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Podcast 400: Relationships and Growth – Part 1

Healthy relationships are just as important as a healthy body and a healthy mind. Spencer Feldman, the author of four amazing (and free!) e-books we are going to introduce to you, says: “We want happily ever after, but our DNA has other plans.  It pursues its goal of maximizing genetic diversity by manipulating our neurochemistry and thus how we feel about our partners.  To regain control of your romantic destiny, you’ll need to understand the three phases every relationship goes through, the neurochemistry associated with each phase, and the counter-intuitive actions we need to outwit our DNA and get to our own Happily Ever After.” Listen to Spencer and Martin chatting about the importance of healthy relationships and personal growth in this two-part interview!

MARTIN: Hi everybody! This is Martin Pytela for the Life Enthusiast online radio network! Today I have Spencer Feldman with me, I would say he is a dear friend by now. Spencer supplies us with products by the brand Remedy Link, which you will appreciate. They are phenomenal detoxification and energy raising tools. But today I thought we would try and explain that most of us are multifaceted human beings. Spencer is no exception. One of his facets is that he is a writer and he has written several eBooks that he has published on a website called Spiritual Secret Agent, and I would like to ask him a few questions about that. Spencer Feldman, welcome to the show!

SPENCER: Hey, thanks for having me, Martin. Nice to see you again.

MARTIN: Hey, you sound so low key as if you took some relaxing substances.

SPENCER: Yeah, yeah, I’ve been working on keeping my cool and staying relaxed, so yeah.

MARTIN: Oh, so this is actually intentional! You are just simply doing a cool dude thing.

SPENCER: Well, you know, it is a meditative practice. You just try to remember that you are here to keep your calm and help other people.

MARTIN: Well, I am sure we will get the conversation to that part as well. What popped into my mind was seven years ago, I got seduced by this advertisement that talked about meditating like a Tibetan monk with this gadget, and the gadget was some kind of a set of flashy LEDs that you put over your eyes, and some kind of sounds that you play into your ears. I brought it home, set it up, turned it on and said, okay, show me what that is like. And so I thought, well, can I try medium setting, then I tried deep, then I tried the ultimate and I am thinking: what’s up? It is just regular meditation, I do this every day!

SPENCER: You know what you might like if you ever have a chance to try? Lucia light and sound machine. If you ever get in front of one of those, that is an interesting experience, that can definitely put you into some interesting states. But yeah, you know, at the end of the day, it is just calming down your nervous system and relaxing you.

MARTIN: Well, I am naturally very keyed up. In my studies of metabolic typing, I came across the fact that some of us are in the acidic, sharp twitch or fast-twitch rapid response, more on the sympathetic side of things, and others not so much. They would be on the other side, more on the parasympathetic, more relaxed, slower. Of course, most advertising these days is done in the keyed up hot to trot, stress, respond now, because if you don’t, you miss out on life kind of way. So talking to you right now I am thinking: oh, okay, let me see, maybe I can just ratchet it down a few notches.

SPENCER: Well, my attempt to ratchet it down initially was trying to figure out what parts of my life were not working properly. And the first thing was I did not have relationships figured out. So I know you thought it might be interesting for us to talk about that. So we can talk about my first book, which is my way of trying to resolve and unravel the whole relationship thing.

MARTIN: Yes, that would be good. So let’s just talk about Spencer Feldman, the writer. I find it fascinating that you have decided to just give this away for free. It is an unusual act of kindness and generosity, where Spencer just pays it forward. So SpiritualSecretAgent.com, go there, you will see three eBooks available for free, the first one is called The Four Gifts, the second one is An Invitation To Kingship, and the third one is called Purifying The Five Elements. Spencer, which one did you want to talk about first?

SPENCER: Well, they happened in a sequence, so I suppose we could talk about them in the same sequence, so they are understood. So, alright. Most marriages don’t work, you know, around 50% of marriages fail. And the ones that don’t fail, a lot of them become sexless or they are just in it because it is too difficult to deal with what the divorce entails, and there are kids. There are of course good marriages, but they are not as often as we’d like to see in our society. Second marriages fail more than the first, and third marriages fail more than second. So it is not like we get any better at this. There’s a huge number of people, I don’t remember the percentage, that would cheat given the opportunity if they knew they couldn’t get caught.

MARTIN: Here is an interesting thing I would like to stick in between what you are saying. In my studies I’ve come across the fact that there are two kinds of people. The ones that value variety, and the ones that value stability, and ones will value intimacy, and the other ones not so much.

SPENCER: So let’s talk about why that happens, right? Because you know, you are right, there is this need for variety. I am going to come at this from a neurochemical standpoint. The variety you could say is dopamine, there is a drive for that. So let’s see if we can unravel what that is and how we can satisfy our partners and ourselves without necessarily having to break up a relationship. Let’s find out what is going on. 

So this is what I came to. You know, in some parts of the world like India, they still have arranged marriages, and the bride and the groom may not even meet, the first time they meet could be at the wedding ceremony. And they are thinking: Oh gosh, what is this person going to be like? But we are all in arranged marriages in a sense, and what I mean by that is it is arranged by our genetics. I’ll give you an example of how this works. Let’s say that a woman, just before the black plaque, had five children by five different men. That means each of her five children had a slightly different genetic setup, and let’s say her neighbor was only with one guy and had five kids with one guy.

There is a greater likelihood that the woman with five different children from five different men will have one of her offspring survive the black plaque than the one that had five kids with one man. Because there is greater genetic diversity. So just from an evolutionary standpoint, we are the descendants, the survivors, of people who were more genetically diverse, who wanted that variety, that is how it codes in, because that is what won the war of evolution. People, male or female, who had the most variety in their sexual partners had the greatest chance of passing on their genes.

MARTIN: So are you actually saying that we are naturally pre-selected to want to be spreading our seed wide?

SPENCER: Right, and it happens in different ways for men and women, we will get into that.

MARTIN: The words that come to mind are that “opposites attract.”

SPENCER: Yeah, exactly. So what we have are genes that are saying: hey, go sleep with as many different people as possible! It is a balance between two things. For instance, a man who slept with a lot of partners, but didn’t protect any of them, his offspring didn’t survive as well. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of years ago, when it was dangerous, a woman who was pregnant might not survive her pregnancy; she was vulnerable if there wasn’t a guy with a spear and ax by her side. So the guy who just slept with as many people as possible was not necessarily the best. The guy who slept with one woman was the best, but the guy who slept maybe with a few different women and stayed with them and protected them for a little while, his genes carried on.

SPENCER: Now, of course, you’ve got things like Genghis Khan, who raped God knows how many women and his genes are everywhere. But if you go back farther, I think that there’s a balance between family and promiscuity, and I think we’re coded for that. So this is what I think happens: the DNA wants us to make children with somebody, to have a family unit, stay functional for about two years, and then go on and make kids with somebody else. Serial monogamy is basically what we are coded for, one person after another, but maybe a little variety. And I am going to explain why I think that happens and how we can outsmart our DNA, which is playing this game on us. It does this by giving us a series of neurochemicals. The first one is PEA, phenylethylamine.

It is two steps off away from methamphetamine, and like any amphetamine, it causes an inability to think clearly, addictive behavior, and pleasure. So when we meet somebody for whom we are genetically matched, we call this the infatuation stage. If you are addicted to a substance, it is called dependence. But if you are addicted to a person, it is called codependence. So the relationships start off with this very strongly addictive substance, and then it hangs around for about six months, long enough for the pregnancy to occur, and then it starts backing off, and it has to because junkies don’t make good parents. So what happens is in the next phase we would go into the oxytocin, and now it is more loving and sweeter and more affectionate and really just the family vibe.

MARTIN: Bonding and stability.

SPENCER: Exactly, exactly. And that hangs around for two years-ish. Some people get more, some people get less, and it is long enough to make sure that the baby is now a toddler, it can kind of function a little bit on his own, and then that starts to wear off. And then the DNA says: okay, we need to switch gears again, and we need to break this relationship up, so we can have genetic diversity. The kid is old enough now, it can move around on its own, and then you get either cortisol or prolactin, which can either be anger or hopelessness. So when I say that we’re all in arranged marriages, that is arranged by the DNA.

Now in a traditional arranged marriage, you don’t get to know each other until maybe the wedding and then you get to know your partner. Genetically, you get to know the person in three stages. You know the PEA version of you and them together, the infatuation, that is the first third, that is really nice and very enjoyable. And people who think that is love, well, when that wears off after six months, they go and find somebody else. You know, they are PEA junkies, if they are not infatuated, they don’t think it is love. And then you get to meet the next third of their personality, which is the oxytocin, the gentle, supportive, loving, kind, forgiving, all those great things. And then you get to finally meet the last third of their personality when the DNA starts creating separation signals. And then you get to meet the hopeless or the angry or the nasty side of somebody. So it is an arranged marriage in the sense of not really meeting the person in their entirety, until a little later on.

So let me express how these things play out in a funny way. Let’s say the man snores. And one woman talks to the other woman, she says: “oh, your husband snores.” And the other woman goes: “no, I never noticed it.” When you are a PEA stage, you cannot see imperfections in your partner. They are just not there.

MARTIN: Or else you call it endearing.

SPENCER: Well, that is the next stage. The first stage is you don’t even see it, you can’t notice it. The second stage is: “hey, your husband snores!” “Yeah, that is adorable, isn’t it wonderful?” And then the third stage is: ”is your husband still snoring?” “Yes, and if he doesn’t stop, I am going to smother him with a pillow one night.” It is the same guy and the same thing the guy is doing, but the woman’s perception is changed, chemically.

MARTIN: Yeah, in love and out of love.

SPENCER: Right. So what I want to talk about now is how we can kind of take the gears back, take control back of our neurochemistry, perceptions, or feelings from the DNA. So let’s start with the oxytocin. This is the state that you can stay in the whole marriage long. You can’t stay in the PEA stage the whole marriage long, even if you could, I will show you some tricks to bring it back.

MARTIN: By the way, we actually have a supplement for oxytocin, it is based on hops extract. It actually really kicks up the oxytocin quite effectively.

SPENCER: Yeah, I’ve sniffed oxytocin for six months, I was taking a nasal aid three times a day, it was a very profound therapy for me. So a little bit about oxytocin. You are supposed to get your first oxytocin hit during childbirth, but if the mother is given a painkiller, for example, because of a cesarean section, then there’s no oxytocin rush that goes to the baby, that is supposed to be just flooded, that has the baby and the mother fall in love, and tells the baby everything is safe and good and loving. If you have a difficult childbirth sequence, either from drugs or a cesarean, or just a hard birth, and you don’t get that rush, a person never really gets their oxytocin system set properly. Or if it was set properly, but they were traumatized in war or any form of abuse, any trauma, it can get broken. So not everybody has their oxytocin system working and sometimes you need to jumpstart it.

Now, the way in which you can raise oxytocin, we learned that from the primates. Primates groom each other, an enormous amount of time, 10 times more than they need to for hygiene. So why are they doing it? Why are they constantly grooming? If you study primates, you find out that the grooming, which is picking out twigs and bark and bugs and scratching and rubbing and stroking, it raises oxytocin. And it is how the primates maintain their bonding structure. So animals will stroke each other, and apes will groom each other as an apology, as a way to strengthen bonds, as a way to carry favor. And think about what you are saying when you are an ape or a chimpanzee, and you sit in the forest and you are grooming one another, you are basically saying: it is more important for me to groom you, than it is for me to eat, sleep, have sex, or watch out for predators behind my back. So you are really telling this animal you love it.

MARTIN: You know, this reminds me of the acts of service that we do, right? A method by which we spend a lot of time serving others. It is sort of sublimated, right? It is not the same direct bonding experience, but it is just the fact that we are there for the other person in that sense.

SPENCER: Yeah! So the first thing is to understand that oxytocin has a very short half-life, we are talking minutes. And our disconnected society, where everything is on Facebook, and even this conversation, it is important that when you are in contact with your partner that you reach out for physical contact, stroke… you are walking by your wife in the kitchen, stroke her hair, give her a little touch on her butt, give her a little rub on the shoulder. Just let her know that you love her, you are touching her, you are bonding to her. When you are passing your husband, maybe he is doing some late night work on a computer, come by, run your fingers through his hair, maybe knead his shoulders a little bit. It is that constant physical contact that keeps the oxytocin going. And because it has a short half-life, it takes a lot of physical contact to keep it going.

So that is the oxytocin. Then there are the other two, right? Because remember, the DNA doesn’t want you to have kids with the same person over and over again, so it has got to get you to go elsewhere by raising neurochemicals that either knock up your sex drive, which is prolactin, or make you a lesser version of yourself, so either you don’t mind cheating, or the other person doesn’t want to be with you, which is caused by cortisol. So oxytocin is honesty and generosity and love and affection and forgiveness and kindness. Cortisol is the exact opposite. Oxytocin is the angel on one shoulder. Cortisol is the devil on the other. People have cortisol issues all the time, if you get hungry and you start getting irritable, that is cortisol. When a woman is getting PMS and she gets really upset, that is cortisol, we have all experienced it. Yeah. And the challenge of the cortisol is it lasts a long time, once it gets triggered, it is there for hours.

MARTIN: Again, I need to butt in here, because we do have a herbal preparation that is called Cortisol-Ease, that actually discombobulates the cortisol in a fairly short amount of time. So if people find themselves stressed, or angry, or just keyed up, like you are describing, they can take a hit of this herbal tincture, and drop their cortisol levels. If they want to still keep that relationship going, or else give into it and ride the wave.

SPENCER: Yeah, phosphatidylserine will break down cortisol, there are ways you can do it, but the best thing to do is just not to make it. So here are a couple of things about cortisol. Don’t let yourself get hungry. Not everybody is going to react to it, but if you are the kind of person that gets irritable when hungry, that is cortisol. So, you know, be mindful of that. What else can you do? If you are in a cortisol state, don’t talk to your partner. If you are in cortisol and they are in cortisol, even if it seems like you really want to resolve whatever is going on right now, it is the worst time to talk. Just say: “you know what, I am spiking cortisol, you are spiking cortisol, if we talk now it is going to be a fight. I get that it’s important that we talk about this, but let’s address this again later.” It takes a lot of discipline because you want to fight, you want to argue about it. 

The other neurochemical is prolactin. Not everybody goes through prolactin. That is pronounced when someone is kind of sad and depressed and hopeless. And I’ll explain this on a rat study. You put a rat in a cage, and the rat doesn’t like it, so it is going to fight and hiss, and be angry. At a certain point in time, the rat is going to realize it is not getting out, it is called learned helplessness, and the cortisol drops down and prolactin comes up. That is the state of hopelessness. If you put another rat in the cage and the two rats fight, the prolactin drops in the first rat because cortisol counters prolactin.

Here is another example, imagine an old couple, it is Morty and Edith. Edith goes to Morty and says: “Morty, what were we just arguing about?” He goes: “I don’t remember Edith, I don’t know what we were arguing about.” And she goes: “Oh, I remember! I can’t believe that you did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And Morty remembers and says: “Oh yeah! And then you did this and blah, blah, blah.” And they go back and forth. Why would anyone in their right mind want to be reminded about what they were fighting about? But they do! I think this happens because cortisol feels better than prolactin. So the fighting gets them both out of the prolactin stage into the cortisol, and anger feels better than depression.

MARTIN: So people will have angry sex with one another, right?

SPENCER: Yeah, you get the makeup sex. Prolactin lowers sex drive because the DNA thinks: hey, I can’t break up the relationship, at least I’ll make sure you don’t have any more kids until I can figure some way out of this. You can also go to drink a cup of coffee, it can raise cortisol and lower prolactin, so it can kind of shift you into that. But the idea is to get yourself back to oxytocin. Prolactin and cortisol have enormously long half-lives. Once we trigger them, they are in the system for a while. So it is really important to understand what it is that triggers them in yourself and your partner. So you’ve got the PEA, you’ve got the oxytocin, you’ve got the prolactin. 

Let’s kind of walk through what you might see. When two people are fighting and are building cortisol, that tit for tat kind of fighting, really, just walk away and come back later. Two people on prolactin, that is like the big chill, nobody is talking and both have got their backs turned to each other, just have a cup of coffee, start arguing a little bit, get the cortisol up just a little bit, then take a break and have some makeup sex. The other option you will often see is one partner is on prolactin, the other one on cortisol. This is where you will see a dominant versus submissive in a relationship, an abusive kind of relationship. One person is kind of ragging on the other, and the other is just taking it, whether they are male or female, doesn’t matter. And so what do you have to do? You have to learn how to be provokable and let me explain this. There was a tournament, a computer tournament in the 80s, by professor Axelrod. He put two computer programs against each other. He told a bunch of programmers the way the game will be played, so two computers meet and they are going to go back and forth in a few rounds. And if each of them chooses to be nice, they both get a point. If each of them chooses to be selfish, nothing happens. And if one is selfish and one is nice, the one that is nice loses and the one that is selfish wins big time.

So he said, all right, build your programs and build your strategies to see who wins. And one program just wiped the floor with all the other programs, and it had a couple of different strategies to it. The first strategy was: start by being nice. If you are nice, and the other program is nice, you pass and get points. The second strategy was if another program is selfish to you, be selfish back the next round. You are being provokable, you are teaching it not to mess with you. That way the other one will not take advantage of me. But then there was the third part, and it said: if you have both been stuck in a cycle of being selfish three times in a row, go back to being nice once. And it kept these vicious cycles from happening. And so what happened was this program beat all the other programs because it could be nice when the other program was nice, it could be provoked into teaching the other program it wasn’t a pushover, and it could be forgiving, saying: let’s start over.

So these are really the keys to relationships. You start by being nice. When the other person is selfish you call them on it, you are provokable, you are like: “hey, that is not really cool, I don’t like the way in which you just treated me or spoke to me or what you did.” And if it gets stuck in a downward spiral, you are going to say: “you know what? We are stuck in a downward spiral, we are playing tit for tat, how about we both forgive each other and start anew.” So that is the way out of the cortisol versus prolactin. It starts by being nice, being provokable. You need a little bit of cortisol, you need to be able to respond if someone is not being their best, and also be a little bit forgiving. I get more into it in the book, if you really want to get into the game theory of it.

The way in which men and women cheat is very different. There is hypergamy and polygamy. Now, this is the man’s version. He wants as many women as he can get, and think about it as a very small investment for a man. It is a huge investment for a woman to get pregnant, nine months with a baby, it can be dangerous sometimes, possibly dangerous childbirth, breastfeeding. For a guy, if he is not ethical, it is a minor investment. So for a man, his strategy is to have as many partners as possible. 

A woman’s first strategy is hypergamy. She doesn’t necessarily want as many as a man does, but she wants the best quality. So a man might have a wonderful woman, but he could still be attracted to another woman of the same or lesser quality, just because of that polygamy instinct going. A woman could be with a great guy, but if someone better comes along, it could trigger that for her, or if the man she is with now somehow starts to lose some of his luster, he is unemployed, he is gaining weight, you know, whatever, getting a beer gut, she could be attracted to a better man. So for women as a general rule, they want better, and men generally want more. It is quality versus quantity. Now, how can we keep our partners satisfied and suppress these two instincts? Well, you can say: “hey, let’s be polyamorous, and we can have as many partners as we want,” but the polyamorous community doesn’t have any better luck with the relationships than the monogamous community. They have just as many breakups. So we’re not really solving anything here.

MARTIN: To me, it sounds like they simply have some variety, but they don’t have better outcomes.

SPENCER: Well, you know, if you are going to be polyamorous, be prepared for a lot of time to talk, because you are going to have a lot of decompression time with your partner like jealousy and all sorts of things will come up. So there’s that whole different thing that comes up.

MARTIN: I certainly am well aware that there are multifaceted, dynamic relationships all around.

SPENCER: So basically what you are doing in polyamory is you are solving one issue, which is the variety issue, but then other issues come up, which is jealousy and all the dynamics involved. So what could we do to suppress the polygamy and hypergamy instincts, so that we can be satisfied and in sync with our own partners? Well, the way that the DNA does it is with PEA and oxytocin. When you are in phenylethylamine, you can’t see anybody else, there’s only one person in the world, it is your partner. And on oxytocin you love them so much, you wouldn’t risk hurting their feelings for something as silly as a fling. 

So I’ve told you how to raise oxytocin, let me tell you how to raise PEA a little bit. There are two aspects of it. One is called emotional transparency, and the idea behind that is this: they did these studies, where they put two people on a rollercoaster, and asked them to rate each other’s attractiveness before and after the roller coaster ride, and after the roller coaster ride, they were both more attracted to each other. Well, infatuation isn’t just PEA, it is also adrenaline, it is also dopamine, so there is a little bit of excitement and a little bit of novelty. So if you can create a date night where you have a little excitement and novelty – that is why travel is so romantic, or a motorcycle ride, or something new and exciting and maybe just a little hint of danger – that will give a little bit of the experience of infatuation, and you will be more attracted to your partner.

Now, the other thing, and this is really more for the guys, women are attracted genetically to the strong male leader, the alpha male, for a lack of a better term. And in animal groups there’s only one alpha male for every 20 males, the other 19 are beta, the support position. And it has to be like this because if you have too many alphas, they fight. And if you have too few, there’s chaos in the pack or the tribe. And this is also true for humans, right? But now in the world of one-on-one relationships, it means 19 out of 20 women are not going to be with a man that is naturally alpha, that is naturally a leader. And if you add into that the feminizing influences, all the plastics, and the soy, and the feminizing man-hating aspects of our social culture, which is now doing the opposite, it used to suppress women, now it is suppressing men, then you don’t see a lot of healthy male role models. 

And so the women end up being frustrated, and this is why sometimes a woman will go and cheat on her husband with a guy across the street, mowing the lawn, full of muscles and sweat. The lawnmower, even though he is a jerk, he is an alpha male, and it still triggers that desire. So let me give you an example of this. Let’s say the woman says to the man: “I’d like to go out for dinner tonight, where would you like to go?” And the man says: “oh, darling, wherever you’d like to go is fine.” Well, that is nice, but it is a beta response. It is supportive, it is kind, but the woman asked the man to lead. She said: “hey, you know what, I want you to take the lead tonight and make some decisions, I don’t feel like making a decision.” So she was being feminine and receptive, and he responded by being feminine. And there goes all the attraction, right? Boom, it is out. But if instead, he’d said to her: “darling, put on that beautiful black silk dress we got. I am going to make reservations at the French restaurant for seven, be ready.” Okay, that is what she wanted, right? So it doesn’t mean that you are an aggressive jerk, it means leading when leading is appropriate in a way that works. So the problem is, you know, there are so few role models for what it is to be a healthy alpha leader, healthy male, and there’s plenty of toxic alphas, the tyrants out there.

So the goal was for the guy to know: wow, she is asking me to step up and lead. So he not only has to lead, but he has to have the perception to know that she has been going to pilates, and exercising for the last few weeks and can now fit in that black dress. And she has been wanting to go to that French restaurant for a while, but she wasn’t sure if the finances could afford it. And also, if you are a leader, you have to have the ability to know what the right decision is for the group. In this case, it was the group of two. So that is the whole kind of relationship game as I see it. We’ve got the genetics setting up arranged marriages where you don’t get to meet your entire partner for several years, but if you understand how it is playing you towards maximum genetic diversity and not to be a happily ever after, if you know how to stimulate a little PEA on date night with, I mean, here’s a fun thing to do, when you are walking to that French restaurant, take turns with one of you closing your eyes and walking, the other holding your hand, and the person who’s got their eyes open, walk quickly and move them around. It is a little nerve-wracking, it is like a little bit of something new and a little bit of something dangerous, you will be surprised at how it can spice things up. For the oxytocin, it is groom, groom, groom. There’s one other thing I need to mention, it has to do with orgasms. Orgasms for the man are going to decrease testosterone, increase prolactin, and increase estrogen receptors. 

MARTIN: So the exact opposite of what a man is, right? 

SPENCER: Yeah. Women notice this, the guy who rolls over and falls asleep afterward, because he lost his testosterone and raised his prolactin, and it knocked him out. One of the most powerful ways to raise oxytocin is lovemaking without orgasm because there’s an enormous number of oxytocin receptors on the sexual organs. So what it means is getting very close, but not having an orgasm. And I invite the people that are watching this to experiment with us, to say to your partner, I want to try something different tonight, I am not trying to tease you, but I want to have a very long lovemaking session, but we don’t finish, and I just want us to see how we feel for each other. And what you are telling your DNA is you are kind of playing hard to get. The DNA is thinking: wow, this person is not letting me make a child with them. They must be out of my genetic grade, it must be out of my league. So by doing that, the DNA is like: wow, this must be a real catch, I am not qualified for them, I really have to try harder! So you can kind of trigger also a little bit of PEA.

And you will also find as a guy, if you are able to master that, you will have more energy in life. If you are going to try to do this, you have to have a woman who is on board, because if she is not paying attention to your breathing and slowing down when you ask her to, you are going to lose it. So my suggestion is if you want to try this technique, let’s imagine number 0 is no attraction whatsoever, and number 10 is having an orgasm. Number 9 is you are not having an orgasm yet, but it is imminent in the next 10-15 seconds. When you are learning this, try to stay around five for a little while, just so you can learn your breathing and your rhythms. It is a way to skyrocket your oxytocin levels. And as a man, if you can do this for a few weeks, you are going to find that your mental capacity, your physical strength goes up… I don’t think a man really knows who he is until he is gone a couple of weeks post-puberty without spilling his seed and letting his charge build.

MARTIN: Well, there are some spiritual practices around this. Just learning to indeed be with a woman, be in the act, but withholding it, withholding the spilling of the seed as you call it. 

(click here for part 2)

Note: this interview and the information provided is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with your medical professional(s) if you are dealing with a specific medical issue.