Dr. Paul Conti: How to Build and Maintain Healthy Relationships | Huberman Lab Guest Series

Andrew Huberman: [Music Playing] Welcome to the Huberman Lab

Guest Series, where I and an expert guest discuss science and science

based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today marks the third episode in our four episode series

about mental health with Dr.

Paul Conti.

Today's episode deals with the topic of healthy relationships, how to

define what a healthy relationship is, and how to achieve healthy

relationships of all kinds, including romantic relationships, interpersonal

relationships at work, friendships with family, and of course, with oneself.

This episode builds on the framework of the psychology of self and mental

health that was established in the first and second episodes of this series.

However, even if you didn't listen to the first or second episode in this

series, today's episode will still contain a lot of information and

protocols that you will find valuable for improving your relationships.

That said, if you have the opportunity to listen to the first and second episodes in

this series, I think you'll find those to be tremendously beneficial at any point.

During today's episode, Dr.

Conti discusses what makes for a successful relationship of

any kind, as well as tools to improve those relationships.

He discusses various types of bonds, including healthy bonds and trauma

bonds, not just in the context of romantic relationship, but in the

context of all types of relationships.

We also discuss different challenges that people face in relationships,

including abusive relationships, and we discuss the role of power dynamics,

anxiety, and boundaries in relationships, both from the perspective of unhealthy

relationships, but more importantly from the understanding and protocols

to cultivate healthy relationships.

While there is an abundance of opinions and information out there on the Internet

these days about relationships both healthy and unhealthy, today's discussion

approaches the topic of relationships through an entirely different lens, which

is the lens of the self in terms of one's conscious and subconscious mind, and how

multiple conscious and subconscious minds through different individuals, interact

with one another in ways that we can see and ways that we can't see, and all of

that framed within the actionable steps that any of us can take to improve our

relationship to ourself and to others.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my

teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer

information about science and science related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed

therapist, carried out all online.

I've been doing therapy for more than 30 years.

While I confess that initially I was forced to do that therapy as a condition

for being let back into high school, over time I learned that therapy is

a tremendously valuable practice.

In fact, I consider doing regular weekly therapy just as important

as doing regular physical exercise in order to improve one's health.

The beauty of BetterHelp is that it makes it extremely easy to find a

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And we can define an excellent therapist as somebody who's going to

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Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman.

Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

Waking Up is a meditation app that offers dozens of guided meditation

sessions, mindfulness trainings, Yoga Nidra sessions, and more.

By now, there's an abundance of data showing that even short daily meditations

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In fact, the science around Yoga Nidra is really impressive, showing that after a

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So for those of you that have not meditated before or getting back to a

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If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com/huberman

and access a free 30 day trial.

Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman.

And now for my discussion about mental health with Dr.

Paul Conti.

Dr.

Conti, welcome back.

Paul Conti: Thank you.

Happy to be here.

Andrew Huberman: Today we're going to discuss relationships, and that will

often focus on romantic relationships, but also relationships between friends,

between family members, and inevitably, the relationship to self, which is what

we really focused on in episodes one and two of this series, episode one

being all the things that go into a healthy self and how to understand what

is unhealthy and healthy in all of us and make adjustments to the unhealthy

aspects of our unconscious and conscious through really specific proactive

behaviors and patterns of thought.

So really a roadmap to these ideals that we call mental health

and understanding of the self.

Today we want to talk about relationships from the perspective

of, of course, how people relate.

But I have a feeling it's going to have something to do with, or perhaps almost

everything to do with our relationship, to understanding ourselves first.

Paul Conti: Yes.

Andrew Huberman: So, just to make sure that we're all on the same page,

regardless of whether or not people have seen episodes one and two, and

certainly people do not need to have seen or listened to episodes one and two

of this series in order to understand today's discussion, could you please

tell us what is a healthy person?

And how can we ask ourselves the sorts of questions that allow us to determine

whether or not we are healthy and where to look in terms of making adjustments

if we want to be healthier than we already are, which I have to believe

almost everybody, if not everybody, certainly wants to be the healthiest

and best expression of themselves so that they can do the most for

themselves and for others in the world?

Paul Conti: So, the linchpin of it all, is the agency and gratitude as verbs.

That's the top of the mountain.

There's a lot of climbing we do to get to the top of the mountain.

Once we're over the top of the mountain, then things are in a better place.

And even though there are two words, agency is, of course, a word, g

ratitude is a word, b ut it doesn't mean that they're separate concepts.

Approaching the world through the lens of agency and gratitude, thought of as

one thing because they come together and they come together as verbs.

That's what we're aiming for, because that's the thing that we can work towards.

If you think about what comes underneath that, it takes us back to

the two pillars and the 10 cupboards.

And if we're looking in there enough, we're mInding, like what is in my

unconscious mind I might not be aware of.

Let me generate some curiosity about my defense mechanisms and

my character structure and think about what's salient inside of me.

If we're doing all of that, then what we're doing, we're building

empowerment, we're building humility.

And then ultimately, the expression of all of that is the agency and

gratitude, and it's something that we can't have enough of.

Like I say, what's the best amount of that?

The most that's possible, right?

Because we're going to engage in the world in the healthiest way.

Because agency and gratitude doesn't mean like, we're happy about everything, right?

If there's something negative and we can change that, then

we don't feel happy about that.

The sense of gratitude in me makes me more likely to feel

that I can change that, right?

Or to take the chance of trying to change that.

And then the agency part of that concept can come more to the

fore and I can make the change.

So it's not about bliss, it's not about forgiving self and others

for all sorts of things and not working to make things better.

It's about being in the world and being as aware as I can possibly

be, including being aware that there are things I'm not aware of.

So sort of having a healthy respect and an orientation to the world that values truth

and values understanding and exploration.

If we do all of that, then we reach the top of the mountain

through the agency and gratitude.

And then what builds upon that or what comes from that is the peace,

the contentment, the delight, the generative drive being strengthened

like that all comes together.

And then the aggressive, or we say aggressive because that's

the traditional term, b ut the aggressive or the assertive.

The assertiveness or assertion drive, however, whatever word we want to put

to that, that drive exists in us in a way that subserves the generative drive.

The same thing with the pleasure drive in us.

It exists in us, but it's subserving the generative drive.

And then all those good things come together and they come together

to help us be as healthy as we can and to stay healthy, including when

tribulation or difficulties come our way, so that we stay as best we can

in the agency and gratitude as verbs.

And again, there's nothing theoretical about this.

It's a way to live, and there are a lot of people who live some of their lives,

or parts of their lives through that.

And we can aspire to it and we can work towards it, and if we're the best that

we can be, then we're going to be in our relationships the best we can be.

Think about it, like, you and I have a relationship, we know each

other, w e're working together.

If I can bring my best self to you, to thinking about you, to

understanding you, if I can bring the agency and the gratitude,

then I'm going to do right by you.

I'm going to mentalize this idea of thinking about what's

going on inside of you.

I'm going to bring the best o f all of that.

And then, because we have a relationship, t here's also an "us."

There's a me, there's a you, there's something that happens between us.

That's the relationship, that's the "us."

And I will also bring my best self to that thing that is no longer just

me or just you, but that is an us.

And that applies to all relationships.

You can apply that to seeking health in every single relationship in our lives.

Andrew Huberman: What you're saying really speaks to the importance of

people taking a real look at themselves, which is not necessarily an inventory

of self in the typical sense that we're used to hearing it, but rather through

this lens or map of the self that was spelled out in episodes one and two.

And again, for those that are just joining the series now, the

map, as we're referring to it, is available as a downloadable

PDF in the show note captions.

If people want to get that, it's completely zero cost.

You can just go there and access it, or just view it on a screen,

print it out, whatever you like.

You certainly don't need to do that, because here again, we're talking about

the core elements of that map, which, if I understand correctly, arrive

eventually at a set of verb states that we're calling agency and gratitude.

Those are not separate, as you pointed out, they work together.

Paul Conti: You described it as on top of the geyser, r ight?

And I really like that there's a lot of things going on, but then

it all uplifts to something, right?

And if we're doing it in the right way, in the diligent way, then i t is like

a geyser, a nd what it's lifting up on top of it is the agency and gratitude.

I love that you put those words to i t, and I think it

captures it really profoundly.

Andrew Huberman: Well, the stuff that geysers up perhaps deserves a bit of

our attention just for a few moments.

You describe these two pillars that I described as geysering up

into agency and gratitude in the best circumstances, but in the best

circumstances, we want to remind ourselves and everybody, are attainable

by looking at what's in those pillars.

Those two pillars are the structure of self.

So really understanding something about the structure of self.

So that includes some understanding of the unconscious mind, some understanding

of the conscious mind, defense mechanisms, character structure and self.

That was all reviewed and described in episodes one and two, as well

as the functions of self, which are more of the verb states, the

expressions of the structure of self.

Self-awareness being the first of those defense mechanisms in action.

And here I'd be remiss if I didn't tell myself and everybody else again that

defense mechanisms are not always bad.

There can be healthy defense mechanisms.

Paul Conti: Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman: They can protect us in very valuable ways.

And then this notion of salience, what we pay attention to, what

sorts of scripts are going on in our head about ourselves and others,

what are we paying attention to?

How are we interpreting those in our head and to others, and then most

importantly, perhaps to ourselves?

And then our actual behaviors, like what we are doing from the time we wake up

until the time we go to sleep at night, and then our strivings, our sense of

hopefulness, or perhaps lack of strivings.

And there I am reminded also that nobody does all of these

things perfectly all the time.

We all have elements within us that perhaps are not serving to geyser up

into agency and gratitude as well as they could, but that all of us have the

capacity to look at these two pillars and these 10 things that were just listed

off, as you describe them, as cupboards that we look into and examine and think

about, and that if we can do that with a skilled clinician like yourself or another

psychiatrist or psychologist, terrific.

But even if we don't have access to that, we can examine within

us what is and is not serving to geyser up into agency and gratitude.

Paul Conti: We can bring any issue of self to those two pillars and

the 10 cupboards within them.

Any issue of self.

Why?

Because that's what it is, in the s ense that it is the "us."

What's inside of me.

I have an unconscious mind, I have a conscious mind, I have a defensive s

tructure, I have a character structure, I h ave a self, that's what it is.

And all the functions that you mentioned, they're all going on

within that structure of self.

They're manifesting themselves.

That's what it is w hen we're being, in the active way of the verb being.

That's what it is, which is why w e can bring to it any issue

of self, even though, of course, there's tremendous complexity there.

The million things that go on in a second underneath the surface in the

unconscious mind and our defensive structures and how to see them.

But we're human beings.

We're complicated, right?

That's okay, because we have methods of understanding, we have methods

of inquiry, and we can use those methods to make things better.

And that's how we make the geyser as strong as it can be.

Where maybe some of the water is running countercurrent in the...

okay, well, let's try and have things go all in the same direction.

But we don't need things to be perfect for the geyser to spring up and the agency

and gratitude to then be uplifted upon it.

Andrew Huberman: So everybody has one of these maps, as I understand

it, and therefore anytime we're talking about relationships, romantic

relationships or otherwise, we're talking about the intersection or

overlap of those maps in some way, maybe even the synergy and the outgrowth

of those maps becomes its own map.

I think we'll get to this a little bit later.

Paul Conti: Yes.

Andrew Huberman: When I and most people hear the word relationships, in

particular romantic relationships, I make a couple of automatic assumptions.

First of all, I have to assume that people are either in a

relationship or out of a relationship.

There's probably a third category out there of plurals and other things,

but we'll keep it relatively simple.

And most people, I assume, when they search for or enter, or entered a

relationship, they thought about whether or not they had resonance with the

person, whether or not there was an intellectual or mutual interest resonance

or a physical resonance, maybe something about family history, common goals, etc.

That's typically what people think about.

And then perhaps if people will have a bit more of a psychological understanding, or

they're reading some pop psychology books these days, some of which are pretty good,

they might understand something about themselves or the other person being a

bit more anxious or a bit more relaxed.

So you'll hear things like anxious, attached, secure,

attached, things of that sort.

If we could just step back from all of that for a moment and examine it

through the lens of the maps as you're describing them, which exist in all of us.

And that really are the map to being the best version of ourselves.

If we look at relationships in terms of lists of where people went to

school, if they went to school, are their parents married or divorced?

Do they have trauma that they're aware of or not aware of these kinds of things, I

guess we could call those, and here I'm borrowing language that you used earlier

off-camera, so I want to acknowledge that.

Points of compatibility, I think that seems like a

reasonable place to start, right?

Do people want the same thing?

So if you could, could you talk a little bit about points of compatibility

in a relationship and how those show up, for better or for worse?

When you encounter people in the clinical setting, when you see somebody who's in

a relationship that's really working for them and is healthy versus if they're in a

relationship where it's really unhealthy, presumably there's some knowledge about

points of compatibility, but I'm guessing that's not always intuitive, right?

Paul Conti: I think the place we start there is acknowledging what

we can know and what we can't know.

So this idea that there are levels o f emergence where things at a lower

level come together and create something that's new, we see this throughout

science, from subatomic particles all the way through to culture.

So someone could know theoretically, lots and lots and lots about you

and lots and lots and lots about me, but they don't know about us, right?

They don't know how we interact.

They don't know if we have shared interests, what we talk about.

They don't know that.

No one knows that.

We don't know that about the combination of people.

We can't know it in advance, but we often believe that we can, which

then leads to a lot of false metrics of trying to figure things out.

So when we're looking for compatibility, the thought will be just very basic,

tangible things, like in romance, for example, if there's someone who

absolutely wants to have a family and there's someone who absolutely

does not want to have a family, okay, that would be a reason for those two

people to not choose one another.

So there are these factors, but the factors are all, in a sense,

very evident and very concrete.

If we go beyond that, we say, okay, we can see the obvious.

Then what we're looking for is really a compatibility of generative drives.

And then that tells you, can these people then get along?

Maybe one of them is from one s ide of the world and the other i s from the

other side of the world, or one's an accountant and the other is a musician.

And it doesn't mean that they're built not to get along or that if they're doing the

same thing they're built to get along, or if they went to college in the same place,

or they went to college versus not going to college, there's so much there that we

try to build a story on, and then what we do is we miss the forest for the trees.

And the trees, I think, are the factors that don't matter.

So again, let's think about the factors that do matter.

Person wants to have a family, the other person doesn't.

That's relevant.

But the trees that mislead us might be, do they have the same level of education?

Do they have the same family structure growing up?

Are parents still together?

What do they enjoy?

Are they creative or scientific or whatever?

Or creatively scientific.

We could look at all of that, but I think then we're making a

bunch of trees that mislead us.

If you say, look, do these people come at the world through how much agency

and gratitude is there guiding them?

How high is the top of that geyser? How high is it uplifting that?

How strong is the generative drive?

If we match people upon that, then we see, oh, those people got

along and those people didn't.

And then there are all the other factors, like pheromones, a nd things that we can't

understand or reflexive first impressions.

We could let things develop, honoring the truth of what we can't know.

That when you put two people together, you get something that's

different from the sum of both people.

It's not an overlap of maps, i t's a new map, a nd the map is informed by

things that are on each individual's map.

But what we're looking for are maps that don't have very significant differences

around just clear, concrete things.

But once we get beyond that, the maps can synergize in all sorts of beautiful and

unpredictable ways, and if both are coming from the perspective of a generative

drive that is at the forefront, great.

You put those maps together and see what happens.

Maybe nothing happens.

Okay.

Those people don't go out on a second date.

Maybe something happens, but it doesn't develop in certain ways.

Okay, those people dated and stopped dating.

Like, this happens all the time, r ight?

But we set the odds in our favor that the generative drive in each that is

at the forefront means that their maps can synergize in ways that can then be

beautiful and ways that can maybe bring to both people that which they want.

And I think there's a simplicity to that, that I think if we honor

it can be very, very helpful.

Whether it's romance, it's friendships, of looking at what the truth of it

is instead of the factors that we try and gain a false sense of security

if we're using them to select upon.

Andrew Huberman: You mentioned several times the generative drive, and I

definitely would like to learn more about that and spend some time there

in the context of relationships.

But just to drill a little bit further into what we've all heard

so often, and you touched upon a few of these themes around points of

compatibility, but also where sometimes we can respond to the wrong things

when thinking about compatibility.

Again, we're framing this mainly in the context of hypothetical

romantic relationships, but certainly it pertains to other sorts of

relationships, things like, is one person educated with an advanced

degree, and is the other person also?

We tend to assume that people who are, are somehow a better

match than people who aren't.

That's sort of an implicit assumption that's often made, not always.

Or that if two people really love music, that they will enjoy music together,

and therefore the sum of the whole is greater than either of its parts.

Paul Conti: And I think those things are utterly irrelevant.

Andrew Huberman: Interesting, and I want to hear more about this because I think

that if you think about, which I'm sure you don't, but, like dating apps, for

instance, like what's listed out there or first or second dates, which consists

of learning a little bit about somebody and what they're doing and maybe even a

little bit about their history and maybe an activity and certainly an intentional

awareness to how the other person is behaving in the context of different

things, like a waiter or a waitress and how they're treating people, and you.

And then you hear about things like...

this is not something I'm familiar with...

oh, right, the love languages.

People are like, oh, what's their love language?

It's like gifts or, like acts of physical touch or acts of service or something.

I met someone recently, and she told me my love language is all of them, which I

think is the most honest answer, right?

Because, sure, there's probably some weighting around what people value

more or less, and in the absence of the things they value the most,

it would probably feel a bit like deprivation in any relationship.

But as I'm describing all this, I'm realizing more and

more, yes, all of that matters.

Anxious, attached, secure, attached, love languages, etc.

But it really doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

It really doesn't get to this, as you're describing it, this generative

drive in individuals, and whether or not those match up well along

the points of compatibility with the other person's generative drive.

And I haven't run a controlled study for this, but the best evidence I have

is that there, fortunately, are many people out there who are in happy,

healthy relationships, but there are many, many people who are not,

either because they can't find them, or they're in them and they're not

healthy, or they're not happy, etc.

So if you could elaborate a bit more on the generative drive, again

reminding us what the nature of that is.

We covered this a bit in episodes one and two, but what the nature

of that is and some different ways that that's expressed and how that

shows up in healthy relationship.

Paul Conti: Yeah, I think we really disprove the idea that some of

these factors that I think are superficial in the context o f whether

people are going to be compatible.

They're not superficial things, but they're not germane.

So let's say you think about music, and say two people are contemplating

romance, and they both really like music.

W ell, that could go very, very well.

Let's say they both have a strong generative drive.

Those pillars are pretty healthy, and the geyser of the agency and

gratitude is riding upon it, and they can find peace in themselves.

They're strongly generative, then they could become interested in

the music the other person likes.

There's not going to be a complete overlap.

Even if people generally like the same thing.

But let's say they like different things, like just liking music, or even liking

the same music, there's still difference.

So the person has to go beyond themselves, and say, okay, I'm interested in what you

think, even about the music we both like.

What factors do you like?

There are places of learning and of growth for both.

And you could see how both liking music, whether it's the same or different

music, that sounds great, right?

But you could also see how that could not be great.

If the generative drive is too low and the aggression drive is too

high, then I'm going to think, I like music, my music is better than yours.

People then start, they'll fragment, even though they have the same interest.

Or if the pleasure drive is too high, then they think, I want to listen to

my music, not yours, I'm familiar with it, instead of, hey, I'm interested in

that music because you're interested in it, and I'm interested in you.

Which leads us to the second part.

Let's say you have someone who really has no interest in music and someone who does.

Well, there can be an openness of saying, if I'm interested in this person and

this person is really interested in music, I have some interest in it, right?

I want to learn something about it.

I want to experience some of it with the other person.

And let's say that person then finds, hey, that's not my thing.

It's not the thing we connect on, then, why would that be

the end o f the world, right?

P lenty of people, one person goes to concerts, the other doesn't.

So we try to find these points of commonality, because I think we

get over reductionist, and then we think, oh, here's a bunch of

factors that we will identify.

And what they do is they obscure us from the primary factor, which is the

generative drive, which, of course, will then induce open mindedness mentalization.

If I don't like music and you do, instead of saying, what do you like music for?

I need a friendship with somebody who likes music.

You think, hey, that's interesting.

If I'm interested in you as a friend and I have respect for you and what you

think, then why would I not have some interest in what you're interested in?

So this idea of compatibility revolves around the health in each person.

It doesn't revolve around factors that are anything but the concrete

logistical factors that would just keep two people apart.

Andrew Huberman: I love the idea that healthy relationships center around the

factors that really matter within the self, in particular the generative drive.

And I love the example of someone being able to be curious about somebody's

interests, about their partner's interests, even though they might

not share those from the standpoint of agency and gratitude, because the

agency component there is really key.

I think that a lot of people feel as if they aren't really good at

something or really knowledgeable about something, then it's not for them.

Which is the opposite of having agency and gratitude.

Because gratitude is closely tied to humility.

How could we know everything?

It can be good, certain things, and not others.

So the way you describe it includes aspects of openness, of humility, but

also the agency side, the empowerment.

Like, if I'm going to learn more, then perhaps we could

enjoy more of that together.

Perhaps not, right?

I think this is what I'm sensing, and I'm also sensing that the words like-minded,

like-minded people has so much more to do with their generative drives and how those

match up as opposed to the activities that they prefer engaging in and the sorts

of foods they like or the movies they like, which makes sense at some level.

But I think it is still counterintuitive for a lot of us who just kind of

reflexively think, oh, they like the same things, or maybe even they met at work

because they like the same type of work.

They like to live in a certain area of the country, and

therefore, by proximity, they met.

And this raises all sorts of interesting ideas, perhaps, about

the statistics of what we see.

Like two musicians together, we therefore assume that musicians belong

together or two scientists together.

I know loads of scientist-scientist couples or scientist-physician

couples, but of course, the numbers are skewed because they were working

in environments where it increased the probability they would interact.

So this is actually a vote for online dating in some sense, because it breaks

through all those, sometimes even geographical barriers, but certainly

the traditional barriers of culture.

Paul Conti: Right.

And if you think about it, we're talking about relationships, so

I would like my relationships to last as long as possible, right?

That means now we're talking about my lifespan and my health span.

That then becomes part of that discussion.

And of course, we're very interested in lifespan and health span.

And we see people do much, much better when they're interconnected

in the world around them, when they're still learning new things.

We know that's true, that people often will tail, they sort of trail off of what

they're learning, whether it's music, it's literature, it's the world around

us relatively early in our lifespan.

But the person who's interconnected learning new things has a much

greater probability of living longer and living healthier.

Right?

So think, what's that about?

It's about a generative drive.

It's about, you know what, I've learned a lot of things over the course of my

life, and I'm 80 years old now, and great, that there's more to learn, right?

And that's what you see.

It makes me think of a woman who's around 90 years old in my practice.

She's always learning new things, she's super interested in things and I'm always

struck by how she seems so much younger.

And there, that's not just a selection bias, like, oh, I just happen to

see that in that person, she has the factors that predispose to aging in

the way that's healthiest and happiest.

So it really comes down to, the root of all of it, in ourselves, in our

relationships, in the quality of them over time and how long we get to have them

really arises from a generative drive.

And that's the thing that makes us then undefended, and lets us find

interest in things about other people that are different from the things in

us, which also comes about naturally.

I think it's interesting that we have this sort of bias, like I said,

that musicians belong together.

Well, why?

They're familiar with the same things, right.

I guess they have the same interest, same thing with scientists.

But then a lot of people like different foods, right?

I love different ethnic foods.

Why? Because it's different, right?

It's an appreciation of difference.

I don't want to eat just like I did growing up and many, many,

many people are like that.

That's an appreciation of difference, of diversity.

So sometimes we'll kind of harness that and we'll look at it and we'll say, oh,

that's present in us, but for whatever reason we become very reductionist

about relationships and now we're trying to match based upon sameness,

and sameness is not the point of it.

I mean there are even thoughts about people then in some way

seeking difference, and maybe pheromones are telling us that.

I actually know very little about that, but I certainly know that

striving for sameness doesn't make good things happen in relationships.

I've been doing this for over 20 years and I don't see that the

alleged factors of sameness matter again unless they're so concrete.

Like if this person is absolutely going to live in North America and that person is

absolutely going to live in South America, let's not potentially put them together.

But once we get away from almost that level of concreteness, let's look

for something different, and then like everything else, it simplifies.

The higher we go up the ladder, the more simple things get.

If you're looking at the pillars, structure of self, function of

self, you're creating the agency and gratitude, then what are you looking

for when you're looking for a partner...

a match in generative drive.

I want mine to be strong and I see that it's strong in this person.

They create in a way, you know what, I do science, they grow a garden.

We're generative together.

Like that could be super compatible because we're looking at the

one factor that really matters.

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I'm realizing that most of what I and everyone else has heard about

relationships is complete nonsense.

I really mean that.

I mean, it has occurred to me before because I've experienced both that

the phrases 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' and 'out of

sight, out of mind,' are in direct contradiction with one another.

So they're both true, it depends on the circumstances and who

the hell knows why, right?

You also hear opposites attract, but they don't stay together.

The important thing is to find someone similar to you or that

there's like one person that's right?

I mean, these are, if we really think about it, crazy notions--

Paul Conti: Yes.

Andrew Huberman: --but they drive a lot of what people think

about relationships, right?

Paul Conti: They drive angst.

Andrew Huberman: Right.

Paul Conti: They drive bad choices.

They drive situations that then create a sense of guilt and shame and inadequacy.

We mislead ourselves by not going to the basics of what is actually true.

Let me look at myself, make myself as healthy as I can be, right?

Because if I'm healthy, I'll recognize a lack of health in the other, s o it also

protects us against bad relationships.

And then if I'm going to make myself healthy, which we're describing, how

that looks, wouldn't I want someone who also wants to make themselves healthier?

At least if we're going to ally, let's ally around making

both of ourselves healthier.

Andrew Huberman: Absolutely.

And we're going to go deeper into how to look into the map of self and how

that relates to relationship, certainly more as we go along this discussion.

You've mentioned several times, however, about generative drive and

that it really is the definition of like-minded in some sense.

And you also mentioned aggressive drives and pleasure drives, themes

that we touched on again in episodes one and two, but listening to those

episodes is certainly not necessary to digest what we're talking about today.

Could you go a little bit deeper into the generative drive,

flesh out for us what that is?

I think generative, I think generator, I think energy.

I hear aggression or aggressive drive.

I think, as I think most people do, friction, maybe even conflict, maybe

physical conflict, maybe verbal conflict.

But I know it's some of that perhaps, but a whole lot more.

And then pleasure drive and pleasure.

Some people think bliss, some people think delight.

Some people probably have all sorts of specific things they

think of with respect to pleasure.

So if you could just flesh those out for us a little bit more, because

I think those are going to serve as cornerstones of today's discussion.

Paul Conti: Sure.

So drives, in this case the generative drive, sort of exist within us.

And what they do is they're defining potential.

So right now, one could argue, if w e just pause for a couple of s

econds, we're not doing anything generative in those seconds.

But then we resume doing something that we believe is generative.

So at the time we're pausing, that's when we can sort of look at that as a

drive within us to make new learning, to understand things we didn't understand

before, to spread a sense of goodness.

So it resides in us in a way that is determined by a whole

bunch of different factors.

Like everything else that's determined within us, there's a

nature and a nurture component.

So some aspects of it are what are the genetics that came down to us?

What are formative experiences?

But we can go in and alter that.

So if we see the drive as a set of potentials, like in that moment, we pause.

There's a set of potentials within us, like potential of where we can take our

thoughts, our actions, our reflections, our decisions, that's the drive within us.

And it exists within us in a way that we could localize now.

Like, if we think enough about, okay, how much of a generative drive is there

in a person, how much is that person looking to make a better life for

themselves or a better world around them?

And how do they feel about themselves and their ability to do that?

How generative are they?

Or how shut down or demoralized or envious?

So we can, in a sense, localize that.

And again, the localization has these genetic and nurture components to it,

but we can then go and influence that.

And that's the importance.

If the drive is a set of potentials, a set of possibilities, then that

drive is one and the same pervaded with, however we want to describe

that, with the agency and gratitude, because the agency and gratitude is

sort of the operative form of that.

That's the verb.

It's the drive, actually driving something.

So if you have a strong generative drive, then agency and gratitude

are leading the decisions.

The reflections are coming through that, the aggression within us,

or again, that's the historical word, but so we can say aggression,

assertion, proactiveness, right?

All of this inside of us and our drive for pleasure, for gratification,

that all is, then it's in us, but it's subserving the generative drive,

meaning the generative drive, that set of potentials and possibilities

is dominant, which of course makes sense with agency and gratitude, those

active verbs being what is most active.

And then we're also going to feel at times, and hopefully at a lot of times,

that set of peacefulness, that sense of contentment, the sense of delight, what

you're describing when you're doing the podcast and you're in it and all these

good things are happening to you, right?

There's a strong generative drive in you.

That set of potentials are being actualized through the

verbs of agency and gratitude.

Like you're doing it all right then, and as you're doing it, you have

a sense of peace and contentment as you're enacting all of it.

And then that makes you healthier.

It reinforces the generative drive.

It protects you against the next sling or arrow of outrageous

fortune that will come your way.

You become more self knowledgeable, more, you become stronger.

And ultimately, that's what we're looking for.

That's the state of goodness.

And I believe that if you look h istorically, what

is it that we're seeking?

We can put so many words to it, and we're choosing to put these words to it.

I mean, I think that this is the structure, because I think the

science, the history, the clinical experience, the phenomenology,

I think it all tells us this.

We can put different words to it, but what we're looking at when we're looking at

truth and how to get to the "happiness" that people have sought through the

ages, I think we know enough now.

We've learned enough that we can say, oh, this is what it looks like, and

it fits the arbiter of all truth, which is, as you get further u p

the hierarchy, it gets simpler.

That's true about humans.

What's going on in my unconscious is very, very complicated.

But if that's summing to, as we get higher up to, I'm approaching

the world with a lot of agency and gratitude, that's a lot simpler.

And that's what can be common among us, which is why if my pillars are very

different from your pillars and what we've struggled against, each is very

different, and what we may still have to work against is very different, well, we

can be extremely compatible as friends, because are we working on ourselves?

Are we fostering the generative drive so we're coming at the world in that way?

And agency and gratitude, that's the similarity between us that matters.

And ultimately, we're looking at the potential that every moment we're building

the potential in us for what comes at the next moment, which is why we're describing

the overlap, the point of commonality that really matters, that matters.

We're putting a label to it.

We're saying it's the generative drive, but i t is also that, okay, we both c ome

at the world through agency and gratitude.

If two people are assessing compatibility, but if we're looking at something to nest

that under, and what seems most logical is the set of potentials within us that we're

building and altering each moment, and then as I alter it in this moment, it's

altered and then affects my next moment.

If I do something that's just kind of thoughtless to somebody because I'm

in a bad mood, then what am I doing?

I'm projecting out my aggression.

I'm doing something that basically makes me less than.

And then I'm going to feel less in the next moment.

Whether that moment is about me or is about someone else, the drives

are the potentials in us, but we are actively working on them, determining

them, changing them each moment.

Andrew Huberman: I'm well on board the idea that the typical pairings, let's

call them the idiosyncratic pairings of musician with musician, in many cases, but

sometimes very verbal person with quieter person, introvert with extrovert, or

introvert with introvert all of that takes backseat or perhaps even back backseat.

Perhaps it even is out of the vehicle compared to the critical

importance of generative drive.

Paul Conti: Right.

Andrew Huberman: When we think about generative drives in individuals, you

beautifully described what a generative drive is and how it shows up in

individuals when thinking about generative drives in romantic relationships, however,

because generative drive can be expressed to varying degrees, does one often see

that, or do you think that, a matching of sort of levels of generative drives

is what fosters the best relationships?

In other words, let's say somebody has a pretty high pleasure drive,

but not a very strong, aggressive, also called, proactiveness drive.

And so maybe they watch a lot of Netflix, like a lot of Netflix, but

they're not even the sort of person that's really excited about the shows

and telling you about them, because there's a version of watching a lot

of Netflix where the person is really interested in learning and in knowing.

Maybe even they're thinking about writing something, you know,

some poetry or book, or they're bringing some of that to their life.

I mention it that way because watching Netflix isn't bad, per se.

It's not anti-generative.

Paul Conti: Is it an escape, or is it generative?

Is a person thinking about what they're going to do, they're going to write

that book, or are they just trying to numb out, and at the end of five

hours in front of the television, they don't know what those five hours were?

There's no intrinsic value judgment based upon a lot of things that

we make value judgments about.

You have to look at, who is the person?

What is the context?

Are they being generative or not?

Andrew Huberman: Yeah.

Some of the movies and shows that I've watched in relationships became

the points of connection around, at least to me, tremendously interesting

discussions on hikes that we took the next day and reflections on our

own relationship and work and life.

And so I'm so glad that you point out that there's nothing intrinsically valuable

or invaluable about something like Netflix, or even intrinsically passive

about doing something like sitting around or even reading books, for that matter.

There's a passive version of reading great books also, people forget that.

It's hard to read a great book and not learn something.

I guess that's why they're called great books.

But there is a version of that, and I know many people.

Paul Conti: People want to possess the book.

I read the book and I'm going t o check it off and I don't know what was in it.

Like people do that.

That is not generative.

Andrew Huberman: So should we consider matching of level or expression of

generative drives as perhaps what we are all seeking in seeking relationship?

And do you think that people tend to pair up naturally, pair up with people that

have a similar level of generative drive?

Or if they don't, do you think it leads to problems?

Paul Conti: Yeah, I think that by and large people don't, that it's not the

thing that we're thinking about and looking for in ourselves or others,

and I absolutely believe that it makes problems and let's take a look--

Andrew Huberman: To not look.

It makes problems to not look.

Paul Conti: Right.

It makes sense.

The fact that we're not basing it upon generative drive does

indeed, I think, make many, many and in fact, countless problems.

And I would take as an example, think about the idea of a trauma bond, right.

A trauma bond is not a bad thing.

That sounds like a strong statement, because the way that I hear a

trauma bond used is it's a bad thing, b ut it doesn't have to be.

So let's take a look at it.

Imagine that you have what people call a trauma bond.

You have two people who will make up a situation, right.

They're functioning in the world around them, b ut they each have

had some very s ignificant trauma that is creating issues in them.

So let's say they're avoidance issues.

A person doesn't feel safe or comfortable in the world around them.

They get invited to places that they'd like to go, but they don't go.

They want to go to the museum and see something really new and cool there.

But there might be a crowd.

I mean, this happens.

And let's say you have two people who both have this in them.

It could be because the trauma is similar.

The trauma could be night and day.

But they each have this in them.

They could bond around that trauma in a way that worsens the trauma.

That's why people think negatively of a trauma bond.

So if the case is that the trauma bond is not a good thing f or these

two people, you say, why is that?

It's not because both of them have h ad trauma and both of them are impacted

by trauma, and both of them a re impacted by trauma in similar ways.

It's not that.

It's that the drives are not in a healthy place and the gratification

of the generative drive and the pleasure drives are not high enough.

So let's imagine the generative drive could be relatively low in

each of these people in one or the other, or they could have a naturally

high drive that's being thwarted.

So there's something that's out of balance where the drive is,

the ability to express the drive.

Is there enough agency?

If there's not, like, let's say one person is really, really shut down.

That person can't stand their job, right?

Okay.

Something is shutting that person down.

The generative drive wishes for greater expression.

They go back and look at themselves.

You can bring that into line.

But something is out of balance at the time.

The pleasure drive may be low or it may be high, but it may not be gratified.

It may be that that person loves museums and wants to go to the museum,

but can't find that gratification.

That's a possibility.

The aggression or assertion drive would be on the low end, but it could be higher.

Maybe if that person felt safer, that drive within them has a lot of latitude

in it, and maybe it could move higher.

But something is out of balance in the drives and in their expression.

That's the problem.

Because let's look at the other side, where a trauma

bond is a great thing, right?

So each of the people in the example has trauma, and they recognize it in

themselves, and they understand how it makes things harder for them, and

then they're communicating about how it makes it hard in the other, right?

So maybe there's a lot of overlap in social avoidance and sense of

vulnerability, but maybe there are things that are different

in one person versus the other.

So then they can come together and say, look, what's the goal of life?

I would like to be as healthy a s I can be.

I'm working on myself.

You want to be as healthy as you can be?

We want to be as healthy as we can be.

And if we're healthy, we also help e ach of us be healthy.

So maybe those two people, neither of w hich they would ever go to the

m useum on their own, because the trauma inside of them is at a point i

t hasn't been worked through, or it's a t a place where they just simply feel

too vulnerable, but together they can go to the museum, and then the bond

around trauma helps them be healthy.

The drives are in a better place because they're able to recognize, hey,

there are things going on in me that I'd like to be different and better,

and you recognize that, too, and we can talk about it with one another.

Right?

So they're in a healthier place, and then from that healthier

place, they build greater health.

Andrew Huberman: So much of what we hear about in terms of friction points

in relationship centers around it seems communication or lack of communication.

And as you're describing the role of the generative drive in healthy

relationship, it seems to me that it ties back in every way to agency

and gratitude and agency being such a critical element of communication,

because wherever you've identified that, okay, there's a potential problem here.

People with high generative drive in these examples seem to be capable of, like,

self inquiry, asking the other person questions that bring them closer together

and to a deeper understanding of the self.

I raise this because one thing that's often overheard, or that I've overheard,

I of course have siblings and friends, and I'll place this in the way that I've

most typically heard it, but I'm sure it exists in other ways too, which is the

conversation in my head is one where a woman is saying they're with somebody or

dating somebody, and he's so clueless.

I wish that he would just do this thing.

Sometimes these are acts of chivalry, like, maybe it's flowers or vacations, but

more often than not, it's a request or a complaint about a lack of proactiveness.

This is also what ratchets up to these very pan statements that you

hear, like, oh, there's no real men these days, or like, there are no

real men left, or this kind of thing.

You also hear it in the reverse, right?

You hear men making pan statements about women.

And here we're doing this in the context of heterosexual pairings.

Paul Conti: But of course it could all work just as well.

Andrew Huberman: It could all work in the context of homosexual pairings too.

So you hear those sorts of things, and it sounds like a lack of communication.

Okay, maybe one person needs to be better at asking for their needs to be met.

Maybe the other person needs to develop more of an awareness

of what the other person needs.

Of course, we all seem to kind of intrinsically wish that things would

just happen for us without the need to request them or ask for them.

But I'm realizing again that all of that is distracting commotion, because

that's not really what's going on.

What's really going on, it seems, is that the engine behind communication, the

engine behind curiosity, a desire to learn and know and create something from that

learning and knowing in the relationship, the generative drive, is really what's

the issue, or the lack of generative drive in any of those conversations.

It seems one could circle back to that and go, okay, well, someone's not asking the

right questions and therefore not doing the right things because they don't either

have a sense of agency, or they don't have gratitude for the situation they're in,

including their own ability to do that.

Right?

So when you hear people aren't showing up for the relationship, they're not

showing up, or she's not showing up.

Or again, let's make the pan statement go in the other direction, that

somebody just wants a lot of attention.

They just need an excess amount of attention, won't let me do

my own thing, but also want me to work and be successful.

Again, these are stereotypes, but all of that seems very distracting.

However, all of it seems far simpler if we push it through this filter

of generative drives and whether or not it's being expressed.

Paul Conti: Yes.

I think maybe the best example of t his, because it's so highly charged,

is, i magine that the pleasure drive is through the lens of sex and sexuality.

So imagine that people are in a pairing, they're in a relationship, regardless

of h ow they got there, w e're taking...

people are in a relationship.

And one h as say, a sex drive, which means a n interest in sex and maybe proclivities

for diversity of sexual experience.

Let's say if we just for sake of this example, we put on a one to

10 scale, that person is a two.

Okay, now let's say the other person in the relationship--

Andrew Huberman: 10 being the greatest?

Paul Conti: Yeah, sorry.

10 being the greatest.

That person is a two.

Now let's say the partner is an eight.

Okay, so there's a big mismatch there, you think, how does that normally go?

The two stays a two, the eight stays an eight, and things don't go well.

Andrew Huberman: Right.

Paul Conti: It creates friction in the relationship.

At a minimum, it blows the relationship apart.

At a maximum, the person who's a two feels inadequate often.

I mean, it's not always right, but this is how this often goes.

Person who's a two feels inadequate because the person who's an eight

wants either more or different and the person who's a two doesn't.

Now that person feels bad, and they may feel bad about themselves or resentful

of the person with a higher sex drive.

The person on the higher level feels now resentful of the

person at the lower level.

Or maybe they feel like there's something wrong with them because their sex drive

i s too high, or they have an i nterest that the other person doesn't have.

And now they start labeling themselves.

This happens all the time and it doesn't change most of the time.

And the problems are enormous.

Okay, let's see.

How would that look with really high generative drives and

therefore the ability to think about self, to think about others,

and to think about the "us" of the situation, t he two people together.

So they would be able to talk about it in ways that wouldn't be

faulting of the other and would acknowledge what's inside of them.

Like, the person with the lower drive could say things like, it doesn't

strike me as more interesting.

I don't think about it more.

They could talk about all of that.

The person who wishes more or wishes different could

talk about that too, right.

And could talk about what they feel inside, if there's a frustration of that.

Just like the person with the lower sex drive could talk about how

frustrating i t feels to feel pressured.

Right?

So what are they developing?

They're mentalizing.

They're thinking about each other's emotional states, and they're coming at

each other through agency and gratitude.

Like, I'm so grateful for you.

Remember, see, the example is these people are partners and they're

happy with their partnership.

Like, oh, my God, I'm so grateful I found you.

They would each feel that way.

I'm so grateful you're in my life.

Like, this happens too, right?

And then from that lens, the two isn't going to become an eight.

The eight isn't going to become a two.

But in general, in situations like this, there can be

somewhere in the middle, right?

Let's say the two says, like, okay, you know what?

I can get out of my comfort zone a little bit.

Why don't most people try that?

Because they feel embarrassed, they feel self conscious.

They don't want to try new things or try more.

People get closed down because there's such shame around sexuality.

You could take people on any spectrum of sexuality and you will find shame

not in every person, but across whatever population we're looking at,

because it's so emotionally charged.

So let's say in a loving, caring relationship, you're like, that

person feels the freedom inside.

Say, you know what?

Maybe I could enjoy sex a little more, a little more

often, a little more innovative.

That person thinks about it like somebody who's at a two can then move t hat to

a different place a little b it more, or maybe even a lot more, depending.

And then the person who's at the h igher level, the eight doesn't

need another eight in order to stay in the relationship, but something

maybe more than a two, right?

And then let's say they come into the middle, and then the person who's

an eight realizes like, look, I love you and you love me and you're out of

your comfort zone in order to do this.

And wow, a nd it's like more fun for both of us.

So you know what?

It's okay.

My higher sex drive, I'll deal with that.

That maybe just making it up, l ike, I would like to do it t hree times a week.

We're doing it, two.

Okay, you know what?

That's fine.

Both sides can live with it.

But it is not threadbear.

It's not like, well, they can live with it.

It's like, no.

Number one, they can live with it.

Number two, it's better.

It's better, right?

The two at one point was thinking, hey, anything more

than a two is, I can't do that.

They shut down.

The eight doesn't want anything less than an eight.

Now they're in the middle and their relationship is closer.

That's real.

That happens.

What is it relying upon?

It's relying upon the generative drive to h ave the openness,

the ability to communicate.

Maybe the person who's an eight, say, has a sexual proclivity

they're embarrassed about.

That happens all the time, too.

But in the sense of acceptance of self and the belief in the strength of the

relationship and the acceptance of t he other, people can broach things.

Most people who feel like, oh, I c ould never broach that.

It's not something bizarre or dangerous.

It's not something that in a relationship that's defined by the generative drive,

the o ther person is likely to reject.

So let's define our relationships through the g enerative drive,

and let's cultivate in self a nd others the most generative drive.

If somehow, let's say, person A and p erson B here, because it doesn't

matter who's the eight and who's the two, h as cultivated more of a

generative drive, then maybe that person could give more t o the other before

that person can give back to them.

We have these, I think, just completely nonsensical ideas about mutuality.

The idea that even in a situation that's supposed to be defined by love, a nd

friendship is a form of love, right?

So friendship, a collaborative endeavor, they have some affection in them, right?

Friendship can have love and often does.

And let's say the love of romance, that there's supposed

to be some equality, right?

The idea that, well, if I'm going t o give something, I want you to give

something, too, it is not good if one person is always doing the giving.

Things are out of balance, but it is very healthy to be able to s ay,

if I can give something and y ou're not in a place to give something.

Let me just give something to you.

People don't always, or maybe don't often depend on how we want to look at it,

give to others with a sense of freedom.

And you don't owe me anything either.

Why?

Because it comes from love.

It comes from the abundance, the excess of goodness in me coming through the agency

that I feel, the gratitude that I feel.

And then what's more likely, you're much more likely the other person, to sort of

feel like, hey, I can go a little more.

You feel stronger, you feel empowered making someone feel worse or saying,

you know what, I can give you something, but you owe me something back.

Even if that's tacit, I can give you this now.

But you kind of know that the other person is going to end up doing the

laundry for two months or something like that, this is not okay.

Why don't I just give something?

You're giving goodness, and then the other person actually gets the goodness,

and they're more likely to find it within themselves to then come a little out of

their comfort zone, develop, move their generative drive a little bit forward.

Gifts given to others with no expectation of return are gifts of abundance.

They're gifts that arise from the generative d rive, and

they make us more generative.

Think about the opposite.

W hat often happens, each person makes the other feel guilty, right?

Oh, this person wants you, wants so much.

And look, there you are again.

Like, people feel terrible about that, or t he're you don't

want any sex, or this or that.

The other person feels terrible.

That's why the two stays the two and the eight stays the eight.

But it doesn't have to be that way, a nd it's also not that if both end up

in the middle, say both a re a five, that that's some compromised position.

That implies less.

No, that's the compromised position that makes more.

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. Based on my understanding of the generative drive, the aggressive also,

we're calling it proactiveness drive, and the pleasure drive, and the importance

of the generative drive being greater than the aggressive or pleasure drives,

I can also see the potential problem of having, like, two eights along the sexual

desire scale, or two nines, or two tens.

And actually, I've observed a lot of examples of this.

For instance, if there are, let's say, two nines, put both people nine out of

10 on the joy and sort of proclivity for sex, adventurous sex, etc., they're

very high on the pleasure scale, perhaps even so much so that they don't pay

attention to, or one person doesn't pay attention to the critical need for

points of compatibility to be met, like the desire to someday have a family.

I've known couples like this.

They're together for a long time.

They seem to really enjoy one another.

I know nothing of their sex lives, but there just seems to be a very strong

attachment around certain forms of pleasure that they both enjoy engaging in.

So this could be activities or travel.

I mean, here we're saying nine out of 10 on the sex scale.

But in many of those cases, there's one person saying, but I want to have a family

someday, and they're just not into that.

Or perhaps even like, but he won't leave his wife.

They're involved in something that feels really good.

They're matching along some pleasure drive, but completely overlooking the

larger goals of one or both people.

Right here I pointed to an instance of infidelity that's its own issues with

morals, etc., but you see this a lot.

People really orienting towards what feels good and who feels good to be with.

And that, of course, is healthy, but that's not the entire picture.

So would you say that what I'm describing is an example of where the pleasure

drive has overcome the generative drive?

Because in the case of somebody wanting a family and the other person already

having one and being unwilling to leave that one or the other person not wanting

a family, that the generative drive of the person who wants a family is not

being respected or it's being undermined by this excess desire for pleasure.

Like they're just drawn into the moment and the amazing weekends,

but this person's incredible and they're charismatic.

And I can't tell you how many times I've had friends say that they admire

the person they're with, but they know the relationship can't work because

of all these other underlying issues.

Paul Conti: Right.

It's interesting.

We both overestimate and underestimate what, say, love can do.

Right? People say, oh, love can do anything.

No, if I spill that glass, love's not going to put the water back in it.

If I must live in North America a nd my partner must live in South America,

we're not going to be okay, r ight?

So we say these things in a very wishful way.

Love will overcome everything.

It doesn't overcome that, o r maybe it does in the right circumstances.

So think about if the generative drive i s very high in both people,

s o both people have, say, a strong n eed to live in a certain place, t

hey can find a compromise position.

Maybe they live half the year in North America and half in South America.

But why?

Because in that situation, the love between them, which is the

generative drive in the relationship.

So what does that mean?

The first person has to have a strong generative drive, be healthy, understand

that even though I n eed to live in North America, does it actually mean that?

That I really need to live in North America?

I have to be able to see beyond myself, a nd what does that mean to

the p erson I love who needs to live o n the other side of the world?

If the other person can do that t oo, then in the relationship,

which is a new entity, i t emerges from one person and the other.

You can know everything about one person, everything about the other.

You don't know about the two of them together.

So the two of them together are an "us".

And if that us has a strong generative drive, which it can If each person

has a strong generative drive, they can bring to the state of emergence

of the us the generative drive.

And we're talking about a relationship, so say the love between them

and they can find a way through.

So the idea that love cures all things, we have to define,

what does that actually mean?

It doesn't mean we have a lot of pleasure together, right?

Or we like a lot of the same things.

That's not what that means, a nd people can very much love one another but not be

aware of the limitations inside of them.

Because maybe there are other things going on in them, like, say, childhood trauma.

They love one another, but they can't g et out of their comfort zone enough.

So the point is, if we make ourselves as healthy as we can be a nd then two

selves come together that a re making themselves as healthy as they c an be,

then the us between them really can fit that definition of love and do anything.

But we have to define that in the right way, in a way that honors

the truth, which, again, is not a higher degree of complexity.

It's actually more simple.

Andrew Huberman: So you gave an example of a romantic relationship

where one person has a strong sex drive and the other a weaker drive.

And then we talked about an example where both people have an essentially high sex

drive and where that could potentially be beneficial, assuming that the generative

drive is also high in both of them.

And we also explored a little bit of how it can be bad for relationship

if it exceeds the generative drive.

What about the aggressive proactiveness drive?

How does that show up in romantic pairings?

If one person has a high proactiveness, aka aggressive drive, and the other

person does not, what does that look like?

Do you see that often in your clinical practice?

Paul Conti: Sure.

If this makes sense, maybe we look a t that example of the person

who's a two and the person who's an eight on the sex drive scale, right?

You'd say, okay, the person who's a t wo, who's trying to raise that

right, has a strong generative drive.

What does that mean?

The person thinks, you know what?

I think I can do this.

I can set myself about this.

I see it will make my relationship better, I'm going to give it a try.

That's a generative drive in action, the pleasure drive.

The person may look at that and say, look, maybe this can be more fun for me, right?

It hasn't been that fun for me.

If I have a low pleasure drive, could I start enjoying this more?

And then maybe that moves up, right?

Or maybe I have a higher pleasure drive, but it's not been gratified because I

haven't been able to be open and honest.

Let me see if I can make that better.

Then what's active, what the person is d oing, is then going to be the aggressive

or assertive, proactive to that drive and going to the potential in that

drive and mining some of what's in it.

Like, yeah, how am I going to do that?

I'm going to bring myself to bear, a nd that's not an easy thing.

It's not like that person then all of a sudden decides to be more sexual.

There has to be a lot of communication between the two people, a lot of

discussion of what setting might be best for that, what helps the person feel

understood or feel more comfortable.

There's a lot then, to do there.

And the person may even need to g o back to the pillars because

the p erson may feel like, whoa, I don't think I can do that.

And then it is...

that's not good.

I want to do that.

What is it that I can't do?

There's a realization there.

And then maybe the person who's an eight because they're so well connected gets it.

Okay.

You can't do that.

Let me support you in whatever way while you're figuring that out.

Because they're both generative, they want to figure that out.

Andrew Huberman: Sorry to interrupt.

When you say, go back to the pillars, you mean go back to exploring

the structure of themselves and their function of themselves--

Paul Conti: Yes.

Andrew Huberman: --so that they can, for instance, get some insight into what sorts

of defense mechanisms might be in place--

Paul Conti: Right.

Andrew Huberman: --what they're paying attention to or their behaviors,

like maybe even health related behaviors that could be impacting

their sex drive, but maybe even things that reside at a deeper level.

The unconscious mind, talking to somebody till they make a connection around shame

or some story that they've integrated into their thinking at a subconscious level.

Paul Conti: Right.

Just an example that I see a l ot is avoidance, where, again, not always,

but let's say the person who's the two on the sex drive scale who f inds

like, I can't do it, r ight, wow, I just can't bring myself to do it.

And then they go back and they explore.

This happens a lot where there's avoidance.

And then we get curious about the avoidance because the person's

like, there's something that just, I don't want to do that.

So there's avoidance.

We identify avoidance.

We also identify that it's not healthy, b ecause the person does actually

want to do that because it's good for the relationship and it could be

good for them, too, a nd then maybe we start looking at u nconscious

mind, right, or conscious mind.

And maybe we don't find it, because it's easy.

Now, if I said, oh, there was a major trauma that the person hasn't processed.

Sometimes it's that, but a lot of times it's not that.

Maybe that person just never learned to feel comfortable with sexuality.

Or maybe the way that they experience o r are attracted to sexuality

was disparaged or denigrated.

Or they had some bad feeling about it because the society

and the culture told them that.

Or maybe they had a couple of bad experiences where they

were treated in a certain way.

And then it's like, okay, that person comes by that honestly,

there's not a major trauma there.

In fact, unfortunately, there's a trauma that's almost predictable from the

way our society has been structured.

So person can go, look at that.

I'm like, right, I never learned how t o do this or how

to be comfortable with this.

Or you know what I learned that I'm not good at it, or I learned

that no one will enjoy it with me.

But that's not true.

These are situations not on the side o f a loving relationship.

Now t hat person is able to bring that knowledge to bear, whether it came from t

he unconscious mind or the conscious mind.

And then that's how you work to start shifting things.

Like, that was then, this is now.

It is not then.

when, say, the person, say in high s chool, had a sexuality that

others didn't a pprove of and made them feel bad, well, guess what?

It's not then.

And that's unfortunate.

It's wrong.

It's unjust.

We're going to honor and validate all that that is.

But we're also going to look at that.

That was then, this is now.

And you get to behave differently now.

You're an adult now, and adults get to choose their relationships,

and you chose a good relationship.

So this is the kind of thing that can get that person to the p oint where

they can go back up through now.

What happens at the end of it?

The geyser is stronger.

There's more agency, there's more of a sense of gratitude.

Why?

Because the person can attach themselves more to, I'm so lucky to have this person,

as opposed to, damn it, I wish that person didn't have a higher sex drive, right?

And they feel better about themselves instead o f, what's wrong with me

that I d on't have a higher sex drive?

Or I said they wish the other person had a lower sex drive or wish they had

a higher sex drive that's not grateful.

Like I'm grateful I am who I a m and that I have any sex drive at all.

And I'm grateful for this other person.

Now, through that, that change, they can go back and better access the assertion,

t he proactive drive, the aggressive drive, whatever w e want to call it,

because they've taken away, they've gone and worked through the barrier to it.

Then they're able to be a little m ore out of their comfort zone, and the

other person meets them there, right?

And they start having this healthy thing b etween them where the us that is them,

the love between them, gets better, right?

And then where do they find themselves?

That's how they get to the five, which is not a compromise between

eight a nd two that satisfies neither.

It is a compromise between eight and t wo that is way better for

both and for the relationship.

Andrew Huberman: I'm curious about common pairings that you observe in

the clinical setting, and not to focus on the bad, but if there are common

pairings that rarely lead to a good outcome, I think it's worth us learning

about those, simply because they're common and they lead to a bad outcome.

And a discussion of this sort could potentially help people avoid such

pairings, or at least recognize that they're in such pairings.

And I realize, of course, because of the way that we're framing things

during this series, that anytime we talk about a pairing, we're really

talking about two maps coming together, forming a new and somewhat independent

map that represents the relationship.

I have to assume that many people in the world have maps that are very,

very healthy, and they're probably even those rare individuals that don't

need to go into those cupboards that reside within structure of self and

function of self and do any work.

But for those of you that are just listening and not watching this,

I'm sort of smiling as I'm saying that, because I don't actually

believe any such person exists.

I think all of us, even the healthiest among us, could be even healthier

and express more generative drive and more positivity for ourselves and for

the world were we to do that work.

Paul Conti: Yes. Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman: So it's a lifelong--

Paul Conti: There's no endpoint to that.

That's beautiful.

We can do that forever as long as we're here.

Andrew Huberman: And you should, I do believe.

Which is one of the reasons for having this discussion.

Exactly.

Nonetheless, I have to imagine that there are also a lot of people out

there, perhaps most people, who still have a lot of work to do.

And those words, a lot, perhaps, are in bold faced capital

underlined, highlighted letters.

And as a consequence, we see relationships in the world that are not healthy.

What are some of those common unhealthy pairings?

I think it's worth spending at least a little bit of time on this.

Paul Conti: Yeah, sure.

As we talk about this, I think that we should make a sort of somewhat simplified

but hopefully helpful distinction.

So there are people who are coming a t coupling from primarily health, right?

And again, this isn't to criticize people who aren't coming at

it from primarily health.

We all want to get to where we're coming at anything and

everything from primarily health.

And there a lot of the problems are those simple things like, wow, I

can't believe it didn't work out.

I play the trumpet and he plays the clarinet.

It's like, no, that wasn't a real set of factors.

That's why it didn't work out.

It's more in that realm.

It's not always just that, but that k ind of stuff is a big factor.

When we look in the other realm, where there are significantly problematic

mental health issues, which people come by honestly but need to face if

life is going to get better, there are two common paradigms there.

Now, again, there are way more than t wo ways this can happen, but I'm

going to highlight two that we see a lot and maybe more than anything

else in the clinical setting.

So the first gets called repetition compulsion.

But I want to be very clear, I do not believe that there is any such

thing as a repetition compulsion.

A compulsion is something that one cannot control.

What's going on inside the person is very, very complicated when they're making

decisions that lead to repeating a cycle.

And those are things that can change and do not have to be compulsive.

So people are often struck by why a person is in the same bad relationship, seemingly

that they have always been in, but with a different name on the other person.

I mean, people will say this like i t's that person's fourth abusive relationship

in a row, and it seems to be, it's just the same person with a different name.

People say that a lot.

They say that about themselves, they say that about others,

and it's very, very baffling.

I mean, people have often been in my office very upset about that, like

realizing they're repeating and they don't know and it's frightening.

And you can get a lot of fear and vulnerability from that.

But there's a way of understanding it that, because the limbic system, the

emotional parts of our minds don't care about the clock and the calendar.

So trauma impacts, it impacts the whole brain, but trauma

impacts the limbic system.

It creates strong negative emotion that then stays with us regardless of time.

It doesn't care about time.

So imagine now a person gets in a relationship and the relationship

starts to become abusive.

I mean, it's easy to say that and then move on to something else.

What's that like for that person?

What does that feel like when that person, who they may have

seen as a protector, a friend, is now cursing at them, denigrating

them, pushing them, hitting them?

I mean, it's terrifying.

It's horrible, right?

So it is a deep impact, a t raumatic impact on the person.

And a lot of the time, most of the time, like all trauma, it triggers shame.

So trauma triggers shame in us.

If the trauma is strong enough, it changes us as we move forward in the world.

And then we are different in a way that makes the past

very immediate in the present.

So what the person then is trying to do, and there's been a lot of thought

about this over the years in the fields, trying to understand this,

and I think in many ways doing a good job of understanding this, that the

"repetition compulsion" is the drive, and I don't mean drive like we're saying.

There's a push inside the person to t ry and make that right with the i

dea that if that person can be in that situation again, and I don't mean in

the exact situation when someone raises a hand to them, but they can navigate

a relationship because they thought it was a good idea the first time.

So they don't want to feel like that was a very bad idea.

So I'm going to make it right, a nd then I'm going to be okay and I'm

going to be whole because the person is driven by fear and v ulnerability

and the shame of the trauma.

So then they're trying to make it right because the limbic system doesn't

care about the clock or the calendar.

If you can make it right now.

You make it right in the past, b ecause that system doesn't care about the past.

It's driven by trauma, s o then the person's trying to figure

out something that is different.

They're trying to choose that person, behave in the relationship, they're trying

to make t hings different, but they've selected for a d ramatically high pretest

probability of the same t hing happening again, which is why if I could count the

number of times t hat someone has said to me, oh, you're not going to help me,

especially a t the beginning of therapy.

There's no way you can help me.

Five relationships were totally terrible.

There's no way.

There's no hope, right?

People have said that to me so many times.

The last three, the last five, the last nine.

And I will say back, if you t ell me seven different stories of relationships

with seven pretty different people, several different relationships as

they evolved, and the same really bad outcome, I'll agree with you,

but you're not going to tell me that.

And that's why there's hope.

And no one has ever told me s even different stories where I feel like,

wow, you just can't do it, right?

No.

And again, even if there were seven, I'm saying things for exaggeration.

But there aren't.

What is it?

It's the same thing seven times.

That's what it is.

Because the person is repeating.

And if they can understand the what and the why, why are they selecting?

How are they selecting someone?

What's going on inside of them?

We go back to the structure of self, the function of self.

We address what is there then that absolutely can change.

And then what we will talk about is that person then goes out

to find another relationship.

Even if they said they never, never would again.

Like now they're making the decision to go out, as to say, what

relationship a re you looking for?

Your second.

You're the first one seven times.

No harm, no foul.

But you can navigate the second because they're in a different place.

They're coming through agency and gratitude instead

of denigrating themselves.

If you're what's wrong with me, what's wrong with everybody else, I'm here.

Even though some bad things have happened to me, look at

what I can bring myself to bear.

I can go out there and try and find someone I can see with clear vision now.

There's agency, there's gratitude, and then that p erson can go

out and find relationship number two that's a really good one.

Andrew Huberman: In the example you gave, it's very powerful and also very extreme.

An abusive relationship where someone is sadly getting hit or screamed at.

Oftentimes, it seems people end up in repeated unsuccessful pairings, meaning

unhappy pairings of maybe someone who's very strongly assertive, maybe we would

say has a strong aggressive drive.

Some people might even call them a narcissist.

That phrase is thrown around a lot these days.

I mean, narcissists, gaslighting, like projection.

These phrases are thrown around all the time, I think, with frankly,

very little understanding of what they actually mean, unless they're

coming from a qualified clinician.

Is it the case that somewhat passive or submissive people

are drawn to narcissists?

Are narcissists drawn to submissive people?

I think these questions ring in a lot of people's minds.

Paul Conti: If I could clarify something that I think I maybe

could have said in a clearer way.

You pointed out that the example I gave was a very strong one

or an extreme one, right?

So as a physician, I think I naturally gravitate to the extreme

circumstances because they're the ones that bring the greatest risk.

But we are talking to people in those settings, but most people are not

in those extreme settings, but that extreme serves as a model for how

things that are less extreme can happen.

So when I think, we're sitting here talking to everyone across the spectrum,

and most relationships that are not going well, thank goodness, are not

going to be that extreme, or the repeated patterns aren't going to be that extreme.

But it's just as important to pay attention to a pattern where one person

really is sort of more deferential than they would like to be to the other,

than is comfortable to them, and they're seeking someone, ultimately, who's just

a little bit more assertive, and that's not s ome disaster, but it cannot go well

over time, where that person slowly gives up, say, more and more of themselves.

And there can be that repeated pattern.

You hear people say, yeah, it was pretty good or pretty equal at the

beginning, but then I just had l ess and less of a say, or t hen more and more.

I just became the whole relationship.

So it's no less important when it's less dramatic.

Because the relationship still goes in a wrong way when it's more dramatic.

There's more risk, of course, but most p eople are going to be in the less

dramatic but super important category.

And I think it's important to point that out, too.

Andrew Huberman: How much of what we're talking about is nested on people's deep,

perhaps understandable desire to just make sure that the other person doesn't leave?

I can't tell you how many times I've heard about or observed relationships that from

the outside that seemed really unhealthy.

But it also occurred to me that people are doing things on both sides of

the relationship that ensure that the other person doesn't leave.

So I'm not talking about a physical trapping of someone in the environment.

I'm actually talking about the opposite.

I'm talking about somebody going against their better judgment and doing things

for the other person or against themselves or both, perhaps even in the context

of what looks like healthy family, like doing an excessive amount of raising

of children or excessive amount of work to support the family, simply to ensure

that the other person doesn't leave.

Paul Conti: Right.

Here, again, we can look across the spectrum.

So before this, you had talked about relationships that can be very

unhealthy, like a narcissistic person.

And how can those relationships develop?

It's important that we touch on that in the context of this because

that's sort of the extreme example.

So people who are narcissistic, meaning a narcissistic character structure.

Now we're getting into the realm of significant psychiatric problems.

And people who are narcissistic are exploitative.

They're a bottomless pit of need arising from vulnerability,

and yes, they can be helped.

And if someone out there thinks I'm narcissistic, then not trying to

be negative or mean like you can get help and you can be better.

That's the whole point of what you and I are talking about here.

So people can change, but someone who's coming at the world through a

narcissistic character structure is exploitive of the other and then can

say, survey a room and find that person who's had trauma such that that person

is going to be desperate not to leave a relationship, and then they can exploit

that person and often behave in awful ways and the other person won't leave.

Now I'm giving an example.

It's not the case that way every single time.

But that's the dominant picture.

If you have a narcissistic person and who is that person more likely to pair with,

and then you sense the vulnerability, the desire for the other person not to leave,

and that person would have to have then significant problems in themselves, like

potentially, instead of a pathological level of narcissism, a pathological

level of dependence, for example.

So we're in the realm then, of real problems.

And again, real problems can be treated and real problems can be improved,

and that's why we have clinical care, but it can also serve as a model for

seeing the ways that are less dramatic.

So there are many people who, through the desire for the other

person not to leave, and we could call that attachment insecurity.

And maybe if we leave away the stereotype version of it, the person doesn't feel

securely attached to the other person.

And somewhere inside of them, they've learned that if they're more pleasing, if

they give up little parts of themselves, that person won't leave, right?

It might be because that's why their m other didn't leave their father,

when they think about it, it might be that's why their father left

their mother, because their mother wouldn't do that, whatever it may be.

Or it may be their own prior life experience or who knows,

something they read but forgot?

I mean, usually it's something more salient, not always, but

they've internalized something that leads to a compromise of the self.

Now, again, that's not what attachment insecurity is.

Attachment insecurity is just feeling some insecurity about the attachment.

So, for example, I feel attachment insecurity about just about everything.

I've had the experience of sudden, very painful losses happening,

so I have attachment insecurity in the sense that I'm worried.

I get anxious about people going away, and I can want to over control,

but I recognize this inside myself.

I try and do my best to say, look, I don't want that to make me unhealthy.

I want to recognize it.

I want to find some happy medium where I honor that in me, but don't

get carried away with it to the point where I try and over control and then

I push my relationships away, right?

So I say that because there's such a contrast between that kind of

attachment insecurity, which can involve over control, and the kind

of attachment insecurity that can involve compromise of the self.

And we want to be very, very careful.

We want to be careful.

What is a trauma bond and what does it mean?

We want to be careful.

What is attachment insecurity and what does it mean?

A certain kind of attachment insecurity can lead a person to make

progressive compromises of self that are not good and healthy for them.

Andrew Huberman: I'm curious about some of these unhealthy relationships from

the other side, meaning from the side of the person who is, let's hope not, but

in some cases exploited or who's being taken advantage of, or in this scenario

of a narcissistic person or an abusive person is the one who's taking the abuse.

Often, it seems the victim in that scenario will be truly

stuck in that situation.

They can't leave for financial reasons or kids or their own internal workings.

Their psychological machinery has them locked into that in some way.

And it's that locked in by psychological machinery that I'm interested in.

And I think a lot of people are interested in, because from the

outside we just look at that and say, why doesn't the person leave?

Why don't they just leave?

But clearly there's something about that "situation" that works for them.

And by works for them, I don't mean that it's adaptive, clearly it's

maladaptive, but that works for them.

The possibility I raised earlier perhaps is relevant here.

Maybe it works for them because they know that the narcissist gets some sort of

internal reward for engaging in this kind of dynamic and therefore won't leave.

And the other person not leaving is of more value to them than feeling safe.

Even so, it's trading one form of safety for another.

Or perhaps the victim, as we're calling them in this scenario, is somebody

who feels a great sense of reward by serving somebody more powerful than them.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions, perhaps about power

dynamics as well, which I certainly have questions about.

But what are some examples of the internal workings of such a person that reside

within those bins of structure of self or function of self that would put someone

into that sort of situation and lead them to stay in that kind of situation?

Paul Conti: Well, any situation like that, if it's, as you say, working for a

person, which at times we see that from t he outside because things continue

to go along and things continue to go forward, b ut that only works for someone

if t hey don't have the understanding, the empowerment, t hat we would wish

for anyone and everyone to have.

So what is going on inside leads that person to feel a sense of an inability

to change, whether they can't see their way out of it or they kind of could, but

could never navigate to it, and there's a problem there if that's working for

someone, b ecause we're talking about something that's exploitive, right?

That's abusive regardless of how it's abusive.

And I think, I believe, that can only happen in the context of being

demoralized or the circumstances of being so disempowered.

If someone just can't go 10 feet from home, like there are situations

of outrageous amounts of oppression of a person where the person

just cannot choose differently.

And there are situations where we, as stewards of all of us, where

the government may intervene, for example, ideally, right, as someone

would come in and help that person.

But barring that kind of outlier, a person would only be in that situation

in the context of being demoralized.

And that demoralization would come from too low a drive for assertion,

being proactive aggression, right?

That that drive, its realization, is too low.

And if we give people the understanding and we give them the help, the means, they

don't have to stay in abusive situations.

Like we see this, in situations where our society will intervene or someone helpful

will intervene, some person or entity will intervene and help a person, help

that person to understand what's going on inside of them, that leads them to feel

that things can't be better, they can't do better, or that they're not worth

better, or whatever that may be, and help them to find the empowerment, to then

navigate themselves out of the situation.

And here again, I think it's not just agency, but it's

agency plus gratitude, right?

Including gratitude for having a self that could leave a situation.

When people are in situations like that, we talk about people as beaten down.

It's a way to kind of capture what I think that feels like and how much suffering

there is in those situations to be in that place and to not have the agency

to get out of it, then the person is not feeling a sense of gratitude for self.

They feel so bad about self that there's nothing to be grateful for.

And there is so much to be grateful for.

We could go through any person in a situation like that, and we could list

wonderful things about that person, adaptive things about that person, kind

things about that person, diligent things.

There are things like that in every person.

But if the person can't see that, they can't attach to that, they can't have the

agency and gratitude, then they stay in a situation that is really defined by the

agency and gratitude, and therefore that aggressive assertion, proactive drive

being expressed at such a low level.

Andrew Huberman: I can see how a healthy relationship could exist in relative

isolation, not complete isolation.

And here again, I'm referring to or thinking about a romantic relationship.

I can see how a healthy romantic relationship could exist in relative

isolation, a few friends, some contact with family members, or in great

connectivity with friends and family and neighbors, etc., and still be a

really great romantic relationship.

Paul Conti: Sure.

Andrew Huberman: I can also see how the sorts of relationships that we

happen to be focusing on at this moment, which are these unhealthy

dynamics, are made far worse by lack of connectivity to outsiders.

In fact, a previous guest on this podcast was David Buss, who's a

professor of evolutionary psychology down at the University of Texas,

Austin, and he talked about some of his research into the dark triad.

These are narcissistic, machiavellian, sometimes also sociopathic

individuals, and how that plays out in romantic relationships.

And it's a terrible thing, but an important thing to understand given the

unfortunate frequency that that occurs.

But one of the things that I remember so clearly from that discussion with

David Buss was that even when there isn't sociopathy or a strong desire to

destroy the other, that in these sorts of relationships, there's often an

attempt to isolate the person, first by isolating them from their family, also

from friends and coworkers, but all with the goal of convincing that person

that no one else would want them as a way to make them "voluntarily" stay.

In other words, to undermine their sense of safety, to ramp up

their sense of anxiety, except in the presence of that individual.

And I'm remembering that now because as we're talking about,

why wouldn't somebody just leave?

Why wouldn't they just tap into that agency and gratitude?

It's clear that the oppressor in this kind of relationship has a real incentive to

try and undermine agency and gratitude, because, of course, with those, they

would be revealed for what they are and the person would feel unable to leave.

Taking us back once again to the critical need to cultivate agency and

gratitude, not just in unhealthy, but certainly in healthy relationships.

Paul Conti: Right, and I think the principle here is that darkness

always favors the oppressor.

So the oppressor wishes for darkness.

So you want to isolate that person because when people see that things

are better for someone else, they realize things can be better.

When people are told by someone that they're worthwhile or they're

funny or they're pretty or they're smart, or whatever the case may

be, they may take that inside.

They may take inside, oh, maybe I am, I'm handsome and smart, maybe.

Or they start thinking about that.

They're very basic concepts that allow a person to entertain new

ways to look at themselves, right?

So the person who's oppressing wants that person to live in darkness.

They don't want them to see that there can be better.

They don't want them to be directly told that they're better than how things are.

And that same darkness on the outside, say the lights are out

around the relationship is the goal of the oppressor on the inside.

Now, again, the oppressor may know this and be doing it consciously, but often

this gets played out in unconscious ways, like the constant denigration of someone.

A person isn't saying inside, gosh, I'm trying to reduce their agency, their

aggressive drive, really down to zero.

But that's what they're doing.

Somewhere inside, there's a knowing of that, even if it's an unconscious knowing.

And then the impact of that kind of abuse over time is a lower and lower and

lower ability to bring oneself to bear, less proactive, aggressive, assertive,

lower sense of agency and gratitude.

That's really the definition of being demoralized.

And that kind of abuse is always promoting demoralization, because demoralization

is the darkness on the inside.

Just as envy is too, demoralization is a form of darkness on the inside.

Envy is no less dark.

Envy may be a lot more active, but in both cases, there's no

knowledge, there's no growth, there's no wisdom, there's no learning.

So they're the states of darkness.

And what can happen in a way that's really so tragic to think about is you

often can have an abuser, an oppressor, who is living in total darkness inside,

living through the lens of envy.

And then you can have a person who is being oppressed, who is being exploited,

who is living in darkness, but they're living in the darkness of demoralization.

And that's a very sad thing to say, to imagine, and it's been a

very, very sad thing to see, right?

If you do clinical psychiatry for long enough, you see a lot of this,

and it doesn't have to be this way.

Even the people who are oppressing have it within them the majority

of time to make things better.

And we do see that.

I took care of a man a long time ago who had been terribly abusive to his

family and it was always unclear to me, it had happened years before that

he just understood, and again, I never understood what happened, that he got

it and the man really made change again.

I don't know what the circumstance was that made that motivation to him, but he

went back and looked at himself, and he went back and looked at how his father

oppressed and terrorized the family and how he just did it automatically.

Because what was rooted in his own fear of vulnerability, and he's going

to lose his family and not be a man anymore unless he oppresses them.

He recognized all of it in him, and he had changed it so dramatically.

He had removed himself from the family system.

And when I got to know him, it was years later and he was reintegrating

back into the system because there had been such prolonged change.

And he had communicated to the family his understanding of self.

So, it's not impossible.

Even someone who is abusing, oppressing, coming through a

narcissistic character structure.

There's no therapeutic nihilism here.

Things can change and things can change in the oppressor, which

isn't excusing that, right?

I mean, a person who's doing things is morally culpable.

They often are criminally, legally culpable.

So that is all true, just as t he ability to change is true.

And then the person we think about more commonly in this situation, of course,

is the person who's being oppressed.

And there can be change there, too.

But a problem is how hard it can be.

The impact of the isolation, and also the dearth of resources to really help people.

It's an actual true story of a woman who I believed with all my heart could

get out of the cyclic abusive situation she was in if she had a carburetor.

A carburetor, right.

She had a car.

The car didn't function.

She had a place to go where others wouldn't know that she was there.

And the problem was just a few hundred dollars to change the carburetor.

But it's like there's no place to go.

There's no resources.

We as a society don't help people.

Now, it may be that someone helped that woman and got her a carburetor

and she drove away, right?

But it shows how we can bring ourselves to bear as a society to

offer people help, which sometimes is like the lifeline the person needs.

And maybe that person really needs a safe house or something very

dramatic, or they need a carburetor to get away from being terrorized.

But a lot of times it's just community support structures, good structures

around people in communities that can offer them support in situations that

may be less dramatic, opportunities for interconnection, which sometimes

people can find through social venues or through religiously affiliated venues.

But the idea that community support systems on all levels

make a huge difference.

There's another level, right, beyond the relationship, right?

It's the society, it's the culture.

And that's how we, on that next level of emergence, beyond the individual

relationships, can foster goodness, can foster health in each and every one of us.

Andrew Huberman: How do some of these same dynamics play out

in non-romantic relationships?

So, for instance, in the workplace, I was weaned in academic laboratories, so

what's most familiar to me are, gosh, unfortunately, numerous examples where

people working in laboratories, not the same as mine, because I've been very

fortunate to have amazing benevolent mentors, quirky and outrageous at

times, but benevolent nonetheless.

But others around me have been in laboratories where, for instance, the

workload was just ridiculously high.

Like the demand far exceeded what any person could do.

And if somebody had, God forbid, a cold or children, it was near

impossible to impossible that they could meet the standard there.

Or stress dynamics, so pressure cooker dynamics, that made it what

anyone would call a toxic environment.

You see this also in law firms.

You see it in companies.

You see it in families.

You see it in friendship circles, right?

I mean, how many movies are about teens oppressing one another through

bullying and ridicule and practical jokes that are anything but funny, right,

that are downright destructive, okay?

And on and on.

And so often the victims in these cases, if it's not a Hollywood movie,

feel as if that's their only choice.

Because to leave is to essentially have no other options, right?

It's not that the only option is to stay.

It's that to leave is essentially to leave science.

Because these people in positions of power have the louder

voice, they have the megaphone.

They write the letters of recommendation, the law firms.

People talk.

As I kind of spool this out in a long form question, I'm realizing I

can't think of a single exception.

Like, as long as there are going to be people interacting and people talking

about their interactions and people in positions of power, this sort of

dynamic is going to take place, right?

Paul Conti: Absolutely.

Anytime you have a closed system without accountability, you're just rolling

the dice for that kind of oppression.

We need accountability.

Think about theoretically what should have happened there.

There should be higher order accountability, whether it's in a company

or a university or wherever it may be.

There should be higher order accountability that

is reasonable and rational.

So it's not then acting in a top down way that would be over controlling,

telling exactly what you can and can't say or what you can and can't do.

And sometimes there's too much rigidity that c an be enacted top down.

But the problem runs both ways.

If there's no accountability from the bottom up, then that person

is just simply stuck, right?

Why?

Because the system we've put into place has failed.

And this is where we're talking now about not just individual

relationships, two people relationships.

But now we start talking about systems of people.

And systems of people are another level of emergence with a personality, so to

speak, an environment all their own.

You can know everything there is to know about each person in the system.

You don't know about the system, but what you do know is that

accountability is necessary.

I mean, probably if we added up all the examples in history, we'd have

to talk about them over 1000 years.

How many examples do we have that closed systems without accountability

are just rolling the dice?

They breed oppression.

This is true.

And I've been at several different places.

So I'm not trying to implicate this any one place versus another, but I

was part of a medical treatment team.

So this is a hierarchical medical treatment team of maybe seven people,

give or take one, depending upon the circumstances, where there was physical

abuse going on in the treatment team.

It's true, and I'm not saying this in some exaggerated manner where somebody brushed

up too close to someone and they slipped.

No, hurting someone on the treatment team.

Two different people who are being hurt by someone, seniors at a major

university in a clinical setting.

Again, it's not like that's the be all and end all, but you think about the alleged.

The sophistication of the people in the system, the alleged empowerment

of the people in the situation, which did not put a stop to that.

So we need to have accountability.

The accountability has to be reasonable.

It doesn't mean over control, but it doesn't mean under control either.

And if that person is being overworked, as you described, with no way of

winning, or harmed on a medical team, and there's no way that that person can

change that, the system has failed that person and failed them dramatically.

And guess who suffers?

Everyone does, right?

That person suffers.

And the science that's being done or the medical care that's being

provided is important to all of us.

Anyone could be the patient who is being taken care of by the team, where one

person is hurting a couple of the others.

You think that medical care is going to be optimized, right?

Is the science going to be optimized, that we're utilizing to try and make our lives

better, live longer, be in less pain?

What's happening there is envy.

That person who's oppressing other people is driven by envy, whether

it's a narcissistic character structure that acts almost exclusively

through envy, or it's envy that is in this person's life, in this way

or not another way, does it matter?

What's going on there is envy.

And envy is nothing but destructive.

The generative drive is nothing but productive.

Envy is nothing but destructive.

Andrew Huberman: Could you remind, for people that perhaps may not

have heard episodes one and two yet, that envy is perhaps not just

a desire to be like somebody else?

That envy, in the context that we're discussing here, is

something quite possibly different?

Paul Conti: Right, and there's a varying lexicon, which is why it is

important to define it, because I think people learn it in different ways.

I've heard it talked about in different ways.

So, to define that, there's a difference between jealousy and envy.

And again, we could choose different words, but this is the

way I learned it that's been most impactful, where jealousy is benign.

It's the idea that if I see t hat you have something that I don't,

then I think, oh, well, maybe I could work harder and get that thing.

Or if I can't have that thing, like maybe a person is younger.

Okay, I can't make myself younger, then I can think.

Okay, through a lens of gratitude.

Is that the only thing about me?

I can't think of anything good about myself, right?

Other than maybe I could be younger.

I mean, if you come at that through the lens of health, it's like, it's okay.

It can serve to motivate people to try harder, work harder, take a look at

themselves and be more accepting of who they are and what their circumstances

in life are, and what kind of control they can enact and what kind they can't.

It's okay.

Envy is different.

Envy comes at that problem from the perspective that bringing

down the other person is just as effective as bringing up the self.

That's why envy is destructive.

So someone who might see another person and they envy them their youth, right?

They envy.

They want that, and they want to bring that person down because

I can't make myself younger.

But then they realize I can't make that person older either.

But they can do other things to them, right?

They can sexually harass them.

Maybe they can make terrible jokes that are really insulting

and humiliating, maybe.

There are all sorts of things a person can do to bring down someone else.

The inaction of envy is destructive.

And I truly believe this, that people who come at the world very

strongly through envy, by and large, a narcissistic character structure.

This is a small percentage of the population, but that small percentage

does most of the damage on Earth.

It's a strong thing to say, but when I think about studying political science

and thinking about history and learning medicine and learning about psychiatry

and sociology and really trying to look at the world and thinking, what drives

a person on a medical team who's gotten to be a senior physician to physically

hurt doctors lower on the hierarchy?

Envy.

That person feels terrible about themselves and then is being

destructive to those people.

Same thing.

That same thing is at work in the lab.

The same thing is at work when people start wars of destruction

that just simply harm other people.

And we can see no other sense of it.

That from the individual setting all the way up to the world setting,

we see the destruction of envy.

And we also see it inside of us, because a person who's enacting envy in

the world around them is never happy.

There's no chance of happiness.

Hence the idea of a bottomless pit.

Whatever you get, let's say an envious person who wants more money.

I want to have more money than anybody.

I want everyone to have less money than me/ So then they come at the

world t hrough the lens of greed.

When they get more money, how long does that make them happy?

Right?

This doesn't mean money is bad or having money is bad.

It just means if you're coming at the world through the lens of envy,

and that lens is specifically focused on money, then you will be a greedy

person who is never satisfied, even if you have 10 trillion dollars.

So it's never good.

It takes away from that person any possibility of happiness.

And if you see people work with people with a narcissistic character

structure, there can be a sense of a very brief happiness in the moment.

Like, I'm happy because I realize I have something someone else doesn't.

I'm happy because I'm thinking of myself.

And even though I feel very insecure and vulnerable inside, I have a

whole set of defense mechanisms that let me turn those tables around

and then feel good about myself in a way that places me above others.

Whatever's going on in that person, it may bring some very brief gratification

in the moment, but that's not happiness.

Hence the need for the gratification over and over and over again.

Narcissistic people are the least secure, most definite people on Earth.

They just have a phenomenally healthy defensive structure that comes about

in order to try and protect them.

That leads them to go to the opposite, some of what's called a reaction

formation, going to the very opposite, denial, avoidance, rationalization,

projection, very unhealthy defenses that then leads that person to protect

themselves from any help while they are frantically trying to gain some goodness

that makes them feel good for a split second and then disappears forever.

Hence the tremendous predilection for destruction.

Andrew Huberman: How do you, and how should we, think about

power dynamics in relationships?

And perhaps starting with romantic relationships?

I've heard it said before that there's always power dynamics

in relationships of all kinds.

I don't know if that's true or not, but I've heard that, and I've

also heard that that's particularly salient in romantic relationships,

independent of whether or not it's a homosexual or heterosexual relationship.

That there's always, to some extent or another, one leader and one follower.

This is an interesting, perhaps a controversial idea, but I've

heard it enough times that I want to know more about it.

Paul Conti: Sure.

Power dynamics, of course, are very important, but also something we tend

to be so over reductionist about.

I mean, this idea, think about that, that there's always a leader

and there's always a follower.

Every single relationship, right?

That's true o n balance, we tend to be so reductionist, and then

what we do is we miss the real power dynamics that are going on.

Just like I had said in a previous episode, that I think my math minor

has helped me the most for all of life.

I think a power dynamics course that I took as an undergraduate

in political science has helped me the most as a psychiatrist.

Took it long before medical school, because that class taught

me so much about power dynamics.

I thought it was going to be about overt power, who has power over

whom and tells whom to do what.

Right?

But what I learned is that so much of power dynamics are covert.

They're under the surface, for example, they're the things that are not said.

Something that was called at the time, at least, the issue of the non issue,

where there's an issue between two people.

Like, this person never takes out the garbage.

That person always takes out the garbage.

That person is resentful about it.

Both of them know.

But the person who always does it can't say so, because if they say so, the

first person will punish them in some other way by not taking out the garbage.

Then the place smells, that person goes to work, and the person

who's at home has to take it out.

Right.

That's one example of the issue of the non issue.

Other examples are where someone is looking and smiling and being really

nice to someone who they know is going to physically harm them if they bring

to light that they're actually not happy and don't feel good about that person.

So, from the dramatic to the nondramatic, unstated power dynamics

are going on all over the place.

And they're in every single relationship.

I mean, less a person is in a relationship with someone else

and they're both comatose.

I guess only one of them has to be comatose.

There are power dynamics going on, but again, it doesn't mean

that they're unhealthy, because there are always power dynamics.

So then what are we looking for?

And again, there are a lot of things we could look for, but we could talk

about, really two primary things.

One is, look for the nonobvious, and t wo is the give and take.

So the first is even in our own relationships.

Because it's interesting how many people will, say, talk about the

power dynamics in their relationship.

They're not always saying, here are the power dynamics in my relationship,

but they're telling me about them.

And they're telling me about the things that are overt.

Right now, somewhere inside of them, they know that they can't really raise

issue A, B, or C, or there'll be some retribution, whether it's small or large.

Or they might even know everything's okay and that person is happy.

But they know I'm not giving them room to say that they're not happy.

And that could just mean if they say they're not happy, then I'll come home

a couple of hours late the next day.

And that person will feel some attachment insecurity because of that.

And there are all sorts of ways t his can play out.

But since so much of power dynamics are unstated or covert, kind of like the

iceberg of conscious and unconscious, there's an iceberg of power dynamics.

So, to think about including in one's own relationships, whether it's a neighbor,

it's a friend, it's a work relationship, or most charged, it's romance.

What's really going on between us?

What's really going on between us?

I'm not looking to tell myself lies.

I know that I may not be able to understand all of it, but

let me stop and think about it.

And if you ask people to stop and do that, they can say,

yeah, that's really not okay.

Because sometimes they don't know that it's there, or they don't

want to know that it's there.

And the therapy work is trying to guide them to.

There's an immense power disparity, maybe in the relationship when they're

presenting, no, everything is equal.

It's a good, supportive relationship.

Hear that a lot?

And of course, it's not always that there's something bad under the

surface, but a lot of times there is.

And even something mildly bad is not okay and can cause problems.

And sometimes there's something very bad.

So look for the nonobvious.

And then the second is that give and take is a very good sign of health.

Is a very good sign of health.

So if a person can kind of see that there's give and take, and it might

be about something as simple as.

Like, who chooses where we go to dinner?

Okay, sometimes one, sometimes the other.

It depends who has a stronger feeling.

Or it may be that person always decides where we go to dinner.

But the other person's okay with it, and that person always decides what

movie they want, the other person.

So the idea that there's give and take, and then in periods of time where

one person may be in a more difficult place, one person has a significant

loss or an injury or an illness, then you see that that shifts a little bit.

One person is giving more, right?

But then, ultimately the idea is that's from the outside.

If one person is giving more to the other, there's a generosity of spirit in

both the giving and the accepting that leads them to then be stronger together.

So even when people say, well, they're imbalances in some way.

If you just look at what's going on day to day, but in a healthy relationship

with high generative drive, the periods of imbalance strengthen the relationship.

You see this with friends, where two p eople have a pretty equal

friendship, and t hen one person has something difficult happen and

the other person is there for them.

What's true on the other side of that?

They're better friends.

And it's also why we often want to be interconnected when we're healthy.

What if something bad happens to both of them?

It's good to be interconnected, and friends a nd family

can be supportive to us.

The idea that give and take is healthy, I think, is very central.

So just looking for evidence, it's often, if I don't understand what's going on

in the relationship, maybe it's early in t he therapy or it's just been kind

o f opaque, or I can't figure it out.

I'm looking for, is there a give and take?

Because then I'm going to think, okay, more likely than not, things are healthy.

If I see an imbalance, whether the person knows it or not, I'm thinking,

more likely than not, it's unhealthy.

And then they're just clues along the pathway of my efforts to understand.

Andrew Huberman: The non-obvious piece is really intriguing,

as is the give and take.

And I really appreciate that you brought up the give and take, because that's a

very concrete place that we can all look and ask ourselves, even if people aren't

in romantic relationships, like, what is the give and take in a given friendship?

And as you mentioned earlier, it doesn't have to be scripted.

One for one.

One for one.

Maybe it balances out over time, or maybe it doesn't.

I mean, I've had friendships that have lasted many decades, even where I can

honestly say I'm always the person to reach out to the other person but

when they connect, they connect with such a depth of attention that I

don't feel any deprivation whatsoever.

In fact, I don't think I've ever considered that.

I'm the person that always reaches out until today, and so

it doesn't bother me whatsoever.

I feel infinitely rewarded in the relationship.

Like, it's generative, it feels generative, right?

Paul Conti: It doesn't have to be equal, however one wants to define

equal, but it has to be mutual.

You're feeling goodness from the relationship.

So is the other person.

Okay.

That's coming from that high generative place.

And when we really, let's say we push that concept forward

to where we want to be living.

Not some pie in the sky, but agency and gratitude as verbs.

The generative drive is very strongly expressed, and the other drives are

subserving the generative drive.

Then we get to the place where we really see it is true that it is

better to give than to receive.

The happiest people I see are the people who are giving.

Now, of course, it feels great to receive, but it feels better to

give because there's a goodness in the self, in the giving.

And I remember seeing this as a child and being too young to understand it, b ut I

was a little kid, I liked getting things.

And as a little kid, I liked getting things more than I liked giving.

Like, that's okay when you're a little kid.

But what I did observe is that my maternal grandmother, who is very sweet and loving

and caring, she loved giving, right?

You give her presents.

And we did.

And she really liked getting presents.

She loved giving.

There was an excess of goodness.

And then as I got older and I learned more, like who she had been in the

community and how she had been to people.

And I could see, and now, through the lens that there was such goodness

in her, I think she's, for me, she's the shining model of goodness that I

internalize as I aspire to be better.

So then I think I want to be like that.

I am more generative as I try and think more about giving than receiving.

I'm not trying to say I'm some noble person or I'm being ascetic.

I'm thinking that's a good way for u s all to feel right.

Or someone, a very, very successful person that I consult to that is in my life,

who talked about how he always makes inside of himself the best understanding

of what's going on between him and another person, whether it's a very big

financial deal or it's about power or it's personal and then gives a little bit.

Always, where have we ended up?

Let me give a little bit, right.

And there's a person who's very, very s uccessful, very, very happy.

But I would argue the goodness in him is why he's successful and happy.

It's not that he's successful and therefore he's happy.

Right.

It's what's inside of him that fosters both of those good things.

And he could be just as happy without the big success.

Maybe he wouldn't.

Maybe he wasn't minded to do that.

And he grows a nice garden.

He could be equally happy.

But the point is the goodness in self, to be able to do that,

to feel good about doing that.

I feel better about giving that than I would have receiving that.

That's pretty stark, right?

It's something given to the other that I would have gotten right now,

and we're in maybe a negotiation to give it feels better than to have it.

Andrew Huberman: I'm sure there are many people thinking about

individuals who are highly successful, who are not givers, who are takers.

I do think those examples of takers, as I'm calling them, grab a lot of attention.

But I know, at least within science and the other domains of life I've

been in, that there are far more successful people who are also

givers, even to a great extent.

And of course, that doesn't mean that they're giving to the point

of an inability to give further or to take care of themselves.

The giving is part of taking care of themselves, but it's

part of this generative cycle.

It's not one thing.

It's not a tit for tat.

It's part of something that makes them feel good, makes others feel good.

It's sort of anti transactional.

And as we're talking about the self and interrelations between selves

in these different relationship contexts today, this word

transactional keeps coming to mind.

And what I'm so aware of as you're describing what healthy selves and

healthy relationships look like, is that it runs counter to pretty much

everything that I've heard and that we hear in the world about relationships

and about the relationship to self, meaning it's not transactional.

It's really about a cycle.

And we're using this word generative over and over in its specific context today.

So I don't want to rob that word for a different purpose, but I'm imagining

a sort of upward spiral in my mind, or perhaps something that's really

like a circle of life that just keeps growing bigger and bigger and bigger.

Maybe we could talk a little bit about this notion of

relationships being transactional.

I mean, it's such a loaded word, but I have a close friend who's married

with more than a few children who told me the other day, I realized

that it's all kind of transactional.

Like they're extracting from me and I'm extracting from them, and it's

benevolent because it's all good.

And I thought, wow, this is really dreadful.

No one wants to think that the closest relationships in

their lives are transactional.

And he was coming to that conclusion.

I disagreed with him, and I don't know where that all sits for him right now.

But maybe we could talk about the transactional versus non-transactional

aspects of relationship, because we all want things.

That's perfectly healthy.

I believe we all experience disappointment and pleasure and relief,

and sometimes major disappointment, pleasure, relief, et cetera.

But what is the role of transaction in relationships?

And how does psychiatry, how do you, and how should we think about that?

Paul Conti: Well, we often get confused because there are transactions in every

relationship, but that does not mean that every relationship is transactional.

So if we think about what transactions are, we can think of

in kind of the stereotypical way.

So it can also be like, here's the transaction.

I'll do the dishes, and you wash the clothes, right?

Andrew Huberman: Or, for instance, I'll make the money, and the other

person will raise the children.

Paul Conti: Right.

So there are transactions.

But that does not mean that the be all and end all of it are sort of

hard hearted, calculated transactions.

And transactions also occur in less obvious but equally important ways.

So another way that transactions occur is right now I'm putting something out there.

Because I'm saying something, right?

And then at a point, I stop and I'm waiting for you to

put something out there.

And then I take in what you said, and we're doing something that

in that sense is transactional.

I'm waiting for you to give me something.

I take it in, I process it, I give something back out to you.

But that's not the be all and end all of it.

So there are transactions, whether it's who's going to wash the dishes, who's

going to do the clothes, or it's what d o I put out there that you take in, a nd

what do you put out there that I take in?

That there is something greater than something beyond the transactional.

And there is some controversy to this, a thought that there really is

a historical thought in the field.

That there are just aggressive and pleasure drives in us, and

that everything is transactional.

Now, again, we don't really have a way of disproving that.

I mean, there's not going to be some equation that disproves that.

But I think it's entirely disproven by human experience.

And there's so many, we could talk about an infinite number of resources

to consider this, but just imagine the writings of Viktor Frankl and

the writings and the theories around human interactions and psychological

theories that have come of it.

To think that everything is just transactional, it's a denial of the

humanness in all of us that I think he just brought to the fore so strongly.

But again, there could be nearly infinite resources throughout

human history that say, hey, we're not entirely transactional.

It's not just aggression and pleasure, but there's something more going on here.

There's learning that feels good for the sake of learning.

There's kindness that feels good for the sake of kindness.

There's giving that feels good, because giving feels good.

This is going on in us.

It's going on when we're, like, loving children, for example, or loving animals.

There's something inside of us that's not just transactional.

And that's why I think what we're talking about is, if it's truth,

it should all hang together, right?

It must all hang together.

And this is why there's an us over top of each individual that's in a relationship.

This is why you can know everything about me.

You can know everything about you, and you can know nothing about our friendship.

Absolutely nothing, right?

Because it's something different.

And if it were all just transactional, there would be nothing different, right?

And I think our experience as human beings, I know that to be true,

because I just know that I don't always feel selfish about things.

Like, maybe sometimes I do, and I do something nice because

it'll make me look good.

Like, okay, we're all human, right?

But I know that there's good feeling from others towards me.

At times, that's just about the good feeling.

I know that there's that from me towards others.

So that tells us, yes, there is something other than just the I.

There is the we of dyads, right, of relationships, no matter whether they're

work, family, friendship, relationship.

And then there are the levels beyond that that are larger "we"s.

The we of groups.

Andrew Huberman: So if I understand correctly, it can be the case that

one person makes the majority or all of the income for a family, the other

person raises the children, takes care of the majority of the home.

And of course, there is a transaction there, a set of transactions, but that

it's in service to something larger that really isn't transactional.

I'm just stealing your words here, but if I were to expand on that,

just to make sure I understand that the non-transactional thing that

emerges from that is generative, because it's a family, right?

It's a family that everyone can extract growth and pleasure and meaning from.

And just because the roles are divided as such, it doesn't necessarily mean

that the relationship is defined as transactional in the sense

that it's less than it could be.

Paul Conti: Right.

If you think about what's really being transacted.

So, say one person is out in the world and is making an income.

The other person is, say, taking care of the family and taking care of the home.

What's being transacted?

Well, the person who's making the money is sharing the money, right?

In that sense, transacting some of the money to the other person.

Like, you get to have some of it, too.

You get to have some of the benefit from it.

And the person who is at home, who's taking care of the family

in the home, saying, you get to have some of that too, right?

You get to come home, the children are taken care of, right?

The home is taken care of.

So both are transacting something to the other.

I mean, that's the truth of it.

If you look at what's really going on there, one person's getting the

benefit of money they didn't earn, the other person's getting benefits.

They have childcare they didn't do or pay for.

They're not paying for childcare, they're sharing resources.

So, yes, that's true.

But is that it?

Are these two robots?

One is the money making robot, and the other is the childcare robot.

That's not what's going on.

The way we want to envision that, i f we have two healthy people with

g enerative drives is they love one another, they're creating something better

than they could create on their own.

In fact, they've created children, they've created a home together, and

they're nurturing that family together.

That is generative.

And because it's generative, it can also be flexible.

So let's say the person who's at home says, I need to do some

things outside of the house, right?

Or let's say the person who's out working thinks, oh, my God, I feel overwhelmed.

And I like to switch to a better job, but that job's halftime.

I could be half in the house, right?

This is where people can come together in the same way.

We talked about the two and an eight on the sex drive or sexuality scale, where

people then can find compromises, right?

And if one really wants to stay out of the home all the time, but the person in

the home wants to leave the home, well, they find a way that that works, right?

Because their care for one another, the generative spirit that is

in them individually and as a couple, lets them nurture that.

And one isn't interested in oppressing the other.

I'm not going to leave my job.

You stay at home or I'm staying at home.

You stay out there.

It's like, okay, let's think about things.

Let's communicate, right?

That's how the generative drive not only makes that awesome, like the

five isn't the compromised position between the eight and the two.

The five is awesome right here.

The transactional aspects are awesome because of the generative aspects of

what comes of it far more than either of those people could make on their own.

I mean, one would say it's not so obvious.

Maybe if one makes X amount of dollars, each could make half X.

That's not what we're talking about.

Neither of them can create that family on their own.

Andrew Huberman: It seems that so much of what we're talking about

relies on the hallmarks that we always hear make up good relationships of

all kinds, romantic and otherwise.

Things like communication, listening, generosity, all the stuff that we all know

that we should bring to relationship and hopefully are getting from relationships.

And that if we're not, that we should probably request

from others in polite ways.

Paul Conti: Right.

I have one word for that.

Kindergarten.

Right? Think about that.

We learned that in kindergarten.

What you're describing is so simple.

That's why it's so high up on the, this is what the geyser is pushing up.

It's high up from the two pillars, because what you're talking about is

simple generosity of spirit, giving rather than taking, being kind to

others, letting things go, feeling good about yourself, even if you fall down.

We learn this in kindergarten.

So we must, somewhere inside of us, really value it, but then we let it go.

We make things overly complex.

And this idea that in many ways we should go back to kindergarten

because there's a purity there.

Children at an age where they can learn, and then we bring a nice kind

of learning to them and a nurturing to them and we can bring it to

ourselves, too, so that we simplify that which has become overly complex.

We simplify because trauma makes complexity.

Having to just make one's way in the world is complicated, right?

So things get more and more complicated and we lose the simple roots of

goodness or the goodness of simplicity, and we can come back to that.

So I couldn't resist when you said, oh, these simple, these basic things.

That's the point of it, because that's where agency and gratitude

and the generative drive, that's where they live in the simplicity.

Andrew Huberman: I'm glad you mentioned kindergarten.

It brought me back to images of kindergarten where, yeah, as far

as I can remember now, there were all the critical components of

a great generative environment, adults who really cared about us.

Fortunately, there were snack time with oranges, so nourishing food,

there was nap time in the afternoon.

Like, these things are all things--

Paul Conti: You got some exercise, explore.

Andrew Huberman: You could take a guinea pig home on the weekends.

They had this guinea pig.

I think there were several guinea pigs, but they kept trying to convince

us it was the same guinea pig because they would allow one family to take

home the guinea pig each weekend.

And sometimes I think it didn't work out quite so well.

But anyway, the guinea pig was a pervasive feature.

So you learned to take care of things.

And in all seriousness, now that I step back from it, there's nothing

more generative, it seems, than a kindergarten classroom environment,

or we should say a healthy kindergarten classroom environment.

It's all about support of others.

And if we go to the pillars, the structure of self and the function of self, surely

there's a lot going on at home, too.

But think about what's salient.

It's learning messages of self confidence, like instilling those.

It's behaviors that are based on strivings and hopefulness.

It's all the good things.

Yes, all the good things.

And so, as I was thinking about communication and all these good things,

that clearly kindergarten is a wonderful template for, in all seriousness

I think, is an amazing template.

I'm thinking about what gets in the way, and of course, trauma can get in the

way, and we should talk about that more.

But it seems to me that one of the things that gets in the way of asking for what

we want, of hearing requests of us in the way that is going to bring about the

most generative goodness, is anxiety.

It's like you're tired from a long day and someone mentions,

we have to take the trash out.

I was at work all day.

That kind of thing or earlier you were talking about the issue of the

non issue in terms of power dynamics.

Well, let's just say I've had the experience before in relationship of

feeling like if I make a request or I have a quote unquote complaint about

something, that the other person is going to be so upset about the fact

that they didn't do something well, that it's going to be three days of

just diminished happiness for everybody.

So I just assume, not deal with it, right?

So when we hear the word anxiety, I think we often think about the person,

like quaking about public speaking or like getting the circuits in

their brain hijacked that were only designed for saber toothed tigers.

But anxiety seems to serve both a very important functional role

in modern life that has nothing to do with physical threat.

But it also seems to be the feature that if not kept in check, if we can't

regulate our own anxiety, I'm realizing there's no way that we're going to

be in a position to ask for what we need and what we want, to hear what's

needed of us and what others want.

In other words, anxiety seems like a major barrier to the generative drive.

Paul Conti: I think the place to start is i f you show me a person who has

no anxiety, I'll show you a mannequin.

We all have anxiety in us.

Remember, it's just a word, right?

What are we getting at?

We're getting at a sense of tension or a sense of disquiet inside of

us that we would like to solve, we would like to ease, if we could.

It is not helpful or healthy if we have very, very low levels of

that, because then our strivings are certainly going to suffer.

There's not a lot of motivation to go make change in the

world, a change in our lives.

So if we have too little of that tension, that doesn't go well.

And of course, that maps to a low assertiveness,

aggression, proactive drive.

There are other ways that could show i tself, but it maps very

clearly, I think, to that.

And that's not good for us on the other end of the spectrum.

We're much more concerned with the other end of the spectrum because a

lot of anxiety feels very, very bad and it feels very bad right now, right?

So our high levels of anxiety, they narrow our cognitive spectrum.

They narrow our ability to think about what's going on around

us, to think about ourselves.

So the idea with anxiety is to recognize, hey, we all have

it, and we can call it anxiety.

We can call it tension.

We can call it whatever we want t o, but we want that to

be i n a healthy place, right?

Which comes, of course, back to the self, that if my levels of anxiety are very

high and therefore it's causing problems in my relationship, like maybe I'm

always asking my partner if we're okay.

That happens a lot.

Like, are we okay?

Are you happy?

Because there's a lot of anxiety in me.

The first place to go is to look at myself.

So we could say, oh, I have attachment insecurity.

That's just stating the obvious, right?

Andrew Huberman: Or, sorry to interrupt, but a very common one

nowadays that I think is new in the course of human history is

the tugging the line phenomenon.

You text somebody, you're thinking about them, you don't hear back,

and then tension starts to mount.

And then depending on the context, you may either be concerned about

the person or even suspicious about what the person is up to.

I mean, here it's very contextual, right?

And it depends on the history of both individuals and that relationship.

But then the person will reach back eventually and it either

will bring relief or relief with some resent, like, where were you?

What happened?

This is very, very common.

So much so, in fact, that I've come to learn in talking to

others, and this is the classic...

I have a friend who, but really others who are in the landscape

of looking for a relationship.

And there are people I know well who go through a lot of effort to set an

intermittent schedule of response.

Like to not give the other person the sense that they always

respond with short latency.

Because, indeed, sometimes they will be able to do that and sometimes they won't.

What they're basically trying to do is make sure that the person doesn't, they're

actually trying to take care of the other person in addition to themselves.

Because I think we come to expect a certain latency of response

with certain individuals.

And if we don't hear back with that particular latency of response,

our own anxiety starts to pick up.

And it can be quite damaging to a relationship, in particular to the

generative drives within us, because in that time that we're stressed,

we're not tending to other things, including things that we could do for the

relationship that we're so worried about.

Paul Conti: The famous scene in Swingers, right, where t he person leaves a message

and then lives the whole relationship in his own m ind and breaks up with the

person and they never actually spoke.

There's the anxiety run wild.

And of course, I remember that was very popular when it came out.

Why?

Because it resonated with the insecurities we feel and now with the

ability to feel those insecurities in a much more immediate way.

That person didn't text me back.

There's a lot more of that inside o f us, which really points to if you're able

to identify that you're anxious, too.

Anxious for comfort, which, again, if one looks inside or even listens,

maybe to what others have said or reflected, like, there's a lot of

data, especially introspection, t o be able to identify that, right?

The next question is always, why?

Let's go look at that.

Maybe that person has been anxious their whole life.

Maybe they just have run tense all the time.

You know what?

Sometimes a little bit of medicine that kind of just pulls that down.

P erson can take that for 50 years, life is better, t here's no side effects, s o

sometimes that might be the case, right?

Sometimes the person's anxiety kind of grew throughout childhood, and maybe

that's because there were difficult things or traumatic things that happened.

Maybe there was nothing like that, but maybe the person was very good at

engaging in the world and then felt more and more pressures upon themselves.

And no one ever did anything wrong, and they've only been rewarded.

But regardless, look at the anxiety in yourself.

Go back to those pillars, right?

And one might discover, for example, maybe the anxiety I'm feeling is

attributable to the other person.

Am I feeling anxious because I'm intimidated?