In this long awaited episode, Kevin finally breaks down what relationships mean in the alpha mindset.
We have gotten a lot of hints from other episodes, but now we will dig deep in what it all really means.
This isn’t only applying to ourselves, but for our thoughts on our partner as well (no matter what the nature of the relationship is.)
Want to know more about what I do and how I can help you? Sign up for a free 45-minute session with me, and I’ll show you how this works!
What You’ll Learn From this Episode:
- The difference between being “alpha” and Alpha in relationships
- How the Alpha mindset works in ALL relationships
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Learn how you can enter to win one of five FREE coaching sessions here!
- Sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the Alpha mindset.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men, the cognitive mastery and alpha mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.
Kevin Aillaud:
What’s up, my brothers? Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. And you know what? I’m going to jump right into this episode because I’m really, really excited about the topic today. But I want to tell you guys something, yesterday was my birthday. May 14th is my birthday. I am 41 years old. So here’s what I want you to do for my birthday, go to iTunes and leave me a five star rating. You can leave me a review, you can say happy birthday, that’d be awesome, but leave me a five star rating because guys we’ve broken 200 and we’re going for 500, so we’re almost halfway there. Head over to iTunes and do that for me. It’s very, very quick. It’ll cost you 30 seconds and it’ll be amazing birthday gift.
Kevin Aillaud:
Okay, so now let’s talk about alpha relationships. Look, if you guys have listened to more than 10 episodes of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, then you’ve likely heard me say that you are not in a relationship with a person or a thing. You are only ever in a relationship with your thoughts about a person or a thing, and that is true and it is challenging for a lot of people. In fact, a lot of what I teach on relationships is challenging for people because of the way that we have always, human beings, have always been conditioned and programmed to believe that relationships are there to make us happy and we need to rely on our main relationship to make us the most happy. Now, in the Spartan Academy, we are taking a deep dive into the secret of all relationships this month. And a few of the concepts that I teach are the cognition of connection, the archipelago of life, unconditional love, allowing humans to be who they are, lovability, boundaries and all of these other concepts. And I’ve done some podcasts on these. And as a Spartan, you learn to apply these directly into your life to create the amazing relationships you desire.
Kevin Aillaud:
With all those concepts and applications, I often get asked, “Okay, coach, so what is that alpha relationship? What is that ideal relationship? What’s it like?” So here you go, guys, get out your pen, get out your paper so you can write this down. The alpha relationship, very succinctly put, is two people who come together and connect with each other in a way that enhances their lives, they are constantly independent and completely responsible for their own emotional lives and their own brain thoughts and their own needs. And when they come together and connect, they produce something even better than what they had independently. And that’s it. That’s the alpha relationship.
Kevin Aillaud:
This is in contrast to a lot of what happens in relationships where someone feels a deficit in themselves. They feel something is missing and they’re not as happy as they want to be and so they want to go find a relationship that will fulfill that need and will answer the problem of not enoughness. The cognitive problem of not enoughness is the beta condition.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, the beta condition, that’s pure thought. It’s sentence, it’s a lie, it’s a prevarication, whatever you want to call it, but the manifestation of this cognitive thought pattern is when you get into a relationship where you’re expecting the other person to make you happy and bring you happiness, you are constantly wanting them to behave in a certain way. That is the beta condition. And I’ve done a lot of describing of the beta condition relationship, this podcast is about the alpha relationship. This episode is about the alpha relationship, which feels like all the things that you wanted in a relationship are perfectly matched to all of the things that you are getting in a relationship. That’s the alpha relationship.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, humans as a species, have the desire and the need to connect with other humans. Yes, I said need. I usually don’t say need, I say want, but this is a need. The first move we made away from animal and into human was to connect with each other. We are a tribal species, we want connection. We want to be with others. And those needs that we have, those desires that we have are often attempted to be fulfilled by one person, by that main partner in our life, by that scarcity-driven beta brain.
Kevin Aillaud:
So for example, if you have a need to connect with someone intellectually, you want to discuss ideas about things with them and have them challenge you intellectually, that may be a connection that you need to have. And maybe you have someone that you want to laugh with, make fun of yourself with and be able to just let loose and have some sarcasm with. And maybe there’s someone that you like to work out with or go for a run with. Maybe there’s someone that you would like to travel with. Maybe there’s someone you like to have sex with, maybe there’s someone you want to raise your kids with, maybe there’s someone that you want to manage your finances with, maybe there’s someone you want to run a business with. We have all these needs and desires for connection, and a lot of us are looking for all of those things in one person.
Kevin Aillaud:
And having alpha relationships and what we’re doing in the Academy is about how to get all of connections, desires met by multiple people in your life. Yes, having a partner who is there for you to love and appreciate and enjoy is very, very important, but placing all of your connection needs on that one person, unjustly burdens that relationship and it just keeps you searching. So when you can spread those needs and desires out to your friends, to your mentors, to your coaches, to your teachers, to your acquaintances, to your coworkers, there’s not so much pressure on that relationship, that main relationship, to constantly be delivering what it is that we think we want and need.
Kevin Aillaud:
One of the main points that I want to make about romantic relationships in this podcast episode is it doesn’t have to be the place we get all of our wants met. I think a lot of us want to have a person that is meant for us. We want to believe that there’s someone that’s made for us. They have this perfect person or this idea of a soulmate. The truth is we can decide what we want from our romantic relationships and then what else we want in terms of connection and where else we will get that, and how to really plan for that and think about that consciously, instead of letting that be a haphazard beta condition thing.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, I teach about intimate relationships, especially marriage relationships, relationships where you’re living with someone. One of the things I like to offer as a suggestion is that you find someone to spend your life with, your time with who is easy for you to love and their only job is to be there so you can love them. Because when you have a relationship that’s based on love and only love, you always win. And the reason why I stated their job is to be there for you to love them is so that you can understand that you do not receive love from another human being, this is the unconditional love concept. Love is not something that is sent your way and absorbed into your skin. It’s not. It’s not even an energy that you absorb from the universe or somewhere ethereal. Love is something you feel because of the way you think, it’s an emotion. And your relationships with other people are based on how you think about them and what you think about what they think about you. It is not based on how they feel, even if they do feel love when they think about you.
Kevin Aillaud:
For example, when I’m with a woman and she feels love for me, if she experiences that vibration in the cells of her body that we call love, then she’s the one feeling it. And when she says, “I love you, Kevin”, she’s the one feeling the love. She says, I you, which means of course, when I think about you, I feel love. Now when she says, “I love you, Kevin”, if I think a thought like she loves me, this is awesome, I love her too, then I feel the love. If I believed that thought and if I think that thought, she loves me and I love her, then I feel that experience. But it requires my thought, always. It always requires my thought. And this is very easy to prove because sometimes in relationships, someone will be feeling love towards someone else and the other person will not feel that love. They will not experience that love because they’re thinking the thoughts that are creating a different emotion in their body. Think about that.
Kevin Aillaud:
You know that to be true. People can tell you they love you and maybe you don’t believe them, or maybe you don’t like them, or maybe you don’t care if they love you. And just because they love you and they feel love, it doesn’t transfer into your body just because they feel it. Your thoughts about them are what you feel in your body, which could be suspicion. If they say I love you and you don’t believe them, you might feel suspicion or doubt. Or you might even feel dislike or hate if that’s the way you think about them. They can love you and you can just simply not like them and not feel any love towards them at all.
Kevin Aillaud:
So if the person’s job that you’re married to, or you’re in a partnership with, if their job is just to be who they are in the world and your job is to love them so you can experience love, then all of a sudden you stop trying to control how they behave so you could feel happy or feel loved. They just get to be who they are and you get to be who you are, and you get to be loved for who you are. The concept of lovability is that you are 100% lovable, brother. Whether someone finds you lovable or thinks that you are lovable is based on their lovability, their ability to love you and nothing to do with you as a person. You are 100% lovable, period, all the time by everyone. How much you are loved in a relationship depends on the person who is loving you and their ability to love.
Kevin Aillaud:
So based on these concepts, sometimes I get the question, it’s like, “Okay, coach, so how do I pick who I marry? How do I know who I should be in a relationship with? And when I’m in a relationship, how do I know when to leave? How do I know when I get a divorce?” And my answer is always the same on this, it’s when you’re able to love someone and you’re able to be happy with someone no matter what, then whether you stay or go is based solely on what you want. And you can leave a relationship for no other reason than you want to. You don’t have to be in pain. You don’t have to think it’s a horrible relationship. You don’t have to wait for something to go wrong or something to go bad. You don’t have to be in a fight with your partner. They didn’t have to do anything wrong. You have the power, you have the ability to leave a relationship if you want to and you have the ability to stay in a relationship if you want to you. The choice is 100% yours.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, if you leave a relationship because you want someone to love you more, you’re always going to be challenged and you’re always going to suffer. If you leave a relationship because you want to be happier, you’re always going to be challenged by that because you’re expecting the other person in your life to provide that for you, which is impossible. It may seem as if someone is providing that to you because when you’re with them you find it easy to think positive thoughts about them and yourself, and that’s why you feel so much love. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. You just need to elevate your alpha to recognize what is really happening, which is your brain is changing when you’re in the presence of that person. That person isn’t changing how you feel directly. You are with the way you think.
Kevin Aillaud:
And I’m going to briefly mention the idea of being with someone and wanting them to be different than they are and wishing they did things differently and feeling like you have needs that aren’t being met. I used an analogy a couple episodes back with apples and steaks, the episode is The Illusion of Control, this can be one of the most challenging situations to be in because you feel like you’re in this relationship with this person and they’re doing things that you feel is making it very hard to love them. Maybe they’re showing up late to appointments, maybe they’re not giving you enough attention, maybe they’re spending too much time at work or spending too much time watching TV, maybe they’re drinking too much, whatever they’re doing. And when I make a recommendation, hey, just allow that person to be who they are, just let them be that apple in that analogy, that may be infuriating to you because you feel like you don’t want to be married to this person who’s doing this. And at the same time, you don’t want to get a divorce. So you think that the solution and the only solution is this person changing, that this person has to change so you can be happy.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, look, guys, I’m a human being, okay? I deal with the human condition as well. If we can control people, then let’s control people. If we can make our wives and our partners exactly who we want them to be so that we can be happier, let’s do it. I am on board 100%. The problem is it never works. It’s impossible. It’s a violation of the universal truth and it creates a lifetime of suffering. Now, I’m not suggesting that you don’t ask your partner or friend or other person that you are in a relationship with, I’m not suggesting that you don’t ask them for what you want. In fact, I always suggest that you do ask them for what you want. However, if they don’t do whatever it is that you want them to do, I’m suggesting that you don’t get disappointed, that you don’t get upset about it because then you’ve abdicated your emotional responsibility to that person behaving a certain. And 99 times out of 100, you’re going to be disappointed, especially if it’s something they’re not actively doing, because they need to be conscious enough to make the change that you’ve requested.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, of course you will notice some people are much easier for you to love than others, and I think this is one of the most fascinating things to dive into because it’s not about them that makes it easy to love them. And that is a concept that we’re going into in depth in the Spartan Academy, understanding why you want people to behave in certain ways. What is it you are desiring and are you going about it in the best way that you can? For example, guys, as I mentioned yesterday was my birthday, I’ll use that, if one of our desires is that someone surprises you with wonderful things on your birthday and doesn’t forget your birthday, and that’s really important to you, then the first thing I want to recommend is that you tell the person that it’s really important to you. You ask the person to do those things and then, and listen to me on this, you do not rely on them to comply. I feel really strongly about this because I think that there’s a lot of relationship situations where people end up compromising way too much and being miserable in a relationship where they’re having to do a lot of things that they don’t want to do and their partner is having to do a lot of things that their partner doesn’t want to do, and so there ends up being a lot of resentment.
Kevin Aillaud:
I’ll give you an example of this. If you want your partner to keep the house clean and go to bed with you on time and make dinner every night and tell you that they love you all the time, you can ask for those things. And if your partner wants to do those things, then it’s gravy baby, because what you want her to do and what she wants to do match perfectly. And it can go the other way around too. Your partner can want you to do things and the things that she wants you to do, you want to do, and so you have this beautiful want match of all of your wants and desires are happily coexisting. When this happens, it usually goes unnoticed because your brain just tells you a story like, “Oh, this person is perfect for me, and they were meant for me and they’re my soulmate.”
Kevin Aillaud:
Now let’s look at where the brain gets fired up. If you want your partner to do all those things and she doesn’t want to do those things, maybe those things don’t come naturally to her, or she’s not interested in doing those things, or she begrudgingly does them, they don’t feel right to her, they feel contrived to her, then you don’t have matching wants. Your wants are not the same as her wants and now she’s doing these things out of a sense of obligation. And then she’s asking you to do things for her and you feel compelled to comply and do them out of obligation for her. And then all of a sudden, you’re both locked into this relationship where you’re having to do things you don’t want to do for the sake of the other person. And so you both suffer a little bit because you’re in this relationship full of all of this compromise, and that is emotional bondage.
Kevin Aillaud:
I don’t recommend that you ever create a relationship based on obligation because the propensity of the negative thinking is so high and there’s so much of it that the resentment then gets perpetuated. Look at the model, look at the action line, look at the A line. If your A line is you’re doing something because of this other person is making you, which is not true, but that’s what your brain is telling you, you’re going to be doing that out of a feeling of maybe frustration or obligation or duty, and it doesn’t feel good. And that’s what you’re creating in your relationship. That’s the experience of the relationship. The F line, the feeling, is how you experience your relationship. And what I mean by feeling good is the emotion driving the action in a positive emotion.
Kevin Aillaud:
So here’s what I recommend. This is how to create alpha relationships. First, for those of you who are in a relationship already and those of you who are looking to be in a relationship, evaluate which of your wants match with your partner. The way you do this is you make a list of what you want in and from your relationship. I want what? Fill in the blank. Let’s just make a list. I want dot, dot, dot. Maybe you want physical connection, like touching and hugging and cuddling this much of the time. And maybe you want sex this much of the time, and maybe you want to travel this much of the time, and you want to have deep conversations this much of the time, and you want to have date night this much of the time, and you want this person to make meals and keep the spaces clean and texts you at lunch to say, you’re awesome. Whatever it is, just make the list of all the things that you want and what you do is you test that against what your partner really wants to do, actually loves to do.
Kevin Aillaud:
So, for example, you could say, “I love having sex once a day. That’s what I want in a relationship” And maybe your partner’s like, “Hey, me too. I love having sex once a day, too.” So that’s great, you have a want, they have a want, you have a match.
Kevin Aillaud:
Here’s an example from my life. I love to go out into the bush, I love to go camping, I love to camp, hike, fish, trap, track and I just love to be out in the wilderness. I really love it. Recently, I asked a woman to come with me on one of my trips out into the wild. Now that isn’t something she would do without me and she really had never done it before, but she was happy to do it. She was happy to do it because I wanted it. So that’s like, “Well, if you want to do it, then I want to do it” and that’s a good match.
Kevin Aillaud:
Another example of something like that is sometimes when people text me, I don’t always text them back right away, and so they’ll start to feel like I’m ignoring them or I just don’t care about them. And they’ll say, “Hey brother, would it be okay if you would just respond to my text? Just message received. Just let me know you got it.” And that’s not something that I would normally naturally do because it’s just not something that I do. I read a text and I put my phone down and I go back to what I was doing without responding. But I’m happy to do it if someone asks me to do it, of course I’ll do that. No problem. It’s not out of a sense of obligation. I don’t feel resentful about it. I’m happy to do it. That’s another match.
Kevin Aillaud:
So for a very quick recap on these matches, there’s wants that you both naturally want and then there’s wants that you ask for that the person is happily wanting to do for you because you asked them.
Kevin Aillaud:
And then there’s things that you may want your partner to do that they don’t want to do or your partner may want you to do that you don’t want to do, and then you don’t have a want match there. I want to travel internationally twice a year, minimum. Each trip I want to be around 30 days, at least. I like to go over a month when I go international. One of the women I dated didn’t like to be away from home for more than two weeks, she started to feel homesick. She got really miserable. She got really sad. She had no desire to be away from her home, her apartment, her space for more than a couple of weeks, more than 14 days. There’s no match there. So when you look at what you want and where it matches with what your partner genuinely, authentically wants, you could see how many connections that you have there and you can see how many matches that you have there, and it will help you align with each other.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, if you’re just dating someone, it’s a really good way to be open and honest ahead of time before you make a commitment. Honesty and courage is the alpha way. So you can say just right in the beginning, “Hey, these are the things that I really want in a relationship. Are these things that you really want to give? And will you please be super honest with me of the things that you’re not into and that you’ll probably do in the beginning of a relationship, but then ultimately you’re not going to want to do them because you don’t want to do them.” What happens is when you have this honesty with each other and you talk about the amount of matches that you have, if you have very few matches, like your partner wants a bunch of stuff that you don’t want to do and you want a bunch of stuff that he or she doesn’t want to do, you run into this problem where you’re always both going to be wanting and you’re going to need to get those wants and you’re going to fulfill those desires in other ways. And so you have to know what your deal breakers are. You have to know what’s important to you. Brothers, you have to know yourself.
Kevin Aillaud:
The way not to approach this is to say, “Well, look, my deal breaker is I need to travel internationally twice a year for at least 30 days each trip. And so, because that’s a deal breaker, you have to do that with me or I don’t want to be with you.” Because like I said, making someone do something they don’t want to do as part of your relationship, out of a sense of obligation or threat, is going to disconnect you rather than connect you. And let me interject this teaching point here because I’ll have students say to me, “I want to have sex with my partner three times a week, because I want to feel connected to my partner” and I want you to hear this because what I say to them is, “But if they’re doing something they don’t genuinely want to do, you’re increasing their disconnect because they’re feeling obligated and threatened to do something. That’s the opposite of feeling connected to you.” You see, if you want them to do something, to feel connected to them and them doing it out of obligation, or threat, or duty makes them feel disconnected from you. You are working against your own desires to be connected to them.
Kevin Aillaud:
If you want to feel connected and you want them to feel connected, it comes from that authentic place. And if there’s something that doesn’t match in terms of your desires, there’s always ways for you to fulfill those desires and needs. And maybe it’s finding someone else, but maybe it’s finding another way for you to take care of that need for yourself. And I have to say that I think it’s important to have some major want matches. I think if you’re interested in being in a committed relationship where there is complete commitment of monogamy, that’s a really important want match. I talked about this on the previous podcast episode, if someone’s not interested in a monogamous relationship and you are obviously that’s going to be a huge challenge. You can threaten them and you can force them, but if that’s not their true desire, there’s going to be conflict in the relationship. So I think recognizing what your deal breakers are, what are the most important things to yo, and then what are the other things that you want that you may not get from your romantic relationship but you could get in many other ways from many other relationships.
Kevin Aillaud:
So first and foremost, in creating alpha relationships, you need to know what is it you want and why? And, do you like your reason for wanting that? A lot of times, if we have wants and desires that are based on insecurity, what we’ll find is that it won’t matter if the person is willing to do those things or not. It will never give us the effect of feeling secure if we haven’t done the work on our own insecurity. So that’s why it’s really important to ask what your desires are, but also why are they there? Are they coming from an abundant place? Are they coming from a place of healing? Are they coming from a place of growth? Or are they compensating for some work that you still have yet to do in your life, in your own mental dramas?
Kevin Aillaud:
I know for me, when it came to romantic relationships with women, I had a lot of work to do on what I thought I needed and what I thought I wanted because it was based on my fears and my insecurities that had nothing to do with any of the women I was dating. But there was no way at the time that she or anyone else was ever going to be able to solve those problems for me no matter what they did. And so I did the work on myself and I really healed those parts in me and then made it so that it wasn’t even a want anymore that I needed from someone else. It was something that I was able to provide for myself from a place of security. So if there’s something that you wish your partner would do, it would be so great if they would do it, I want to encourage you to ask them if they would want to do it, not if they would do it, but if they would want to do it. Would that be something fun for them?
Kevin Aillaud:
And be truthful with yourself in how they answer the question. It’s not a good reason to be disappointed or upset or frustrated and sometimes you may be really surprised. They may be like, “Totally, I’ll do that. That’s no problem. I love that.” Or they may say “No, that doesn’t feel good to me. That doesn’t feel right to me” and that’s okay too. You can find another way to meet that need.
Kevin Aillaud:
I recently did this work, what I want at this point in my life. I’ve done this a lot. I’ve done a lot of want journals and included a lot of things that I already have and included things that I don’t have yet. And some of the things that I want, because I’m really good at my own self-care and taking care of myself, I know how to find them. And what I mean by that is I know how to find people that want to do those things too. I don’t only satisfy all my own needs with myself. The goal is not to be your own best friend and be your own mate and be in your own tribe and live in a cave somewhere by yourself. That’s not the answer. I mean, you do want to be your own best friend, but that is another concept altogether.
Kevin Aillaud:
The answer is if I really want someone that I can have an intellectual debate over mental health or religion or politics with, if that feels important to me, I don’t want to be mad that my partner doesn’t want to do that with me. I don’t want to be frustrated that I wish she was more involved in mental health so that we could have the conversation because that just creates a wedge in our relationship. That doesn’t make any sense. But I still have that want, so I don’t have to go without just because my partner doesn’t want to do that. I can go find someone that’s totally into mental health just like I am, a friend or a mentor or teacher or student, and this amazing full life where I’m taking care of a lot of my own needs, my relationships that I’ve chosen and created are taking care of a lot of my needs, and the collective of all that is perpetuating my desire for even more for myself and for my life. And I want to offer this perspective to you and this way of looking at your wants and thinking about your wants and asking for your wants from a place of abundance.
Kevin Aillaud:
There are so many people in the world, your brain is looking at this one person. And if your partner doesn’t want to fulfill a want or doesn’t want to follow through on something that you want, don’t stop there. Find other ways to get your desires met. Obviously you must stay committed to the promises that you’ve made in terms of you don’t want to say to your partner, “Well, I’d like to have sex three times a week and you only want to have sex twice so I’m going to go off and find it with someone else. I’m just going to go find someone else if they want to have sex with me that third day.” If you have a commitment to monogamy, that’s not going to work. But if you ask yourself, why is it that I want to have that third night of sex? Why is it that I want that? What is the underlying need? And is there another way for me to fulfill that, whether it’s with my partner or with someone else? You’re going to start noticing that your self-care will just go up a level and you’ll start feeling so fulfilled and so motivated by all of the alpha desires within you.
Kevin Aillaud:
I believe that our desires are our roadmap to the life that we’re meant to live. I believe that just like pain is a part of being human, desire is a part of being human also. And when we clean out all the false beta desires and we tap into our true alpha desires, we have a map for where our life is supposed to go. And so I want to recommend that you honor those wants and find your want matches out there to be able to create the most fulfilling alpha relationships and the deepest connections that I think are possible for us as humans. That is how we live the life we are meant to live. That is how we live our alpha life.
Kevin Aillaud:
Brothers, if creating amazing relationships and fulfilling the life you’re meant to live is something that you want, there is a place for you to learn that process. Go to the AlphaMaleCoach.com and click on the menu button, work with Kevin, to find The Elevated Alpha Society, Spartan Academy. You can enroll right now and begin your cognitive mastery and emotional ownership training to begin to create the relationships of your dreams. I am looking forward to working with you in the Academy and until next week, elevate your alpha.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset at the AlphaMaleCoach.com/unleashed.