SPEAKER_00 0:02

Is there a silent contract, this agreeableness contract that you've created with this person? Are you doing something and silently thinking to yourself, okay, so I did A, now I definitely gotta get B. That is a silent, agreeable contract. You've created a contract that only you signed, and the other person has no fucking idea that it's happening. Failures podcast. Today we're talking about the nice guy paradox. Have you ever sat there and wondered to yourself, how do I break out of this loop of hell that is the yes man trap? I don't know how I got into this, but I've realized the more I keep saying yes, the more I agree, the more I do favors for friends, family, girls, it never works out for me. How do I avoid getting the short end of the stick? How have I become Mr. Strings Attached? Mr. Strings Attached is the guy who does things to get things. And it's really not your fault because your pre-programming when you were younger was from school. It was from your parents, it was from people who loved you. When you're a little person, they tell you do nice things to people and you'll get nice things back. The problem is as you get older, it becomes a little finesse. You start giving to get, and then you become Mr. Strings attached. And you're trapped in the nice guy paradox. Why is it a paradox? It's a paradox because you're putting money and coins into the vending machine and you think you're gonna get something, but you actually get something totally different, and you're trapped in this web of lies because you don't know who you are. Rich, I have a funny ass story that I do want to share with our listeners about me going to no lie, at least 10 museums and one or two too many silent films with a young lady that I thought, and this was just me, I thought she really liked me. But it turns out she did it. I was just her yes man friend. I'll get into that story later. But Rich, I do want to start off by asking you the yes man, uh Mr. Strings attacks guy, the the nice guy paradox, when I say all of these things, does anything come to mind? Can you relate to this guy? Why do you think he lives in this hell?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

For sure, man. Listen, I used to be this guy when I was in my 20s, right? And there's a lot of gray areas about this topic, right? Because as a young man, you're told, and once you're growing up as a young man, you're told to be nice, be respectful to women, be honest, be loyal, have all these like really good core values about yourself as a person, but no one teaches you boundaries, self-respect, you know, emotional strength, and things like that. So what ends up happening is the way you present yourself to women ends up being different than how they want to receive you, right? And I often feel like most women, bro, when a guy is too nice and comes across as too cushy, in her mind, she views him as safe. Like, oh, he's nice, but you know, he's safe. Like, can this guy actually protect me from any real danger? And this is weird, like gray area, because we're encouraging you to be nice and be respectful to women, but at the same time, a guy with no self-respect, a guy with no boundaries is not a desirable guy. And that's what we're here to unpack today.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Rich, we dug into some research in our pre-show, and I think Pew, PEW, is one source that I always go to because they're really good with modern research in the last three or four years. And they did a speed dating uh test with young men and young women under the age of 30. And it wasn't like speed dating in the sense that they were like in a room. It was more like they monitored the conversations between a group of young guys and young girls, and they tracked their first three dates that they went out, they went out together, like three dates, and they tracked over a hundred couples. And they found that the number one trait for women with these guys was kindness. Women's number one trait was kindness. They wanted a man who was kind. The paradox, and the reason why we're going with the nice guy paradox is because I think what you said earlier, and I know you have a younger son, is you want him to be a kind man. You want him to be a good person. You don't want him to be a piece of shit or arguing with people, being mean, being malicious, right? Like you tell your son, you guide your son, be a good person in society, be a kind person. But the issue is a lot of these guys, when they get to their teenage years in their early 20s, they confuse the word kindness for agreeableness. And that's the paradox. Being a yes man is not being kind. Being a yes man is shrinking yourself. So that's why we're going at it this way. It's a paradox because there's a goal, there's an action, and then there's the result. And every time your action to your goal doesn't line up with the result, you're just confused. You're like, why am I not getting what I want? And what happens there, Rich? The formula equals resentment because your goal and your action is not getting your result. Now you start resenting the world. You start getting angry at the world because fuck this. I've done it this way and I haven't gotten what I wanted. So now I'm gonna be a villain. And this is the whole other side of the problem. You go to the other extreme, you go from Batman to Bane all in fucking one year. That's not the solution. The solution is somewhere in the gray area, and I think we're gonna unpack that today, Rich.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah, and like you said, you know, when you're the agreeable guy, that means you don't have boundaries, right? And that there's a difference between being a nice guy and you know, being a good guy and being weak. And that distinction is extremely important because a woman can detect when a guy is genuinely being nice versus when he's uh we we've spoken about this, we have a whole episode around this, but it's called like the performative male, the guy who just pretends to be nice with the sole intention of getting her her to sleep with him, right? Or getting her to go out on a date. And he's performing the act of being nice, but it's not genuine. And I feel like women detect that immediately. And that's part of what we're here to discuss as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah. Listen, that's the fake nice guy. The guy laughing at your jokes at work. If you're a boss, you ever been a supervisor, you ever managed a team, and you're that person's destiny, their pay relies on your relationship with them. It's almost uncomfortable as a man for another man to be abnormally kind to me, laughing at jokes. I could tell if I say something that I thought was funny and I'm with four people and three of them don't laugh, and the one kiss ass, uh Mr. Strings attached, he's always wanting to make you feel good. Correct me if I'm wrong, Rich. I feel like you can feel that when someone is overly accommodating. Like somebody buys you a gift, but there's no reason, no birthday, there's no anniversary, opens the door for you, but you're good. You have two arms. When somebody's laughing at your joke, somebody's asking you, hey, do you need anything? Are you good? That level of paying attention to me and not paying attention to yourself, even on a work level, feels weird. Guy to guy feels weird. It's just like, yo, relax. I'm good. Think about when you put a woman into that process. And I think that's what you're trying to say. A woman that has a guy that's always at her beck and call. He's just like always around, he's always nudging her. Are you okay? Is everything all right? I bought you this. Look at this thing I got for you. Do you like it? It's not do you like it? You know what it is, Rich. It's do you like me? Look what I got you, look what I did for you. I assume women can feel that debt that you're already fronting them. And they're like, look, look, I don't want to be in debt with you. Uh it's fine. And and that's where that weird energy comes from. It comes from that. You know, you know what's something metaphorically that I think about when I think about this subject? Imagine a sheep, a whole gaggle of sheep, just 20 sheep out in the field, and then there's you, Mr. Yes Man, Mr. Strings Attached, Mr. Go Along to get along, fake nice guy. You're a wolf. You find yourself a little sheep mask with the two strings, you throw it over your face, and you just start slowly hanging out with the sheep. You start banging like a sheep, you start walking like a sheep. You're trying to become a sheep, but at the end of the day, the other sheep can see it. They're paying attention to your body language, your intentions. You are wearing a mask because you want to be a part of something, and you want at the end of the day to get something out of hanging around with the sheep. You're a wolf in sheep's clothing. And I think people can pick up on that. You're a people pleaser, you have a nice guy energy to you, and your intentions are not pure. And I think the intention part is important. What are your intentions when you're being nice? If you're genuinely a good person, stay tuned. We we have some genuinely kind feedback to give you on this episode. But if you're somebody that's running a play and you and you've convinced yourself, you're lying to yourself. You're trying to get something out of the situation.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah, and listen, when you don't get something out of that situation, then you make it about the woman. You start villainizing her, you get mad at her, you're like, damn, all women are the same. Women don't like me. And bro, there's a very clear-cut difference between the acceptable man and the respected man, right? The guy who's always trying to agree with her, be non-confrontational, be extremely accommodating. And what tends to happen, just is there's no bones on a man like that. You know what I'm saying? Like this guy doesn't know how to set boundaries, he has no conviction in any like the decisions that he makes, he has no decisiveness on anything that that he wants to like plan for. And that's partly the components of a man that a woman seeks, right? Is a man that stands 10 toes down on whatever decision he makes or whatever plans he's planning, right? But I feel like that's something that every young man should unpack and decipher that these two things are very different. Being a performative male, to be performing the act of being nice to get something that you want, and then being upset that you didn't get the thing that you want because your niceness pushed her away is sort of that toxic loop that we're trying to break these young men out of.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, when you say that, Rich, I'm curious to know what you think about this. But when you say that, can you date back to a time maybe when you were younger? You said in your 20s you you were a victim of this, where people would constantly say things that you knew in your own gut and the in your own opinion that you didn't agree with. Did you go places you didn't want to go? Did you agree with plans that you didn't want to agree with? Did you do things that you truly didn't want to do because you were Mr. Agree, Mr. Go along to get along because you didn't want to create friction? Because I think at the core of all of this, that might be the biggest issue and the hurdle that this guy listening right now can't get over. He doesn't want the friction of disagreeing, so he just kind of just rolls with it. And he's just like, you know what? It is what it is. But that it is what it is puts you in hell when you're in your late 20s and your early 30s because you haven't been driving the ship that is your life. You've been just letting the waves of other people's ideas and opinions just move you along. And now you're a part of the world that you don't want to be in, and you really have no choice but to blame yourself because you're Mr. Get Along. You agree with everything just to get along with everyone else, and then your life becomes a hell.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Just that is such a big point that you just made, right? Like, I think about moments when I was in my early 20s where I agreed to everything, right? If a woman wanted to go here, oh yeah, let's go, right? Like I never really pushed back on anything, especially like at work, especially with my friends. I think in my early 20s, and this is probably common amongst young men, you don't want confrontation, right? You generally speaking, you want to be accepted by your peer group.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

This is something that comes up a lot, Rich. Confrontation and friction avoidance is at the core of a lot of these episodes that we're discussing. But I do want you to unpack that because you were there. Why avoid confrontation? Why avoid friction?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah, I mean, I just think naturally it doesn't invoke a good emotion when you're confrontational with someone. Like something you said either upset someone.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

You're saying within yourself, you don't even you don't like that feeling of tension. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah, you start to feel real tense, you you shrug your shoulders, right? You feel like you have to build up a wall to guard yourself from uh the friction and the resistance that you're getting from being the confrontational person. And like you said, when you don't have the ability to at least be a little confrontational, you you never really grow the ability to defend yourself in any situation, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Well, I want to be clear. I, Justin Duran, have a tendency to be confrontational. That is not a good thing. I'm I promise you, if I had a son, Rich, or if I was talking to your son who was like a nephew to me, I I would actually vote against that. That's some short man shit I got going on. I do like static. That's not a good thing. I recognize that. But friction is the word that I want to replace for confrontational. Because confrontational means you're being like rude. You're you're you're shoulder bumping somebody. Sure. Friction is like, hey, did that guy say something to you while you were in recess and it was the last basketball in the bin of basketballs, and he took it from your hands? How'd you feel about that? I'm talking to a 15-year-old right now, and they're like, uh, it's cool, it's fine. I'll just I'll just play kickball uh over here with the people I don't know. It's like, no, no, do you want to play basketball? Yeah, I would love to play basketball, and that's why I grabbed the basketball. It's like, well, you're not being confrontational then. Because I think the guy who pulled the fucking basketball from your hands, he's being confrontational. I think you're afraid of a little bit of friction. I think you're afraid of a little bit of smoke, and you don't want to feel that tension so you shrink. You betray every fiber of your body so you don't have to live in a moment of friction. That is really what we're talking about today. You shrink yourself, you betray yourself, and you're like, you know what, fuck it. And then you and then you immediately cope instantly. No, no, I don't want to play basketball. I it's fine. I'll I'll just skip rocks over here. I'll throw rocks at the water, I'll just stay on my cell phone. No, man, you just denied yourself something internally we you know you wanted. So, not confrontation, definitely friction avoidance. I feel like that is huge in this generation.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Absolutely, bro. Bringing it back to women, I remember a personal story where um I was dating multiple women. I was a single guy in my early 20s.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Shout out to the RP that rich. He was a fun guy.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

I hung out with him, it was a good dude. One girl said, Hey, um, for a next date, I'd like to go and watch this movie. I said, All right, cool. We could go watch the movie. Go two and a half hours, watch the movie. Wow, that was a great movie. Two weeks later, a different girl I was dating says, Hey, I want to watch this movie. Same movie that the first girl wanted to watch. Right?

SPEAKER_00 15:55

You have to make pretend you haven't seen it yet.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Making making myself the agreeable man, right? Being the nice guy that I was, I said, sure, we could go see this movie. So the second time around, I'm watching this movie, I'm pretending I'd never watched this movie before. I, in one instance, I said the line and she was like, Wait, what? You saw this movie? I said, No, no, no, no, this is my first time. Yes, just being the performative male, right? In that scenario, a couple things happened, right? I didn't want to disappoint the women that I was dating, right? They wanted to go see this movie. I wanted to be the nice guy, watch the movie.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Rich, you wanted to fuck. Let's be honest. I mean, listen. You wanted a fuck. You don't want to rock the boat. Hey, I get it.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

No, but that's a great point. How many things are you susceptible in doing as a young man when you're chasing the tail, when you're trying to chase the woman and get into her pants and get in bed with her? You are susceptible to do some really ridiculous, stupid things, including being agreeable, being kind, being nice, and being respectful, which we're not saying for you not to do, but we're saying when it comes from a place of not being genuine and not being yourself and being performative, that is the danger that we're highlighting today.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Rich, that right there is the betrayal devil on your shoulders. Imagine you in your most sober young man version of yourself. You're like, man, I'm a good dude, I'm healthy, I'm thriving. Any woman would be lucky to be with me. And you have a good head on your shoulders. You're not a piece of shit person, you're not out here just being manipulated by anybody. And then comes along a beautiful young lady, and you like this young lady, but you're unclear on whether or not she likes you. So she says to you, Hey, I love going to museums, and I am the main character in this story, Rich. I'm like, I like museums too. If you know anything about me, I fucking hate museums. But I was Mr. Go Along to get along, but I was the wolf in sheep's clothing. I had strings attached to the seven museums we went to in one summer. Rich, I was down bad this summer. I got out of a really fucked up relationship, and it just so happened that this young lady also was getting out of a really fucked up relationship. And if she's watching, I know she knows who she is. I won't put her business out there, but she was in an abusive relationship, and I was her shoulder to lean on. But I didn't know that because I find myself to be a very like tactical and intelligent young man. I feel like I have control of my life. I know what I'm doing. But it just took one soft touch from a beautiful girl, and all my fucking rationality went out the window. Bro, I didn't know who I was for that whole summer. I was doing shit that, bro, I'm embarrassed to even bring up. I was going to museums every week, every Saturday for a cool three months last summer. I was fucking the museum guy. Bro, we were in these places for hours, Rich. And I kept thinking to myself, damn, I gotta figure out a way to get it back to the crib. Like, it never happened, bro. And on the ride there, she would play me songs that reminded me of him. On the ride back, she was venting me about like the progress and what he's doing. Bro, this dude had a whole ass other girl with a whole ass other kid. And I'm in that bitch, like, yeah, no, no, I get it, man. You you gotta move on. You gotta move on. You gotta find somebody that's willing to go to museums with you and willing to eat vegan food with you because she was a vegan too, so I'm eating vegan food now. Like, bro, I'm literally living an opposite life just so I could get approval from this woman. And maybe, just maybe, she would touch my inner thigh accidentally. Bro, it never happened, Rich. And when I was doing the notes for this show, that motherfucking story popped up in my brain like toast out of a toaster, bro. It just came up. I was like, oh shit. I remember living in this hell. And it took me a while, Rich, for me to be honest with her. And I went through the resentment phase. I started getting mad. She would invite me places. I'm like, nah, I'm good. I don't want to go there. She's like, oh, I thought you told me you love this place. Like, I just found the new reopening and uh Jackson Heights. And like, I'm like, bro, stop inviting me to shit. You haven't kissed me on the neck yet. She had no idea, Rich. She had no idea that I was romantically interested in her. And I don't know why she needed to know that. I just assumed if I did everything that she wanted to do to get over her ex, that she was eventually gonna fall in love with me. Bro, I feel the young man in this situation right now. And like we said, it's not all about women, but it happens a lot with women because that's when we become the most irrational, because it's a paradox. You want something, you think this is the process to get it, and you get the opposite. So your brain is fucked up. That usually happens with women or some form of employment where you do something, you're working hard, you're trying to show off, and then you're not getting the promotion. This is not limited to women, but these are good examples for you to understand. And this is something that feedback that we've gotten from our show, Rich, is that we have to do a better job at identifying where this problem shows up at, when it shows up. Show me the pain and I can figure out how to fix it. Right there, those two stories that Rich and I exchanged, that's pointing out the pain. It happens subconsciously. You don't even know when it happens, but pay attention to when you're contorting your whole body and living a different version of yourself in order to get something back. The resentment comes from wanting something back. That's the biggest problem here.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah. And just what do I say all the time? You have to have the ability to do a self snapshot. If you're being that performative male and being and pretending to be kind and light and living a Frictionless lifestyle, and you're that kindness is not being reciprocated by women, you're not going on dates, or they're not inviting you into a second date, then your process is clearly not working. You need to do a self-snapshot, look at yourself internally and figure out what are the things about how I'm approaching dating, how I'm approaching women, how I'm how I'm carrying myself as a young man day to day. What about that? It's not working, and then work diligently to dissect that and change that. Because in my mind, kindness is given freely, it's not something that you perform. Women detect that immediately. How many times have someone said someone's name and you're like, oh man, that that's a kind soul, or that person's genuine, right? Like people have that internal radar. We're emotional beings as a uh human race. And when we detect someone who is genuinely kind, free-spirited, right? We know that about people and we treat them accordingly. But yeah, yeah, man. You you know what's something just that I feel really strongly about, and it's sort of like in the same vein, but a little bit of a different angle, is if you continue to be this performative male, how you end up becoming this like harmless man syndrome to the woman. It's like you can't defend me in any situation. I don't know if I build a life with you, if I ever have to worry about the mortgage not being paid, right? Like you carry this softness about you that can be mistaken for weakness because you're someone who is too kind, too acceptable, too agreeable, too shape-shifting, right? For her taste.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Yeah. You said something that sparked a whole train of thought in my mind. You said something about being genuine. And when you said that, all I thought to myself is sometimes I'll be genuine, but I'll be genuinely full of shit because I want something from someone. Sure. So be aware of that little distinction, that little slippery slope. Are you being genuine or are you being genuinely full of shit because you want something? Is there a silent contract, this agreeableness contract that you've created with this person? Are you doing something and silently thinking to yourself, okay, so I did A, now I definitely gotta get B. That is a silent, agreeable contract. You've created a contract that only you signed, and the other person has no fucking idea that it's happening. And to your point, Rich, I think women are keen to this. If you're someone that's constantly agreeable and you're Mr. Go with the flow, go along to get along. Bro, I seen a dude at my old job. I won't mention what job it was, but we were at like a Spanish spot that had like the Chipotle like conveyor belt style of serving you food, but it was like a Caribbean Spanish spot. And this beautiful older woman knew one of my boys that I worked with, and she would always say, Oh, this is the guy that likes lechón asado. Like for whatever reason, she thought she knew his order before he ordered it. This dude did not like pork, bro. I don't know how that she confused him for somebody else, but for at least two fucking months, Rich, this dude literally would just take what she served him and she would call him chulo, oh chulo, and like she would make him feel good about himself. And I would always be like, yo, why do you why don't you eat the pork when we eat? He's like, bro, I don't really like the pork. I'm like, why don't you tell this woman? He's like, bro, I don't know. Every time I go there, I'm like, I don't want to disappoint her. I'm like, it's little shit like this, Rich. And I think women are fucking doghounds for people that are this agreeable. They can notice when somebody is not strong, not firm on anything, they just kind of go along to get along. That is the point that you're making. I believe if I could simplify it for the young guy watching, if you are insanely agreeable, if you shrink to every point of tension, if you shrink whenever there's friction with anyone in the world, this woman in your life is paying attention. She can see that you minimize yourself in order to avoid any type of friction. You are a waterbed in her life. When she lays down, she's expecting something firm, reliable, soft, but firm, like a good mattress. You're a fucking waterbed. When she lays down, she cannot find stability in you. Don't be that guy. Be someone with a backbone, be someone that has presence. You can resist if you truly don't want to be going along to get along. Now, this is where it gets fucked up, and we get into the Andrew Tate-effection of the internet. We're not that, Rich. We're not saying to be a dickhead to be a dickhead. We're saying if you don't like eating pork, but every time you go to this restaurant, they serve you pork, you have to put your hand out and say, hey, hey, hey, I don't like that. Can you please put something I want on my plate so I could enjoy the meal that I'm paying for? No one's going to get mad at you for telling them what you want out of your own life. And the person that does get mad at you, you need to get rid of that person. That's what we're saying, Rich. I know it was a very long Chipotle story to get to my point, but I think it's important because this is a gray area. And I know you talk about gray areas often when it comes to these subjects.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Just I almost feel like a hypocrite giving this advice because I have a short story of something that happened to me over the summer where I was this exact agreeable guy. This summer. This past summer, yeah. As a 37-year-old man, I made this mistake. But my neighbors were inviting me to a barbecue and they were having like a seafood broil, and they were like, hey, we want to invite you over, and we heard you like crawfish. So we're gonna get you crawfish. And bro, I don't eat crawfish, but this is the first time they were inviting me over. I don't know where they got this information from, but I'm like, I'll eat a few pieces of crawfish. Like, I didn't want to disappoint them, right? Bro, I show up to the barbecue, two big ass trays of just crawfish.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

By the way, that's not a barbecue.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah, seafood broil. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I go and I'm like, oh my god, like, look how much crawfish they ordered.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Look what I signed up for. Look what I signed up for.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah. I'm like, oh, so everyone likes crawfish here, right? They're like, oh no, we we got that just for you. And I was like, bro, the shame and guilt that I had in that moment that I let these folks buy two trays of crawfish because I let them believe you're the only one that had to eat it. It's like and I'm bro, I had two little pieces of crawfish on my plate, and they were looking at me strange. They're like, I don't look like a person who likes it. Hey, Mr. Crawfish, what's going on? Bro, long story short, bro, they put some aluminum foil over those two trays that were like, take this with you, right? Because like, we don't eat this, we got this just for you. And I remember just a sad, miserable moment of sticking two aluminum trays in my refrigerator of crawfish that I eventually threw out. But I just remember replaying that moment over that summer and being like, Why did we do that? Why did we not check them immediately when it was raised that I like crawfish? I should have been like, no, I don't know where you got that from. Yeah, bro. I don't eat crawfish. This is what I like. XYZ. Short story to highlight that even if you do overcome this situation of being the agreeable man, there's still little moments in your life. Like you said, these are great areas where even something as simple as an invite to a dinner or barbecue or seafood broil can have you feeling like this agreeable man. And what happens in this scenario? You have no control, right? You're being agreeable for the sake of not being confrontational. And you regain control and clarity when you can stand firm and being like, hey, I don't know where you got that information. I actually don't like that, but here are the things that I do like.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

So just a short story, but no, I think that's incredible. And I mean, I find it hilarious, and I'm sure you do in hindsight, that somehow you not stopping this narrative created a false narrative for you that you had to live in. By the way, no one benefits from this. That I think that's the point of the whole episode. No one benefits from you faking it to get along. Being a yes man, no one benefits. Like you didn't eat the crawfish, and those people were trying to be nice to you and they bought crawfish, and now you gotta leave, and they're like, oh wow, maybe he didn't like it. Maybe Rich hates us. It's like, no, man, if you would have nipped that shit in the bud early, you wouldn't even have this problem. Listen, there's something that it's a little framework that I've created that I think would be helpful for the guy going through this situation, and it's the safe disagreement test. It's a very simple seven-day strategy. I'm calling it the safe disagreement test. And why is it the safe disagreement test? Because it's a safe place for you to go to where you don't have to deal with the friction. It's very simple. Monitor yourself day over day, hour over hour, with your mother, with your girlfriend, with your friends, with your coworkers at school, whatever your life is. Every time you are caught in a situation where you truly feel in the pit of your stomach, damn, I just agreed to something that I didn't want to do. Damn, I just went along with a story that I wasn't even interested in, and I wound up listening to an hour and a half of some shit that I didn't care about. Anything like this, any point of friction in your life that you feel, and you're like, man, I really wanted to say something, but I didn't say it. I wanted you to grab your cell phone, write a text message to yourself. You can do this on iMassage. You could text yourself and just write what you truly wanted to say. Safely disagree with the moment that just happened. Damn, my mom just said that I need to pick up my brother from soccer practice. And I wanted to tell her, no, I can't do that. Don't disagree with her. Avoid the friction. Go on your phone and write it out as if you were texting her. You'll see after seven days, you'll have a nice collection of all these singular moments in your life where you were being passive and you let the world dictate and you let the waves of other people's priorities and responsibilities move you in a direction that you had no business in going in. That is called safe disagreement. And it's allowing you to see, man, if I would have checked all these moments, I would have been living a life that I want to live. So just a little framework for our listeners out there that needed something to walk away with. The seven-day safe disagreement framework, run with that. Let me know how it goes. Rich is something I thought of because I like to text myself ideas whenever I have them, just because I like keeping them in my phone. But I thought that's something that could really help these guys because they they want to avoid friction, but I want them to see how it's becoming a snowball that's going downhill and it's gathering more snow. And at some point you wake up, which what we saw in the research, you're a 34-year-old Mr. Yes man, and you have a lot of resentment in your body about other people. Where does that resentment come from, Rich? Comes from expectations. You expected people to treat you in a way you never asked them to. Why would they treat you in a way you never demanded or you never asked? The onus is on you. The responsibility is really on you.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Yeah, listen, I love that story. I think you said something pivotal, that advice rather. I think you need to capture the things that you are allowing by proxy of being this nice, acceptable person. Once you capture this, right, you'll quickly realize that as a person, as an individual, as a young man, you're abandoning your standards. And once you start to abandon your standards, you start to drift away from who you are as a person, what your identity is. You become a shape shifter. Like you said, a lot of outbound influences can easily manipulate what you believe, what your opinions are, how you feel about yourself, your self-respect. It's almost like slow-infecting poison, right? That once injected, like just little by little over time, it starts to dehabilitate your limbs. Yeah, and unfortunately, over time, it just really ends up shaping you into a person that you never wanted to become.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Yeah. The note that I thought of that I had handwritten down before the show is you're selling your morals for a peace of mind. And I was thinking about that because I was thinking about a younger version of myself that I was donating my morals and my self-esteem. I was just giving up to get, and I never got. So it would make me filled with anger. And the anger comes from the lack of self-esteem that I had. I didn't have a good relationship with myself. I was angry at other people for not giving me what I thought I deserved. You know, there's something that came to mind when I think about a yes man, a people pleaser. It's called the they owe me syndrome. They owe me. Those people owe me. When you feel like the world owes you something, you live in a purgatory, a self-made jail of anger and resentment because you're thinking to yourself, man, I did all this for all those people, and they never recognize how nice I was, how good of a person I was. They owe me. That is a hell that you're living in when you think people owe you, and motherfuckers don't even know you exist. They don't even know what you did for them was a silent contract. That agreeable contract that you only signed, it don't it had two lines you and them. You signed it. They didn't even know they were under an embargo. So they don't owe you a motherfucking thing. Nobody really owes you anything. So you got to clear yourself of that. Nobody owes you anything if they didn't agree to it. If you made a contract with yourself, that's on you.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Just that is incredible. You have to relieve yourself of that thought process because if you live with that mentality, especially once you apply it in the dating world, then you know what happens? You end up becoming the guy that says, Oh man, women only want toxic men. Yep. Oh man, dating is broken. The dating apps don't work, good guys finish last is the famous quote that gets thrown around by these guys. And you live in that victim mentality of like, why am I not getting what I expect to receive by being a good guy?

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Yeah. There's a phrase that I wanted to share with our community that it's Spanish, and uh, we'll figure out a way to translate it. Maybe you know how to translate it, Rich. My mom taught me this about people that lend you money or do you favors, and it's called sacando en cara. What is the translation?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

It means like throwing, throwing in your face, like throwing it in your face, like you do a favor for someone, and when you say no, you throw it in their face and remind them that you did a favor for them in the past.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

So we have a mutual friend, and when we worked at Ho Fu's, Rich and I worked at Ho Fu's together, we were really young. I will not say their name, but they will know who they are when I share this story. This was the prime example of Sakando Ankara throwing it back in my face because they did something for me, and I didn't even know that they wanted something back. But when they asked me for the favor, they were frustrated with me. I was so confused. I didn't I didn't realize I was in an agreement. When we worked at Whole Foods, I drove a shitty Toyota Camry that was literally working four days a week. I worked five days a week. My Camry worked four days a week. So occasionally this shit wouldn't start. And Rich and I worked in Jersey, so on snow days it was difficult. So having a reliable friend with a brand new car that can get to and from work was a good friend to have. So we both had a friend, I won't say his name, but he had an artist that he was working with that he wanted to get on our radio show. And if people don't know, Rich and I started our own media company when we were younger with a few of our friends. And he kept asking, Can I get this person on the show at work? And I kept telling him, No, we want to hold a standard for the type of guests we have. Unfortunately, your friend doesn't meet that criteria. So anyway, time goes by. Obviously, he's very persistent, this guy uh in the story. And my car broke down. So when my car broke down, I was taking the bus to work. And I was taking the bus. It's like an hour and a half. You got to take two different buses to get to our job. And when our mutual friend, I almost said his name, found out that I was taking the bus, he was so happy to help me out. He was like, yo, I'm coming from 20 minutes away, but I have no problem coming to pick you up. So I thought, all right, this is my guy. Like he's a friend of mine. He wants to do me this favor. Rich, this motherfucker picked me up, and in our 40-minute commute to work, he played all the music of the artist that he wanted to get on our show. He didn't even speak to me when I got in the car. He was like, yo, this is the shit that I was telling you about. Bro, he basically trapped me in his car to play me music of someone that I had no interest in bringing to our show. And that was the exchange. I had to sit there and listen to a pitch meeting about something that I said no in order to get a fucking ride to work. By the second day of donating myself to this self-made hell that I was living in, I told him after the second day, like, yo, I'm good. I'm gonna take the bus uh tomorrow. You don't gotta come pick me up. He was like, bro, why won't you let me come pick you up? And then he was like, yo, I forgot to mention my boy's gonna be in town next week because he lived in Florida. Can you get him on the show? I was like, yo, well, we already had this conversation. He's like, bro, that's fucked up, bro. I've been giving you rides every day, and you're gonna, and you're gonna. I'm like, oh shit. I was like the wire meme where the dude's like, oh shit, I put the math together real quick. This motherfucker was being nice because he wanted me to get his artist on my show. He had zero intentions of being a good person. He just wanted to get something out of the deal. And I'm not mad at him, I don't knock nobody's hustle. But the sacano and cara, that's the part that's fucked up. If I don't give you what you wanted out of the deal, you throw it back in my face. That is a big issue with this type of person in this episode because that's where the resentment comes from. And that's where that nastiness comes from, where guys don't get what they want out of the deal, and then they do a 180 and they turn into the wolf. They take the sheet mask off and they turn back into the wolf. And they're like, fuck you. You didn't give me what I wanted, now you're the enemy. That is nasty work. That right there is another layer of it's the evolution of the nice guy. That's like when you're in your 30s and you kind of learned how to trick people into falling into your trap. I'm not attacking these guys. I'm just saying you're not low. And there is a Spanish phrase for your actions. Sagando and cara, you do shit to get shit. And then when you don't get it, you throw it in people's face. That's not good, bro.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Yeah, you're the type of person who gives to get, right? And I have a quick story, just that you made me think of. But well, late in my 20s, I started working out, started to understand how to better my physical fitness and learning different exercises. And I had a coworker who had owned a CrossFit gym. He had just closed it down, but he had built the gym in his garage. And he's like, Yo, we grew up together, you're the homie. Like, why don't you come to my garage two, two, three times uh a week, and I'll show you like different exercises and different drills that you could do on your own? Cool. I'm like, why wouldn't I take him up on that offer? Um, he was a friend, he obviously owned the gym and he was very knowledgeable, so I took advantage of that. But I did this with him for about a month. On month two, he needed help painting his home inside. And he texted a group chat with a couple guys, like, hey, is anybody available to help me paint the house? Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Well, that's what I don't live at airports, I don't help people move, and I don't paint motherfuckers' houses. Hell no, that's fucked up that he did that, bro.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

So we all say no. He hits me on the side, he's like, Bro, you you're really not available this week to help me paint. I said, No, I'm not. And his literal response to me was like, damn, bro, after all the free gym sessions I gave you at the crib, bro, needless to say, that was the last time I ever went back to his home to work out or asked him for anything ever. Like, as far as I'm concerned, the friendship died that day. Yeah. Because he was giving to get. And I didn't know that at the time. But that that is very predatory when you are the type of man that only gives in order to receive. And like we stated earlier, Just, it's ungenuine of you to operate like that as a young man.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Yeah, Rich, I do want to pivot to one segment that I think we'd be missing out on a huge block of our listener that is a little younger and they don't necessarily have a lot of real life experience. And that's the best way to put it. Um, and I think you thrive in this category because you've had many different jobs. You've even changed your profession a few times. And I want to kind of stay in the world of a younger guy's mindset and think about their life with friends, think about their lives with girls, but just a younger, maybe pre 21, pre 18. And there's something that I found in our research, and they were talking. About men under the age of 24 naturally come from a hack culture, a cheat code culture, meaning they were raised on video games. So they understand that they can play the video game straight up. And without any YouTube or uh Chat GPT search or Twitch streamer advice, you literally play the game the way the game was designed for you to solve every phase with trial and error, right? Think of a video game. But you have an entire generation that knows they've had YouTube or a third-party source where they could figure out okay, how do I beat the first level? And then they'll watch somebody beat it and then they do it. Or how do I beat the second level? How do I get this gun that I don't have? Other people have it. And basically, life is all about to this generation, it's all about input and output. If I do this, I get this. And if you take that into another phase of their life, which is school. And you and I were raised this way with school. If I study for this, I'm gonna get this grade. Hey teacher, can you let us know what is or is not gonna be on the exam? Sure. Make sure you pay attention to this class. This is everything that's gonna be on the exam. So what does that do, Rich? That creates a generation of young men that look at the world from a hacker's perspective, from a cheat code perspective. And then when this young man becomes late teens, early 20s, all they do is watch YouTube and TikTok content. Basically, what we're doing, we've been told you have to have a section of your show, failures. We've been told this by people who advised us on our channel. You gotta give them tips, tricks, and hacks. Why don't we agree with that, Rich? Because we're not gods, we're not gurus, we're just guides. Yeah, bro. And life is so nuanced. Every bully is a different type of bully. There's not one video game cheat code to slay the bully. The bully could be anybody. The bully could be a fucking lesbian girl in your ninth grade PE class that doesn't have a family, and this girl is always on go. You can't YouTube that. You know what I mean? Like, you gotta address that as it comes because you can't be confrontational with a woman. You know what I mean? So, how do you deal with that? There are no cookie-cutter cheat codes to highly nuance things in life. And I did want to get into this portion of it, Rich, because I believe that that framework of video games, school, and YouTube, TikTok hack culture is what a young man in his mid-20s that has hacked his way through life, when they get met with real life, highly nuanced friction, they're confused because they're thinking to themselves, well, if I treat this girl nice and I give her things and I take her out and I buy her expensive things and I bring her to expensive places, if I fly her to different places, then she's supposed to give me something, right? Because that's the input. I'm guaranteed this output. And I just wanted to get into that headspace, Rich, because I think this is a whole other section of the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Exactly what you just stated, just is the gray area, right? And one end, you have this belief that if you are a certain way and you have certain values, morals, beliefs, that that will translate into what a woman is seeking, right? And when it doesn't work, you know what you end up doing? You go back online, you search up masculinity content, you find your Andrew Tate to the world.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

The overcorrection, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

The overcorrection, you try that, that shit doesn't work, and then you become confused. You're in this gray area. Well, I tried to be the nice guy, didn't work. I tried the Andrew Tate toxic man that didn't work, and you know why it's not working, bro? Because you're not being yourself, you're not being you, you're not being genuinely you, you're not adding the nucleus of your identity into the equation. Like you said, this paradigm, like this paradox, is unique to every individual man. Like we don't have the solution for every single young man, but we're telling you with high confidence that if you approach the dating world or just life in general as your genuine self, that would have higher probability of more positive outputs for you than you piecemealing different things that you found on the internet that you believe will work with women.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Damn. Now you snap. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I like that we are 30 plus shows in to this show because I'm starting to see patterns in each of these individual incidents that we're speaking to. It's like, oh, young men are having trouble finding employment. Okay, cool. We we try to attack that. Young men are having issues with their confidence. They want to be more confident uh when it comes to like getting a job or with women. Cool, we attack that. Young men feel like women owe them because they're doing everything for them. But you start seeing a pattern, you're like, oh, wait, oh, this is why these guys are watching this type of content. It's very revealing. It's very meta to have a conversation about the psyche that is in a show of the psyche of our viewer, but maybe they don't even know when they look in the mirror what is stopping them from getting what they want. And it's so nuanced that you have to ask yourself a question. Oh, am I trying to cheat code my way through life? Is this why I'm frustrated? Because I believe everything is an input and an output. If I wear this designer shirt and these designer shoes, am I supposed to get friends? Is this how this works? Kind of. But there's so much more to the man that's inside of the clothes who are you? Like, what are you? What are your standards? What do you stand for? What do you really want? Do you have a backbone? If you do, let it be known. Are you agreeable because you're agreeable, or are you agreeable because you're trying to lure people in to hanging out with you and being with you? I don't know the answers to these questions. And I think it'll be hypocritical, Rich, if we just sat here and tried to solve a whole fucking generation of issues with four pieces of advice. It's highly nuanced. And you really got to take some time, like you say, to do some diagnostic, to really understand, give yourself a self-snapshot. What do I want? What do I want? The answer is integration. It's taking all these pieces of information and bringing it together. You become a man with enough self-respect that you give from fullness. You give from fullness. You don't give from scarcity. Because when you give from scarcity, you're giving something you barely have because you need to get it back. That is when women can see the fangs. When you smile. That's when women can see your sheet mask falling off and your wolf nose poking through, and you got the fucking bloodshot eyes. People are not dumb. You can't cheat code your way through life. Humans are highly nuanced. So everything on the internet is on the internet. Yes, there's a formula for a good tweet. Yes, there is a formula for a good TikTok. Yes, there is a good formula, Rich and I know this, for a good YouTube intro. But there are no formulas for making long-term friends. There are no formulas for finding what makes you feel purposeful and happy. That shit you got to find on your own. And I think we're in a very formula-driven generation that they're looking for these cheat codes. And I hate that our viewer had to listen to 40 minutes of us talking to realize there is no uh actionable advice or tips, tricks, and hacks to this one. You're just gonna have to get in the field, bro.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

Yeah, listen, I'm hopeful just that the person who's watching this clicked on this episode, not necessarily to find solutions, but just to gain clarity, right? Because you're out there in the dating world and you're being overlooked by women. You're out there in the workforce and you're being overlooked by your manager, right? You're being overlooked by your friends when you opine on like plans that no one agrees with your plans. Everyone's always going with someone else's plans. And this is what this show's about. It's just highlighting that like you can be respectful without being submissive, right? You could be kind without being weak, you could be disagreeable without being a hostile person. Understand that nuance. Nuance. You know what I'm saying? Understand that nuance and adjust yourself appropriately.

SPEAKER_00 52:41

Yeah. Rich, this was a heavy one because the more I read about the nice guy trap or the nice guy paradox, it's a fucked up situation because I know you had mentioned this before we started the show. You were like, just you know, we don't want to make anybody the villain. We definitely want to make like the thought process the villain. And I do agree with that to an extent. But I will say, for this one, we got to hold our guys accountable. I think you have to take a long ass look in the mirror and be like, what do I want? What do I want? Like, what do I truly want? Who am I? What do I truly want? And I feel like when you ask yourself that question, a lot of the bullshit of life just slowly starts melting away. When you are at peace with the things that you truly want, what are the desires that I have in my life that I will die for because I really want to get this out of the world? Everything else to me is a distraction. So if you have an insane amount of desires, it's almost impossible to get all of them at once. The man who chases three rabbits gets none. I think that's that's what's happening here. All these guys are chasing all this validation from friends, chasing women. I want to get respect. It's all these like secret desire contracts that you have. If you truly know what you want and you take some time to figure out who you are before you go out there and try to perform your way to getting something, you'll get from the world something that's a bit more pure and more aligned with your true worldview, who you are. And I'm not one for the fucking woo-woo magical theories, but I do feel like that one is at the heart of this episode, Rich. You you really gotta understand when you look at yourself in the mirror, like, bro, what am I doing? I'm all over the place. I got a mohawk. I'm going to fucking events that I don't even want to go to. I'm listening to music I hate. I'm going to EDM festivals and I really like hip-hop. Bro, you're all over the place, bro. You're all over the place. Figure out who you are before you try to bring people into your world.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

Just I think solving for you is the greatest gift that you can give yourself as a young man. That self-respect that you give yourself to become a grounded person and understand who you are, what you like, what you don't like, and how to be firm on those things, yep, will make you not end up with two trays of crawfish in your refrigerator.

SPEAKER_00 55:10

Listen, I know this was a heavy episode. And if anybody listening to this found anything that Rich and I said in this episode helpful, resourceful, and you know someone that's going through this. You have a friend that is in this situation, you have a family member, a relative. If you're a grown person and a young person needs to hear this, shit the other way around. If you're a younger person and you got some grown men in your life that need to hear this, share it. Rich and I are literally not selling anything, and we just want to be helpful. We are the older version of ourselves that want to be helpful to a younger version of ourselves. So just make sure you share.