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Best known for his groundbreaking book The Game, Neil reflects on his journey from being a pickup artist to becoming a celebrated writer, podcaster, and advocate for self-improvement. Together, they discuss personal transformation, relationships, and how to navigate the complexities of love and life. Neil shares insights on overcoming insecurities, finding personal growth, and his current passion for exploring human psychology through crime podcasts. This episode is a raw and candid conversation about growth, self-awareness, and the evolution of one’s identity.

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Time Stamps:

[00:00:00 – 00:10:00] Introduction to Neil Strauss and His Journey Beyond The Game
[00:10:01 – 00:25:00] From Pickup Artist to Personal Growth Advocate
[00:25:01 – 00:40:00] The Emotional Impact of Relationships
[00:40:01 – 00:55:00] Crime Podcasting and Real-Life Investigations
[00:55:01 – 01:10:00] Love, Boundaries, and Growth
[01:10:01 – 01:20:00] Exploring Vulnerability in Personal Growth
[01:20:01 – 01:30:00]The Psychology Behind True Crime Podcasting
[01:30:01 – 01:40:00] Healing from Past Mistakes and Relationship Dynamics
[01:40:01 – 01:50:00] Balancing Professional Success and Personal Life

Show Transcript:

The concept of Peacocking, negging, and so many other often toxic dating tactics were explored and highlighted within the book. Since the publication of that book, Neil has struggled with the book’s legacy. Through a journey of self reflection, he’s come to new realizations about his blockbuster work and its impact on society.

Believe me, I used to co host a podcast with Neal, so there’s a lot to it. And I wanted to have him on to talk about the book, its legacy, and how we can come to terms with actions and decisions in the past that we either regret or we’ve learned from or even question. It’s a really interesting conversation that goes in a lot of directions and I never would have imagined.

So make sure you stay through to the end as we discuss his work, not only in the past, But now in assisting with solving crimes, Russian assassins, and so much more. Welcome to the Gabby Reese show. Let’s go.

Neil Strauss. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:28] Neil Strauss: Thank you.

[00:02:29] Gabby: Why haven’t you done plant medicine? I’ll tell you why. I haven’t.

[00:02:31] Neil Strauss: Okay. I’ll tell you why I haven’t done plant medicine. And the reason is because I got dosed by an evil shaman. This is true. This is true. Why is everybody laughing? I’ve seen

[00:02:43] Gabby: this movie.

[00:02:43] Neil Strauss: No, this is true.This is dramatic and you’re laughing at my pain. I thought you were writing.

[00:02:50] Gabby: No. He’s like an evil shaman.

[00:02:54] Neil Strauss: It’s really true.

[00:02:55] Gabby: That’s like saying like a killer puppy.

[00:02:57] Neil Strauss: Right, yes. So here’s, and some puppies are pretty Probably killers. Some shamans are evil, right?

[00:03:03] Gabby: Only you would meet the evil shaman. But the

[00:03:05] Neil Strauss: shaman is by a puppy is biologically a puppy.

A shaman’s maybe self proclaimed as a shaman, right? So it’s being killed by a self proclaimed puppy. So, so this is, this is what, this is what happened. Uh, and I think basically I had a group, the society, uh, a group of guys that got together to bring them on a self improvement journey. And I thought I’d do a spirituality intensive for them.

And I thought, I’m gonna get a bunch of Type A guys, take them to Sedona, and really kind of connect them with the oneness. And so someone said, you know, this great guy, he’s a shaman, he can come teach. And I said, well, let me check him out first. So he came over to my house. At the time, my house was myself.

I was married at the time, so Ingrid, uh, and an employee of mine. He came over, he said, can I give him my ayahuasca? I’m like, no, it’s a business. Some people are sober. Let’s not. Let’s just Try to give him a spiritual experience naturally. He said, okay, but maybe like some tea, like some chamomile tea. I said, great. Chamomile

[00:03:59] Gabby: tea for a psychedelic? Or he said, let’s not do a psychedelic.

[00:04:02] Neil Strauss: I’ll talk to them in a lecture room and I’ll take him there and just like maybe a nice calming tea.

[00:04:06] Gabby: Oh.

[00:04:06] Neil Strauss: This, but this is where I should have had my, so, so basically he gave us the tea. Next thing I know I’m outside with Ingrid saying, Ingrid, I’m tripping my balls off. And she’s like, no, you’re not, calm down. You’re just being paranoid. I come back inside, I listen to him, he’s drawing mandalas, like, in circles, talking totally Wait, the friend?

[00:04:26] Gabby: The friend?

[00:04:27] Neil Strauss: Uh, just the, the shaman guy. Oh, the

[00:04:28] Gabby: shaman was? Okay. Yeah,

[00:04:29] Neil Strauss: talking complete nonsense. Even if you were sober, it was complete nonsense.

I can’t find Ingrid. I look to find Ingrid. She’s lying face down on the bed, going, I can’t move. I find my employee, who’s never even smoked weed before. He’s in the kitchen, just staring at the front, back of his hands and the front of his hands. Just standing still, staring at both sides of his hands, over and over.

Then I’m making laps around the, I don’t know what he gave us. I’m making laps around the kitchen counter. The kitchen island, just drinking a glass of water every five laps. I don’t even know where all the water’s going, so. So eventually, my employee asks if he can drive home. The shaman, who is evilly established, says yes.

So this guy, he drives himself home somehow through the canyons of Malibu. Gets in the shower, thinks he’s melting. Never like, never been high before. So dangerous. Then the shaman leaves, and I’m just like alone, and And then

[00:05:22] Gabby: the

[00:05:23] Neil Strauss: crazy thing, this lasted maybe like six or seven hours. It was horrible.

[00:05:26] Gabby: And was Ingrid just flat out on the bed?

[00:05:28] Neil Strauss: She was able to move after a while.

[00:05:30] Gabby: And did your employee quit?

[00:05:32] Neil Strauss: The employee was fine, but when I didn’t hire the guy for the intensive, he sent us a bill for the session.

[00:05:37] Gabby: No.

[00:05:38] Neil Strauss: I swear to God. say, I guess I shouldn’t say his name. Why

[00:05:41] Gabby: not? Oh yeah. You don’t want to get a legal trip.

[00:05:43] Neil Strauss: But I did say his name to a mutual friend of ours.

[00:05:46] Gabby: Okay.

[00:05:46] Neil Strauss: Um, and she actually worked with him and stopped working with him. So this guy’s kind of legendary for making weird concoctions of substances.

[00:05:55] Gabby: Why do you think he did that?

[00:05:57] Neil Strauss: Okay, I, so this is an important point. I have a tendency not to attribute, even though I call them evil, I think that it’s the only way, I think it’s for validation. So Hoarders. about someone who’s obsessed with this guy. Neil,

[00:06:12] Gabby: you have such an interesting life.

[00:06:16] Neil Strauss: So, so, I think that he has no other way. Okay. Magicians try to be cooler than other people because they know the tricks and you don’t, right? I’m reading your mind. Shamans, not all of them, let’s just say self proclaimed shamans want to, it’s a power thing.

So I think he gets his power being the drug wizard without you being high or without him facilitating experience for you, he doesn’t have any meaning to you. So I think he can’t connect without getting you high.

[00:06:45] Gabby: Wow. Yeah. Did, did you abort the idea of bringing your group all together on anything after this?

[00:06:50] Neil Strauss: No, I still did it. It was a great intensive. This woman, Sherry Huber, I don’t know if you know her work. Oh, you

[00:06:54] Gabby: can say her name. It was okay.

[00:06:55] Neil Strauss: No, that’s not the guy. That’s not Shami. Sherry Huber is like, yeah, she’s the greatest. She is one of the most powerful, uh, her books are amazing. if you deal with depression or anxiety or shame, she has.

It’s amazing. Books on these and is like pure wisdom. And

[00:07:10] Gabby: so you did that. You went that route.

[00:07:12] Neil Strauss: I went that route. She was amazing. So the point, the circle back to the story is it’s, someone shouldn’t be allowed to enter your mind without consent in the same way we’re like that physically. And so it was such a sort of violation that, uh, sometimes I’ll literally like maybe drink something, a glass of something here and start to think, dosed? Really? I have some like psychedelic PTSD.

[00:07:34] Gabby: Um, maybe you should go on a really measured journey and rewrite that.

[00:07:39] Neil Strauss: That’s what they say. So, so

[00:07:41] Gabby: get up on the horse, get back on that horse now.

[00:07:43] Neil Strauss: So I had the intention to do that. This episode has turned to my, why don’t do, but there’s so many episodes promoting psychedelics. Let’s, let’s take the other, other thing, other, other journey. So I was in. to loom, right? So, and everyone was doing, um, toad that, that, uh, five MEO DMT. It’s quick. It’s

[00:08:03] Gabby: a very quick journey.

[00:08:04] Neil Strauss: It’s quick on the outside. Watching. Yes, yes, yes. The inside, the inside experiencing it. It’s like could be an eternity.

So I was trying to, you know, they tear the dog that beat you, the hair of the toe that beat you, I guess. Um, so, and I was talking to the shaman before and she’s like, you’re free to take this, but make sure you have six months afterward free to integrate. Okay. I’m like, I don’t know if that’s worth it. Six months is a long time to be in a psychedelic mental hell prison.

[00:08:34] Gabby: it just hasn’t found you. I haven’t done it either. I do micro dosing.

[00:08:38] Neil Strauss: Yeah.

[00:08:38] Gabby: Um, and I’ve eaten certainly like edibles, but I’m not, I just, it hasn’t called me yet.

[00:08:43] Neil Strauss: Right. And you did give me ketones before this podcast. Yes. Right. That’s right. Should be fine.

[00:08:48] Gabby: But ketone IQ, we got you. We’re trying to focus.

[00:08:52] Neil Strauss: Here’s, here’s why I think, here’s why. Um, it may, I think that people do something and it works for them and they think it’s for everybody and I don’t, and I think it’s for them and to push it on everybody sometimes can be irresponsible. I certainly know people who’ve had life changing, great experiences. I know people who’ve really gone to a place they never came back from.

[00:09:12] Gabby: Yeah.

[00:09:13] Neil Strauss: Uh, and so you really have to consider all this stuff and for you and I, We’ve worked so hard on ourselves, right? The long way, right? And, and I feel like we’ve fine tuned ourselves so much that sometimes maybe just throwing a grenade in there and hoping everything lands in a better place may not be right for us.

[00:09:30] Gabby: And I also will add to that. And I, I sometimes I’m afraid, yeah, I am. And you’re like me, you don’t mind a little control. Yeah. So I think it’s, if I’m being honest, It’s also a little bit of that.

[00:09:44] Neil Strauss: And doing something like holotropic breath work

[00:09:46] Gabby: Yeah.

[00:09:47] Neil Strauss: is something, if you’re starting to go to a place where you’re uncomfortable, you can just, you know, stop this breathing cycle. Right. And relax and you can get back to normal. I’ve seen some

[00:09:55] Gabby: stuff doing some breathing. Yeah, especially when I’m guided by somebody and I just surrender to the patterns. Yeah So some people may or may not know this you and I actually used to do a podcast together. You are the one who? initiated me I We did one in the sauna called the truth barrel.

I Had a lot of fun with you doing that. I know I miss it. I feel like we You are very different, but then there’s some congruency there, even though it probably wouldn’t be that obvious from the outside. Um, but you’ve moved on. You have, you have some really successful podcasts, which I’m, I’m really excited for you.

Cause I know how much, I know to the level at which you work on everything. So they’re basically crime, real life, crime mystery podcasts. It’s like old fashioned radio. It is. When I listen to your podcast it would, it’s what reminds me of people before TV would gather around a radio, the music, kind of some of the conversations coming in and out from the phone. It feels like an old fashioned Uh, you know, a show that’s being brought to life, but just by listening.

[00:11:05] Neil Strauss: Yeah. That’s exactly how I think of it. It’s so fascinating. Everything comes back around. It really is like old radio plays.

[00:11:10] Gabby: Yeah. And it’s engaging. And, you know, you know how to even fade out waiting, Oh wait, what’s going to happen?

So is it Ingrid, your ex wife who kind of got you, cause the first show was really kind of, I feel like she was the inspiration. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I think most things in life happen by

[00:11:35] Neil Strauss: accident. I think people look at other people’s successes and think they just planned it, but I think the people we know who are successful just follow their curiosity and follow their excitement, right?

You’re smiling because you know it’s true. Yeah. Yeah. So, so basically what happened was, first of all, we did this. I had this amazing podcast called the Truth Barrel, which was in the sauna and, uh, and together between both of us with our super strong, you know, curiosity and like, we’d really just get people in there just in their swimsuits. So they’re very vulnerable. They’re overheating. They’re overheating. And we would really, really go deep with people. I really like, it was really, uh, special.

[00:12:16] Gabby: Yeah.

[00:12:16] Neil Strauss: Yeah. And so, and I think that started both of our podcast journeys, uh, and then mine took a turn because my wife at the time, Ingrid. Uh, we just had a child, she was going through postpartum, the marriage was kind of falling apart, it was a tough time.

And uh, unbeknownst to me, she’d read in the news, or read a, just a small article about someone who went missing in Malibu out here, and she felt like it was just a small item. She went to the Facebook page, she, no one was doing anything about it, so she thought, well, I’m going to go do something about it.

And so unbeknownst to me, she was taking our little, like, one and a half year old child, strapping him on her, like, You know in a little baby carrier and looking through because she went disappeared at the top of Malibu Canyon and there was her car was found at the bottom of Malibu Canyon on PCH not far from here So she was going on these hikes searching for this missing person and then one day she finds this uh Sneaker that matches this sneaker of our ex boyfriend Contacts a Facebook page next thing.

We know Malibu Canyons closed. There’s helicopters as police Uh, and she’s like I just solved this crime Uh, I just and i’m what what’s going on and then and it turned out not to have solved it, but that I uh We became fascinated by how can we help this happen in our community? Nobody’s doing anything like how would we feel that was our daughter?

so And also I thought I could repair the marriage By doing this project who are doing this community service together. So Ingrid and I And do you know Mike Einziger at all from Incubus? Yeah, I remember that you

[00:13:54] Gabby: got him involved.

[00:13:55] Neil Strauss: Yeah, because she’d gone to Starbucks, ran into Mike after this happened. He was like, sorry it took me so long, I was trapped because my bouquet was closed.

And she goes, that’s because I just solved the missing persons case. And he, next thing I know he’s calling the family the missing person and we’re all meeting with them.

[00:14:10] Gabby: And

[00:14:10] Neil Strauss: I thought, okay, if I make this maybe an article for Rolling Stone, uh, then I can repair the marriage. And, of course, knowing what you know about my personality is I got so obsessed with the case that it almost destroyed the marriage, that it did destroy the marriage.

It just finished it off. Yeah, it finished it off because we’re maybe at dinner on date night and I’m taking calls from the private investigator, uh, we’re meeting with the police. I think, uh, I rented a room in the home of someone we suspected of having done it because I wanted to preserve sort of what we thought was the evidence and, and I, and I think that might have made her feel a little unsafe.

[00:14:46] Gabby: Yeah, and that led you to the russian spy I wouldn’t say prostitute But it’s like these gorgeous women that are trained to be russian spies with different levels of capability Whether it’s to drop something off get information kill somebody, right? I mean this is

[00:15:06] Neil Strauss: serious So so just so to we’ll still to close the loop on the missing persons thing, but I did learn it gets solved though Yeah, so so one case got Fully solved. The other one, uh, But let’s just say is still You can listen and decide.

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[00:18:38] Neil Strauss: listening. It’s interesting. It’s, it’s pretty. And what we, what we learned, I’ve learned a few things about how police work works.

And at least in my experience of the people trying to solve these cases are in my experience of it, there were really good people. Trying to do their best, but dealing with a very small staff, right? And so, if it’s a full time job for me and Ingrid, Mike, and Anne Marie to solve one case, they have a giant caseload of missing people, you know, thousands a year, on top of doing all robberies maybe, and maybe all homicides too, and literally they just can’t put their resources into something where it falls in that gray area.

Um, and also, the objectives of police, I love, I’m like a, Learner, right? So you learn by doing, and what I learned is that the police is, they’re not trying to get, say, justice or fairness or find out who did it, they’re trying to close a case. So you have to study what are people’s incentives, in all, every situation, know what someone’s incentive is, so you know how to work with them, and their incentive is to get evidence to close a case, because if they arrest someone and don’t close the case, that looks bad on them.

[00:19:42] Gabby: Yeah. But

[00:19:43] Neil Strauss: as a parent, as a family whose child went missing, your incentive is, where is my child? Yeah. Yeah. And. Um, and what happened at who’s responsible, you don’t worry, you’re not just as you worry as one of the moms said of one of the mothers, one of the missing people, we’ve done a number of cases now said like justice can come later.

I just want to find my daughter. I want to find out what happened to her. Yeah. Um, so, uh, I want to, I want to

[00:20:05] Gabby: add to that really quick. It reminds me of something. If you have a child and you’re going through something that’s very difficult, it’s usually be around a teenager. Yeah. Somebody told me one time about, uh, We went through something with one of my daughters and, uh, I was sort of, there, there’s a part of me that was like, I was trying to get to understand if there was a transgressor, if there was some stuff that went down and the therapist basically said, you know, don’t get, um, kind of caught up in the details, focus on them being okay.

Right. And that’s hard to do. Right. Right. Cause. one thing you feel like you can control and one thing you can’t. So I just want to remind people if you are going through something, sometimes we’re trying to get everything straight and let me understand it and let’s backtrack and let’s, let me get the exacts and what time was that?

And what day was that? And it’s actually like, no, let me focus on you. Like you said, like the mom saying, I just want my daughter really putting that energy. Into how do I support this person? Yeah, and it’s very hard to do. Yeah, and it’s really so important Yeah, and you know what you learn is when you do it that way And they begin to be okay and thrive The details really mean a lot less to you.

[00:21:20] Neil Strauss: Yeah, I think we make it about us instead of about them This is what I need to feel

[00:21:23] Gabby: so I just want to I don’t know why that really provoked me. Yeah You know to remind myself of that. Yeah,

[00:21:31] Neil Strauss: I think that’s a really I think it’s a really good Point. And the other thing I learned, again, this might reach one person listening, when the police come and you want to give them all your information, your computers, your phones, your child’s phones, whatever may happen, you will most likely never see that stuff again.

So before you, if it’s possible, just hesitate for a moment and just copy and make backups of everything. Because later comes six months and the police have done nothing and they won’t talk to you and you you’re like you have all the data And you’re not speaking to me. You’re gonna want that data. So always like conduct a parallel Investigation again, this is not what the podcast is about are the listeners.

[00:22:14] Gabby: Listen, you never know Yeah,

[00:22:15] Neil Strauss: but I think it’s what’s interesting and maybe why I became a journalist in the first place was like I just love Um, learning about how, really how the world works by experiencing it, not by reading about it on Twitter or in the news or, or even other people talking about it by like, you just learn by doing.

[00:22:31] Gabby: Yeah. I mean, you even wrote Emergency.

[00:22:33] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Yeah. Pretty

[00:22:35] Gabby: great.

[00:22:35] Neil Strauss: Yeah, which is like way too topical now, which is a book I wrote about, I realized that, you know, Growing up in the city and raised by the parents. I was raised by like if the shit hit the fan Like I’d be the first one to be like deemed useless and he’d eaten Yeah,

[00:22:54] Gabby: what are we doing with Neil?

[00:22:55] Neil Strauss: Yeah, exactly. Is there enough meat? How long can Neil’s meat survive? He’s got

[00:23:00] Gabby: some fleshy sides. Exactly.

[00:23:01] Neil Strauss: We’ll make a little Neil jerky Yeah, and layered you would keep alive Forever. Forever. ’cause he like literally saves, he’d be useful. , he saves a few people’s lives a year. , I mean, how many people can you say that about?

[00:23:16] Gabby: So, okay, so let’s, let’s, so you did that podcast, which was Right, wildly successful. And what land, how did you pick. Were you being strategic to like, Hey, this genres, you know, people love this. And what is it with women and like murder mysteries, you know, all that stuff. They love it. Yeah.

[00:23:36] Neil Strauss: It’s weird.

Yeah. I want to do that. I actually want to really write about what our attraction is to that. But it’s women more than men. I think you, I think it’s the same reason. I think it’s about understanding and knowing what’s out there. If there’s some way of informing yourself of what’s there, what to be aware of, or I wonder what the more of it, but once you

[00:23:53] Gabby: know, you don’t, do you need to watch those stupid, you know, those nightline shows or whatever. How do they keep making the same show basically with just a couple of different scenarios? You

[00:24:02] Neil Strauss: know, what’s fascinating about the channels that are the channels that are voted to these murder mystery shows, whatever they are, oxygen crime, whatever they are, they actually don’t have commercials. Between the shows they do the courses in the middle and when one show ends the next one just starts So you get hooked on it right away.

Yeah, it’s sick. Like it is it is sick, but there’s some Here’s a thought and by the way, I really want to research this for a project so I’m gonna ask that I think that our brains Our brains are wired for fear first before happiness and joy because we need to survive.

[00:24:35] Gabby: Yeah,

[00:24:35] Neil Strauss: right so anything that’s like Gonna hit the the fear center Wins is is just gonna win.

So you’re like, this is a good business, right? But think about it to do watching those and again as someone who’s I guess created them Even though you think I the goal the goal the goal of those was not to create like fear porn Obviously the goal was to if you crowdsource an investigation, for example in the first season Someone called and said hey, I know who did it.

I haven’t called the police because I don’t trust them Haven’t called a private investigator because I don’t Trust that they’ll go to the police and keep me anonymous, but I’ve heard your podcast. I’ve heard your voice I trust you and literally somebody had confessed to them the whole thing. We went to research and it turned out to be true So I do the podcast to sort of crowdsource an investigation.

[00:25:23] Gabby: Yeah,

[00:25:24] Neil Strauss: but that said It is true like is watching these stories about people killing their loved intimate partners, supposedly loved intimate partners. Is that making you happier? Is that making you healthier? Is that, uh, you know, improving your life somehow, your quality of life? And it probably isn’t.

[00:25:42] Gabby: No, unless it has a purpose, like you’re saying.

Yeah. I think it’s, uh, it makes you feel better about your life. Well, like I’m doing a good, my husband hasn’t hacked me up. And, uh, I think it is indulgent. It’s almost like when we indulge in our ego. like with anger or other things. I think it’s some kind of weird indulgence and I think it’s driven, like you said, by our biology.

I think biology could care less if you feel happy or peaceful. It’s like, I’m here to keep you alive and I’m here for you to procreate, you know, biology. That’s what it’s driving. The rest is child’s play. That’s it.

[00:26:16] Neil Strauss: I need to know what’s out there. I need to know what’s out there just in case. It’s chocolate

[00:26:20] Gabby: chip cookies. It’s like, that’s it. You have to control yourself. Like you have to go, okay,

[00:26:24] Neil Strauss: Right.

[00:26:24] Gabby: I think.

[00:26:25] Neil Strauss: Right. Because like the sweetness is supposed to let us know that fruit, that this food is healthy to eat. Right. And then all of a sudden we be, we go overdrive on the sweetness and the same thing with, um, let’s be aware of the threats in our environment to let’s watch like eight hours of these murder shows.

[00:26:41] Gabby: Like, I mean, if you’re planning a trip to Brazil, have some strategy. Like I’m gonna take all my I used to when I used to play there. I’d never bring my Jewelry, you just wear bring everything really basic. Where are you walking? Where are you going? What are you doing? I was there last January even walking on the street.

I don’t look sit there and look at my phone, right? I look where I’m going. So I think that is more for me the way to utilize that those thoughts About what am what am I dealing with? Right? So the the Russian spies?

[00:27:13] Neil Strauss: Yeah, so You

[00:27:15] Gabby: You must have loved that. Were you attracted to that woman? I was wondering if she tried to manipulate you as well.

[00:27:20] Neil Strauss: I, I, I, I’m like, I feel that, I mean, she basically said she tried to manipulate me, but not, not like say, I mean, I’ve done, I’m pretty good about drawing. I’m very, when I, when I do a book, like I did a book with Jenna Jameson, the porn star at the height of her career, but Like, once I’m working with some of the boundaries, just

[00:27:34] Gabby: But Jenna Jameson, for me, is more honest.

[00:27:37] Neil Strauss: Right.

[00:27:37] Gabby: The Russian girl is, uh, was that kind of atomic blonde sort of the idea, a little bit almost? Yeah. I mean, sexy, but

[00:27:43] Neil Strauss: So here, yeah, so here’s the story. So, basically, a friend of mine whose dad I, like, helped write a, helped him with his book. His dad was, uh His dad was from like a mafia family and his dad worked with Al Capone, or his dad was like in the Al Capone kind of world in the Midwest.

And the son said, I have a story for you. You wrote the game. I think I met your female equivalent. So you wrote this book on these pickup artists. Here’s the female equivalent. But she learned all these pickup strategies not to, uh, sleep with people, but to get their secrets or to kill them. And

[00:28:19] Gabby: when it first, when you first heard it, you’re like, Oh yeah, yeah.

[00:28:22] Neil Strauss: No, no, when I first started, I usually, I’m, I’m always start with like credit, I always, I believe everything right away, like, I give everyone the benefit of the doubt and then I can research it later because if you shut it down, you don’t go anywhere. If you’re just wide open to it, then you can go somewhere, you hit a dead end, you back out, right? But you’re closing the door right away if you just doubt right away.

[00:28:41] Gabby: And

[00:28:41] Neil Strauss: I mean, think about it. All the, the biggest transformations I’ve had just in my personal life are the things that I initially mentally rejected. Right? The thing that you think is a no is the one that’s going to open up the gate to the biggest transformation.

Right? The stuff you already agree with, you already agree with it. So anyway, so when I hear something that like confounds my mind, even like the conversation with Laird earlier about all this stuff, like I’m like, I want to know more. So uh, so yeah, this, so supposedly it was trained by the FSB, the equivalent, moderate equivalent, the KGB, as like a, as a seduce, seducer, like a seducing spy.

[00:29:19] Gabby: I’m not going to give much away, I think people, if they want to listen to it, but I will say the one thing that was great is like someone out there having a cigarette and somehow the guy’s offering her a light and he thinks he’s chosen to go up to her, but she really put him in that situation right from the beginning.

[00:29:39] Neil Strauss: When it comes down to it, like I think my fascination is like human psychology. So the psychology of the agent is. Let’s say, let’s say you’re out, right? And, and this beautiful woman starts hitting on you, you might say, like, what’s your agenda? Right? But you’re out.

So that’s why they never go hit on the guy. They like get the guy to approach, the first step is to get the guy to approach them. So it seems natural, but you’re obviously this beautiful woman. You work up your courage. You talk to your friends. You’re like, okay, all right, I’m going to go for it. Then you talk to her and she’s receptive.

You’re like, Oh my God, I did it. Like she’s interested in me. Right? And then she’s going to slit your throat. Yeah. So it’s all, so it’s, so it’s all about psychology and she’s, There’s something, she talked about a technique, uh, called Circles of Hell. And Circles of Hell is, is where you just, once a, once a guy’s starting to get sprung on you, it’s like if he behaves well, you can reward.

If he doesn’t behave well, the behavior you want, you start to get cold and punish him. So you sort of create this, what we’re talking about with sugar and, uh, this fear stuff, you create this validation dependence that he has on you. You’re the, you’re the rewarding, punishing, inconsistent mom figure. Yeah.

[00:30:49] Gabby: And, and it’s, these are a lot of them are powerful, educated, like these are not dumb guys. And I thought it was also interesting the way they touch them. in certain ways to evoke certain emotions. So every time they put their hand on them a certain way, it would, I mean, pretty, pretty incredible stuff.

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[00:33:09] Neil Strauss: Yeah, I think, I think it’s about what’s, and, uh, by the way, she says men’s biggest weakness is sex. And we can see that with all these powerful figures going down over, uh, their inability to, uh, Uh, be truthful, be truthful, A, be truthful or B, have appropriate boundaries around that stuff. So, so she said the, uh, what was the question?

[00:33:36] Gabby: but Neil, Neil,

[00:33:39] Neil Strauss: but it’s frustrating as a consumer. I know it’s true. Yeah. So I just want, I want to tell the story the best. It can be told, so, for example, you have someone on their podcast and they tell their story and they’re like, that’s interesting, four or five minutes about how you got here, but, but I want someone to like live it, to feel it, to, to breathe it, to really be there.

And then to me, I, you took her story as a way to learn about modern Russia. So for example, when there’s an assault that happens, I bring an expert to talk about what it’s like to be like a woman. In, in the Russian military, where there’s really no recourse for anything that happens when she’s, when she’s poisoning someone.

I talked to experts on poisonings, um, and talked to somebody, learned about Russia’s poison labs, the different poisons they have. Talked to someone who was good friends with Litvinenko, this Russian, uh, Defecting sort of FSB officer whistleblower who was poisoned with this radioactive polonium and it’s a great then here’s what’s crazy Was he

[00:34:39] Gabby: in London?

[00:34:42] Neil Strauss: guy Yuri Foshkin ski was his name is co author. So he’s It’s he called so he he’s in the hospital after being poisoned with this polonium 210 and he tells him He was in Russian prison for a year or so. He’s like, I would rather be back in prison than to go through this pain again. Like, that’s how horrible the experience of being poisoned is.

[00:35:06] Gabby: Yeah. You know, Neil, I have to say, knowing you as I do, I always find Maybe people’s perception of you versus who I know you to be. Right. So interesting, a different analogy. Laird years and years ago, he did a movie called The North Shore. It’s like the cheesiest cult surf movie, right? But his character was a bad guy, Lance Burkhardt.

And I’m not kidding. Thirty five, thirty something years later, and people, I think sometimes, and then obviously you know Laird very well, he’s not, Kind of like, hey, let me make you feel comfortable and good and show you what a nice guy I am. It’s like either you get it or you don’t. So he also has a roughness about him.

But it’s almost like he has lived being Lance Burkhardt, like that was people’s first perception of him. And for me, I feel like you have sometimes a little bit of that Because I’ve experienced somebody who is thoughtful and curious and compassionate and loving and gentle and all these things. But your first really big work, I mean, you’ve done tons and tons of work with Rolling Stones and how many articles was the game. And so there is a residue about who people think you are because of this piece of work.

[00:36:22] Neil Strauss: Yeah, it’s a weird thing. Like it’s funny. I mean, I think one of the reasons we did this podcast is I was I was telling you guys before the show, like I was talking to Gabby, I said, you know, I just did these podcasts and then the marketing is like world’s greatest pickup artist reveals all or whatever it is.

I’m like, Oh man, that was like, that was like a book I did like, whatever it is, 15, 17 years ago. And I feel like I’ve done some cool shit since then, I hope, but maybe it hasn’t, I don’t know. But it’s like, Oh man, it hurts to read it. Cause even the point of the book. And I’ve done so many, I’ve done so much work on myself since then.

And, and uh, you know, it’s like you have a relationship, you have marriage, you have a child. It’s like, uh, so it feels strange. Yeah. But I just saw that, and I understand, by the way, I really do understand that that gets clicks. Uh, you know, and we’re in this sort of like, how can we get people, we’re in this race for people’s attentions.

[00:37:10] Gabby: of that is, so you don’t fret, ’cause I know you’re a fretter, right? is. if somebody then is drawn to listen to it and can hear you, they would know pretty quickly how thoughtful you are. Yeah. So I don’t personally like that either. Yeah. I’m, you know, kind of a literal listener and speaker.

But that’s why I’m bringing it up because the game for me was a younger man noticing something, a pattern, in our social construct, that I would imagine is pretty interesting, especially as a single man, maybe who was interested in women and seeing like, well, how do women operate? And how does it work? And I would have sometimes people say to me, I can’t believe you did a podcast with Neil Strauss.

And I’m like, isn’t the bigger question, I can’t believe that works. Right? Because I can tell you right now, if I met you, and during your experiment of the game, and you pulled some of that bullshit on me. I might be like does that I used to say to guys does that work? Because I think when you’re a certain kind of woman, it’s like I actually want you to be kind and nice to me not Oh, well, you know put your name on my phone and put something so I remember who you are

[00:38:24] Neil Strauss: All right. Well here I mean Do you think you think there’s a cluster of thoughts around? Okay, but do you think like

[00:38:28] Gabby: if one? Myself or one of my daughters you think that that strategy would work?

[00:38:33] Neil Strauss: It would work better on you Why? The person in the club, because, because you’re smart and you’re curious and you’re interested.

So you think, so the person who’s like, you know, whatever, there’s the, you know, who’s like whatever is like, you know, off dancing to, to whatever, uh, you know, song that is and that just hears like that hot song in the club and wants to go dance to it. Like you’re not going to keep their attention, but someone who’s actually curious, who can focus.

[00:39:03] Gabby: Cause you think of like, Oh, what’s this little guy up to?

[00:39:06] Neil Strauss: You know, you, you, so here, here’s, here’s what would happen. And again, I don’t think it’s right, I don’t do it anymore, but this is a, this is a conversation by the way to tie it to the, to the spy podcast. After the book came out, I got a call from the FBI who wanted me to come in and train their agents on, on basically how to, how to pick up in their case. It’s like, I’m a state scientist. I’m a state informant. State scientist. It was the same thing.

[00:39:30] Gabby: Secretaries.

[00:39:31] Neil Strauss: Secretaries, yeah.

[00:39:32] Gabby: What are they called? Not Romeos. What are they called?

[00:39:34] Neil Strauss: Romeos are the swallows. The female agents. Yes. And then Romeos are the males. Well, it’s

[00:39:39] Gabby: almost like kind of mandatory reading, isn’t it?

[00:39:42] Neil Strauss: A little bit? Yeah. Brody read it.

[00:39:44] Gabby: Yeah, I know. Okay, so I have a daughter. She’s going to be a senior, unbeknownst to me, and she’s known you her whole life. Right. I get, I get her mail, right? And sometimes I’m like, man, this Amazon just doesn’t quit stopping, right? It just comes and comes and comes.

So I go, what is this kid ordering? I open it up and it’s your book again. And she’s like, I just want to be aware of the ways that people manipulate you.

[00:40:05] Neil Strauss: I, I, so, so I wrote the book. So this is, there’s, so there’s two sides to what you’re saying. Let’s talk about what the book is and if it works. So it works, it’s really smart about human nature, which is just to like walk through a couple of things quickly, which is like going back in time.

But, uh. say you two are hanging out. First of all, it doesn’t matter. I’m more likely to approach a man and a woman hanging out than three, then two women hanging out because they get approached less. Right? So right away your guard’s already down because you’re not with like a, so I’d approach and I just say, Oh, just quick question.

I can only hang out for a second because my friends are waiting for me over there, but we were just having this discussion. So what you do from the, so it’s all micro, it’s the whole game. It’s really about buying yourself 15 minutes with someone who’s a stranger to show them your personality. You’re not doing the game with your real

[00:40:53] Gabby: personality or fake personality

[00:40:56] Neil Strauss: to buy enough time to then show your personality because there’s a great line from, I think Kobo Abe, the Japanese writer who says, um, the city is the first place where a stranger has had to meet a stranger who’s not an enemy.

And I don’t think we’ve gotten used to that yet. So as soon as you’re somewhere and someone approaches you, your first thing is Okay. What do you want? And how do I get rid of you? Right?

[00:41:18] Gabby: Yeah.

[00:41:19] Neil Strauss: So a lot of it. So two things about it. And again, I can talk about the negative things as well. There’s both things, but a lot of it is how do I get over the hump of meeting a stranger?

And secondly, I only realized this recently as I kind of reflected on it from a sort of more modern current mindset. Most of the game were not like these assholes and douchebags or whatever you would call them. I didn’t, uh, not these kind of asshole and narcissist cause those guys would never read a book getting help.

They always think they’re so great. They were neurodivergent people trying to figure out how to socially interact and they just needed a rule book for it. Like, I don’t know what to say, so give me something to say.

[00:41:55] Gabby: And I really appreciate that because I think people are not as sensitive to understand and it’s less now because men are swiping more than having to go up cold and talk to a woman.

And face the possibility of rejection. As a female, I don’t think we understand how difficult that is.

[00:42:11] Neil Strauss: So, so that was, so to me, when I, this is the weirdest thing, again, my intention, which may be different than what the book is, let’s say, but the intention was, I actually thought women, and this is, would read the book, to me it was a book about male insecurity.

I really thought women would read it and be like, Oh my God, these guys are so fucking pathetic. Like, look how hard they’re working. And like, like just to learn to talk to us and like, and realizing that their self esteem could just crush their self esteem, a guy’s self esteem for months by saying, go away loser.

Right? Like, so, so I thought they’d read and see how, but instead of the book being helping, uh, even things or help, help, help people have empathy for, uh, it became another reason to fear men. And, because it’s a better cultural story. And again, maybe it’s true. I don’t know. That’s a

[00:42:57] Gabby: different form of clickbait.

[00:42:59] Neil Strauss: Yeah. And so, it’s funny. I’ve, even the, so the last thing is. That the game itself wasn’t really an advocacy, it was just the journey through it. Uh, and it begins with the greatest pick up artist in the world trying to kill himself. So it’s not like this is going to go well for anybody.

And it ends, like, with this Lord of the Flies thing of all these fake alpha males in a house, like, just going to war with each other. It’s not even about women anymore. It’s about, like, it’s the sadit’s, like, really pathetic. So, so, uh, so it The mistake was maybe it was nuanced, right?

[00:43:29] Gabby: Did you say that the mistake was that it’s nuanced?

[00:43:33] Neil Strauss: culture where you got to like just

[00:43:35] Gabby: Hammer it down. Yeah. You know, I always say that I know because I’m a female, and even having daughters and having girlfriends, I know what is hard about being a woman or, you know, just the challenges of being a woman, nevermind hard. You know, I think I’ve learned to package things where they, it’s all connected.

Right. So it’s actually not that it’s hard. It’s the other part of, like, I know what’s, you know, kind of glorious and then you go and then there’s the stuff that’s, you know, the other side of it. But I, I can say that I, I don’t know why we don’t have conversations around What men have to go through. Yeah.

It’s, it’s, and and people go, oh, well, boohoo. But it’s like, yeah, no. In certain ways the feelings are in certain ways more sensitive. The ego is more delicate. The, the, the ability to man manipulate truly is less, I think.

[00:44:28] Neil Strauss: Yeah. And I, or, or, or, or in addition a way of looking at it too, is everybody is going through Yes.

Something, and we can be empathic to that. Right. And, and in the same way, I’m really empathic to the person who. despises the game and thinks it’s the most evil thing in the world. Because imagine that you’re, as sadly, a probably large amount of people have, you’re in a relationship with, with a guy who is super controlling, who has you, isolates you from your friends and family because they’re a threat, who eventually has you leave your job, You know, because they want total control, then you’re completely dependent, and they start treating you like shit, humiliating you because they’re insecure, narcissist, borderline, whatever they have going on, and you’re just wrecked from this relationship, and then there’s some book out there teaching you guys how to fucking manipulate, you’re like, that is Satan.

[00:45:12] Gabby: I mean, I get it. I guess for me, I think it’s about personal accountability, and so at some point, We have to learn to stand up for ourselves and sort of understand, like, oh, wait a second, now you’re moving, infringing, and going too far, I believe, obviously, in compromise, I’m in a long relationship, it doesn’t happen without compromise, but not, you know, so I think it’s, it’s both sides, and the only reason I even bring it up is because I see who you are, It’s so different from that.

And I, and I think because like you said, there has been like the truth, there is the Rick Rubin book. I mean, there is a lot of good work, um, in addition to something that got you a lot of attention. What is the, Universal truth that still stands that when you wrote the book it showed up for you that still stands today In the game.

[00:46:10] Neil Strauss: Yeah, I mean i’ll tell you two things one one i’ll step back up to with one thought and i’ll answer that question directly but I think that’s to go back to just empathy for why it’s such a touchstone for people. I think when it comes to sex and money People have a lot of baggage and issues around these two things So when it was coming out of the world, talking about sex or talking about money is going to be a, the center of a lot of projection.

So when I do an interview or a talk about the game, the way you know, you’re coming out from a healthy, empathic place of being in like a healthy, empathic relationship, right? Marriage. And so someone else who’s got a lot of trauma is going to come to it with that the same way. Yeah. Your filter. Yeah. Say if I go back to, uh, the discussion at the top of the podcast about being dosed.

Right? To me this glass of water is a threat. It’s been open. I don’t know. I didn’t see it poured. But I do trust you all so I’m gonna take a sip. But you know, like there’s, but if I’m somewhere else in a weird place and someone’s acting a little weird, this glass of Just, water is threatening now in the same way that I project my experience onto something empty.

[00:47:16] Gabby: Yeah. That’s, that’s very reasonable. Isn’t that the work, though?

[00:47:19] Neil Strauss: Mm hmm.

[00:47:19] Gabby: Like, the ongoing There is something

[00:47:20] Neil Strauss: in this. There is. There’s a flavor. Just let me know.

[00:47:24] Gabby: You can wait till you see the questions coming up in 20 minutes now. It’s not pure water. Uh, uh, yeah. But I think that is the work, right? Is how do we hear things and see things as they are not with our filter?

[00:47:34] Neil Strauss: That’s it. That’s it. And it’s funny. I was thinking about chat GPT the other day. Oh gosh. Wait, this can go right into it, which is, have you noticed the chat GPT that if you’re inaccurate and imprecise what you’re saying, it kind of gets your meaning anyway.

[00:47:46] Gabby: Yeah.

[00:47:47] Neil Strauss: And so you’ll notice you don’t, you’re nodding because it’s true.

And it’s not because in my opinion, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s because of some wild algorithm or algorithm or programming. It’s listening without a filter. So it gets what you’re saying because it doesn’t like put all its own experience and baggage onto it

[00:48:02] Gabby: That’s all I want to do.

[00:48:04] Neil Strauss: Yeah,

[00:48:04] Gabby: I really want to try my best.

I can do it pretty good as a friend pretty good Not great But pretty good just being like i’ll listen and then i’ll try to think about you But I that is I feel like some of the work as we’re here one of the things we can do is You know How do I keep thinning my own filter to everything? Right. It’s so tricky to do.

[00:48:28] Neil Strauss: mean, you’re a very good active listener. I try. Yeah, and you could succeed at it. Like it’s something I think about sometimes. I might leave the like pool or something and we’ll have had this discussion. You just focus and you listen, you ask good questions and, and uh, and you’re really present for it and, uh, and really empathic.

So you do, I think you’re in the top of your game. You know point one percent of that.

[00:48:50] Gabby: I also will say that maybe It’s an interesting thing I was sharing with you earlier I interviewed Paul check yesterday and he was talking about the whole trip is to try to move from the mind to the heart Right. Yeah, and part of why I’m good at certain things is I think because I’m I can create distance and I’m not sure if I do that through my mind.

[00:49:18] Neil Strauss: I feel like you’re a good, and I’m not, I’m not just saying this because I’m on your podcast, but I feel like you’re, if I think of, I think about it, like I think there’s three energy sources we maybe communicate. It’s probably many different ones, but probably the head, like the heart.

And then, you know, whatever the, that sort of like muscle. You know, physical energy, let’s say, right? There’s the head, heart, body, maybe we’ll say. I do feel like you have a balance of all three. Like your heart is definitely present. Yeah. I’m probably more head.

[00:49:47] Gabby: So head.

[00:49:49] Neil Strauss: I know. But

[00:49:50] Gabby: then you’re very sensitive, which is funny.

[00:49:51] Neil Strauss: Yeah. But you do your best to bring me into the heart, which is great, so I need to be doing what you said.

[00:49:56] Gabby: Well, one of my favorite questions by Neil Stroth, okay, but. Uh, what’s your relationship like with your mother? Is that really, like people would answer and you’ll be like, okay, but is that really the answer?

[00:50:08] Neil Strauss: Yeah. I can definitely go too far. I can definitely, once you understand this human nature and psychology, you know the patterns. And so when someone says what something’s like, like you might think it’s like that, but that’s not what it was like. Cause you wouldn’t show up like this.

[00:50:24] Gabby: Might be the, okay, let’s, okay, I want to, I want to. Wait, let me

[00:50:27] Neil Strauss: ask the question you asked before that I’ll take. Yes. Because I know I don’t want to ever, so. Yes. This is a short version. So what did I learn and what was the big takeaway from the game?

Like, for sure, the thing that’s changed my life and the reason I’m here is, it, it was, to me, it would like open up the door to self improvement. That I thought, I’m like this, and I’m the guy who’s always like this, and then I realized, oh no, I can change. And once I realized I could change just that, be able as a super shy, introverted, uncomfortable person to go anywhere and start a conversation with anyone, I realized that there are other things that can change. And that became the next books and like really like life purposes to keep sort of growing and letting go of baggage.

[00:51:05] Gabby: You, you document it pretty well in the truth. Yeah, you had a, you know, uh, uh, your mom was tough, tough lady. But I’m just curious when you say somebody who’s maybe shy or awkward, if somebody feels that way, and I think a lot of people do, because we, we only see our flaws, right?

That was the other thing Paul said yesterday. It’s like, Oh, yeah, you want to know God look in the mirror, like we’re part of his creation. And sometimes it’s like, Whoa, how could you really love yourself that way without I’m great, but like, just love yourself. If someone is in a place of feeling less than not good enough, awkward, shy, whatever, what would be a really powerful first productive step?

Yeah, to to Cause people are always so much better than they think, they just don’t give themselves that chance. Yeah.

[00:52:02] Neil Strauss: I can, I can give, I can give a few. I mean, I’ve done so much of this work myself, so I can give you, I’ll give you a few things and you can tell me when to stop cause I could go on this subject forever.

But here’s like a little technique that you can use right away. It comes from this woman named Barbara McNally who worked with the tools guys. But uh, so the short version is intervene on the lie. We tell ourselves a lot of lies, and you want to rewire your brain and intervene on it as soon as it happens.

So, so I’ll do the deeper thought afterward, but the simple thing is this. Let’s say, um, one way you can tell you’re lying to yourself, if it’s an I am statement, I’m stupid, I’m an idiot, you know, what’s wrong with me, right? So let’s just say you’re. parking and you bump the car in front of you and you’re like, God, I’m an idiot.

Right? So if the lie is I’m an idiot, what’s the truth? And we don’t want to, I think affirmations are also, can also be lies. Like, I’m a powerful person capable of anything. No, you’re not. Right? Like, you’re not. I don’t even know that’s going to help you because when you fail in life, you’re going to feel the discongruence of what you’re thinking.

So, but you can say, um, Um, I hit the card back behind me and I didn’t mean to do that and I’m feeling some shame. That’s true. But you’re not into it. So, so the technique is as soon as you have a deaffirming thought, you just say that’s X and you almost picture throwing out of your head. So that’s X. I’m getting rid of that.

And then instead, you tell yourself the truth. And what you’re doing is you’re undoing that critical parent, or whoever it was, that in your life was telling you, you’re an idiot. For example, it doesn’t come from nowhere, my parents literally, literally, like I still have, so, um, when I did something wrong once, I had to write, I am a dumb jerk, 500 times.

Not a piece of paper as a punishment. So what’s that program? Is that for real? It’s for real. And here’s the crazy thing. I forgot about it. And then years later, I think I did something and my mom sent me, I guess she had saved it, sent it to me as a, as a message or a warning, but that’s unbelievable. She

[00:54:00] Gabby: saved it?

[00:54:01] Neil Strauss: Yeah, she saved it. I know it gets worse. Imagine

[00:54:03] Gabby: how embarrassed you’d be as a parent.

[00:54:05] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Yeah, so, so, and sometimes we forget about these things. I literally forgot that ever happened to my son. I’m like, oh my God, no wonder I have self esteem problems. I literally had to write, I am a dumb jerk, like 500 times as a punishment.

[00:54:21] Gabby: You know, I can’t help but see how it shows up over and over is all of the incredible work that’s put into the world because somebody had to suffer at the hands of their parents. It’s like, listen, if you’re feeling good, you’re, you’re kind of just gonna be like, yeah, let’s have a relationship and go to work and everything’s pretty cool.

I think Oh. Most of the great work. I mean, first it comes from maybe the hurt, and then you see people who can generate the work from love. That’s the most powerful. But, that has been your gift the whole time. I

[00:54:55] Neil Strauss: love that you’re saying this because, So, so my next book is called The Power of Low Self Esteem.

Laughter.

It’s so on brand. But it really is. Because it’s like not thinking we’re enough that drives us to want to be better. That drives us to do great things. And if you study the greatest figures in the world, like, they suffer from low self esteem. They’re people who change the world. Like, I think Darwin’s father told him he was shit, he’d never amount to anything.

You know, Abraham Lincoln, who we can say is one of the, you know, seminal figures in our. Culture and people think is the greatest, you know, president leader like he literally he he suffered from such Self hatred and depression his friends wouldn’t let him carry a penknife in his pocket in case he stabbed him to kill himself You know, once my misery was so great it could just cover the world and take everybody’s sadness and it wouldn’t equal mine.

You know, and we, we put these people on pedestals and we try to be like them thinking they’re perfect. Martin Luther King told his congregation, sometimes dreams don’t come true. So you know, we, sometimes we can just, can just see people who’ve changed the world as I need to be perfect to get there and we can accept our own imperfections and let them drive us to do great things.

Yeah.

[00:56:16] Gabby: Yeah. And love that imperfect part of ourselves. And love

[00:56:19] Neil Strauss: it,

[00:56:19] Gabby: yeah. Because it’s sort of also part of the magic.

[00:56:22] Neil Strauss: Yeah, and accept it in others.

[00:56:24] Gabby: Yeah, well that’s, what do you think is harder?

[00:56:32] Neil Strauss: That’s a good question. So to accept our own imperfections, to accept it in others, you know, it’s Cate is the work, right? Like in the sense where you flip the reversal. Yeah,

[00:56:42] Gabby: yeah, he should do this, he shouldn’t do this, I should do this, he shouldn’t do this. I can say that through time. Um, I, because again, I’m in a long relationship is, it’s become, both practices have made both easier.

Right. I accept what is, uh, sort of really dynamic and big about Laird, uh, uh, And also my own kind of intense flaws. I’ve accepted both of those easier through the practice of both.

[00:57:20] Neil Strauss: Yeah, and accepting it doesn’t mean you don’t want to change it in yourself either.

[00:57:25] Gabby: No.

[00:57:25] Neil Strauss: So, um, so my point, hold on. So going back to the question is, what’s easier to do?

I think there’s two kinds of people, right? There’s some people who are really hard on themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s some people who are really hard on others. You know, and it’s sort of like a personality type. I mean, both are really unhealthy.

[00:57:45] Gabby: Oh yeah, and I was just thinking that when you said that.

It’s like, I can get more annoyed by his Uh, I know it’s futile. So why don’t I just keep the energy towards the stuff I’m in charge of? My reaction, how I do it, all of it. Yeah. It’s both. But I’m certainly more annoyed by him than myself. Right. I’m almost perfect by now.

[00:58:16] Neil Strauss: Right.

[00:58:17] Gabby: Exactly.

[00:58:17] Neil Strauss: After all this work, of course.

I mean,

[00:58:18] Gabby: shit, I’m over 50. Let’s go. No, exactly.

[00:58:20] Neil Strauss: At this point, if it hasn’t, if you’re not perfect, you’re done. It’s

[00:58:23] Gabby: not happening.

[00:58:24] Neil Strauss: Yeah. But I do think it’s, you know, I was thinking the other day about people like who, the saddest thing is when people have so much shame, uh, and give themselves such a hard time that they think their loved ones would be better off if they’re not here.

Right. A lot of people in their notes and things say, well, they’re the people, my loved ones we have for what I’m not. I’m not here to. And of course, just for everyone thinking that there’s, it’s a hundred percent not true because knowing loved ones of the people like this, uh, the bigger burden is that you being here, the burden is you not being here.

Um, and people can go into such a deep place of shame. So I think the overall thing is correcting the lies we tell ourselves, the lies that uh, we tell ourselves about ourselves and about other people. So for me, for example, if I find somebody. It only irritated something I don’t like about them. The first thing I do is I tell my, ask myself, what is the story that I’m making up about that for myself?

So for example, um, simple thing, super critical mom, as you’ve gathered already. So if I’m with a partner and they’re criticizing me and I’m getting really, and I feel myself getting that, You know the feeling when you get irritated. You don’t say anything, but you just feel, you feel like a certain energy in your body.

Everyone has a different thing. Maybe their heart clenches or I feel like a sort of tightness somewhere, whatever it is. I’ll just stop and I’ll say like, Okay, why am I getting annoyed by this? Why am I having a reaction? And uh, and then for me, I’ll say, Oh, of course, because my mom used to criticize me all the time.

Is this person my mom? Uh, and let’s say they’re just like my mom, then I frickin chose them for that reason. Right? And if not, or is their criticism valid? It’s super unhealthy to expect your partner to always say affirming things about you. That’s not realistic. Your partner will have some criticisms, and that is okay because you’re not perfect.

And you’re harder on yourself anyway. Probably most of us are harder on ourself than our partner is, and more critical of ourself than our partner is. And so if we can accept it for ourselves, maybe we can hear it in a loving way from our partner. ________________ Page 1 of 8 On the other hand, right? If, if, I love relationships, by the way.

Relationships are my favorite thing because it’s where all our issues come out. Like, everyone’s super healthy when they’re single, right? They’re doing great. As soon as they get in a relationship, they’ll, you know, Tell me about it. Yeah.

[01:00:30] Gabby: It’s school every day. Yeah, right? Yeah, it is. Well, they say we really know ourselves.

That’s, that’s where we get to really know ourselves. I, I used to joke all the time, I’m like, I could write books like Osho, too, if I lived on a hill and lived in a yurt by myself. Exactly. Get me around Brody. Right. And, you know, the real Gabby’s coming out. Yeah.

[01:00:48] Neil Strauss: And all our wounds are relational.

[01:00:49] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:00:50] Neil Strauss: All of our wounds are relational.

So they come out in a relationship and it’s either a chance to heal them or a chance to relive them.

[01:00:56] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:00:57] Neil Strauss: Yeah. It’s interesting. I was thinking. I feel like the psychology stuff that, like, we’ve been into for a long time is getting very, it’s very, like, trendy now, to its detriment. And, and I always hear people talking about, like, I’m avoidant, love avoidant, love addicted, and 50 percent of the time they’re wrong, and they don’t understand what it is.

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed it. I’ve been in conversations here. I’ve heard somebody say, well, I’m a love avoidant, because I’m just, like, just, but, but I don’t know. People have the wrong idea of those things. So it’s interesting that everyone’s throwing these concepts around and they’re kind of becoming cliche and we’re getting tired of hearing them.

But when you understand that they’re deep and I get worried that, uh, you know, love avoidant doesn’t mean you’re avoiding love, you know, a love act doesn’t mean you’re always looking for it. It’s different. And people, you know, Yeah,

[01:01:45] Gabby: they do that. And like you said, then they, and they don’t go down any rabbit holes and really understand.

It’s like, you know, anxious feeling, you know, being anxious, having anxiety versus you’re having a moment of feeling anxious. These are wildly different and nobody does any homework and, and I think they do. They love the fast label. I have ADHD. I have, oh, it’s like, holy Mike, I’m triggered. I’m trauma. I take it.

[01:02:10] Neil Strauss: Okay. And you can’t do the homework on yourself because you’re too close to yourself.

[01:02:13] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:02:14] Neil Strauss: You don’t even know what you look like. You don’t even know what, you know what I mean? Like literally look in the mirror and what you see is not what other people see. Right. That’s right. Right? So like, how could you diagnose how your brain, how it acts?

You really need someone from the outside or even a group of people from the outside, uh, to you know, to, to get some of that information, figure out what to do with it. But for sure you can’t, I don’t know, any, you can’t, as a writer, you can’t, you can’t Books are not enough to get an Instagram post and TikTok videos are not enough to like really grow.

[01:02:43] Gabby: No. Not even close. One thing Pyrenne Katie does that I like is when she does the work, she does the worksheets. Because you can go all your brain can change its mind and go off on these tangents and she’s like no Let’s go back to the sheet, right just even simple disciplines like that Yeah, where if you are trying to get into an excavate, what kind of framework do you have to help you sort of stay on?

Now, what did you first say right because we can be like, oh no I what I meant was and we can you know move around so I think there’s within it all is still going to be You Reading and yeah, it’s gonna be slow. It’s not going to be a seven minute video

[01:03:20] Neil Strauss: reading begins the journey It doesn’t

[01:03:22] Gabby: end the journey.

No, well the practice.

[01:03:24] Neil Strauss: Yeah, like you can it’s like you could read byron kennedy’s book But you actually have to do the work and then you have to have maybe somebody else You might need someone else to yeah to show you how to do the work and to go back to your first your question about How do we correct these not enough statements that we make about ourselves?

I think the other part of it is Recognizing where they came from Right? So, for example, they, these, the beliefs we have didn’t come out of the blue. So, you can recognize how they came in and how you came to believe them. You can disassociate yourself from the belief. As an example, uh, you know, a parent might say, it’s a bad kid, it’s a bad, you know, might say, oh, you’re bad, or you, and you get the identity of, well, I’m bad.

Right? Or, I’m bad, or I’m not good, or whatever it is. Um, I can certainly say, as an example, I get every issue around something negative. So, I really always thought I was a bad selfish. I was also called selfish a lot growing up. Um, and then, and I thought of myself as selfish. And then later I realized that I took on that as an identity when in fact what it was, was when a child can’t be controlled, Right, it isn’t there for the parents needs they can control them by calling them selfish or bad so in other words, you can come back you can take your thought your belief and say Your brain your brains like a computer that’s being programmed by our childhood experiences.

It’s just a fact like you’re We’re so adaptable as human beings. We’re spread out all over this world because we’re born with this certain predisposition certain resiliencies but the the Brain cells are there, but they’re not all wired together. We’re born in this environment in the first few years.

This wiring is taking place on a wildly fast level like the neural connections that three year old is making is like, you know, two to 10x times what What we’re making in fact later after a certain age in youth We start losing connections, the ones we don’t need. So they’re, it’s wired together really quickly to adapt to our environment.

So if your environment is, uh, getting no emotional time with your parents, then the, I’m not important or I’m not enough, it just gets wired in there. So instead of believing your lie, you can say, Oh, Um, you can run a virus scan yourself. The virus was put in by this experience and now my goal is to unwire that and get back to who I am.

[01:05:45] Gabby: Hmm. And I think it’s also when you think it makes perfect sense and it also, there’s a couple things that happen when you do that. You go, Oh, no wonder I act like that. I get it. I don’t need that anymore or I respond that way. And the other thing is sometimes having this weird compassion for your parents and realizing in that moment they did the very best they could.

And so sort of uncoupling it all also helps you have, I think, a better understanding or sort of just compassion for whatever they were going through. Here’s

[01:06:21] Neil Strauss: a radical thought or not a radical thought, but here’s a perspective on that, which is you’re absolutely right about the compassion and understanding your parents, but There’s a time and a place for that.

So if you lead with just compassion and forgiveness for them, what are you doing? You’re throwing away your reality. Yes and your needs so it starts So there’s a place for forgiveness and it’s the it’s at the end of the healing process when you can stand When, yes, exactly. When

[01:06:45] Gabby: you’re okay. When you, I agree with that.

Yeah.

[01:06:47] Neil Strauss: If you do it too soon.

[01:06:49] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:06:49] Neil Strauss: You’re doing what you did throughout your childhood. You can tell this if you’re talking about your childhood. Oh, but I

[01:06:53] Gabby: didn’t do that, Neil. Yes, exactly. No. Yeah. It was about me and everyone. I want, I was like, what is everyone’s problem? Yeah. Yeah. So I needed to come to that to have the softening.

Yes. Because the softening also released me from the anger and the narrative. Yep.

[01:07:08] Neil Strauss: It’s an essential part of the process. But it comes at the

[01:07:11] Gabby: end. You’re right. See, we’re different. I’m a lot meaner than you. You just don’t realize it. I always knew that when we were in the truth barrel. I was like, Neil’s all nice and, you know, whatever.

So you wrote The Truth and it impacts, why did you write this book?

[01:07:27] Neil Strauss: Yeah, I mean, I think the book always comes after the experience in a sense, like it just becomes so interesting. So, leading off the game, it really is, well, what? It would, I broke, you know, I think, I think in retrospect, I, I realized the truth was that we realized the part, broken part of me that was attracted to the game in the first place, but more than that, it was, uh, it was just failing in relationships, just relationships not working out, me cheating, the other person cheating, and eventually, uh, your former podcast guest and our friend Rick Rubin, uh, we used to paddleboard on the, uh, Back when, uh, on the every, every, almost every morning or every other morning and, uh, and he almost like listened to my the problems of my life like it was a, uh, song he was producing, right?

And he’d give me some notes for improvement, which I would like, I was probably like, which I would Not, I literally thought I would just argue with him most of the time, but eventually I realized he was really right. So through his sort of awareness, uh, I kind of went on this journey to, I guess, if I could say it directly, I did cheat on, I cheated on Ingrid.

[01:08:39] Gabby: Okay.

[01:08:39] Neil Strauss: Got caught. Really regretted it. Thought, what’s, what’s wrong with me? First of all, of course, you only regret cheating once you get caught, which is horrible in the first place. You should regret it as soon as you do it, you know, but it is true, right? It’s like, but people compartmentalize really well.

You know why I wanted to, you know, I loved her, but why would you hurt someone you love? I wanted a future with you. Why do you jeopardize your future for, like, sex that wasn’t that good anyway? So it’s like, maybe you’re a sex addict. Um, and I really thought he was just trying to, like, do some experiment with me or something.

And I literally, I have, Hundreds of pages of text of him and I arguing about this back and forth, like, you know, and he’d be like, maybe you should just see if you can do three months without sex. And I was like, he’s trying to, like, neuter me or something. I don’t know. I was so resistant. And like, I can sound really self aware now, but I had so many defense mechanisms up.

And, and he was really about to give up, and I’m surprised he had the patience. But eventually, I went to sex addiction rehab. Realized that, Most of the guys there were just people who cheated on their partners or wives. Only one guy is what I would have thought of as a, like a sex addict, um, uh, but realized there was an intimacy disorder coming from, uh, sex.

My childhood and I think half the stuff I’m talking about here came through We were talking about earlier the thing I said no to the thing you say no to a thousand times That’s the one for you, right? So the thing I said no to a thousand times with Rick turned out of the thing that broke my whole life open And any kind of emotional intelligence I have when we’re talking is because of that moment when I was in rehab And they just threw my past in my face and said this is why you’re like How you are

[01:10:11] Gabby: is it that you couldn’t feel the love?

And you were scared and distrusting and, and, you know, like, well, if, let’s say, for example, if your mom was not trustworthy, right? I think kids give their, their parents a pass. Because we’re imperfect. But if overall it feels like we’re kind of safe, I think that’s a pretty good start. And in ways, whether it was intentional or not, your mom wasn’t safe.

And so, how are you going to trust a woman? I mean your mom. So, is it, was it that? Is it like, Hey, listen, at the end, I’m so, well, who can, how can I trust anyone, a woman? How can I trust her?

[01:11:01] Neil Strauss: Yeah. And I think like to hit one point of what you’re saying is, it’s good to think of the stuff in your past as just variables.

You’re a combination of these variables. They’re not good or bad. Right. They’re just what made you, you and like everybody’s imperfect and you have to examine these variables without blame or judgment. Just this is going to help me understand what’s going on. Like what it’s about. It’s not about

[01:11:18] Gabby: it’s a map.

[01:11:19] Neil Strauss: It’s a map. And so so a hundred percent. I think it’s jet that literally In my case, you know sort of like a depressed narcissist. Let’s say

[01:11:29] Gabby: yeah,

[01:11:29] Neil Strauss: so so so everything Everything was kind of about her is very suffocating. Your needs aren’t seen so as soon as someone I someone there’s love right, I would as soon as I’m There’s love and somebody starts to get needy My the child in me, let’s say or or my that brain that was wired is like, oh, this is familiar This is uncomfortable.

You’re gonna lose yourself here. Like let’s just

[01:11:56] Gabby: she’s gonna try to devour you.

[01:11:58] Neil Strauss: Yeah, you start to feel literally Like I might get hugged in this sort of loving way and my skin would start to crawl and start to like feel like, uh, Um, I feel like I can’t breathe so which is which is wild the thing because You This is why people understand the Love Addict, Love Avoidance.

There’s nothing I want more than to be in love. There’s nothing I want more than a relationship. There’s nothing I want more than to be married.

[01:12:21] Gabby: Yet, then

[01:12:22] Neil Strauss: why is it that when someone’s really loving with me, I start to get uncomfortable?

[01:12:27] Gabby: Yeah. Well, because you hadn’t done that check in with yourself. Yeah.

I get it.

[01:12:33] Neil Strauss: Yeah, so it was a few years, like, Here’s a note for anyone listening, people 100 percent can change, but they can only change if they do the work. Never. This is gonna, some people can be angry for me saying this, but I think that it also saves some people. If someone says, Hey, I’ve changed, I promise not to do that again.

They like most likely, very likely will do it again unless they actually are actually really doing the work. Yeah. Because it’s, they’re still running on the same program.

[01:13:01] Gabby: Well, also see what happens in a case like that too. If something happens and you’ve, someone screws up, which people do, uh, and they, they just want to mend everything.

Yeah. So like, I won’t do anything different cause they, they are, they’re afraid maybe that person won’t stick around or they’re going to leave. So they say that versus, uh, you know what, obviously I’ve got some stuff to work on. I’m going to put a plan in action. And if you’ll stick by me. And then put in a practice because I think what happens is we get this fear like oh my god They’re gonna leave I need to reassure them You know That won’t happen again

[01:13:34] Neil Strauss: or yeah that that and how often does it happen?

Someone’s in a relationship They push the other person away. They want their freedom and the moment the other person actually starts to leave They get panicked Uh, they feel abandonment. Yeah, they feel hurt and they try to pull the person back Yeah, and so and then yeah, and then as soon as the person’s back They’re suffocating and they’re pushing away and you can just be in that yo yo forever.

Yeah. Yeah.

[01:13:59] Gabby: So why do you think Ingrid said, okay, let’s give it a go? What, what, what did you do and what, and what was in her that that was, cause this is not unique.

[01:14:10] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Yeah. I think what made it work was that I didn’t do it to get her back. I did it for me. We had already broken up and I just did it for me.

Yeah. I’m like, I want to. I felt a lot of guilt and shame and I wanted to be able to have healthy relationships and have a future and have family and I kind of just did it for me, um, and so I was willing that if she didn’t accept me back, I, that was okay.

[01:14:34] Gabby: That’s powerful.

[01:14:35] Neil Strauss: Yeah. And I think you have to do it for you, not for someone else,

[01:14:38] Gabby: anything,

[01:14:38] Neil Strauss: getting sober, whatever it is.

[01:14:40] Gabby: So true.

[01:14:41] Neil Strauss: Yeah.

[01:14:42] Gabby: It’s hard to do. Yeah. So you have your son, you’re married, and, and the relationship in that form doesn’t work out. Right. Because I would almost argue in certain ways, you’re closer today than you’ve ever been. Yeah. So what, why didn’t it work out? People are thinking, okay, you have all this information, you have all these tools, both of you’re pretty, you know, you’re evolved humans, you’re healthy.

Was it just for a season? Like, what was the It’s

[01:15:11] Neil Strauss: so interesting. There’s so much baggage. I’m thinking as we’re talking, like, a book about breakups would be interesting because there’s so much stuff about meeting people. And there are a couple things about healing from breakups, but nothing really about really understanding.

The other side of relationships. So It’s funny because when I broke up with Ingrid Like let’s say the game followers were like, oh like we’re really like See this guy like can’t hold on to somebody and then the truth followers were like I thought you found love and cured all your stuff and so like I felt like Like um, but again, i’m fine with what people say.

It’s just interesting. It’s an interesting reflection but uh, yeah, I think first of all I think the tragedy is staying in a relationship that doesn’t work You for anyone. Like I think we had this idea and how many people stay in relationships because of failure if they leave.

[01:15:56] Gabby: But what does it mean doesn’t work?

[01:15:58] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t work means like.

[01:16:00] Gabby: Each person is not able to be their whole selves in this dynamic?

[01:16:04] Neil Strauss: And you’ve tried everything you possibly can to make it work first.

[01:16:08] Gabby: Great.

[01:16:09] Neil Strauss: Right? Because, listen if you think you’re going to break up, Except in case when there’s emotional or physical abuse, in which case just like a hundred percent of the way you get support, you’re just out, cut, cut the cord, completely.

In other cases, you’re already in the relationship, so you might as well say I’m gonna give it extra time to just really try everything. So in this case, like yeah, we did couples therapy, we did everything, so as soon as she stopped, as soon as she dropped out of couples therapy, I was, and there was no more fixing it.

I did, but just for perspective, I did text her at one point. I think someone was asking me like on a date or something while I had broken up and said, you know, here’s my take on it, but let me, you know, I’m going to just text her cause people are so one sided when they tell their story about why they broke up, right?

So I asked her, what?

[01:16:58] Gabby: I just love when it occurs to you, Neil. Yes.

[01:17:01] Neil Strauss: So I just asked her directly and I was like, and she said, you know what? She’s like, I think. We got married when I was young, in my like late 20s or what have you, or 20s, and I wanted to really find out who I was. And she’s like, did I find out who I was?

No, but I think I need it. I think there’s a part of her that pushed, that pushed me and intimacy and that stuff away, uh, just cause she felt overwhelmed. Now she has a child and a husband and I think she felt like trapped and needed freedom.

[01:17:32] Gabby: I think that people think men are the only ones that have this crisis. I had this crisis. I did not have a, I only had a step daughter. But I remember clear as day at 30 being like, Oh, is this what it is? Right. And I left. And I left for other reasons too. But I, I think it’s so interesting. Women kind of get their voice around 30.

I mean if for some reason they grew up with a bunch of brothers, they might have, they might have it their whole life. Right. Like I don’t like that. You know, they just know how to have confrontation and roll and just say it and it’s not personal. But I do see a lot of women move as they get towards 30.

They look at what the world has told them how they should behave and then how they’ve behaved in partnerships and they think, wait. This is what it is. And it is our version, I think of a midlife if we stand up for it. Otherwise, we retreat, right? Maybe we, we eat or gain weight or go on a girl martini lunches three times a week, like who knows all the ways that we do it, right?

But if we really go to face it and go, wait, I signed up for this, but maybe I didn’t sign up for this. So how do I, you know, kind of make some changes here and get your partner to make changes. Oh, that’s a hell of an experience. You should see, I even think now, I, I, I am a very different person than when I met Laird.

And sometimes he’ll say something to me, and I’ll say something in a certain way. And I can see the surprise on his face, like, who’s this bitch? But it’s like, No, listen, I have to be myself, because and who I am today, because otherwise, This won’t work. And then everyone’s adjusting and then he makes a shift and I make a shift.

But it is something, it’s harder for women to really stand up for themselves because we just think I’m going to work through it. I’m going to take care of everybody. I’m going to roll. So in certain ways, it’s pretty great that Ingrid could understand that she needed to do that. Who, you know, who knows? I keep lobbying for the two of you to just get back together.

Um, If you write a book. like the game and, you know, sex is sort of this kind of part of it. Do you think it’s possible for certain types of people to be in a monogamous relationship and not get bored or tired? Because listen, let’s face it, you can have a beautiful sexual relationship and great intimacy, but it’s not going to be like what it’s like to, you know, you know, fuck someone for the first 10 times.

Right. So, do you think that that is possible for, for people to grow in a, in a way that that works too?

[01:20:14] Neil Strauss: So, a couple thoughts. So, I’ll answer it directly and then like I’ll pull back and do a bigger picture kind of thought. Um, but the first thought is that like, of course, it’s, I mean, it’s definitely possible.

Uh, but I, but, you know, but it takes, it takes more work and, uh, what does that mean? It takes work. I mean, Helen, Helen Fisher wrote, I think she wrote about, she’s this great evolutionary biologist and she talked about. Three things if I can remember them that keep a relationship healthy, which is just um, you know, uh, you know adventure and surprise and Learning more about the other person keeping things.

I forget I forget her things. I’ll have to go look them up or you can look them up. Yeah, um, but For sure. First of all, their people were totally happy being monogamous and committed each other and keeping it exciting a hundred percent um other people As rick said to me, uh when I was doing this, he said I don’t trade You Long term happiness for short term pleasure, which I think is a great way to think about it because the fact is I Mean knowing so many guys that maybe it feels really nice in the moment afterward if you have a feeling of shame about it afterward It’s probably something you want to cut out whether that’s playing like app Mindless app games to kill time and you feel guilty afterward or it’s like just some meaningless physical experience that It was somebody who you didn’t really like in the first place.

Novelty. Yeah. But then to, but then to zoom back, I think we have this really fixed idea of relationships and, and, and how they’re supposed to be and what’s supposed to happen and what the roles are and what the unspoken rules are. And that come from years of brainwashing through religion and culture and everything else.

And I think like a healthy relationship is an ongoing discussion. Yeah. And saying that if there’s, if there’s three entities in the relationship, there’s me, there’s you, and there’s the relationship, right? All three. It’s like what’s healthiest for all three. And so it might, certainly it happens to people.

For example, our one of someone who used to work on our podcast, uh, do you remember his situation with his relationship? I’ll tell you. Okay. So basically his wife went through menopause and in her experience, she just didn’t want to, she just don’t want anyone to be touched. Right.

[01:22:25] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:22:25] Neil Strauss: After a while it got really hard for him, you know, cause he still has his needs, physical and sexual needs.

And she said, you know what, like, Go, go have some other experiences. Like, I want you to be happy. In that case, like, she was cool with it, he was cool with it, and that was going to help their relationship around the boundaries. So that’s kind of a healthy thing. Or it might be that two people want to explore.

It’s not healthy when the guy is like, or the woman, we have, I’ve definitely heard both of these, an equal amount, actually, an equal amount. One person wants to go have other experiences. The other person doesn’t want to lose them, so they accept it. In that case, it’s just healthy for that person. person and not for the relationship with the other person.

So the other point being is like, there’s no rule that you can’t like, have another, you know, fun experience with someone else. But you also have to prepare that if you start to change the rules around a relationship or try to do something, there’s a period where it’s awkward and you need to communicate really well to get through it.

[01:23:21] Gabby: And I think, you know, what you go into a relationship knowing versus maybe updated conversations that you have five years, 10 years, 15 years into the relationship, you know, you have to be willing to, I think each individual has to be comfortable Being uncomfortable taking ownership of their needs and wants and that could be just their needs and wants between the two of them Yeah, you know and women especially are not taught to express what they want or need somehow it’s like it becomes a they get inhibited and uh,

[01:23:54] Neil Strauss: I don’t know and I believe you know to say that Just to sort of add another thought on it that negotiation doesn’t have to be about other people that makes the notion can be you know, what I feel like You I feel like we used to have like a much like more hot connection together.

Like let’s, let’s go like, uh, take like a Tantra class together and open up something new for ourselves. Or let’s bring in a somatic sexologist or let’s watch these, let’s do something together that that’s going to give us some like excitement again, because we got into a pattern where we got stuck. So that, that, that can be maybe an even better solution.

[01:24:33] Gabby: So now that you’re You and Ingrid have an interesting dynamic. You’re actually having

[01:24:38] Neil Strauss: one. Sorry, I guess. I just thought he loves sex talk. Do you see

[01:24:41] Gabby: that?

[01:24:42] Neil Strauss: I think I think I think it’s just um, there’s like a or it’s like if I’m trying if there’s something as a principle that I Feel like might be helpful, but the principle is when in doubt call it out, right?

So a lot of people are in relationships and I found that whether it’s early stages or the late stages of a relationship Or even a friendship or something. There’s something you’re thinking And you’ll know you’re thinking because you complain about it to other people,

[01:25:02] Gabby: right?

[01:25:03] Neil Strauss: And you’re scared to say it.

Mostly when you say it in a non judgmental, non accusatory, connected way, it’s like now the elephant in the room is on the table. You both can look at it. As a simple example, that’s different from this. I have a friend and he’s So, she’s dating someone who’s very, very always upset at him, right? Like, there’s nothing to do, right?

Like literally, like he goes out with his friends and they’re just like, why weren’t you with me? Right? And, and she wants to move in together. So, but he’s like, do I want to move in with somebody who’s literally always telling me that I’m like doing something wrong with them if we’re not with her, but he’s too scared to tell her that in case she gets more upset and feels more insecure.

But the moment, and this literally took a year to get him to say something. and once he did. Just called it out. They didn’t even change it. Once you just called it out, the whole relationship changed.

[01:25:50] Gabby: She became more aware of her behavior?

[01:25:53] Neil Strauss: Um, no. She felt not crazy. She felt like, oh, I’m just trying to make up reasons why, like, I feel this insecurity.

I feel like you don’t want to live with me. I’m trying to think what’s going, what’s wrong with me. So now I actually know that I’m not, like, crazy to think that it is true that you don’t want to live with me.

[01:26:11] Gabby: Right. Or that I’m a nag.

[01:26:13] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Or that I’m a nag. It’s like, it’s like, okay, I’m not. And now I know the reason why.

Because in the absence of information, we make up stories.

[01:26:19] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:26:20] Neil Strauss: Yeah. So, so, so, uh,

[01:26:23] Gabby: See, I’m, I have to say, I would get, I would have ended up in a very different relationship because of my tendency, but I live with somebody who’s so confrontational that it has helped me so much. Because it’s like, what’s that?

What’s this? What’s, what’s, you know, it’s just constantly. you know, like, why’d you look at me like that? What’s the tone of voice? You know, it’s just and it’s taught me to be that way back. Right. And not, not, like you said, it isn’t, I’m not accusing you of anything, I just am observing. That’s kind of a strong reaction.

Is something up? Right. Like, just whatever it is. And if you can do it quickly all the time, it doesn’t mean every second, like, should we have a five minute conversation? It could be at the end of the day. Right. Right before I go to bed, I go, hey, I noticed da da da. Oh, really? You know, it’s just, you learn.

[01:27:09] Neil Strauss: Yeah. And timing’s everything. I remember sometimes you guys are like, don’t poke the bear.

[01:27:13] Gabby: Timing is everything. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:27:17] Neil Strauss: It is true. I think like one other like relationship tip I love again, I love relationships because it’s like,

[01:27:23] Gabby: I’m not in one, but I love them. Yeah, exactly.

[01:27:26] Neil Strauss: Because it’s like, it’s just where all the tools come into play.

But one is, Um, don’t try to make a point, argue about something in the heat of the moment. Like, if you really want to have a discussion, wait until someone is back to their balanced self. Uh, because when someone has a reaction, whenever they get upset, they get shut down, whatever your partner’s reaction is.

It’s like an age regression. They’re going, they’re going. It’s like an age regression. So you’re trying to argue with a teenager or a child and to wait till they’re back to their adult self. And the healthiest thing is like, just don’t make the point there. Okay. Um, just see what it is they need, space, connection, a hug, uh, listening, whatever it is, advice, whatever it is, see what they need, let the moment pass.

That night’s in bed. You’re having this discussion. Say, Hey, you’re just, I noticed this morning when I said, uh, I was going out tonight. You got very upset about that and just want to talk about that and how you can feel safe and comfortable and I can still hang out with my friends.

[01:28:24] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:28:24] Neil Strauss: Yeah.

[01:28:24] Gabby: Did you ever yell?

[01:28:26] Neil Strauss: Um. Did you ever

[01:28:26] Gabby: yell?

[01:28:27] Neil Strauss: You know what? I’ll tell you this is really interesting. I used to yell. And when I did all the work healing, like my um, the, the enmeshment stuff, the stuff with my mom, the, that stuff, it literally went away. It literally went away. I’ve been in situations where I used to get upset and I wouldn’t even be upset.

Like it’s the strangest thing. It literally went away. And I think that yelling came from the frustration of dealing with, uh, Irrational.

[01:28:51] Gabby: Yeah. You couldn’t penetrate punishment. You couldnt penetrate,

[01:28:53] Neil Strauss: couldn’t accrue.

[01:28:54] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:28:54] Neil Strauss: And so when I felt that frustration, and once I solved that, that it literally disappeared.

It was the wildest thing. Yeah.

[01:29:01] Gabby: Yeah. So, Ingrid and yourself have decided, because you are a family unit. I knew you were

[01:29:08] Neil Strauss: trying to get around to this. Go ahead. Well, I

[01:29:11] Gabby: am. I’m just going to drop it off. I know.

[01:29:12] Neil Strauss: Go ahead.

[01:29:13] Gabby: And I’m the safest person besides Ingrid to talk about it. So you, you, you have a beautiful relationship.

You are very close. You are a family unit. You have your son. You have both decided together that you would like to have another child. You are doing that. And, um, You are not going to be in a relationship, but you are in a family relationship and dynamic. Um, do you, what’s the dance on this? Like, and who brought it up?

Like, was Ingrid like, Hey, I think I’d like to have another child. And neither one of you are really in a relationship and you are both the parents of your son. So it seemed, And you trust each other as parents and friends, who, who brings this up?

[01:30:03] Neil Strauss: Yeah, so I think we got divorced maybe six years ago. And since then I’ve really liked best friends and, so you’re like a family member, like a sister and great co parents and know, I think when a relationship ends, all your stories about the other person should end.

They’re not like this, they don’t do this. I think just the relationship’s over, so let go of the stories. And I think that allowed us to become, uh, close friends and we, We care about each other. If you love someone, it’s okay to still care. So anyway, the point being is, uh, yeah, I think we always used to talk about, we love Ten, our son.

And, uh, I think we used to just talk about having another child, um, and, uh, and having like a sibling for him and, and so it just came about that. Like, eventually she got very serious about it and I was like, that’s, I really, I grew up with a brother. I’d love to have a brother. I think you’re a great person.

I think you’re a great co parent. Like, to be frank, it’s scary out there in the dating world. Like, you really, like, you really need to be careful about who you,

[01:31:00] Gabby: Well, when are you going to have another family in a way?

[01:31:02] Neil Strauss: Yeah, yeah. I think it keeps the simplicity. And again, I won’t, but I did have a discussion saying, obviously we’re, let’s make sure we have the same expectations of this as far as.

You’re being free to date, find, find romantic love and all those kinds of things. So, so yeah, so we decided that. We’d have another child. I’m

[01:31:23] Gabby: excited for you. And because I’ve seen the way the two of you have operated and not everybody gets it Like some people have really they’ve sort of really I’m always amazed Like when I see two people and it seems healthy, right and it’s okay with them.

Why other people are somehow They’re because they don’t get it or why would you do that? I’m

[01:31:42] Neil Strauss: just yeah, you know, I’m thinking sorry I mean, okay. No. No, I just think

[01:31:46] Gabby: it’s two people You Sort of really thoughtfully making a decision and, um, and doing it and, and, uh, so you’re, you’re, you’re doing this, but certain people, I guess people have had different responses to it.

[01:32:00] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Speaking of what you’re saying, I was just thinking that if I think of the game being really controversial without me expecting it to be like in retrospect, of course it’s controversial, but which is that courtship period, enter your relationship. And now it seems like this. Again, it’s been really, to me, it was told, to me, it was normal.

I think people find our composing families in all kinds of new ways now. And so to me, it’s knowing someone’s a great parent, knowing that you’re giving, your child is really excited to have a sibling, knowing how just great they are in the hard times and everything else. So it just made total sense to me.

It was exciting. But I think on the, people have a lot of issues on the outside, Other side of relationships getting into and getting out of them, especially on exes. The word itself is such a horrible harsh word Maybe people have bad, so maybe people are projecting Experience with exes and fear about this person went back to their ex.

It should be over. That’s why they’re an ex So I think there’s a lot of stories. I’m still trying to really understand In the same way it took me a few years to understand the response to the game. Yeah, I’m still trying to understand maybe the polarizing response that this Is Is getting when it make when it really well, it’s not about them controversial to me it is

[01:33:07] Gabby: and they’re not doing it You’re doing it.

So that’s why for me. I just wanted to bring it up cuz I like, you know, so these are a little bit more And also, you know I want to just kind of dive into your writing because you are very thoughtful and methodical about the way you do things. Yeah That’s like an understatement First of all, how long was your book with Rick Rubin on it?

Has it been on the New York Times bestseller?

[01:33:35] Neil Strauss: Yeah, it was on for people who haven’t heard it.

[01:33:38] Gabby: Will you share the title? Yeah, it’s

[01:33:39] Neil Strauss: called the creative act, a way of being. And yeah, I think it was on the bestseller list for I don’t know if it’s still on, but it’s for sure was like, over a year, which is like, super grateful and super rare.

[01:33:52] Gabby: What do you think about that book struck a chord with people?

[01:33:55] Neil Strauss: Yeah, I think I really think it was the purity of it. I don’t think. It’s really cool because the book followed its own principles and the principle really is it’s like creating for a very pure place of of uh, Excitement and and trust that the universe is building this and you’re not the author And in that same way like we kept it every publisher Wanted rick to tell the stories of his life They thought the big hit book would be in the studio with jay z in the studio with kanye, you know Think every artist every He had artists, Johnny Cash, Beastie Boys,

[01:34:30] Gabby: Adele, I mean it goes on and on.

[01:34:32] Neil Strauss: It goes on and on and on and it’s of course like all those celebrity names and all those stories and Rick was like, I’m not going to mention any of them, like I’m just going to talk about the pure practice and principles of creativity and everyone thought that was a terrible idea. Yet if he did that other book, maybe it would have been on the list for two weeks, you know?

And I think it speaks to really trusting. What you’re called to do what you feel is right and not listen to everyone else, which maybe touches on what you were saying about the, uh, non traditional family.

[01:35:02] Gabby: Yeah. So you’ve done books, uh, you’re, you’re notorious for sort of doing, um, uh, Co authoring like Kevin Hart and you know certain people you that a lot of people ask you to tell their story How do you choose?

Is it a feeling is it after meeting the person? Where is it in you that you go? Okay. This is a project that I will take on. Yeah,

[01:35:27] Neil Strauss: it’s it’s interesting I love so so yeah, what get what you’re talking about is all the books have come out Kind of co written for other people in their voice, which I love doing and maybe that comes how do

[01:35:37] Gabby: you do that?

[01:35:38] Neil Strauss: Yeah, it’s so fun. I can think again. So there’s the blessing in the curse of the trauma, right? So having that narcissistic controlling mom where you feel frustrated you want to scream because everything is her world You also have to be very empathic whether you’re growing up with say the narcissist narcissistic parent or an alcoholic parent where you’re like, okay, I need to really, really read them really, really well to know whether I’m safe or not tonight, right?

And whether this is gonna, like, be saying something or doing something that’s gonna lead to horrendous consequences for me if I don’t walk on eggshells. And maybe the consequence of that is you become You know, it can hurt your relationships, but it can make you a great empathic artist.

[01:36:15] Gabby: Yeah,

[01:36:15] Neil Strauss: so you can be

[01:36:16] Gabby: in tune

[01:36:17] Neil Strauss: Yes, it’s very easy for me to tune in to someone else and I really love the challenge of going from whatever jennett jameson to kevin hart to rick rubin to whoever else uh, all the people i’ve written books with um to step into You know the jonas brothers where you’re in three different minds at the same time uh, I love You really try to see them and write in their voice and have them learn something about themselves they never knew through that process.

[01:36:48] Gabby: It’s not an easy process.

[01:36:50] Neil Strauss: I think the challenging process is not so much the empathy and the channeling. The challenging is if someone’s not willing to be truthful, either A, with you, or B, with the public.

[01:37:05] Gabby: That’s what’s, you know, it’s funny, even doing this show, and you know this from, We’ve done other interviews Sometimes and I understand it.

I have friends that are very well known and they’re guarded Yeah So you can’t really have a conversation and because I feel protective of them and I only want people to tell me what they want To share it ends up being the most boring conversations,

[01:37:25] Neil Strauss: but you’re free And I think I’m like I’ve done like I said it a couple podcasts recently within 10 minutes They’re like it’s while you’re so open and vulnerable about this stuff and to me You You’re safer by sharing everything because then you have nothing to hide Yes,

[01:37:41] Gabby: but I think when you get to certain levels of fame And every word and there’s a few right like if you’re i’m gonna make it up beyonce, right?

It’s a whole other

[01:37:52] Neil Strauss: I think there’s two different reactions to that one is And I have a hundred percent experience both having worked with these kinds of people, right? I’ve worked with Two people the same level of fame

[01:38:03] Gabby: Yep.

[01:38:03] Neil Strauss: One person is in a place of fear, right? And they’re like, Oh God, if I say this, the tabloids are going to say this and the newspapers are going to say this and so on.

So, and the funny thing is, say in a case where the person was so scared and didn’t even put out the book, they ended up getting raked over the coals for the same, for something else anyway. Then I’ve worked with other people who are like, this is awesome. Didn’t change a word in the book. Just let it come out and we’re fine.

So I think it’s just.

[01:38:30] Gabby: Hmm. That’s a very good point. Yeah.

[01:38:32] Neil Strauss: So I think the thing is fame, money or fame are amplifiers of what’s already true about you. Right? So if you’re already fearful, sensitive to criticism, take things really personally, which again is true of a lot of artists, right? That’s gonna be like times a thousand when you’re on the platform and if you have a little more, uh, if you find Again, let’s say Rick, he sends me the most negative reviews of the book because he thinks they’re just so funny.

And then we just laugh about them because they’re funny. They’re like, they’re like, who is, they’re like, you know, this is like, they’re like, this is new age psychobabble and then they’ll do a funny imitation of it and we just crack up over it. And I think it comes down to like, um, being comfortable with being misunderstood.

[01:39:22] Gabby: I don’t think you can do anything in life and not be under misunderstood impossible.

[01:39:26] Neil Strauss: It’s impossible I

[01:39:27] Gabby: can’t even be understood in my own house. Yeah.

[01:39:30] Neil Strauss: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[01:39:31] Gabby: Not really. Yeah, I mean But the freedom of Saying I could be wrong and I might believe something different in a year from now, but this is how I’m feeling right now Yeah.

It’s pretty liberating.

[01:39:46] Neil Strauss: And you can see the stuff. I think that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. And you can see the stuff. It takes a while to get the boundaries up, to get your healthy boundaries, but you can see the stuff is feedback. So I think like ignoring it all is not, say in the public sphere, as an example, the podcast you’re talking about, people review the podcasts and I’ll read the initial reviews and then some might have a criticism.

And maybe they say it in a very insensitive way, because people are savage, if they want to be. Especially

[01:40:16] Gabby: when they don’t have to say it to your face.

[01:40:19] Neil Strauss: Especially when they don’t have to say it to your face. But then I’ll say, okay, they’re saying, uh, Oh, I’ll give you a simple example. I’ll give you like a really clear example.

Someone. Someone. In one of the podcasts, somebody said, um, you know, this person should not have been talking to someone who lost a loved one. He should have taken a trauma informed interviewing. A trauma informed interview should have done it. Like, this is like horrendous. It was they were going on about it.

And so before I did the podcast with. The Russian spy who’d gone through a lot of trauma and abuse actually took a course in trauma informed interviewing, which I never even knew was a thing if it wasn’t, if I didn’t read that savage review and not take it personally. Right?

[01:40:56] Gabby: Yeah. Well, I think too, it’s, it’s when you go, Oh, this isn’t really about me, but there’s an opportunity to take something good from that.

I have that. I always say that in relationships, like let’s say you and I are in a disagreement and I’m going to make it up if I’m a, you know, I’m 95 percent right. Right. Let’s say whatever that means. But you made a point. You should be able, one thing I do is like, I could get into it with Laird all the time and I can go, I can see why you feel that way.

Because when you have that opportunity, then it’s a chance just to be a little better.

[01:41:27] Neil Strauss: Yeah. And to me, I’ll dwell on something until I learn the lesson. So I’ll dwell on something until I learn the lesson, then I’ll let go of it.

[01:41:34] Gabby: You go hard on analyzing stuff, you know.

[01:41:37] Neil Strauss: So, so as an example, we were talking about, we were talking about the, uh, about having the.

Uh, another child with Ingrid and I talked about on the Modern Wisdom Podcast. Mm-Hmm. , which is like a, let’s say like a different audience. And the top comment is something like, oh, as soon as he said he was having a child with his ex, I just tuned out and stopped listening, which is fine. But then it has like 550 likes.

literally, I swear to God, has like, has over 500 likes. So,

[01:42:05] Gabby: so I’m like, but it’s a top comment. Their thumbs aren’t fatigued yet. Yeah, that’s it. But, um.

[01:42:12] Neil Strauss: You want to know who those people are? I want to know who they are. I want their names. No, so I’m so like, okay, there’s something about this. It’s striking a button and an accord.

So I want to understand what it is. So I can be more mindful of that perspective when I discuss it.

[01:42:25] Gabby: Why?

[01:42:26] Neil Strauss: I don’t know yet.

[01:42:27] Gabby: But why do you want to? It’s your story. You’re not being a dick and being insensitive and be like, everyone should have a kid with their ex. You’re sharing your experience.

[01:42:38] Neil Strauss: Yeah. But I think I want to be empathic.

To the degree that I can on other people’s experience, what I’m sharing it to help them understand or maybe there’s a breakthrough for them because I think people, whatever it is, I just want to, I think it’s more about just understanding the human nature and psychology and knowing, it’s about awareness, even self awareness.

[01:42:53] Gabby: If

[01:42:53] Neil Strauss: something you’re saying is pressing a button for other people, like, oh, I stopped listening the moment he said that, you’re like, oh, there’s a button being pressed. And I just want to understand what that button is. I’ll continue to press it, but I really,

[01:43:06] Gabby: I want to know why. What’s the process for a book?

How long does a book take to write and, and are you, do you have note cards? Like people always want, are curious about the writing process because it is. It’s complicated and difficult. How do you do it?

[01:43:24] Neil Strauss: I think that there’s a, uh, first I love the process itself. It’s like grueling, but I love it. And basically everything takes as long up until the deadline, right?

And if you have a four year deadline, it takes four years or no deadline. If you have a three month deadline, it takes three months. So that’s how long it takes. And then the process is, uh, the process is the vomit. Right? Just vomit all your shit out, right? You relate to that, right? You just get it all out there on the page, or if it’s a recording, on the recording, whatever it is.

Then you sort of start sculpting into something pretty. And the vomit part, uh, usually is the easiest, but takes people the longest to do when it doesn’t need to be. I think you’re not precious about it. We’re calling it vomit because it’s just ugly. My first draft of a book. You know, even a book that was a New York Times bestseller, if you read the first version, you wouldn’t even give it a publishing deal.

[01:44:20] Gabby: And but that’s your, that’s your experience giving you the comfort of saying, yeah, yeah, I know what this is. It’s just the first pass, but I’m going to get some meat on the bones to work with. So the key would be just gut start, do it. If someone was like, Hey, I have this idea, I want to write something.

[01:44:40] Neil Strauss: Yeah. I do that. Yeah. And, and, and let go of all your stories about like what it’s going to be and how people are going to receive it. Just, just do it. And it’s funny if you take somebody who’s having trouble starting their project and they’re sitting across the microphone from me and I said, let’s turn this off.

Instead of recording the podcast, you’re just going to write for half an hour on that idea. They’ll do it for half an hour. I’ve never had anyone where I said, just sit down and write. I do talk sometimes helping people write books. Um, and every person is able to write anything on command. Meaning that no one has writer’s block.

It literally doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing. It’s just performance anxiety of It being seen so you have to write that first draft not for it to be seen but just to get what’s inside out

[01:45:21] Gabby: When you hand in a final draft like, you know, that’s it right. Do you sleep well that night?

[01:45:27] Neil Strauss: Yeah, because because they have to pry it out I have to pry it on my hands till I know it’s till I know, uh, till I know till I know Do

[01:45:33] Gabby: you get a feeling is it a something in your stomach?

Is there is some what happens when you go? It’s ready

[01:45:39] Neil Strauss: Yeah, so first of all, you’re making your Your ideal people always say what’s your audience? What’s your ideal reader? Like what’s your market market demographic? Don’t

[01:45:47] Gabby: you love that? Don’t you get sick of that? I hate that. It is

[01:45:50] Neil Strauss: the stupidest question I

[01:45:50] Gabby: hate that and I know it’s important.

I know you’re supposed to be strategic

[01:45:53] Neil Strauss: Exactly

[01:45:54] Gabby: I

[01:45:54] Neil Strauss: hate

[01:45:55] Gabby: that anyway,

[01:45:55] Neil Strauss: you know, no, it’s because hey, you have no freaking idea. No idea. Well, and also

[01:45:59] Gabby: I might have a 20 year old male that I can share something with and But even though it may not be my most obvious demographic, like, how do we know?

[01:46:09] Neil Strauss: And then, like, really, do you know exactly how you’re doing?

And then you’re not going to say anything that is not interesting to that demographic. You’re just going to avoid those topics. So it’s a horrible question. So the ideal audience is just you as the listener or you as the reader. So I’m writing for, like, me, the reader. Like, I want to write a book I love.

You want to make a podcast that you’re excited about. Um, and then you can control your success. So yeah, so I’m trying to write, so a, I’m trying to write the book I love and, and yes, it’s the two reasons where it’s done is if doing any more work on it makes it worse, right? I mean, sometimes you can work on it and then it’s just getting worse.

Or B is there’s just a feeling it’s like puzzle pieces fitting into place. All the puzzle pieces feel like they’re in place and you feel like it’s done. I think there’s some people who. I don’t feel like it’s just done right away and don’t do the work on it afterward. And some people feel like it’s never done.

Those are the two sides of that. The people are just like, they just give you their vomit and say I’m done on to the next or the other people who like, it’s just, they’re afraid to let go of it.

[01:47:13] Gabby: Like, don’t you think a nonfiction in a certain way would be, or excuse me, a fiction would be harder to go, yes, it’s done than a nonfiction.

[01:47:25] Neil Strauss: I mean, I think it can be true, but I think the same way could be true, but I think that people who are like that are like that about anything, whether you’re doing a song or, uh, a business proposal, you know, like a deck, you know, I think some people are like that about, about anything, because in that last stage, you’re really looking at the micro things you’ve ever been to a concert and you go backstage and you say it was great.

And they start talking about the mistakes they made. You’re like, Now, we may not notice any of that, but any mistake is cool because it’s live and we want some humanity in

[01:47:54] Gabby: it. Yes. I used to say that Eddie Vedder is a friend of ours and, um, you know, they say like he has kind of better days and not better days, even though it’s all good.

But that’s why it’s so compelling because it’s right exactly. Because there’s other groups, no offense to you two, you, they, they never have a bad day. Right. It’s every chord, every step. It is perfect. It is. With the light, everything, it is bang each time. And it’s fantastic, but it doesn’t have that humanity.

[01:48:28] Neil Strauss: Yeah, the microphone cuts off, like, you know, that’s kind of cool if the singer forgets the lyrics. You’re like, Oh my God.

[01:48:33] Gabby: Yeah. Or he seems like maybe he’s in a bad mood. Or is he drunk? Like, it’s just even that.

[01:48:37] Neil Strauss: You saw something special.

[01:48:38] Gabby: Right then.

[01:48:39] Neil Strauss: Yeah.

[01:48:39] Gabby: Yeah. It’s so true.

[01:48:40] Neil Strauss: And maybe that goes back to your thing about self acceptance.

It’s the. It’s the imperfections that make us lovable, it’s the imperfections that make the work great.

[01:48:48] Gabby: Yeah. Um, so I wouldn’t, I want to finish up by talking about, um, your fitness. You’ve gotten yourself more and more healthy. You’re a healthy guy. Um, wait, how big of a dumbbell did you swim across my pool a couple of weeks ago?

[01:49:00] Neil Strauss: 50 pound dumbbell, which is, that’s a lot. By the way,

[01:49:04] Gabby: that’s a lot. That would, that’s a lot. Like even I think who was it Luca? Was he Luca there? He told Laird and I think he had to tell Laird three times the weight. Laird’s like, how much weight? How much weight?

[01:49:15] Neil Strauss: And Laird goes to me, that’s because you’re a sandbagger.

Like he literally, it’s the funniest family. I love it because

[01:49:22] Gabby: Don’t talk me into this.

[01:49:24] Neil Strauss: That’s true. But Brody, I remember like that first pool work I think I told you that I did something that I think was really like Remarkable for me at the time. We knew to maybe just did four lengths or something. Yeah And she’s like, oh my dad did six Like, I got up and I’m like, Oh my God, it’s four.

And so there’s, there’s, it’s so, it’s so funny, but I love that. I think that’s like a form, like, I see that as a form of like, Lo love in your family is like, he’s like, no, we’re not gonna be arrested here in the world. Like, you keep, you keep I’m, we’re trying to make you better. Yeah,

[01:49:51] Gabby: yeah. Well, we can all be better.

Yeah, for sure. But, but, but we are loving.

[01:49:55] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Sort of. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

[01:49:57] Gabby: So we, is there, is there something that you switched over because you’re from Chicago, it’s not like you were probably raised on, um. You know, ultra healthy diet or anything, probably not good or bad,

[01:50:10] Neil Strauss: but, you know, horrible, like cookie crisp cereal.

[01:50:13] Gabby: Yeah. Well, I mean, that was just a different time. When did this become something in focus for you? Um, and then sort of what rules make this doable for you?

[01:50:22] Neil Strauss: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. Like it’s such a lifestyle transformation. It’s funny. Like it goes back to two things we talked about. Um, Yeah.

Again, I’ve been friends with Rick since I first moved to LA so I keep bringing him up But it really has been a lot of like a mentor to me a lot of ways So I noticed when he moved out to Malibu and he’s kind of got me out here. He got healthier

[01:50:41] Gabby: Right.

[01:50:42] Neil Strauss: He used to live in town and it’s like there was no sunlight and everything was just dark and he just kind of sat around like this big kind of white blob, white shirted, you know, t shirt blob and, and then all of a sudden he’s out here and paddle boarding and shirtless on the beach and getting sun and like, I think moving to, I think the, I think it, for some of the answers are community and environment.

I think those are the things. And man, I’m just so, it’s so, it was such a late journey for me. I was never, I was the guy who was picked last for teams in school. Like, literally, they’d pick everyone and there was this girl, Melissa, and me were last. And I’d be like, is it going to be me or Melissa this time?

And half the time it was Melissa, then it was me. You know, and we were like the tiniest, scrawniest things. It was like so, it was so, so sad. And then I would always try to join gyms, but, but, uh, I, You know work out or get a trainer that I just feel like I’m tired of being under halogen lights or on you know This unhealthy environment moving things up moving metal up and down And I wonder I think it might have literally been coming here Like I don’t know if that’s it.

I think it literally was because the things I learned here were You’re outdoors. You’re in the sunlight. Yeah, there’s community right? So you’re on just healthy people And and it’s fun and always different right, so so and I think You So there’s two, two things that changed me. I think one was the community here and you’re around healthy people talking about healthy things.

And maybe you’re in a place in Malibu where your health, your social time is in the mornings, right? I’ll do my do morning workouts with my friends. Uh, and then we sit at the sauna, we talk about life. And so I think that, that we were, Talked about earlier in the podcast about how we’re so adaptable So if you’re on a healthy community doing healthy things, it makes you want to be a healthy person doing healthy things

[01:52:29] Gabby: Yeah,

[01:52:30] Neil Strauss: the second thing was when Ingrid, so Ingrid and I used to drink soda all the time Like we’d be at night, we’d be like, I’m cokey.

What kind of

[01:52:36] Gabby: soda?

[01:52:37] Neil Strauss: Like coke.

[01:52:38] Gabby: Coca Cola? Coca

[01:52:38] Neil Strauss: Cola.

[01:52:39] Gabby: Interesting.

[01:52:39] Neil Strauss: And so we’d be like, I’m cokey and we’d run out and get coke. When we got married we toasted with coke instead of wine however Um, she, and this is part of the psychological moment when she, she went through postpartum and at the end of a year she was like, I really, she never told me this afterwards.

She’s like, I’m going to literally talk about killing herself. She didn’t get any better. It was really dark. Um, and then she just said, you know what, I’m going to hire a trainer. So we got Adam from who I met here. So outcomes, Adam Freeman, Adam Freeman, he’s a wonderful, wonderful. And then she started, uh, getting into healthy diet and getting into the biohacking stuff and literally doing none of the psychological work we’re talking about.

Um, just by eating really, really healthy, um, and by working out, you know, in movement once a day, uh, literally became a new person, physically and psychologically, to the degree that people would see her and her son, maybe at the time it was like three or four together, I think they were brother and sister.

Literally think they were brother and sister. She’s very youthful. Yeah. She was like a reverse aging. Stretch marks went away. Like she was like sunny again and optimistic and positive. And this is from doing, not talking about her parents at all, just from exercise and diet.

[01:53:50] Gabby: And

[01:53:50] Neil Strauss: so she kind of became like my, like a health guru when I saw what happened with her.

Yeah. So it’s those two things. And man, you just feel better about yourself. I think part of healthy eating is in healthy, doing healthy things is. Whether science proves it or not, like knowing that your intention is to do healthy and do healthy things and surround yourself with healthy people, you just feel healthier.

[01:54:16] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:54:16] Neil Strauss: And it just charges your day. Are you, does that, have you noticed a transformation from when I first came here? A hundred percent. Yeah.

[01:54:25] Gabby: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, just a consistency. Yeah. It feels like it’s integrated as part of your life. Yeah. Not like a thing you do.

[01:54:33] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Those are the great thing.

Those are the great things in your life where you’re like. I’ve never did I can’t imagine my life without it. Yeah, it didn’t exist before

[01:54:40] Gabby: Maybe you could do a book about that. Yeah, like a regular person’s journey to Somehow finding in the way to make that part of their lifestyle when your parents didn’t teach you and your environment didn’t have it

[01:54:52] Neil Strauss: Yeah, and no amount of resolutions or you know commitments to this or goal oriented things like worked at all No, it really has to be like this is My life my community and who I am.

[01:55:05] Gabby: Yeah Um, are you, are you where you, you want to be at least right now? Like do you sort of take a moment, cause I know you’re an analyzer. Do you sort of go, Hey Neil, you’re doing pretty good. Like do you give yourself the space for that? I think,

[01:55:25] Neil Strauss: yeah, I think it was a two sided question. I think the answers are.

Yes, not enough because I think you know that about me uh, but yeah for sure i’m super super grateful and I think like really Like when I got the job a job at the village voice when I was like 21 That was my goal in life Like literally my goal in life was to be writing for the village voice Which was like this cool weekly alternative newspaper in new york the center of like the art scene and everything And so once I got that like everything else has just been like a lot gravy And luck so I feel like super fortunate and at the same time Uh Like that the growth of the self is a continual process and journey And so I’m always am always looking at this is my next journey and what I want to work on next

[01:56:08] Gabby: Do you have something that you can share?

[01:56:10] Neil Strauss: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think it’s a hard thing and I know it’s a overcommitting Saying yes to too many things and then having a bit of overwhelmer chaos Maybe too many projects, too many social plans, and maybe at some point it takes away from the self.

[01:56:29] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:56:29] Neil Strauss: Do you write at all to that? I’m curious. I don’t have that issue.

What’s your thing you’re working on?

[01:56:37] Gabby: It’s a great question. I’m, I’m working on being as fluid as possible. Just moving in and out of spaces and Because I’m, I’m very, I’m very you know, I can get really stuck in certain ways. And so I’m trying, I’ll give you an example. Justin can appreciate this. So we, we drove a couple hours to interview Paul.

And um, he deserves anyone to come and drive to him. He’s done 40 years of work, right? So we do the, we, we visit, we have a two and a half hour podcast and like, now I’m like, okay, Like I got shit to do like chop chop, right and we got another two two and a half hour three hour drive back No problem, but I’m also like very checklisty.

I got stuff. I’m doing a lot of different things And Paul’s like, let me show you the property So I’m like, okay and he’s walking very mindfully and In that exact moment my tenancy would be like, oh, let’s go, you know, whatever and I thought you’re here You’re with this person that you respect and admire.

You may not ever walk with them again. So just do that. And so I’m just trying to move in and out of all situations at what’s required of me in that moment. Right.

[01:58:01] Neil Strauss: Like a more present and accepting. Yeah. Not with

[01:58:04] Gabby: how I am. Right. And there’s enough of me in my life. How do I it’s like, okay, I walk in birdie wants needs it wants a hug that never happens the other day And I just put everything down and just give her a hug.

I didn’t say one word I didn’t say like why you seem a little upset or why nothing right? I didn’t say one thing So I’m just trying to do that. That’s more I really you know, it’s so funny. You were talking about making work art that you’d want to listen to I just really wish I was a comedian, right?

Because that’s the only shit I really want to listen to. I want to listen to all the true things about life. But through a comedian, like, Justin knows this, I’m obsessed with Tim Dillon. It’s like the weirdest. I’m so drawn to him. I can’t even tell you. I want to help. I want to help him get healthy because I want him to, you know, feel good and work and get his work out there even more like I have this thing because I so appreciate the ability that through all of what the insanity that is life is that you keep your levity and your and your perspective and your sense of humor.

So for me, I can only make it like every day because that’s who I am. As far as these conversations, like if we’re talking about performance and health and fitness or well being, but if I had my ideal, it would be to do it with a only a sense of humor. Yeah. Yeah. That’s not my round this time.

[01:59:32] Neil Strauss: Right. Or May.

It could be.

[01:59:34] Gabby: I don’t think so.

[01:59:34] Neil Strauss: Yeah,

[01:59:35] Gabby: it would’ve happened already. It’s fine. You

[01:59:36] Neil Strauss: could, what if you prepare like a little, like five minute intro to each of your shows? That’s just fire.

[01:59:41] Gabby: Ain’t nobody wanted to hear that from me. . Well, no. ’cause they don’t because the problem is is mm-Hmm, .

[01:59:45] Neil Strauss: Just for you to practice the craft, not for anybody else.

Okay.

[01:59:48] Gabby: Maybe I could do that.

[01:59:49] Neil Strauss: Turn the mic off to practice the craft. Yeah. Or or you would just do it it the beginning and it’s just, you’re just sort of saying, I’m just gonna put extra focus in just doing great intro. People like your intros anyway, but you’re just gonna work on making them better till it’s almost.

It’s like, like any craft, you have to practice at it.

[02:00:04] Gabby: And

[02:00:04] Neil Strauss: so you’re just doing that for you for fun.

[02:00:06] Gabby: Okay. I’ll do that.

[02:00:07] Neil Strauss: Right. Just be like, I’m going to just, before I do the show, I’m just going to write out some great observations and thoughts and then you just start the show with that. Um, and maybe you can feed off the energy of the guest and just say, yeah, we usually start with a three minute intro and I’ll talk about these different things and then we’ll dive into it.

[02:00:21] Gabby: I’ll be harsh. Real Gabby.

[02:00:22] Neil Strauss: Yes. Yes. And I think I want to say one more thing before we wrap. It’s funny cause we can talk about this stuff forever. It’s funny. Like how, uh, I mean, how many years just, yeah, it’s just wild. Uh, how long we’ve known each other and like the different ways we’ve woken in and out of each other’s lives.

It’s really amazing. Uh, I’m super grateful for it, but, and you have really changed as an interviewer, uh, even from the early podcast I did with you, maybe one of the first five or 10 podcasts I can remember was early in your podcast. Maybe it was later. I don’t remember, but it was early from the truth barrel to that, to here.

I think you’ve changed a lot. And you’re like, part of what you’re saying, like way more present. Um, usually we have a very, uh, like excited conversation bouncing off each other and here, like you gave me like so much space, it was almost uncomfortable, which is great. But I, I, but I really, uh, change versus like, I think you were always driving the car and now you’re, um, uh,

[02:01:19] Gabby: I’m just the co passenger with a map.

Letting

[02:01:21] Neil Strauss: go of the steering wheel. Yeah, you’re letting go of the steering wheel. And then every now and then you need to put it back on the road and you do that very gracefully. But I think you’d like, it’s real cool. It’s fun watching each other evolve.

[02:01:33] Gabby: Well, I love you, Neil. And I need to, I want to ask one last question.

As a parent, have you formed any go to’s that really when you’re in the middle, That guide you as you you sort of know they show up and work for you

[02:01:50] Neil Strauss: Yeah, yeah a hundred a hundred percent like a hundred percent like I think um I think two things that have like really worked for me as a parent is Patience like patience would be the number one thing not patience because it’s annoying but patience that if they’re having a moment to just be present for that moment, whatever they’re having.

Like if they’re not trying to force them on a time schedule that’s yours and not theirs or something. So one has really been patience for whatever they’re experiencing and give them the grace to experience whatever they’re experiencing and validating that. I found it’s created a lot of like emotional intelligence later.

Um, you know, as an example, when he was like three, he like yelled at the babysitter. The babysitter told me afterward, then went away. I Uh, stormed off and came back and said, Hey, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I was angry.

[02:02:39] Gabby: So

[02:02:39] Neil Strauss: for him to have that awareness of what the emotions were going on, uh, and that self awareness was great.

And I think the other thing is, and again, like I had this rule, this is another of those controversial things I post where I’m surprised it’s controversial, but the rule is like you should never treat your child in a way that’s not okay to treat your intimate partner, meaning that that would be abusive to intimate partner.

So if you. Um, if you yelled at your intimate partner, that’d be emotional abuse. So why is it okay to yell at your child out of anger? Um, if you strike your intimate partner, that would be abuse. So why is it okay to do like a, like a tiny little vulnerable thing? So for several reasons, like people are like, well, my parents hit me and I’m fine and sure, but I still think it’s wrong.

[02:03:18] Gabby: Yeah.

[02:03:19] Neil Strauss: So, so I think those two, those two guidelines, I mean, there’s probably, I could probably write a whole book on him, but also to appreciate, I think this, his natural spontaneity as a child, I think. Growing up, we try to control the kids. Don’t be too loud. Don’t be too wild. And I think that can limit people’s joy as adults.

[02:03:36] Gabby: Yeah.

[02:03:36] Neil Strauss: And so if, don’t take a child who has an undeveloped prefrontal cortex to somewhere where they need to be quiet. Like, don’t, don’t take them to that fancy restaurant. Right. And tell them to shut up. Like, let them experience, like, the full limit of their joy and their self expression versus putting a lid on it too early. And what can happen is the child develops a Yeah.

[02:03:58] Gabby: So

[02:03:58] Neil Strauss: I mean, I could probably go on with like dozens of these, I have, I have like so many, but those are the few that come off the top of my head. Um, and really it’s all about really being attuned.

[02:04:10] Gabby: Yeah. I, I know this, this just popped into my head cause you were talking about with a partner and this is very, this is a very direct question, but you know, I think we have like sort of making love and fucking, right?

And And I think you can be in a very intimate relationship and do both. But do you, does, does, for somebody, because I think sometimes men are afraid, right? Or actually women, everybody, we’re all afraid for intimacy. Do you, have you had times where you really thought to yourself, Oh, that was making love versus fucking, and was it as satisfying, more satisfying?

[02:04:54] Neil Strauss: Yeah, I remember like in my relationship, like I think I remember when I came back from rehab. Um, And we made love afterward. I didn’t have any of my trauma and anything attached to it. I really like connected with her on like all the sensory levels For sure. There’s definitely like a huge difference and there’s nothing wrong There’s nothing wrong with fucking But there is sad if you don’t have the ability to make love, right?

[02:05:17] Gabby: And i’m just I don’t know why because I feel like you’re the perfect person to ask that question, too Yeah,

[02:05:21] Neil Strauss: it’s such a different more powerful Experience and like it’s and you get to places of pleasure that you didn’t think were possible.

[02:05:28] Gabby: Yeah So your next project is working on basically saying no, right.

And you just remind people all the places that they can find you, then your podcasts and um, and when’s the next one coming out?

[02:05:42] Neil Strauss: Next podcast.

[02:05:43] Gabby: Yeah. The second part of this.

[02:05:44] Neil Strauss: Oh, it’s out now. So the, so the, so now I

[02:05:47] Gabby: can binge that. Thanks Neal.

[02:05:48] Neil Strauss: So they’re coming out now and I’m working on like the last, like they’re coming out kind of once a week and I have about two or three episodes left.

[02:05:54] Gabby: Okay. So how many are out now? Cause I’m going to listen to them.

[02:05:57] Neil Strauss: I’m up to 13.

[02:05:59] Gabby: Okay. Yeah. Cause I listened to the whole first.

[02:06:01] Neil Strauss: Oh, I’m so happy you listened to it. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. It’s such a wild story. Episode like 10 and by the way, they’re only half an hour for people listening and I try to make them.

So it just holds your attention. The time flies by.

[02:06:12] Gabby: Oh, it does fly by. And then I’m like, what? So, so remind them the name of the book of all the podcasts.

[02:06:18] Neil Strauss: Oh, to die for is the one with the, uh, Russian, all about Russia and this sex, sex spies. Um, and by the way, she said. It’s fascinating to work there in the world of spies because a lot of people out there are just working Casually for different she’s like there are people in everywhere and now we were reporting back to like the Russian government They have a handler and they just report back there what’s called eyes and ears and it’s fascinating about this this did this this world So that’s to die for and then to live and die in LA is the one about the missing persons

[02:06:51] Gabby: And if people want to just get to you directly, do you have a website that you like or?

[02:06:56] Neil Strauss: Yeah. I feel, you know, it’s funny. It used to be a website time. Now it’s more like Instagram, right?

[02:06:59] Gabby: Really? You’re dealing with that?

[02:07:00] Neil Strauss: Right. Cause I feel like no one really goes. Do you go to people’s websites anymore?

[02:07:03] Gabby: Sometimes they haven’t. Right. Because you have a lot of content. You sometimes do workshops.

You do a bunch of different things. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[02:07:12] Neil Strauss: So no. Then you go to, what’s that? The thing is the, um, what’s that page where all your links are? The link

[02:07:16] Gabby: tree.

[02:07:17] Neil Strauss: The link tree. Right. You go to someone’s link tree now. You know, it’s like a different, right? So Neil struck their Instagram, then you go to their link tree and then you choose your own adventure, right?

Right. You’re my only fans. Exactly. Only fans.

[02:07:27] Gabby: I got to get on that. I’m just kidding. What would I show? I have very big feet. Foot fetish. Hey, they were trying to go

[02:07:32] Neil Strauss: legit only fans. So I got from people TV shows and stuff I’m surprised I didn’t

[02:07:37] Gabby: Yeah, maybe if I get desperate enough, I’ll do it. I’m like, I want to talk about wellness anywhere.

[02:07:41] Neil Strauss: Yeah You should like buy that so much wellness is just like doesn’t take an account It’s just for like on research and studies are just male shit. Yeah, you need to be yeah

[02:07:53] Gabby: Okay, it’s a it’s a bigger conversation. Yeah, you know Strauss. I love you. I thank you for your time and I’m really excited about the growth of your family and your next project.

[02:08:03] Neil Strauss: Yeah, so fun talking to you as always Yeah.

[02:08:05] Gabby: Thanks. Thanks, Gabby. Thanks again for listening and spending time with us on the Gabby Reese show. I want to thank Alexi for joining me today and a quick reminder, her new podcast, Mentor Buffet will be launching on Thursday, August 8th. Make sure you check it out and make sure you like and subscribe so you never miss one of our conversations.

About Neil Strauss

Neil Strauss is a ten-time New York Times best-selling author; a longtime contributing editor at Rolling Stone; and a former music critic, cultural reporter, and columnist at The New York Times, where he won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism. His podcast, To Live & Die in L.A., hit number one on the iTunes charts and spent four months in the top ten, where it was named the best podcast of the year by The Associated Press and one of the ten best podcasts of the year by Apple. His latest podcast, To Die For, is currently ranking in the top 10 on iTunes under the true crime category. His most recent book collaborations include The Creative Act with Rick Rubin, which entered the New York Times bestseller list at number one and has been on the list for 76 weeks so far (and is still there), and I Can’t Make This Up with Kevin Hart, which also entered The New York Times bestseller list at number one. Other New York Times bestsellers of his include The Truth, Emergency, Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, and The Game, which has the dubious distinction of being the most stolen book at Barnes and Noble besides The Bible. His book with Motley Crue, The Dirt, was hailed by Q magazine as “the most unputdownable rock book of the year, or possibly any year.” A feature-length film of The Dirt was released on Netflix, directed by Jeff Tremaine. Strauss has received the President’s Volunteer Service Award for his search & rescue work and the Los Angeles Press Club’s Journalist Award for his Rolling Stone profile of Elon Musk. He has appeared as a guest star on Curb Your Enthusiasm, in videos by Beck and 30 Seconds to Mars, and on talk shows such as The Jimmy Kimmel Show, The View, Good Morning America, Nightline, and Dr. Oz.

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About Neil Strauss