1212: Orion Taraban | Understanding Relationship Economics Part One

1212: Orion Taraban | Understanding Relationship Economics Part One

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Folks, a little bit of housekeeping. If you downloaded our Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on conspiracy theories, and you found that it was a repeat of Feedback Friday, well, it was a mistake. Or was it? Did they just not want you to know? No, really what happened was we swapped the file. And yada, yada.

Everybody got the wrong show. So if you still can't listen to that Skeptical Sunday, delete the file in whatever app you use and download it again. Uh, Spotify, whatever it is, delete it, Apple, delete it. Just download it again from the RSS feed, or play it on the website or use another app that doesn't normally download the show and stream it from there and you should be able to get it.

Sorry about that, folks. That one's on us. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to [00:01:00] help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional arms dealer, drug trafficker, rocket scientist, or legendary Hollywood actor.

And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about it, and I always appreciate it when you do that, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime, and cults and more.

That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today's conversation is one I've been looking forward to for a long time, and honestly, I'm a little nervous about it because I already know that this episode is gonna make some people uncomfortable, maybe even angry, and that's kind of exactly why it's worth doing.

We're talking about relationship dynamics, what men and women in general actually want in dating. Why we so often fail to admit those things and how [00:02:00] our real preferences don't always match up with what we say we want. This is sacred ground for a lot of people. It touches on identity, insecurity, values, and when you strip away the illusions and expose people's true motivations, it can really feel threatening, especially when those motivations are shallow, uncomfortable, or inconvenient.

My guest today is psychologist Orion Rabban. He spent over a decade dissecting how attraction and dating really work. Why we pursue who we pursue, what drives us subconsciously, and the strategies we use often without realizing it in both short-term and long-term relationships. We'll get into why men and women test each other, why dating apps are basically a rigged marketplace.

Why sexual attraction matters, even in long-term committed relationships and how power and optionality shape every romance. We'll also tackle some of those more controversial ideas like. Why relationships are inherently transactional, why men and women play different mating strategies and why people get so darn defensive when these truths are laid bare.[00:03:00]

This isn't about cheap tricks or manipulative hacks. It's about understanding the real forces at play in human relationships and learning how to deserve what you want instead of chasing what you can't have or can't keep. I promise. Whether you love what you hear today or it just pisses you off, you'll walk away seeing dating and relationships in a completely different light.

Here we go with Orion Taraban. I'm excited to have this conversation, man. I've been looking forward to it for a while. I'm a little nervous 'cause I think it's gonna piss some people off. I don't know if you've seen any of that happen as a result of your YouTube videos. You get some nasty comments here and there,

Orion Taraban: here and there.

But I would say that overwhelmingly the response has been positive. 98, 90 9%. That's good. YouTube's interesting, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Because you get people who typically want to see that topic. And it's also a younger crowd. Typically, YouTube tends to, at least for me, be a younger crowd. So you get a different kind of comment than you do from somebody who's willing to sit down and write you a long email.

Orion Taraban: Do you get emails from your I do. I get emails every day. Uh, every once in a while I get [00:04:00] a nasty email, which always boggles my mind that someone actually took the time to sit down and antagonize someone that they apparently hate. And just have a cheeseburger. Have a cheeseburger, take a walk.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right.

Dissecting relationship dynamics is kind of tough though. I meant to tell you this pre-show, for 11 years, I taught guys how to meet and attract women and it was like white hat dating stuff as opposed to like pickup artistry, so you're not meeting women on the streets in real life. That was definitely real life back then.

Online dating was kind of like, eh, we don't need that and we're not gonna do that. And we can talk a little bit about why that doesn't work for pretty much anyone. This was pre pandemic too, thankfully as well. 'cause as that started to come up through the zeitgeist, it was like. I found myself being like, no, no, we're the good drug dealers.

And it was just a failing argument, right? Like you couldn't tell someone, no, we're teaching guys these skills. And if they would listen to you, they would go, oh, that's great. You know, men and women. But there's a lot of people who are just against figuring out how to become more of

Orion Taraban: a desirable [00:05:00] mate. It's, you just have to leave off the last thing, which is I'm helping men to become more confident and successful.

No one's gonna have a problem with that, but if it's to get laid, whoa.

Jordan Harbinger: Ours wasn't even that. It was like to meet a woman that you can procreate with if that's your goal. Like these were very wholesome goals. My clients were like. I just wanna get married and have kids, and I'm an engineer at Amazon and I don't meet a lot of women and I don't know how to do that except for Tinder, which isn't working.

It wasn't like, yeah bro, I wanna go hit the club and smash a bunch of tail. We never really had that. But if you tell somebody, my clients are engineers in Silicon Valley who want to meet a nice lady, they're like, ah, I get it. You teach guys how to use and abuse women? And it was like, no, but okay.

Orion Taraban: The fact that they hired you means that they're already dorks and losers and beyond a lot.

Anyway,

Jordan Harbinger: it was, you're teaching men who shouldn't be able to get women how to get women, and that's bad somehow. And it's like, no, I'm pretty sure I'm doing you a favor by making sure that the only guys you date are not [00:06:00] exclusively players and disasters on wheels because the guys you say you want are busy at work all day for 16 hours working at Facebook.

So like they need a little bit of a nudge in the right direction, but that was completely offensive. To so many people and I just kind of like got out of that industry and I don't regret it. It's harder to do also when you're married and you have kids, it's harder to be like, I'm a credible voice in this area.

Yes, you have the proof and the pudding, but it's also like when's the last time you ran an online dating profile? Jordan Harbinger? I don't know. Never. 15 years ago. Okay. I had to learn what Hinge was recently. Right. I'm not in the

Orion Taraban: game. Yeah. I have this theory that there's a lot of dating coaches online, some of them from older generations, and I think you really need to suss out where they are in having updated their browser to 2025.

And so I think a good first question is to ask how would you get a job in 2025? And if they say First you get a nice good [00:07:00] card stock for your resume and you work on having a firm handshake and you go down and you look 'em straight in the eye and you ask for a job, you probably shouldn't take that guy's dating advice.

It's 40 years outta date.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Orion Taraban: There was a lot of that. I,

Jordan Harbinger: I'll vent more about my previous career later on. I think there's something about dating and relationships that is almost sacred to people, and it doesn't even matter what that is. It's just their particular belief system in that area, if they're say 30 years old, has coagulated and solidified into this is how it is.

I spent so much time arguing with people years ago that you're not just born with it or not, and people would die on that hill. And I'm like, what qualifies you to know this? You're a single dude who has had no luck with the real long-term relationship. What do you mean you're born with it or you're not, and you're so convinced of this that you will not open your mind to anything.

And I met a lot of people of both sexes of that. It was like medical religion versus science back in the middle ages.

Orion Taraban: [00:08:00] Exactly. And don't you think that's a little suspicious? I argue in chapter nine that a lot of romantic love is transfigured religious impulse, especially. Monotheistic Christian religious impulse, and I think that helps to explain the zealous overreaction that some people have to examining the nuts and bolts of romantic relationships.

You're just not supposed to cut open the saint's body. You're supposed to have faith that it's pure light or something like that. And I think that holds people back from having satisfying relationships. Tell me what you mean by that, how it's religion is transposed onto dating and relationships. People have these ideas that they're basically willing to argue about die on those hills, and I think we should be very cautious about what hills we want to die on.

That somebody has a different idea about what works to attract men or women, or I want a relationship that looks a little different than the conventional norm. What's so problematic about that kind of viva la difference? Let's have tolerance [00:09:00] and find relationships that work for the individuals involved.

I think that's actually a pretty. Moderate, reasonable perspective,

Jordan Harbinger: you would think. Yeah. But we've seen how people react to same sex relationships. And if you think that's out of air, you'll meet somebody who's totally fine with same sex relationships. And then you'll say, oh, my friend is Polly and has two boyfriends, or has a husband and a boyfriend.

And they'll go, oh my goodness. And their head explodes about how wrong that is and could never work. And it's icy. So you draw the line at monogamy, even if it's with the same sex, and it's like what makes that arbitrary boundary something so strong for you? Yeah, we're

Orion Taraban: here in the Bay Area and it would be more socially acceptable for me as a man to date multiple men than to date multiple women.

If I dated multiple men and I was gay, it'd be like, go for it king. Woo-hoo. Fist bump. Yes. But if it's multiple women, how could you be abusing these women? You narcissist. You're just using them? Maybe, but probably not. Probably not.

Jordan Harbinger: Where do

Orion Taraban: you find these? Do they know about each other? Yes. They must be stupid [00:10:00] then.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Orion Taraban: There's a lot of that. Well, no, true Indian. That's that argument.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, I think we say Scotsman now, but hey, whatever. I'm not gonna police your speech. Haven't heard that one for a while. You wrote, people are in sexual relationships with their best option period. I'm starting making people angry

Orion Taraban: early.

Let's get it. Let's rip off the bandaid with their perceived best option. And that's the heart of my argument, is that to argue that somebody is in a relationship with a lesser option when they could get realistically a better one in their minds is absurd. No one will choose the worser option in their minds when they could get the better one.

So that means that the perception of value is at the heart of human relationships. Perception is a psychological thing and value is an economic thing. So that's where a lot of dating advice I think falls flat, is you often get the psychological stuff. All you need to do is inner work and you need to be confident and you need to believe in yourself.

And do you need to just be yourself? [00:11:00] Not too much of yourself, right? It's a good start,

Jordan Harbinger: but it's 15% of the equation.

Orion Taraban: There are a few content creators that go more towards the economic side, where you just hear people about sexual marketplace value. It's a red pill type of stuff, that kind of stuff. But that's a smaller crowd and a smaller audience than the conventional mainstream wisdom that it's like all about emotions and who you are, and there are dangers and pitfalls to just maintaining one perspective exclusively.

I think you need both to have a really complete understanding about who ends up with who and who stays with whom.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree. I think one of the biggest problems with the red pill, so I guess you would say that's the economic argument, is that they're right about so many things and the things that they're wrong about make people who latch onto those go.

I'm gonna reject everything that you say because I don't like the idea that people have a certain value in a marketplace because that's dehumanizing. It's okay, but. [00:12:00] Scoreboard, it's not working for you.

Orion Taraban: It could be the other way around. The people on the red pill space, you can say, well, you should probably cherish your long-term partner like you sim, come on, man.

Jordan Harbinger: That's the main problem with red pill that I have. The reason it's quote unquote dangerous is they get a lot of things right and it's hard for especially young guys to find where the brackish waters hit and meet in the middle because they're told they're an idiot by either side for believing too much of that, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show here.

Like most

Orion Taraban: things, it's a synergy. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Any perspective that persists through time must have some degree of truth to it.

Jordan Harbinger: Why can't men and women seem to describe what they actually want in a relationship?

Orion Taraban: Wow, that's a complicated question. So there's a few different layers to that.

On the most superficial layer, it's not socially acceptable to come right out and say what it is that you want. One of my most popular YouTube episodes is called the part that women Always Leave out when I was in my twenties. I was [00:13:00] feeling frustrated about my ability to get the kind of relationship I wanted back then.

I really wanted to get married. I was more moving in that direction and I was approaching the women in my life, friends and older mentors with this good faith question. It's like, what do you want? 'cause I want to give it to you or someone like you so that I can have a successful relationship with a woman.

And I heard all kinds of things that were like, I want somebody who's kind, and I want somebody who makes me feel safe. And I want somebody who buys me flowers and makes me feel like a little girl. And I'm thinking, what the fuck, man? I'm all of those things. I don't understand what the problem here is.

And so the part that women always leave out is that they do want those things, but they want those things from the men they're already attracted to. If she's not attracted to you, buying her flowers is not going to make her attracted to you. And when I said this out loud in [00:14:00] that episode, the most common pushback in the comments was, well, a ride.

Of course, as women, we want to be attracted to men. Like, why do we have to say that out loud? And I was like, because there's a generation or two of well-meaning literal minded men who actually listen to the words that come out of your mouth and you didn't say the most important part. And clearly, if they're already attracted to the guy, that attraction wasn't based on kindness or safety or all these other things because they don't fucking know if that guy is kind or safe yet.

So the determination of attractiveness is based on other variables. And as a guy, you have to attend to those because if you don't, it won't matter if you're the kindest, gentlest, sweetest man on the planet.

Jordan Harbinger: When I started the business I was just talking about, we went to New York. That was our first location and I remember interviewing a lot of, I was trying to network with writers, and this is Sex in the City era, so there were a lot of dating bloggers and I got all these men and women together and I remember interviewing each of them individually [00:15:00] and becoming friends with them.

And I remember there was one gal, herb Mindset was very common and people are gonna go anecdotal fine, but this is like very pervasive. She made a whole documentary about how guys are terrible at dating and all you need to do guys is compliment her shoes and buy her a drink and you're good. I remember thinking, I bet if a hundred guys did that, one of them, she would be interested, you know, whatever.

And that would work. And she died on the hill of, no, you don't understand, we just want a little bit of kindness at, and a little bit of attention. And she had sex with all of my worst friends, the worst. The ones where you would go, I put up with him 'cause he's hilarious and we go drinking and he goes hard.

But I would not let my cousin or my sister alone in a room with this guy, the friends you have when you're in your twenties, before you cut them out of your life, when you turn 30 basically. And she was just like, I don't know why I can't find love. And I was like, you have no clue what you want, darling.

Like no idea.

Orion Taraban: The most superficial reason why it's so hard to talk about it is sometimes people know what they want, but [00:16:00] they're not allowed to say it out loud 'cause they will be judged for being superficial. I have another episode called the Superficiality of Desire. And a lot of those superficial variables that go into attraction are actually rooted in evolutionary principles that have to do with.

Sexual selection and it's like, wow, maybe facial symmetry is a sign that this child, when it was a fetus was exposed to fewer bacterial or viral attacks. So it's actually a healthier developmental process. These cues that we think are just superficial could actually, in many cases, communicate that this person is healthy, that this person is youthful, that this person is ready to reproduce.

Not always. We have a lot of false cues these days, especially with the cosmetic industry, but that's just one layer. The second layer is that people don't even know what they want. They think that they know what they want. Like this woman that you mentioned, they're aware of. I think kind of a [00:17:00] ego ideal of what they should want, but they think it's what they actually want.

If you want to observe or understand what people actually want, you have to notice who they hook up with, who they actually enter into relationships. That's what they want, regardless of what they say with their mouths, watch what they do basically. Versus course stated.

Jordan Harbinger: It's stated versus I think actual preference, is that how you say it?

Stated versus actual preferences. That's what it's like when you're marketing a hamburger and you say, what do you want? And they're like, I just want it to taste fresh. I, I don't care what looks like revealed preferences. Right? And then they eat this thing and it's not tasty rated by the other ones in the blind thing, and they're like, Nope, the looks of the burger matter a lot.

We're gonna focus on that. It's just the reveal preferences. And there was another gal that I remember very specifically. She goes, I date jerks. And I was like, what? Excuse me. Oh, in her honesty, she was, you know, she was like, 20, 21. And I go, what do you mean she's, I just, I like jerks. And I go, do you like them?

She's like, they're the worst. But that's why I'm attracted to, and I remember thinking, you are remarkably self-aware. I'm envious of the level. Of self-awareness that you have. I want [00:18:00] that. How do I figure that out for myself and every single one of my clients?

Orion Taraban: Well, that's another layer is that sometimes people actually become aware of what they're attracted to, probably by observing their own behavior and making some reasonable determinations.

But sometimes what people actually are attracted to is at odds with the kind of relationship they would prefer to have. Like this woman who was self-aware enough to know that she was sexually attracted to jerks probably isn't in a loving, long-term relationship.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Not then. Everybody she dated was a complete disaster.

We were referring. So I was like, can I ask you, are you okay? And she's like, sometimes to this day I'm like, what was your home life all about? What's

Orion Taraban: your relationship with your dad? It's generally where it comes from. Yeah. That's our first culture, is our family of origin, and we model our love templates unconsciously on observing the primary relationships of our caregivers.

Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Why do men and women often focus on, let's say, irrelevant or possibly [00:19:00] even harmful and air quotes criteria like, I think this speaks to how early relationship experiences can cause us to value something that's contrary to what we want.

Orion Taraban: A lot of people don't know what is actually important for the type of relationship that they're shooting for, and they fall under a real general fallacy, which I think chapter 10 is exclusively about, which is they believe that they could have any relationship with anyone.

Most people think that I am just going to choose the person I'm most attracted to or I most love, and that person should be able to have the type of relationship that I would prefer to have, and that is absurd. Like you can only have certain relationships with certain people. If you want a peaceful, loving relationship, you need a peaceful, loving partner.

It's impossible to have a peaceful, loving relationship with somebody who is chaotic or addicted or narcissistic or whatever. Problem you want to name. It's like, don't take your groceries list to the hardware store, [00:20:00] as they say in aa, right? So a lot of people don't know what actually is important for a long-term relationship.

Other people and women are generally more guilty of this, operate under the illusion of infinite abundance in both in terms of potential partners and their timelines. And I can understand why this might happen. If I was a reasonably attractive 22-year-old woman, I could just turn on an app and by the end of the day, I probably have a few hundred likes from guys who are being very sweet and polite to me and complimenting how I look and asking me to buy me drinks or dinner.

Some of them are gonna be, Ugh, I would never touch that. Others might actually be the most attractive men in the area. Sometimes those women then feel that because they can secure a short-term sexual relationship with a man. That's the same thing as potentially being able to secure a long-term partnership from that same person or [00:21:00] a comparable person.

As I talk about in chapter one, we all have that love template that's trained on our family of origin. That's like training a AI on how to recognize birds, but you just trained it on one sparrow. There's a huge dearth of data. No matter how good or healthy or loving your family of origin was, it's one piece of information, which means that whether you're aware of it or not, you're probably going to think that's the way that all relationships and certainly your own should look.

And there's probably. Variables in that template that don't actually move the needle with respect to successful relationships, and there's certainly other ways to have loving stable relationships that were not manifested in that template, and so you might not recognize them. It's kind of a signal detection problem.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I see this. I have more questions about online dating at one point because one, everyone uses it and two, it's endlessly [00:22:00] fascinating. Sure. I remember early in match.com or plenty of Phish whatever, which apparently still exists early in that era. They do. I had a friend who wrote a book about it and he was like, not a very tall, not super attractive, but he was really funny.

He was a comedy writer and he is like, this is for me running around bars and I'm disqualified automatically by a lot of things. He's like five six, which is fine, but he was a little older, but he was a great writer and so he would write dating profiles and teach other people how to do it. I remember. He liked spicy redheads.

That was like his, one of his many things we're in our twenties people, so don't judge me based on current Jordan, but based on 26-year-old Jordan. But one of the things he wrote was no redheads in his dating profile. And you'd think, isn't that counterproductive? No. What it did is it got every spicy redhead, which is exactly what he wanted to be like, what the hell is your problem?

And he is like, ah, thanks for starting a conversation with me. And then he's going on the messages and just absolutely crushing it. And I'm like, every time I saw him, I'm like, so no redheads, huh? Do have

Orion Taraban: to understand that a lot of dating is marketing. [00:23:00] Yes. There's a lot of good guys out there that just have a marketing problem.

Yeah. I was having a discussion with a guy the other day, and he works in modern viral advertising. He said if I wanted to get a batty in 2025, I would pay like an Instagram model with two or 3 million followers. I would commission a short, and the short would basically be like. I hate this guy Uhhuh.

There's five reasons why you should never date this guy. And all five of the reasons are actually good. Like humble brags about the guy and 5 million Hurt. It's too big. It's a painful, I couldn't take it all.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. Immediately. He always wanted to go to nice places. Sometimes I just wanna sit at home and watch a movie, shit like that.

And I think that was very clever. That is smart. So he did that.

Orion Taraban: I don't think he did. Uh, somebody

Jordan Harbinger: do that, please. And tell me all about it. And that's genius. Genius. Yeah. Yeah. I think part of the meeting people live is also tricky. Body language is something you talked a little bit about in your book. [00:24:00] Most of the initial attraction happens before guys anyway are aware that they're on someone's radar.

So the nonverbal communication ended up being really important for when I was teaching this, because when you walk in the room, other people become aware of you. The guys that were approaching thought as soon as I approach and open my mouth, that's when the first impression is formed. It's that's way too late.

And guys think they choose the moment that they're judged and evaluated, but that's not true. The decision has been made already. Q is like social status, other people being interested in you already, that's already done. And I wondered if you could shed some light on that. I think that's one reason why married men get hit on is there's mate copying strategy going on here.

Is that a bunch of nonsense? The mate copying strategy like, oh, okay, he has a wedding ring. A woman already likes him, he's vetted.

Orion Taraban: I've

Jordan Harbinger: heard

Orion Taraban: that called social proof.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's slightly different. Yes,

Orion Taraban: that does make sense. It's just like business. It's sometimes cheaper and easier to poach your competition, train someone from scratch and have to [00:25:00] go through the hiring process.

So yeah, if it works in business, it generally works in dating. So at least one woman when a man is married has said, this is the absolute best man that I could possibly. Get one, and I thought that he was caring enough and stable enough and successful enough to build a long-term relationship or have a family.

There is already a lot of passive vetting that has occurred. So that's one reason. I think another reason why the ring does tend to attract women to married men is it can feel safer. Sometimes people act more appropriately when there are fewer safety protocols. If we were to go to the edge of a canyon and there was no railing, you'd probably stand further back from the edge than if there was a railing.

Yes. You know what I'm saying?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Orion Taraban: of course. So a lot of women and men believe that women can now [00:26:00] talk to this man. He's safe. It's not going to go anywhere. That could lead to a conversation and conversation could lead to an emotional entanglement, an emotional entanglement could lead to an affair, et cetera, et cetera.

But there's also plausible deniability and the say, oh, oh, he is married. It would never happen. I like the railing comment because

Jordan Harbinger: I'm staying away from even the railing, but it's my own issue. That's smart. But especially the people who are doing it for the gram, they're standing on the railing. They're on the other side of the

railing, leaning back with the phone in the air.

Oh look, I'm on the other side of the railing. Yeah.

Orion Taraban: Every year at Yosemite there are like three tourists to go over the waterfall. They don't even find the bodies. Yeah, that's nightmare. Stay away from the the

Jordan Harbinger: edge. I don't have that much to prove, man. I'm staying away from the railing. Are you scared? Are you scared?

Yeah, I'm scared. This kills people. Healthy caution. You can call it that. Yeah. How do strategies for short-term relationships differ from long-term relationships? So you wrote err on the side of being more boring. When you're looking for long-term relationships. Err on the side of being [00:27:00] too bold when looking for something short term.

Orion Taraban: Yeah, those are some of the major differences. Look, people, men and women, they want different things from different people. This is also something that's really important for mostly men to understand. Women already get this. When I was younger, I just thought that all women wanted relationships. And so that's what I tried to give them because in my masculine mindset, I will give a woman what she wants and therefore she will give me what I want.

And that's the basis of a reciprocal relationship. And I just thought that women want a commitment and love and the labels and all of that stuff. And a lot of women do want those things from the men they want them from, but they don't want them from all men indiscriminately. There are certainly men that they just want to have a fun evening with.

That's how players. Can play. They have to have someone to play with. And these aren't all bad [00:28:00] promiscuous women. Sometimes these are women who do have low body counts and they just get swept up in the moment because the man is masterful at creating an emotional experience and conducting them in the direction of a sexual relationship.

It doesn't mean that he lied or deceived her, but in the vast majority of cases, she isn't a willing and enthusiastic participant in the interaction.

Jordan Harbinger: Alright, before we piss anyone else off, let's take a quick break for the people who actually pay the bills around here. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Kindred Travel is at its best when it feels personable, comfortable, and connected.

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Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by Quilt Mind. I've always thought of LinkedIn as a place to stay connected professionally, but Dove from Quilt Mind, who's a friend of mine, made me realize I wasn't using it to its full potential. I have over 25,000 followers, which is, you know, it's not like TikTok or Instagram, but I didn't really post anything 'cause I didn't even realize LinkedIn had followers.

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They keep me consistent. For me, success on LinkedIn looks like sharing insights from the incredible guests we bring on the show, inspiring the business community, connecting with executives who wanna reach that audience. So if you're curious, check out what I've been doing on LinkedIn, follow along, and if you're thinking it might be time to step up your own presence, reach out to me directly or Quilt Mind at Jordan, audience@quiltmind.com.

That's Q-U-I-L-T-M-I-N d.com. A [00:31:00] few of you have signed up and had awesome results and I love to see that and I'm happy to refer people over to this service. If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust.

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You can find the course again, all free, no shenanigans@sixminutenetworking.com. Now, back to Orion Ban. This is, we were talking pre show about how tough it was to teach this because the assumption is, oh, so you just lie to women and get them to sleep with you, and then you don't [00:32:00] offer a relationship.

You're a scumbag. And it's like, no. We're super upfront about the fact of what we want and what we don't want, and there's consent the whole way along. And some women are actually open to that and many people will be surprised to hear that. A lot of women refuse to believe that there are women out there who want just short-term relationships, and I don't even know if they refuse to believe it.

I think they refuse to acknowledge it. I think they know it because they probably themselves have also done it. But there's somehow this like unwritten rule, like you shouldn't do that. You're screwing it up for everybody else. That the women are screwing it up for everybody else. Yeah. Like the women who allow themselves to have fun with a guy here and there are screwing it up for other, that was a common belief that was articulated to me, I should say.

They're like sexual scabs. Yes. They're going across the picket line. Crossing the picket line. And I remember one older lady, she was really awesome 'cause she was super self-aware and very outspoken. She would debate me a lot on this and she would go, no, as a group, we need to withhold sex from men because that's how we get what we want.

And I was like, damn. You said the quiet part [00:33:00] out loud.

Orion Taraban: So there is an ancient Greek play called Estrada. Do you know this play? No. It's by the comedian Aristophanes. Okay. And I made an episode about it because the whole plot of this comedy is all of the husbands in. Athens, I think were out at war. They were constantly campaigning here and there, and the wives were getting sick of all this.

So the wives get together and act one and they basically make this blood oath that no woman will have sex with her husband until the husbands end the war. And the rest of the play is how that plays out. And at first the men laugh it off. Oh, women are gonna be crawling back to this monster. Pretty soon that doesn't happen.

And then the men start to sneak out and be like, come on baby, I just need a little bit something. And sometimes the women almost fold because they want it to and, but they hold strong and eventually the men stop the war and everyone lives happily ever after. It's Greece. I figured you were gonna say they were banging each other by the end of the play.

They [00:34:00] might have, but maybe that gets old. I'm not sure. It in Greece. So the idea here is that women can and do control their sexuality for political or ideological reasons. The issue is that it. Worked in this fictitious play because it was a unified community, it would never work in California because not all the women are aligned with their cultures and their values and the type of relationship that they're looking for.

So if they would never get a unified coalition, but let's say if every liberal woman said, we're not gonna sleep with any men anymore until Donald Trump gets impeached, or something like that. Well, that's a real movement.

Jordan Harbinger: Have you heard about

Orion Taraban: this? Oh, the four E's or something you're thinking.

Jordan Harbinger: You're thinking of four B, that's more like, we don't need men and we're not gonna deal with them.

This was like, don't have sex with anybody who didn't vote for Kamala. I'm paraphrasing, but it was kinda like that. But it's a small group of women and you just feel bad because they're [00:35:00] married to guys who are maybe did that and then their wife is like, well, I'm not gonna have sex with you until the next presidential elections.

Like, yeah,

Orion Taraban: that sucks. It's even harder for the women who aren't partnered who make that decision because they basically just voluntarily take themselves out of the mating pool. And that's an opportunity for the women who don't have those same beliefs to come in and be like, get a load of that woman.

But I don't have that kind of an issue here. And so other women can make other women more attractive and women will seize those opportunities.

Jordan Harbinger: Tell me why. Men often pretend to be interested in long-term relationships, and women often pretend to be more interested in sex at first.

Orion Taraban: I think both of them are trying to display what they believe the other party wants.

And we could call that lying and in some cases it is. But it could also mean putting your best foot forward. Is it lying when you go to a job interview and say, I really believe in creating shareholder value and I'm really excited to be a [00:36:00] part of your team to help you reach your goals. Like it's

Jordan Harbinger: not a lie, it's just that the unspoken part is as long as you compensate me handsomely and don't treat me like crap,

Orion Taraban: and you know that same job that you're jumping through your butt to get and are enthusiastically celebratory when you receive it, is the one that you bitch about further down the road and you're looking for something better once you get acclimated to that position or opportunity.

So I think it's just both parties believing that they know what the other party wants and showing. I can do that. I can give that to you because that's basically the basis of. Relationships is that you have to want something from me. If you don't deal with me at all, you won't even talk to me. 'cause that's an opportunity cost.

You could take your time and attention elsewhere where it be more profitably deployed. Of course, I have to show that. Make a good guess about what you want and display the thing or [00:37:00] demonstrate a willingness to provide it. Otherwise, how could we possibly move forward?

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like it's important to admit to ourselves and to society, what men and women actually want in long-term versus short-term relationships.

Orion Taraban: They want something totally different. So I learned this personally. So in my early twenties, I was an actor living in New York City and I was broke all the time. And I was living in public housing in Brooklyn. Oh geez. And month to month, just trying to make ends meet so I could live in New York for another month.

But I had no trouble finding women to have sexual relationships with. You do not need money to get women. I know that 100%. I call things like a fancy car or a seven figure bank account, attraction proxies, all things being equal. If we have two exactly the same guys and this guy's broke, and this guy's a millionaire, of course the women are gonna choose the millionaire.

But men incorrectly believe that just having a million dollars or a Ferrari means that you get [00:38:00] effortless sexual opportunity. And that's not true. It's not like they just line up in front of the car till you like go out for a drive and throw themselves at you. You still have to engage their emotions.

You still actually have to listen to them and go through the whole process. Back then, when I had no trouble attracting women, I wanted to get married. I wanted a long-term relationship, but none of the women, they didn't even wanna be my girlfriend. They didn't even want people to know that they were dating me.

You know what I'm saying? Ouch. They were coming over to my house seven nights a week. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Then fast forward a little bit, I clean up my act. I move to California, I get my doctorate. I start making decent money. Now all the women want to get married and I just want to hook up.

Oh man. So people kind of want what they can't slash don't have because that's what wanting means. It means both to lack and to desire, and of course we desire what we lack.

Jordan Harbinger: What part of that is a function of age? Because when you're in your twenties, a lot of women don't want to get married. They wanna hook up.

You get your doctorate, you're, I don't know, [00:39:00] like 33 years old, whatever. 35 years old. I was probably like 33. Okay. So you're 33 years old. You're meeting a different age of gal that maybe wants something else, or were you going for the same age group that you were?

Orion Taraban: No, I was, I usually date a little bit younger.

So at 33, I actually had a 25-year-old girlfriend at the time. And certainly when I was a 25-year-old living in New York, I was dating. 25 year olds. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So it's the same age. Do you think that there's a difference in, okay, I wanna marry him 'cause he's successful and he's attractive versus, I just wanna hook up with him because he is attractive but he's not successful

Orion Taraban: because, I dunno if it's necessarily the age because there's gonna be some, it doesn't sound like it is really sexy dudes out there, not me working on it.

But there's some really sexy dudes. Some of them are in their thirties, some of them in their forties, but they're like Instagram models. They're dumb as rocks, but they have the abs, they have the piercing gaze. A lot of women just want to have that experience. Same thing with fame. A lot of fame is probably the [00:40:00] most attractive variable to women, even more so than money, even more so than abs.

But a lot of women just want to have the story, the experience, and so they'll DM famous athletes or movie stars and if they're cute enough they can get a rendezvous. But sometimes these women are married or they have boyfriends and they just want to like. Have a little excitement on the side, but they're not going to leave their stable situation.

And they probably correctly believe that they couldn't engage this really attractive man's long-term attention against all of his optionality and her intersexual competition. So women can be a little bit more realistic in that they won't deposit it like that, they won't come out. Well, the reason why I did this is because I don't think I'm attractive enough to beat out all of the intersexual competition that is attracted to this highly desirable man.

They'll just say, oh, he's just a playboy. He's not serious. Both could be true. Both can be true. Could be a both end. Not an either or.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:00] A lot of my neighbors in my old place were athletes. One of my friends was a star quarterback, but it's like, how'd you meet your wife? 'cause she was like a singer and a model.

But he had met her I think, well before the NFL Oh high school or early college, and I was like, smart. One, you weren't rich and famous then, so she actually likes you theoretically. And two, I cannot even imagine what his inbox was. He's a good looking dude. And he was in the Super Bowl and I think his signing bonus was like he could buy half this neighborhood with it.

And so whenever he had his NFL buddies over I, I was like, you guys dating? And it was either like, nah and then a chuckle. 'cause it was like dating. What's that? Or they were already married and done.

Orion Taraban: Yeah. I saw an interview with Dan Blazer in a while back. Nowadays he's a pro monogamy guy, but he's plowed through half of Los Angeles.

That's equivalent to a billionaire coming on TV and saying, guys, it's not all about money. You're right. But it would be nice for most people to have a little bit more, [00:42:00] for Dan to say it's having meaningless sex with beautiful women every day of your life for 10 years gets old. But maybe it could wear on me a little bit.

I wouldn't go to Bilzerian for any insight that you can necessarily trust. My point is that the interviewer was trying to make him feel as if he were manipulating and exploiting these women, and his response was basically like, actually, I think that I'm more often used in these interactions and throw these big parties.

They come to drink my booze, they come to stay in my

Jordan Harbinger: pool. It's a value exchange, I think, for him. And he realized that early. I know the guy who built his Instagram, this was a design thing. He wasn't like, oh my God, I'm famous and I'm having all these people here. They were paid to. There's that too.

Orion Taraban: Yeah.

But these women are often using me. They're trying to get revenge on their ex-boyfriends. They're trying to have. An experience that they can like take pictures that they've been there to make other girls envious. It's more complicated than just men get sex from women. I agree. I

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:00] remember those parties and there'd be like a baby giraffe there.

I didn't even have Instagram. And I remember they were like, make sure you tag. And I was like, I don't even have Instagram. They're like, what are you doing here? Uh, friends of this gal that goes to all of his parties. Yeah, there was a baby giraffe at the party and guns like automatic, you know, it was like what you see on Instagram.

And I remember thinking kids these days, where do I sign? Like why is there such a well established double standard with the, you said body count earlier? Number of sexual partners between men and women. I'd love to hear about this because this is hotly contested. We congratulate guys for having sex with a lot of women, but those same guys will go, oh, she's run through, if she's got even a third of this guy's number,

Orion Taraban: it's very deep.

The pithy phrase is. A key that can open any lock is a good key, but a lock that any key can open is a bad lock. Warm up those emails, folks, I'm here for you. But you have to understand that this is rooted in often very deep [00:44:00] cultural scripts and ultimately it's not even about men and women. It's about economic inequality, which I'll get to near the end.

But one of the reasons is that as far as I know, there are no cultures in which male virginity is celebrated. Every once in a while you see clips of the Christian youth camps where they're trying to say, being a virgin is cool. And it's like, oh bro. You know? So nowhere is that a value. You never hear a woman say, I want a virgin man.

Maybe if women did start to talk like that, and more importantly decided to act like that, we would see. Male virginity increasing its value, but it doesn't really give women anything that they don't already have. Traditionally, what female virginity does give men is some sort of paternity assurance in the context of marriage.

So there is, the women always know it's their baby men. Never 100% [00:45:00] no. One of the foundational

Jordan Harbinger: Jewish law things is, did it come out of mom? Okay. That's the lineage we're going with because there you go. Don't

Orion Taraban: know which dad it is. So there is a value add to men for female virginity that doesn't exist the other way around.

That's probably the reason why female virginity is celebrated in a lot of cultures instead of the other way around. But ultimately, I don't even think it's about men and women. It just looks that way because most of dating and mating occurs in the twenties and early thirties, and that's the time when women are more advantaged in the dating marketplace.

So the way I think about it, think of a soccer game, whatever team is up gets to run defense and whatever team is down has to run offense. If you're down on points, you can't just sit back. You have to take action and make something happen. But if you're ahead on points, you can just sit there and bleed out the clock if you [00:46:00] wanted to.

So this can change, and we definitely see that flip later on in life. Especially guys, usually they're divorced or they never got married, and they're in their thirties and forties, fifties sometimes, and they've become very successful. Very famous, very wealthy, and now they have hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.

Some of these men of women chasing after them. They're running defense. It's not like these guys are like finally and they just become Wilt Chamberlain and run through all of their fan base. That's very uncommon. Most of these guys are like, Ooh, I actually have more to lose than to gain in this sexual encounter.

I've

Jordan Harbinger: written those NDAs for friends, and so it's like I need some kind of agreement where if they get pregnant or if this happens, I can't get

Orion Taraban: sued. The person who has more to lose and less to gain runs defense, and that's generally women throughout most of the dating timeline that people are aware of.

'cause most people date and pair up by the time they're 30 or so, and women [00:47:00] definitely have more to lose in that timeframe, but it's not inherent to the female sex that they're that way and not the other way. In fact, we would. Find it virtuous for a guy who has a lot of power and wealth and optionality to not exercise it.

But the vast majority of men do not have power, wealth, and optionality. It is no virtue. It's a necessity. They can't exercise it, so why would we celebrate it? But when like a famous politician doesn't cheat on his wife, we're like, good low clap.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Orion Taraban: Because we all know that he could if he wanted to, but he didn't.

So that's part of it. For men, it takes

Jordan Harbinger: some skill on the whole to have sex, you have to have a little bit of riz. At least you gotta meet a bar of attraction and fitness that's set somewhere arbitrarily most of the time. There are exceptions to this, right? If fat dorks like me get laid occasionally, no, it doesn't matter.

But for women, [00:48:00] that bar is so much lower. There's the bar for skill. It feels so mean saying this, but some of the most conventionally unattractive women could still have sex. I won't say off the drop of a dime, but certainly by taking enough messages online, they'll find somebody they could post on Craigslist, if that still exists, might not be the man they want.

It won't be the men they want, but they will get the sex for men. It's often I will take anyone, and the answer is

Orion Taraban: still no. I do talk about that in the book as well, where that any action that requires mastery, competence, or skill is going to be valued more highly than any behavior that doesn't. And for men to get laid requires a lot more skill and mastery than most women will ever know or are willing to admit.

By the same token, the skill and mastery for a lot of women is to weed out the bullshit and to save her time, attention, and opportunity for the men who are actually serious. Who could give her what she wants [00:49:00] if she just falls for every line, hook, line, and sinker like some naive country bumpkin. We wouldn't say that she's very skillful or masterful.

And that wouldn't be a behavior that we would celebrate or value. And this is especially true because most decent, normal dudes don't aggressively pursue women. The dudes who aggressively pursue women are not entirely, but they're largely composed of players and pickup artists and guys who maybe have narcissistic grandiosity because that's what enables them to say, this girl's gonna be lucky that I'm talking to her tonight, which is actually a decent attitude to cultivate because it's scary to approach women in the wild, as it were.

And so these men are often the bad faith actors that women need to use their discernment with respect to their intentions. The issue is that a lot of women, that's all they interact with because those are the bold men who approach them, and so they [00:50:00] think that all men are liars and things like that.

It's like, no, but the liars aren't brave enough. They're sitting at a table in the corner. They're thinking about how pretty you look, and that's why he's so scared sweet, but like he's having eight shots to build up the guts to talk to you, provided he's not keeled over in

Jordan Harbinger: the

Orion Taraban: toilet. That's not hot.

That's not sexy because think about what woman has to say, like a man has to get drunk to talk to me. She knows that she's not the king of the jungle, and who are the ones that she goes home with? The guys who take, yeah, more or less, yeah. At least sees the opportunity. There's a selection

Jordan Harbinger: bias there. I mean, again, as per my previous business, it was okay, we need to take the guys who are normally like eight shots deep before they even think about talking to a woman and turn them into a guy who can almost be that sort of like overly bold guy for a few minutes.

All he needs to do is burn hot for a few minutes and then once he's got the attention and seated at the table with the girls, he can put on a little bit of a performance or whatever and then it's like, I've [00:51:00] gotta run. I got my friends here. Lemme get your number. And I remember teaching this, they'll come back to the table and they'll go, oh my God, that was exhilarating.

And it, 'cause they've never done, and it's thrilling because they basically turned into like Neo from the Matrix for 10 minutes, came back and they're good and they've won. There's huge victory for themselves. But other guys that do this all night long, every single night, those guys are terrifying because they're machines in a way that is not a compliment.

Orion Taraban: Yeah. One of the most risky things about skydiving is when you have a thousand dives and you lose the sense that you're doing something dangerous. You don't even get the adrenaline rush anymore. They like forget to deploy their shoots. So. Those guys who are just approaching 50 women a night, night after night, they don't feel that exhilaration anymore.

They're just doing it because they're trapped in the game. Yeah. There

Jordan Harbinger: was a lot of my, I guess you'd call 'em colleagues, these strange pickup guys from back in the day. They were deeply unhappy and it was like they had to fill this bottomless pit of validation [00:52:00] with empty sex and

Orion Taraban: validation from strangers.

I think you could call it a process like I've worked with a few patients who were like, I don't even like these girls. I don't even think they're that cute. I took almost three the other night just because there was nothing better and I had to score and I was like, oh man, dude, I have seen and heard

Jordan Harbinger: that before.

It's funny. Process addiction. I never thought about that. I've lived with a guy for a very short period of time, and I remember he would bring home women where I'm like, I don't even want her in my house. Not because she's ugly. You picked a crazy person. She's an arson risk. Yeah. Like this person, I don't want them freely roaming while I'm asleep in my home.

And he'd be like, ah, come on man. And it's like, go to her place. Oh wait, she doesn't have one. What does that tell you? She lives at her friend's bar in the back. There was quite a bit of that. You've said that men are more likely to cheat and stay and women are more likely to cheat and terminate the previous relationship.

That's insightful. Can you tell me why this is the case? Okay. So this is, [00:53:00] by the way, men and women who cheat, not that they're more likely to cheat than the other sex to be clear.

Orion Taraban: According to statistics, men are more likely to cheat.

Jordan Harbinger: I thought it was even actually, it's

Orion Taraban: getting real close. Okay. Women have really gone for the equality in the last decade because I swear I looked this up and it's 51% men, 48% women.

It's very hard to get reliable statistics on this because sometimes it's like anywhere between 15 and 90% of men cheat in their marriages. It's clearly a socially unacceptable thing to admit. So you get self-report surveys, if they're anonymous, is probably the best way to do it. This is

Jordan Harbinger: self-reported and Chad GT's, like it really depends on how you measure it.

Did they have sex with someone or is it like they have a long-term written affair going for somebody they've never met an emotional affair.

Orion Taraban: Do they have the statistics there?

Jordan Harbinger: They do, but it's 20% of men versus 13% of women self-report that they have had sex with somebody outside of their marriage.

That's a tiny piece of the pie graph.

Orion Taraban: You gotta define it somehow. Yeah, and so that is a definition and that fits with my [00:54:00] understanding. The reason why I say that men when they cheat, tend to stay and not women, is that based on another study that's, I think been replicated multiple times, that has to do with relationship satisfaction and infidelity.

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Jordan Harbinger: If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support the sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, email usJordan@jordanharbinger.com. We are happy to surface codes for you. Yes, it's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of part [00:57:00] one with Orion Ban, correct me if I'm wrong, men will often cheat because of, and again, often is relative, but because of opportunity and they're happily married, but they have opportunity to do something, whereas women are like, I'm only gonna cheat if I've been neglected for years on end, it's bad.

A little something like

Orion Taraban: that. I don't think the study suggests that. Men cheat because of opportunity, I think. I believe that, but I think what the study shows is that there's no statistically significant difference in relationship satisfaction between men who cheat and men who don't. Okay. Which means that the loyal and the disloyal men are about as happy with their marriages.

But there is an enormous discrepancy in relationship satisfaction between women who cheat and women who don't in the expected direction is the women who cheat have very high levels of expressed relational dissatisfaction. Oftentimes, women will cheat, they kind of can kill two birds with one stone in the sense that they can use [00:58:00] it to trigger the end of a relationship that they might already have been emotionally done with some months or years and or secure the next long-term relationship.

It's like they're jumping ship for another safe harbor. They call it monkey branching on the internet. They do. It's an evocative image and Okay, if that's what people are calling it, that, yeah, that might be like a red pill term.

Jordan Harbinger: It's also not only that, right? It has to do with hyper gamy.

Orion Taraban: Yes. Generally hyper gamy means that you may end date up social status hierarchies, and the fundamental thing we started talking about is that people don't forego a better option in terms of a worser one.

Now, does that mean that every time a guy crosses a married woman's path, he makes slightly more than her husband, she's just going to go off with him? No, because the value calculation is actually much more complex than that. If that opportunity, that man is better than her husband in [00:59:00] multiple important domains for her, in conjunction with maybe more dissatisfaction in that relationship, that's going to make.

More likely that she's going to move forward with that man if he offers her the opportunity to do so. So that's why

Jordan Harbinger: women are more likely to cheat and terminate the previous relationship, whereas men, since they don't have that dissatisfaction necessarily may cheat. And then say, I'm not going off with you, I, let's put a

Orion Taraban: little asterisk on this 'cause this is a pet peeve of mine because I just got done saying that men cheat more often than women.

Yes. However, we ignore the way that women tend to cheat. Oh, okay. Men are more likely to cheat simultaneously. They have multiple girls at the same time, women are more likely to cheat consecutively. Technically, no cheating has occurred. I broke up with Derek and the next day I'm dating Thomas. Now you [01:00:00] might think, okay, no harm, no foul.

There was a clear delineation, but it's like. Benedict Arnold was loyal to the Americans up until the point that he was loyal to the British, and we don't really hold him up as a paragon of patriotism and loyalty. The way I talk about it in the book is in terms of ethics. So I'm a psychologist and we have an ethical code, and one of the statutes, unsurprisingly, is therapists don't have sex with their patients reasonable enough.

But here's the thing, what's stopping a therapist from terminating with a really attractive patient on the spot and then taking her out for dinner that night? Oh, we're not patients anymore. We've ended the therapeutic relationship Wink. So your place or mine, he wasn't a doctor and she wasn't a patient, so no harm, no foul, right?

The power dynamic is still in play, and that's why they have this second statute right after that one, which basically says. Therapists can only initiate sexual relationships with former [01:01:00] patients after all of these various conditions are met. There's 10 conditions, including most notably, that at least two years have passed since termination.

And it's, yeah, that kind of makes sense. 'cause it closes the obvious loophole around the doctor patient relationship. So if a woman can end a relationship and immediately start another one, especially if she probably already knew this guy has already spoken to this guy, has sensed that there's some sort of attraction.

She didn't cheat

Jordan Harbinger: really. Right. You get broken up with, and then she's dating the guy from the gym that she told you not to worry about for the last six months. The next months, yeah. What a coincidence.

Orion Taraban: Yeah. So that wouldn't count because they were on a break. You know what I'm saying? But that's how women's cheating flies under the radar.

And if you count consecutive relationships, women cheat just as much as men. I see.

Jordan Harbinger: Interesting.

Orion Taraban: My

Jordan Harbinger: old strategy was to be, as you said before, overly bold. Then I would eventually sleep with, not necessarily the [01:02:00] same night. It might take a couple weeks, a little bit of dating, and if I liked the person and frankly to be transparent also the sex, I would switch gears and switch my signals and be like, now I'm not a short-term dater.

I'm actually interested in a long-term relationship. This really, it didn't always work, but it actually worked a lot because I signaled short-term relationship just in case, so that I wasn't lying about my intentions. Although if you really think about it, I kind of was just, it, it usually, it was the reverse lie, right?

It wasn't me pretending to be interested in a long-term relationship to get sex and then buy. It was me pretending to be interested in only sex and then go, Hey, you know what? Actually you're really cool. I'd like to date you for longer. That was super successful and can you explain maybe why that worked so well?

Oh, I'm

Orion Taraban: putting you on the spot. That's your experience. Yeah, and it does, I think, accord with what I'm going to say though. Superficially it might conflict with some of the things that you just said. That's fine. It's not a rule, it's just something that worked for me. So you can correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing in.

What you just told me is that there's two different pathways. There's a way that you [01:03:00] get a short-term relationship and there's a way that you get a long-term relationship and you signaled one and then switched to the other.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Orion Taraban: More or less. Okay. I just never started

Jordan Harbinger: with, I want a long-term relationship, and it's like I'm talking to you, you can't at a bar at one o'clock in the morning, you can't,

Orion Taraban: outside of very specific communities like you're dating in a closed religious context, church introduction arranged marriage, or a very traditional culture that I have not visited in my life, but I've heard about on the Nature Channel or something like that, Amish dating.

But even they get Rumspringa, right? We hear from

Jordan Harbinger: those guys all the

Orion Taraban: time, oh yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: I need a shortcut, man. I've been Amish my whole life. I don't even know how to use a smartphone, and I've got eight more months to figure out how to, well, you know, fill in the blanks.

Orion Taraban: Okay? But in my opinion, there aren't two pathways.

There's only one. There's only one pathway to everything. And that's because in our culture, sex precedes commitment. That's just how it is. So paradoxically, the best way to get [01:04:00] a long-term relationship is to do the things, to get a short-term relationship and then just keep doing them for longer, more or less.

Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: that's that. That tracks.

Orion Taraban: Because if you go up to a girl at the bar and be like, I'm getting marriage vows from you sweetheart, and like cr, have you decided on our children's names? And that woman could say, I just want a good man to get married. But if a man were to approach her like that, she would get creeped out.

The relationship is based first on sexual attraction. If that's not there, you don't get off the ground now to go the distance. It has to be based on something more than just sexual attraction. And a lot of women make this mistake, especially in their thirties when they get serious about settling down, is they actually, were playing around with lots of guys and they're like, I don't wanna do that.

I wanna start dating intentionally. And they start treating their dates like job interviews, and they're like, where is this going? Do you see yourself getting married the next six months? Because I could see myself getting married in the next six months. That works about as well as the guy coming up to you asking about [01:05:00] your future kids' names.

Whoa, that is not the right order of things, sweetheart. I'm just getting to know you. It comes off as really transactional. Women often bulk at the transactional model until they are ready to do business, let's put it that way. And then they're like, what do you bring to the table? Unfortunately, I've had a number of contentious conversations with women on this.

They also just tend to focus on what they want, which is only half of the equation. They have to also say, well, what are they providing? And it can't be what they think is valuable. I like to say the cat decides what milk is good. They can't decide what men are supposed to value or be attracted to. It's for men to decide that, and then for women to look how many of those things that men value do I have, because that's what I can barter for what I want, and that's the basis of reciprocal human relationships.

Jordan Harbinger: I like the way you put that, especially the do what you do for short-term relationships and then just keep [01:06:00] doing it. That's actually more accurate than me having made some big switch. I think that when I say made a big switch, I basically say, I like you. I wanna keep dating and hanging out. That's it. I'm not like, I don't change my entire personality or approach to the relationship based on that.

Orion Taraban: There's a number of reasons why this works because probably the most scary thing about dating is the rest of my life. That's why sometimes it's easier to tell your deep, dark secret to a stranger in a bar on a random Thursday than to your wife who's supposed to be your soulmate and your confidant.

Because if that goes sideways, you now have to look in that person's eyes every day for the rest of your life and experience that judgment that is very risky. Okay. So when women start to date intentionally, the guy's thinking, uh, the rest of my life, that's just a very long period of time and I don't even really know who you are.

And this is going really

Jordan Harbinger: quickly, ma'am. We're at Lucky Strike [01:07:00] and I'm on my third old fashioned. Yes, I am looking for a partner, but wow. Not like in the next 10 minutes.

Orion Taraban: Exactly. This also is one of the conditions under which Passion Fluoresces is restriction. It's no accident that people tend to fall deeply in love with somebody who's moving away in two

Jordan Harbinger: months.

Oh god. This, I was gonna give you an example, and my wife is gonna kill me of somebody who was supposed to be a hookup because it was her. She was moving that weekend. I met her on a Tuesday. She's like, I'm moving on Saturday. And I was like. Okay, whatever.

Orion Taraban: Then you are safe. Yeah, because it's like the ring.

This can't go anywhere, so I can be as honest and authentic as I possibly like. If you don't like it, I'm never gonna see you again. And so they become vulnerable, they become authentic. They take risks because there's very low perceived risk, which makes them more attractive to each other.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This was the first four days of the relationship.

I'm moving on Saturday, moving on. So it was like warp speed because whatever last romp in la and then it was like, I [01:08:00] actually really like you. Yep, same. But that took a couple weeks stretching out. She had to come back and get some of her craft from the apartment and, oh, I need a new apartment. Maybe I'll rent the one you moved out of that your parents own.

That's how my relationship began. I have to wonder, I think the answer's yes, Jen, just in case you'll listen to this, but I have to wonder what things have played out the way that they played out. Would we be married right now? If it was like she'd lived in LA and I lived in LA or we both had moved to San Francisco and she, the circumstances were different, there's a very high possibility she wouldn't have even answered my DM 'cause that's how I met her.

Orion Taraban: And

Jordan Harbinger: men

Orion Taraban: get this the other way around. When there's like the nice guys in their twenties who are like ready to settle down, they automatically make themselves a plan B, if not a Plan Z, because that guy is a sure thing and he is always there. So he can be a fallback. Unfortunately, if you're fishing or hunting, you have to use some tactics to bring in your quarry, as it were.

And this is true for both men and women. And so again, I don't think that there are two [01:09:00] different pathways for those who are interested in a long-term relationship. You have to pass through that phase that it's still a short-term relationship. I have an episode probably is out by the time this comes out, but it's called No One Night Stands.

You see that in a lot of women's dating profiles. No one night stands. Lot of judgmental energy about that. It also sounds a lot like no redheads, which I talked about in the beginning of our show. Well, at the end of the episode, I say, and of course the only reason why this is a rule is because she's had one night stands.

Yes. Because that's where fucking rules come from, is people do something and then they have an outcome that they prefer. So what a woman who says, no white night stands is communicating is, I've had them, but I'm not going to have them with you. Which makes her more expensive and less valuable at the same time to the men that she's now potentially trying to attract.

Jordan Harbinger: It's true. Although you could read that a different way. Like, maybe I'll still sleep with you on the first night, but I expect to do it again next week. You know? But that's, that's not what you mean. But that's

Orion Taraban: the thing. It's like, the point is that there [01:10:00] aren't two pathways to marriage. There's one pathway.

In today's day and age, every relationship starts out as a one night stand in the sense that unless you're in some sort of arranged marriage. You initiate a sexual relationship without any commitment or guarantee that you'll ever see the other person again in your life. And if you play your cards right and you're attracted enough to each other, that one night stand becomes a two night stand and you still don't really have any safety or guarantees or commitment.

And you just have to play that game until the days and the weeks and the months string together long enough that you can then begin to enter into discussions around commitment, because that's what, for better or for worse, is how our culture says this is how we do things. Now, leading with commitment is not gonna go very far, especially with men who are probably in their thirties or forties, which is when those are the men that the women in their thirties are targeting for marriage.

[01:11:00] Imagine she's, I'm a born again virgin, or I don't want to take things slow. The guy's like what? It's like the she's on the other foot. I'm a successful, attractive. Man, I have tons of options now. You made me one of your options in the twenties, or you didn't even look my way. Well, you had lots of options.

So on some level, men in their thirties and forties when they're shamed, are kind of acting the way that women acted in their twenties, which is basically to say that human beings find it hard to resist the temptation of experiential optionality. There's a lot

Jordan Harbinger: of shame with guys in their forties. Look, I'm 45.

A lot of my friends are either that age, they worked really hard on the business and they never have actually dedicated any time to real relationships, or they're divorced or something along those lines. They'll go, man, am I being a creeper dude, I'm met this 27-year-old. And I'm like, no, but I'm not. A lot of people are gonna think that you are being creepy doing that.

And we were like, but why is that? And the answers of uncomfortable, [01:12:00] and there's a lot of societal shaming that I actually think comes from. The policing of the age gap comes from a lot of places where it's like, no, no, no. We want men to feel ashamed for dating younger women like that because it makes it harder, one, for older women to date those same men, which they also want.

So it eliminates competition. And you can also create almost like a shame funnel where it's all right, we're gonna make this an off limits age group for the guy, therefore increasing my chances of getting a maid in that same category.

Orion Taraban: True. And it goes even deeper than that, and it's tangentially related to, let's say, the health or the beauty at any size campaigns that women in most places ostensibly support and celebrate.

There's this really fascinating study. It's long been shown that men find women with longer hair to be more sexually attractive, and women tend to know this. There was a study in which women asked. Other women [01:13:00] how much hair they should get taken off at their next haircut, and they always say a ton. It was related to how attractive the woman getting the haircut was.

The more attractive she was, the more women on average told her to take more hair off. Shave your head. It's so courageous. You're so bold. You look great. With that kind of cut, that's what comes out of their mouth and they may not even be conscious of it, but they're working in a way to disqualify them as intersexual competitors.

For the same men, the women are playing like 10 D chess

Jordan Harbinger: with each other. I wanna be careful not to say women do this, that, and demonize them because I don't even know how much this is. I'm not demonizing them. I think that's fucking clever. It's either clever or possibly completely operating at a subconscious level that doesn't necessarily change whether or not it's clever.

I don't think cleverness has to be conscious. That's interesting. I just, I'm being careful here 'cause I don't want people to think, oh, we're putting women in this bucket of, they're evil in planning something as a cabal. Uh, maybe as a Jew, I'm sensitive to that kind of talk.

Orion Taraban: I don't think they're getting [01:14:00] together and having meetings about how they do this.

But does having a plan make you evil again, I think it's smart as a

Jordan Harbinger: guy who taught guys to have a particular plan to be more successful in dating and mating. No, I don't think it's evil. I think it's smart and I think you leverage what you can. When you're in a competitive market, you do the same thing for your business.

Works in business, it works in dating.

Here's a trailer for another episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show with the legendary Esther pll as she sheds light on cheating, not just being about the thrill, but about finding a part of ourselves that we've lost.

JHS Clip: Affairs also happen often in good relationships. They're not just symptoms of relationships that have gone completely awry.

Sometimes a person goes looking elsewhere, not because they wanna find someone else, but because they want to find another self nuclear family. Life is a bitch. It's really a stressful situation on people, especially if they have on top of it, young kids, pets [01:15:00] and in-laws and older parents and all the other responsibilities of life.

We were not conceived to live like this. What's going on is this. There is what people fight about and then there is what people fight for. Power and control. That's the hidden agendas of most fights. Whose decision matters most? Who has priority? Is it about care and closeness? Can I trust you? Do you have my back?

Can I rely on you and respect and recognition? Do you value me? Do I matter much of couple's life? When things begin to go a little bit awry Is putting the responsibility on the other person without paying attention enough to what can I do to make this better? Or in what way am I contributing to my partner feeling the way they do?

So it's very important what is relational and what is individual, and where do you start to make sense of this complicated and often very painful experience. [01:16:00]

Jordan Harbinger: To hear how our fights can actually make our relationships stronger and what the future holds. For love in the age of AI, check out episode 911 on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

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