The Attachment Compass

A Guide to Stronger Bonds

Content

1. Intro
2. Dialogue
3. Styles and orientation
4. Oxytocin mechanisms
5. Neurology of attachment
6. Types of love
7. Introversion vs extroversion
8. Happiness and Longevity
9. Assortive mating
10. Infinite games vs finite games
11. Social isolation
12. Arena
13. Great divine
14. Proxies and litmus testing
15. Conclusion
16. Practices
17. Summary
18. Epilogue
19. Resources
20. Acknowledgements

Intro

The reason why I chose the word compass is that it is my hope and intention that this book can be used as a means to orient the attachment landscape. I’ve written it to bring a richness and depth, so the compass is as precise and whole as possible. In every way I can think of, it’s meant to foster a way of understanding the layers, dimensions, the models, and then the integrated practices of HOW one fosters and maintains attachment and bonds. Seeing my audience is largely men, and I’m a man, the vantage point and exploration is largely aimed at men, although there might be some value in here for women, perhaps they won’t connect with the manner of expression and how the information is relayed, however it would still offer something for them as a means to understand attachment at a deeper level. This exploration will look at different aspects and levels of attachment, whether they are romantic or non-romantic, friendship, parenthood, how bonding takes place, what it means to have a secure attachment, and of course, how to build and maintain these.

As usual, we’ll be relying heavily on Plato and, if you know my pattern by now, modern neuroscientific inquiries into attachment, all woven together to give you an extensive, multilayered overview of attachment. This article and framework aren’t aimed at making friends or finding a partner, or dating in general, rather, it aims to provide the exploration of how these bonds are formed in the first place, how to maintain them, how to nurture them, and how to navigate human nature. Why write this in the first place? Surely the space is saturated with it? Even though the space is most surely saturated, very little of it is integrated, there’s too much focus on the superficial and secondary (or really tertiary) aspects instead of the fundamentals, and rarely are there any practices involved that go beyond mere theoretical models, or the systematic when X happens say Y. Communication is important, but it seems to develop naturally when all these other aspects are addressed, especially in terms of one’s biology and neurology.

It’s important to note that this isn’t a guide to deal with high-conflict people or those with personality disorders. Attachment for them works differently in the sense that with an injured attachment, some of the practices I propose won’t be beneficial in navigating them. Socialization and attachment are complex, though as usual, they follow some general patterns. There’s far too much variance to go into everything that could be a part of this. And even though I tried to make it as expansive and fundamental as possible, it’s bound to miss certain elements and aspects. It’s my hope, however, that it aids in people’s learning process and practices that foster attachment. Additionally, it’s not about novelty or attempting to reinvent the wheel; of course, there might be new things here, but the point is to integrate everything into the format. I acknowledge that not everyone will take to certain sections, which is why it’s split into 3 parts: The dialogue, the framework, and the practices.

The intention is to make it coherent and cohesive, in approaching it like this, inevitably, there will be repetition and exploring the same concepts through different angles. So while you could jump over certain parts to get to what you need, it isn’t written in this way, even when it allows for it in a certain way. I think it’s important to acknowledge that this book isn’t necessarily a blueprint to fix your attachment, even when it could go a long way in doing so. Its intention, as I started off with, is to explore the scope and depth of attachment and provide the practices to foster, nurture, and maintain attachment.

Furthermore, I’d like to state and clarify that I’m neither a neuroscientist nor a psychologist, so the terminology will vary where I know the clinical terms and where I do not, I have used the terms I use with clients. My background is in coaching, which I’ve relied on heavily, plus the extensive amount of learning and self-study in regards to all these different fields, which I’ve integrated into a coaching lens, and admittedly a philosophical lens that is strongly tinted by the Platonic tradition. Furthermore, we’re picking up on general patterns and specific patterns that have to do with attachment, seeing we’re exploring things from multiple angles, expect iterations and certain things repeating as they feed back into the multiple angles. All of this is predicated on my way of sense-making, and others who might do it in similar fashion. So take certain things as provisional, and no matter the tone, not absolute or exhaustive (unless it is a bona fide mechanism, and then nature or god has decided for us). It walks you through a/the landscape of sense making through these different angles, from philosophy, psychology, biology and neurology.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
- Tolstoy

Dialogue

The Dialogue is a dramatization of sorts, in line with the Platonic tradition, or at least trying to aspire to touch its imitation as closely as possible. It aims to convey multiple aspects and layers/dimensions you will find throughout this article; it isn’t supposed to hit every mark of the framework, or the dialogue would go beyond its intended scope. Its purpose is to establish some general patterns and open this space for exploration in a defined/constrained setting. As such, not everyone will resonate with the story at first glance or initial analysis, though it does pave the way to set up the rest of the models, frameworks, and exploration that is to follow in depth.

Furthermore, in the dialogue, we will play with the aspects of love. Each one has more dimensions, levels, and interpretations than would fit the dialogue, so don’t take them as an absolute representation. Rather, as an aspect that has an amplified essence for the sake of the dialogue and the argumentation. Lastly, this dialogue, and the other ones I’ve created for these articles, are not meant to replace the Platonic-Socratic dialogues (If they even could, which to be honest, is quasi impossible), rather, they serve as an invitation, entry point and stepping stone to read the actual dialogues and contemplate their implications in your own life (the real work). I aspire to the ability to deliver a similar impact the Platonic-Socratic dialogues have, and as such, think of these as practicing that art (while I practice the art in an embodied sense through dialogue with clients, from which a lot of these ideas emerge). Regardless, this dialogue serves as the opener to our exploration, so without adding more, allow me to set the stage.

A note on the names: Faistos translates to “light bringer”. And Aphilodemos translates to: a man loved by none.

At the theatre at the crest of the bay at night, lit by braziers, torches, and candles. A tragedy is playing in the theatre. Aphilodemos and Faistos are present for the show. The tragedy that takes place is about a man who’s never known love, who, no matter how hard he tries, love evades him. Whenever he gets close, it recedes further, in an endless cycle. So much so that in the end, he goes mad and throws himself into the sea because he deemed himself cursed, never to know love. When the show concludes, Faistos enters into dialogue with Aphilodemos.

Faistos: “How did you find the show, Aphilodemos?”

Aphilodemos: “This tragedy touches me deeply, I must confess, I suspect I am cursed. and left wondering if I am unable to love, or perhaps am unlovable. Every relationship has been a tragedy. I seem to keep running into the same type of person and the same type of issues. By the gods, it is as if they took my liking and put him on stage, parading my sins and failings for everyone to see!”

Faistos: “This does sound troublesome, my friend.”

Aphilodemos: “I’m desperate Faistos, I pray and I pray, I make oaths to myself, not to chase my passions, to be temperate, to not share a bed straight away, and yet, my prayers are unanswered, I break all my oaths, I am consumed by my passions, temperance is nowhere to be found and I bed every woman I can as soon as our lips meet. Any woman who gives me a chance at a relationship turns out to be as unruly as the last one, so much so that after a few months, I can’t stand to be with them, but I maintain my poise, I swear I keep trying to make it work. I must be the biggest fool the gods have ever laid eyes on, and these women have slept with. Mind you, it’s not even about chasing the women, for in my relations I have not strayed, it’s that every relation seems to be a tragedy on repeat.”

Faistos: “These are dire circumstances indeed, my friend. I believe this is beyond my capacities as both a friend and a guide; however, if the gods are willing, let’s invoke their like and see what they offer in response, in the hopes that they can provide some clarity for us. And I pray that in this case, I too will be educated. Let’s invoke their like, and invite them to participate.”

Soft pink glowing motes appeared in the image, forming a beautiful young woman clad in a revealing silk dress that left little to the imagination. Her entire body emanated a soft pink glow.

Eros: “I am Eros, the goddess of desire. I see my favorite suitor has invoked my like. Most certainly, your silent prayers have fallen on silence, when your actions are offerings of worship to me, of which I am most pleased, my dear.” She twirled around and played with her hair gently, as she strode forward towards Aphilodemos, gently stroking his chest. Aphilodemos started to blush. Faistos made a curt bow to acknowledge her presence.

Faistos: “Divine representation of desire, irresistible Eros, your follower claims his prayers have not been answered, how do you stand on the matter?” Eros turned her head towards Faistos, a coy smile playing on her face.

Eros: “Surely his hidden prayers and true desires have been answered, women find him irresistible, those who were thought to be off limits, impossible to snare, prudes, or old-fashioned, he has converted most of them, save for a few pure of soul.” She giggled at her own comment on virtue. Aphilodemos attempted to keep his eyes in his skull as they kept scanning her body, and when meeting either’s gaze averted his eyes quickly as if to hide his shame. She took a few paces to inspect some hanging fruits on a tree nearby, caressing them gently. Aphilodemos had all but lost any awareness of the presence of Faistos.

Faistos: “You mean to say you know what’s in his heart?”

Eros: “Oh my dear! " she almost yelled in delight. What I know is definitely not in his heart,” which evoked an even heartier laugh and a toss of her long hair as the silken dress rippled with her movements. I didn’t have to take him at his words; I think his conquests speak for him,” she said as she gave Aphilodemos a knowing look, which once again made him avert his gaze.

Faistos: “Perhaps we acquire more assistance to help us look into the matter. Who else will answer his summons?” Faistos proclaimed to the aether.

Another swarm of motes made their appearance, glowing orange. Slowly, they manifested into the figure of a man wearing a toga who looked like an amicable late-thirties diplomat. He had sharp features, a strong body, and a comely appearance that hinted at distinguished service. He addressed all present.

Philia: “I am Philia, the god of friendship. I answer the summons as part of this tribunal of love.” He gave Aphildemos a disproving look, offered Faistos a respectful nod, and upon seeing Eros, conjured a scowl. “I see Eros has already taken charge of her favorite pet.”

Faistos: “Most esteemed Philia, we thank you for your attendance. How would you present your case, as you’ve surely heard the charges and misgivings of Aphilodemos?” Philia scoffed in response to Faistos addressment.

Philia: “His offerings and contributions are nil; Eros has him in the palm of her hand. No friend greeted or met, they all complain about how Aphilodemos is rarely available. Surely he gives credit to his name and confession. If he can’t bed it, he scantly has interest in it. These charges against him are weighty.” Eros walked a circle around Philia, swaying her hips, flipping her hair, not hiding the dismayed look on her face. Broke off from her circling and inspected the flowers nearby, bending over to get a closer look, Aphilodemos following her movements with his mouth open. “And look at him now”, Philia continued, “he barely shows any restraint.”

He said in an offended tone directed at both Aphilodemos and Eros. The actions of both spurred on his tirade. “He is worse than a fool, a complete rogue, overtaken by his basest nature. He would decidedly rather starve than give up chasing his pleasures. And surely this if this chase of vices would lead to the grave, it would still cause not the slightest hesitation or apprehension. But rather a willing commitment to die in ecstasy.” Eros slowly walking back to Aphilodemos, circled to his back, putting her head on his shoulder, hands wrapping around his chest, and tilted her head to signal her boredom at Philia’s tirade. Aphilodemos didn’t know how to respond to either god, one accosting him, the other coddling and spurring him.

Eros: “Surely a man is allowed his pleasures, Philia”. She remarked dryly.

Philia: “Did the Delphic inscription not warn us about nothing in excess?” He responded in disbelief.

Eros: “Reciting this dribble again, are you?” She replied with a sour tone. “You and your Apollonian cult have barely scratched the surface of what this world and I have to offer. You hide behind these aphorisms, frightened like little boys of a little taste of what Dionysis offers. Tell me, Philia, do you peddle this as courage? Seems like you’ve taken the image of a sophist instead of a diplomat.” She stuck out her tongue, and moved her hands closer to Aphilodemos’ groin in order to antagonize Philia further.

Philia: “Such slander, though I’m hardly surprised since seducation is surely your strong suit where argumentation is not.” Although he tried to maintain his composure, his remark came out through his teeth. “Neither was paying attention to what is important ever a concern to you, surrounded by pillows, liquor, and playthings.” He became livid when he saw her hands move down Aphilodemos, which stunned Aphilodemos to freezing in place. “You fondle him, coddle him, and play with him until your whims are satisfied and then he loses all meaning” Philias remarks made Aphilodemos heart run cold and stiffen up, Eros sensing this made an effort to press her body closer into his, stroking his hair as to soothe him.

Faistos: “By the heavens, Aphilodemos, surely you have sparked a battle which is beyond my capacities to fight alone. I pray we’re offered graceful guidance.” Faistos was at a loss with the vehement discourse between Eros and Philia.

As if on command, a third swarm of golden motes materialized and manifested the image of a golden glowing philosopher figure with a beard exuding paternal and guiding energy, with luminous, radiant features, strong and serene.

Agape: “I am Agape, the god of virtuous love. I’ve come to answer this summons.” He gave a hearty wrist clasp and shoulder pat to Philia, moved to Eros, took her hand, and kissed it as he bowed, conferring his respect to both of them. His eyes locked with Aphilodemos, revealing the glint of sadness. Turning to Faistos, he walked up to him and embraced him as if Faistos were his own son, then took a position at his side.

Faistos addressed Agape: “Most esteemed Agape, god of virtuous love, in your omniscient presence, you’ve heard the cases made by all who are present. What words of wisdom do you have for us?” Agape gently bowed in acknowledgement to the honor conferred upon him by Faistos and began his address to Aphilodemos, and by extension to the group.

Agape: “Tell me, Aphilodemos, as you are the subject here and it is your queery we are addressing, would you consider your acts acts of love?”

Aphilodemos: “They surely feel as such, or present themselves as such,” Aphilodemos said hesitatingly, feeling the pressure of the presence of three gods.

Agape: “Should we examine their likeness then, to see if they do not hide something from us?”

Aphilodemos: “Surely, I subject myself to the examination.” He said, as originating more out of succumbing to the pressure than sheer willingness to be examined.

Agape: “As Philia presented, tell me, what have you done lately for those whom you deem to be friends?” Agape addressed Aphiledemos and acknowledged Philia’s contributions to the conversation with a nod and a raise of his hand.

Aphilodemos: “I’ve brought them tales of bravery and unparalleled conquest, made them laugh, made them clap, made them holler with excitement. I believe I’ve brought entertainment and perhaps even the very roadmap to conquest.” A measure of pride and achievement was making it into Aphilodemos’ reply.

Agape: “So you find this enough as payment and service for all they have done for you? When you needed a loan, you received one. When threatened with legal action, they came to your defense. When threatened with violence, they came to your aid. When you had failed to keep your latest conquest, they rallied behind you, bringing cheer and camaraderie. When you found yourself without bed, they sheltered you. When they found you ill, they acquired a doctor. Are your services equal to theirs? Have you repaid kind with kind?”

Aphilodemos: “Surely I contribute something beyond such basic tasks? They have plenty of friends who would be able to take care of such things, whereas I am uniquely predisposed to bring cheer and joviality.” His building pride finally made it to the surface in this great pronouncement. His face revealed his pride confidently.

Agape: “Were you ever summoned for their wedding ceremony? Or to come to their defense in court? What about in battle, were you standing shoulder to shoulder? Did they ever require your aid or even desire it? If the situation demanded something beyond trivialities and frivolities, did they call upon you?” Agape’s brow frowned at the exuberant display of hubris.

Aphilodemos: “I… well, this…” He stuttered in the sinking realization that he had no answers, and try as he might, couldn’t recount a single instance of these situations for which he had been part either deliberately or by accident. “I concede to having not been called upon as such,” He eventually replied solemnly, the hubris all but wiped out.

Agape: “What of your conquests? Did you stand by them in times of sorrow? Have you stimulated their interests? Or even paid attention to them? Or perhaps facilitated progress in their life? Did you make introductions? Perhaps paid for education?”

Aphilodemos: “Surely they can’t expect all this from me?” Aphilodemos replied aghast

Agape: “Here we encounter exactly part of the problem, you perceive yet as a spoiled child, only looking at what you stand to gain from the relationship. How does one expect to have a long-lasting relationship leading to marriage and children without this investment, which would enable her to become a woman proper?”

Aphilodemos found it difficult to hide his anger at the insult. Shot Agape a look of both immense embarrassment, shame, and anger. Eros wrapped herself around his side and stroked the side of his head, whispering sweet words in his ears. Discombobulated, he started to formulate a reply: “This is not what they come to me for, nor why I seek them out.” He answered sternly, though his face revealed his consternation.

Agape: “This is exactly the point: you lust, you don’t love. You have no regard for the soul of your partner, nor your friends. Ask yourself: whom have you nurtured? Who have you made a better man, directly through your efforts, or indirectly by your mere presence? Who can say Aphilodemos is their anchor or their guide? There is no homing and anchoring, for you move omnwhim as the wind does, with no considering or second thought to either your conquest nor your supposed friends. Pray, tell me, where is this supposed to lead?” Eros merely held a blank expression as Agape made his proclamation. Faistos silently nodded along while Philia’s visage expressed agreement.

Aphilodemos refused to accept the verdict. “Have I not fulfilled my duty, or “imposed” role? To be granted status by bedding the fairest of our city? I was told I could not do the impossible, and so I have; no woman has escaped my charm. Women have begged and proclaimed me a god with my prowess. Have I not proven to be a man? I have loved many a woman, in my way.”

Faistos: “Does it matter she proclaims you god of the carnal pleasures, or that you are deemed the most handsome, when the praise never settles in your soul? Will a thousand more of these instances cure your hunger for the validation you seek? This is a bottomless pit, my friend, where the void won’t be filled with words nor bodies. Neither is pleasure a gateway to love, your conquests are proof of this.”

Aphilodemos looked questioningly and troubled, his eyes quickly darting between the gods and Faistos, as if looking for anything to settle this anxiousness.

Aphilodemos: “What about my conquests, do my friends mock me?” He asked tentatively, as if he was suddenly being crushed under the weight of the case made against him.

Philia: “My friend”, he uttered as dryly as possible. “They mock you for your triffles. You ask what about my conquests? As you have come of age, and the signs of youth surely diminish, they ask: so has he become a statesman? No. What about a craftsman? No. A general? No. Is he at least a good spouse? No. Pray to the gods, is he a good son? Not even this, for he fails to honor his parents by taking up a position proper to his age. Instead, he chases every whim, like a child.” This provoked a glare from Eros.

Aphilodemos: “what am I to do?” He cries out with the verdict now fully settling in his mind.

Agape gave Faistos a knowing look and a curt nod to inviting him to take the lead to offer guidance to his friend.

Faistos: “Follow me then, Aphilodemos, in the examination of the case of love. If a horse breeder loves his horses, he takes care of them?”

Aphiledemos: “Yes”

Faistos: “So this means providing for them, cleaning them, changing pastures, tending to their hooves, and similar practices?”

Aphilodemos: “Necessarily.”

Faistos: “What about a statesman, would he not make sure his charges were taken care of in a similar fashion? Access to trade, a safe city, an appropriate dispositioned mate, a worthwhile education, and everything else that comes with the tending of people and culture?”

Aphilodemos: “By the heavens, how can one disagree?”

Faistos: “And if a son cared for his parents, what would he do? Would we venture to say he would strive to make the most out of his parent’s investment, to pay them back by being a valued member of the city and contribute to its status, function and organization. Would that not honor his parents? And would he not vow to return the investment and take care of them in their old age?”

Aphilodemos: “By the gods, if it is not custom or law among men, then surely it must be divine law.”

Faistos: “Let’s not allow our point to slip away from us, remember where we started, at your behest, the gods have revealed their judgements of you. The greatest love is this one, such a parent has for his children, as the horse breeder for his horses, as the statesman for his flock. Surely they do everything in their power, as far as means go, to nurture them, strengthen them, and make them the best as possible. In their love, doing so dutifully, with patience and understanding, balancing a guiding hand with a stern voice. Neither failing to reproach where it is fitted, nor failing to praise where it is right. As such, it is not that you are incapable of love, it is that you have not truly loved because you have not taken your responsibilities, like any of our brave parents, horsemen, and statesmen would, to ensure the growth of those around you. And although this is most surely a failing, the greatest shortcoming is that you haven’t given the same consideration to yourself. For how can one expect to contribute and properly tend to others, when one does not even attend as such to oneself?”

Aphilodemos: “Then I find myself an absolute beast. I thought myself a fool, it is rather that I’ve acted like a complete rogue. I am ashamed, and truly see how the gods must have sent you as a divine sign as an answer to my prayers. So what can be done? Pray tell me?”

Agape: “You are no longer a youth, even for this we should make the case that this is trainable at early age, and those who had good upbringing shed their vices and compulsions faster. Renounce your base nature as the sole driver of your actions, seek to elevate your friends, hold your faith in god. As for you Eros, you are welcome, in the appropriate setting, aligned and anchored into virtue. For the desire for virtue is without question the highest form of desire. As such, he still requires your service” He looked at Philia in this addressment “All of our service, so that he is whole in his love and desire.” Indicating that even here Eros as a significant role to play, in collaboration with Philia.

Aphilodemos: “Though I must admit, how it is you have not disparaged me?” Aphildemos stated incredulously to Faistos, “I stand here friendless if it wasn’t for you.”

Faistos: “Because I see into your soul, as the gods have permitted me to do, and all you stand to become, there is no malice in your heart. And my aim is to support rather than chastize, for only the former affords change.”

Aphilodemos: “Then you are one that loves truly, I now see what before I was incapable of doing so. By the gods present and all the yet remain at Olympus, I vow to change my ways, and follow your edicts so I can find my way to virtuous love.”

As the motes of divine light faded into the night and Faistos left Aphilodemos to contemplate his vow beneath the theater’s flickering braziers, a question lingered in the air: What is this force called attachment that so shapes a man’s soul? The gods had spoken, Eros with her seductive pull, Philia with his stern camaraderie, and Agape with his call to virtue, and through their voices, we glimpsed the currents that draw us to others or drive us apart. Aphilodemos’ tale is not merely his own; it is ours, a mirror reflecting the triumphs and failures of our bonds, whether forged in passion, friendship, or duty. Yet, to understand attachment fully, we must step beyond the stage’s glow and into the architecture of the mind and heart. What began as a drama of one man’s struggles now demands a wider lens. Because beneath these struggles lie mechanisms, oxytocin’s embrace, vasopressin’s grit, that we’ll soon dissect.

As we’ll see, attachment is no simple thread; it is a tapestry woven from instinct, experience, and biology, stretching across our relationships with lovers, friends, kin, and even the unseen divine. To navigate it, we need more than stories, we need a compass. In the pages that follow, we’ll map its contours: the styles that define how we connect, from the guarded avoidance of some to the anxious clinging of others, and the orientations that anchor us—to ourselves, to those around us, and to the very fabric of reality. It will lay bare the layers and dimensions of biology and neurology that form these undercurrents of our behaviors and hard-wired need for attachment. For men, especially, who seek to master these bonds rather than be mastered by them, this exploration offers not just insight but a path forward, rooted in the wisdom of the ancients and the revelations of modern science. Let us begin.

Styles and orientation

Attachment doesn’t end with attachment styles, in the mainstreaming of it, that kind of seems to be the gist. Now that you know your attachment, you learn how to work with it. Which is certainly true in a way; however, the ideal would be to get to a secure attachment on all levels, and preferably in most of your relationships. Which is also what we’ll explore per level, as outlined in the table of contents and mentioned in the introduction and the dialogue.

Styles

By and large, the names are indicative of what is going on in the attachment. Instead of presenting clinical definitions, I’m outlining the most robust patterns within these styles.

Avoidant:
Avoids connection, avoids confrontation, avoids emotional vulnerability, is more likely to shut down and withdraw especially when emotions are high, is generally waiting for the other one to bridge the gap as a show that they are worthy of love like a sort of subconscious test to see if others “care enough” to break down their walls. The higher the emotions, and the less mature, the more the withdrawal will manifest as ghosting, which can be amplified by shame. They are the least likely to communicate emotions or deep internal landscape experiences, and thus will generally operate at a more surface level, also in how they express/show emotions.

Anxious:

This one is marked or represented by a social Damocles Sword. As if it comes down at any given moment, and out of nowhere, their partner leaves them, or doesn’t love them anymore, or isn’t attracted anymore, it’s marked by high neuroticism and distrust. They typically go into spirals with narratives of infidelity or exaggerated self-blame (especially when they are dealing with avoidant types). Seeing they’re insecure about the attachment and themselves, they need “constant” reassurance, and will tend to walk on eggshells with this impending sense of doom that if they do anything wrong or make any mistake, “it’s so over”. Setting boundaries for these people feels like a monumental task.

Disorganized:

This is a combination of the two previous styles, which tends to be the case with severe trauma and wounding, and seems to be the dominant style for people with personality disorders, especially narcissists (think hot-cold, push-pull, chase-reject). This makes dealing with them highly volatile, confusing, and difficult to predict. They also tend to move from one extreme to the other, like from love bombing to ghosting. This one is also marked by extremely poor self-regulation and asymmetric coregulation (meaning they rarely rise to the occasion to regulate their partner). They also have a tendency to weaponize intimacy.

Secure:

Both people feel safe and confident in sharing emotions, internal landscape experiences, setting and maintaining boundaries. They operate from an intention to understand and collaborate, and have balanced self-regulation and co-regulation, they are enable to integrate both positive and negative emotions. They co-regulate both sides of the spectrum, downregulation of negative states and upregulation of positive states. They are proactive about being on the same page and in sync, making the time and space to facilitate communication, connection, and intimacy.

Orientation of attachment

The way I see it, you have 3 orientations of attachment: Self, other, and reality. From there, each of these has complexification and differentiation. For example, which parts of myself am I attached to in which way? My article, The Path To Your Aspirational Self deals with exactly this extensively. For the other category that covers: people, objects, culture, religion, nation, and symbols. Reality would encapsulate Nature, God, the universe, and the scope of life.

You could make a sort of case that these attachment styles are also present in how you attach to other things like money, your health, or your body, etc. The common vernacular also indicates this because we talk about a relationship to money, a relationship to our body, I can’t think of a relationship that isn’t based on attachment, that being said, that’s not me saying that these styles are full blown or as dominant in these ways, rather that they could be present to a certain degree (like a spectrum).

Another orientation that’s a determining factor in attachment is the Peer orientation and parent orientation. Seeing that children come into the world knowing nothing, the parent becomes their axis mundi in a way, their guide to model and understand the world. Thus, they orient to the parent to be educated, shown and modeled what the world is like. There are stages of development that are critical periods for what happens in the malleable psyche of a young person until they’re reaching the end of their teens (and of course, factoring in dispositions, some stay and are more malleable than others for longer). Parasitization of these critical periods can happen due to peers (especially), but also due to parents who have been strongly influenced by society/culture/politics/religion.

Let’s, for the sake of the exploration, assume that the parents are healthy and in tune with higher order values and virtues, and due to certain circumstances their child loses the parent orientation and instead orients to their peers (which is a relatively common experience as soon as they hit high school, although we could and should argue that if these parents understand the importance of this orientation aspect, they’d actively structure and behave so that they maintain the primary orientation) then it is the dominant system and culture “raising” your children, as their peers will be usually tapped into it. There’s a contextual differentiation I think is warranted here, in that there is a natural process of orienting towards peers as you get into puberty, which has some value. So it’s not black and white, though, it stands to reason the main and dominant orientation should be the parent (considering it’s a healthy attachment), and typically, if it is a healthy attachment, that’s naturally the case. The book Hold On To Your Kids talks about this extensively, which is quite convergent with my experiences, and I’d argue the experience of my peers growing up in Belgium at the time. With school being what it was and our parents working, we had a lot of time to get oriented to our peers, and that became a competing attachment.

Let’s talk about these models of attachment to God in relation to how one perceives the divine/metaphysical dimension.. In Plato’s Timaeus, his Demiurge, the creator God, was neither directive nor punitive. He ensouled the planets and made the gods. From what I can gather, the Old Testament God is very punitive and directive/dictative (that’s from recollection and dialogues, there’s room here for error). I wrote this in my original framework for attachment: It's very common for someone with a punitive father to see the universe or God as punitive; they not only expect to be punished, they believe they SHOULD be punished. Someone who comes from a securely attached father sees the world, reality, and/or God as a nurturing presence, a benevolent facilitator who wants the best for you. That tells you something significant about the depth of attachment and how it alters the worldview. It alters how one sees oneself and others too. Someone who was acted upon and against expects their attachments to be filled with conflict. Whereas someone who grew up in a stable home with securely attached parents expects cooperation from others. The section The Great Divine will pick up on this exploration. None of this is absolute; someone’s relationship to god could be altered or salvaged if there were others involved in exploring and building that relationship.

Additionally, orientation is so plastic that a partner specifically can change all three orientations. First off, there is how you feel about them, how they make you feel about yourself (and/or see yourself), and how they make you feel about life/the world (sometimes even God). Curiously enough, we could make the same case for someone who finds God (using the term broadly, in terms of establishing a profound connection to the divine, sacred, and metaphysical). It’s more common to see this with a partner than with God, because being in love radically changes the brain, and thus our perception of the world, with rose colored glasses being what they are. I don’t think that profound mystical experiences are any less potent, not at all; it just seems that there’s less interaction with them, as people in the West have largely moved away from the practices that would induce these experiences (explored in depth in the Platonic Spirituality article).

Origin of Attachment

“Hell isn’t fire and chains, but simply being unable to love” - Dostoevsky

So, what is the origin of attachment and its effect on us? In Saposky’s book Behave, he offers a summary of John Bowlby’s Attachment and Loss:
“What do children need from their mothers (parents): love, warmth, affection, responsiveness (attention bids), stimulation, consistency, reliability. What is produced in their absence? Anxious, depressed, and or poorly attached adults. What’s the most basic thing provided by a mother? Knowing that she is happy you exist.” This is where attachment originates, although we could make the case that the attachment is already being formed natally as neurons of the baby land inside the mother’s brain, and the mother experiences love, warmth, and affection for her baby sometimes as early as they feel the presence. Prenatal and natal exposure to stressors and environmental toxins have an effect on the developing fetus, and thus the circuits that are about to be formed. As shown in many studies, if the fetus/baby is awash in cortisol and adrenaline from the mother, this leads to outcomes where the stress circuits in the child are more sensitive or more susceptible to stress.

I’m making this point because the critical period talk usually centers around the first few years after birth, which are, of course, very important, as we’ll explore shortly. However, the mother’s dispositions, prenatal circumstances, and natal circumstances/experiences set up a lot of the parameters that go into what forms in the child in what way. The intensity, frequency and duration of these stressors obviously matter, the ability to recover is the main factor, seeing stress is perceived and experienced differently. Which would already have an impact on all the factors that go into attachment: oxytocin, serotonin, vasopressin, dopamine, and GABA (all of which will be explored more in the upcoming sections). In these critical periods after birth, the rest of the circuits and propensities start forming for oxytocin and serotonin in terms of behavioral capacities later in life. Oxytocin deals with self-soothing (oxytocin will be explored in depth), and serotonin deals self self-regulation. Obviously, these are two major aspects of what we would attribute to maturity and the ability to attach, create, and maintain healthy relationships. Most people would attest that it’s difficult to have a relationship with someone who’s immature and has extremely poor self-regulation and a lack of self-soothing capabilities.

When there is positive attachment, as outlined previously, there’s also negative attachment and negative reinforcement. This is by no means uncommon, and I wonder truly (as it is the cause of much reflection for myself, my previous relationships, and at the time of writing, being single) if this has become the norm. In the book Behave, Sapolsky offers an insight into this negative attachment: “Why do we often become attached to a source of negative reinforcement, seek solace when distressed from the cause of that distress? Why do we ever love the wrong person, get abused, and return for more? Poor self-esteem, believing you’ll never do better. Or a codependent conviction that it is your calling to change the person. Maybe you identify with your abuser and oppressor (trauma bonding), or have decided it is your fault and the abuser is justified, so they seem less irrational and terrifying.” If you ask, “well, how can this be?” Primarily because attachment has evolved to ensure that the infant forms a bond to that caregiver, regardless of the quality of care received. That’s how crucial attachment is to survival and life as a whole. As such, it’s better to survive in a hostile environment than not survive at all, that’s a very strong mechanism that tends to play out in adulthood for those who come from these experiences and environments. It’s an exceptionally difficult “setting” to resolve because it is wired so deeply and formed so early, which explains largely why so few make it out from this properly, and it also becomes the grounds for personality disorders.

Additionally, the savior complex seems to largely spring from this: when there were very acute times and or chronic times where a healthy adult should have been present, jumped in and protected them, but either didn’t or was absent (or worse, was the perpetrator), it tends to create this subconscious need/desire for a savior, to be saved whatever is the current perceived (or actual) threat to survival. These profiles also tend to turn to saving or a desire to be a savior, seeing that they had to “save themselves” and want to save others from their suffering. A noble intention with a lot of pitfalls, drawbacks, and fallout.

In essence, it’s unresolved and unaddressed attachment injury and/or attachment betrayal that then gets brought into their relations overall, muddying their filters for who to approach and bond with, in a way, trying to recreate the dynamics of the past and attempting to resolve them. This pattern of recreating these “old” injured dynamics is coined compulsion repetition. Very often, they repeat the same behavioral patterns with their partners, so even if the partner differs, the relationship dynamic is the same; ergo, they keep repeating and recreating the same relationship over and over again. Compulsion repetition is a general mechanism induced by adverse childhood experiences, which can be expressed acutely or subtly. That’s why we’re focusing extensively on patterns of behavior here, because arguably that’s the way with the most potential to expose what is latent in the psyche.

There’s a level of complexity to compulsion repetition that has to do with the modeling of behavior, and the way I see it, there are 3 models present:
1. Parent-parent model: How they behave with each other.
2. Mother-child: How the mother behaves with the child.
3. Father-child: How the father behaves with the child.

Seeing that introjects are formed (the neurological networks that represent these models), it seems reasonable that these are different models, even though they obviously have feedback loops between them and overlap of behavioral outcomes, which feeds into the overall attachment model.

If we’re sticking to the analogy of a compass: when a parent is out of the picture, you’re missing a part of the compass. This obviously takes place on a spectrum, so this can also mean emotionally unavailable, emotionally unstable/volatile, neglect, inconsistent, to anywhere to present and the varying degrees and expression of abuse physical and psychological. On the flipside, the better the parents and the attachment, the better the compass in terms of both situation where you are and the ability to navigate the attachment space (toward a secure attachment).

Summary

• Even before we are born there are many factors that influence attachment and the need for it.

• We come into being with the need for attachment, as part of the survival mechanism, part of what makes us human beings at large.

• Orientations matter in terms of both style and perception of attachment

• Styles aren’t the end-all be-all, but they are important to understand.

• Attachment is a double-edged blade, it works for the good and the bad of both our behaviors and the type of people we seek out or attach to.

• Compulsion repetition (repeating childhood dynamics) can be present to varying degrees.

• Self-soothing and self-regulation are built natally and in the early critical periods.

• Prenatal exposure and parental dispositions matter greatly in terms of impact and influence on the child’s neurological systems that deal with attachment (and everything else).

• Poor self-worth and self-esteem issues influence attachment perception.

Oxytocin mechanisms

We’ll be looking at oxytocin here primarily, but bear in mind that it’s an interplay between hormones, neurotransmitters, and neuropeptides that form our ability to bond. We’ll look into the integrations with other neurotransmitters in the neurology section. So consider this the springboard to that. I’ve relied on Jack Schroder’s threads, and asked his blessing to use his material for this section (seeing he put it together in such a great way) whilst adding the transitions and extra explanation/elaboration for the sake of writing flow and comprehensibility. He also has an extensive post on sex, which I’m not covering here (not because it’s not important, but because it’s not the thing we’re exploring).

Oxytocin is released in the brain and body from things such as love, sex, touch, social interactions with friends and family, laughter, sunlight exposure, being in nature, meditation/breath work, cold/hot therapies, and more. It relies on a set of resources in order to be synthesised. Magnesium and cholesterol are important modulators of the oxytocin receptor and act as positive allosteric modulators (PAM) of this receptor. They essentially enhance the binding of oxytocin to its receptor to increase its activity.

Oxytocin can become low from chronic stress, trauma, social isolation, porn, drugs, alcohol, artificial light/nnEMFs, and other factors. Oxytocin depletion and dopamine depletion go hand in hand, as they rely largely on the same mechanisms of what depletes them. That’s why it should come as no surprise that people with PTSD, anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders across the board seem to generally have low plasma oxytocin levels. Oxytocin has many functions that bolster and support our well-being, one of its functions is anti-anxiety, as it increases the activity of GABAa receptors, and also shuts down cortisol and dynorphin (more on dynorphin later) production which increases during both acute and chronic stress. This is why love, feeling heard, and other factors are crucial to overcoming stress. It stands to reason that oxytocin can increase dopamine activity, crucial for reward, motivation, and pleasure as they are intrinsically linked in this way. Due to its dopaminergic activity and implications it also helps the dopamine systems from going overboard, as oxytocin lowers addictive behaviours. This speaks to why one of the main buffers for addiction and means of overcoming addiction is support and feeling loved, heard and seen.

Oxytocin also works on hormones, such as testosterone and DHT, as it increases the conversion of testosterone into DHT. Which makes us feel more assertive, more confident, and increases self-esteem. Although often demonized, DHT is up to 3- 4x more potent than testosterone, which enhances muscle growth, lean mass, libido, erections, energy, and more (which is a pretty good track record if you’d ask me). It even has the potential to increase the conversion of testosterone into DHT, via upregulation of 5a-reductase. Additionally, Oxytocin is required for top-quality erections and orgasm, the more oxytocin you have, the higher intensity/better orgasm(s) you will have. This is why having sex with someone you love is 10x better than a one-night stand.

Which has a lot to do with the satiasating effects it has on the hypothalamus, which has an direct affect on your appetite, which would lower appetite and thus aid in fat loss, in particular to carbohydrates via suppressing Neuropeptide Y - leptin is also involved here, it helps you lose fat, whilst staying anabolic to muscle and bone. It also helps with diabetes/blood sugar issues. The story doesn’t end here, oxytocin is anti-inflammatory and anti-allergy, it lowers inflammation in the brain and gut, which prevents food allergies and has direct and indirect effects on fat loss, muscle building, and blood sugar regulation.

It’s almost as if there’s nothing oxytocin can’t do, as it increases neurogenesis, this a necessary process that rewires your brain to enhance memory, emotion, mood, and adaptation. Across the board, that has implications for states that are marked by low(er) activity of neurogenesis, such as depression, PTSD, anxiety/OCD, BTPD, ADHD, etc. There’s another system oxytocin affects which has to do with pain relief, pleasure and euphoria, which is the endocannabinoid system, so it can increase endocannabinoids and β-endorphins. Which further bolsters the mental and physical well-being effects of being in a high oxytocin stimulating environment.

That means that the inverse of this, low oxytocin, high dynorphin and high cortisol starts to rise with chronic stress, buried trauma, social isolation, & any form of addiction. All of which negatively impact your sex hormones, dopamine status, & POMC cleavage. Dynorphin—acting via the Kappa-opioid receptor (KOPr)—inhibits GnRH release, thus, reducing LH/FSH & sex hormones downstream (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, DHEA, etc.), dampens dopamine activity in the nucleus accumbens/prefrontal cortex (affecting reward, motivation, attention, decision-making, productivity), & blocks POMC cleavage (affecting a-MSH, endorphins, etc.). Beyond the mechanism, all you need to understand is that dynorphin reduces sex hormones, reduces dopamine and thus has a significant impact and effect on behavior, as Jack lists out previously.

In a cosmic stroke of good luck Oxytocin acts as an antagonist to the activity of dynorphin (this is the wonder of biology at work that it has so many checks and balances) —but magnesium (Mg2+) significantly enhances its activity via positive allosteric modulation of the oxytocin receptor. Both oxytocin & Mg2+ are often deficient in states of stress, trauma, social isolation, & addiction, which worsen dynorphin's effects. This again speaks to why I emphasize these bottom-up biological and neurological aspects, rather than just speaking about top-down cognition and psychological models.

When you are depleted in magnesium that is going to worsen outcomes across the board, whether physical or psychological. It's also important to note that when there's an imbalance of glutamate & GABA—Mg2+ becomes deficient due to its effects at the NMDA receptor, mitochondrial function, and its ties to 3000+ enzymes in the body—one of these enzymes includes GABA synthesis via glutamate decarboxylase (also requires vitamin B6/P5P). All this implies is that your brain goes into this hyperexcited/hyperaroused state which can be experienced as anxiety, rumination, and constantly feeling wired.

One last mechanism worth exploring is that the gut also shares a bidirectional communication pathway (gut-brain axis) with the brain, in particular the brainstem & hypothalamus. It communicates to these via neurotransmitters made locally in the gut, various cytokines (eg., IL-6), short-chain fatty acids (eg., butyrate), & via the vagus nerve. This gut-brain connection is key in regulating mood, appetite, stress, & overall brain function. When gut health is off, think dysbiosis, leaky gut, and/or inflammation, it messes with this signaling, throwing off hypothalamic function. This can trigger hormonal imbalances, metabolic imbalances, circadian disruption, mood swings, & immune system dysregulation. That’s why optimizing your gut health is crucial for supporting not just your gut, but your hypothalamus and brain health overall.

Seeing Oxytocin stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis via oxytocin receptor expressed in CA3 pyramidal neurons, which means it increases the neurons and their plasticity in the hippocampus, the brain region involved in memory and learning (this also means social learning). It should come as no surprise then, that having a partner with whom you connect with on the deepest emotional and physical levels is one of the best biohacks, seeing that Oxytocin is upregulated by connection, love, touch, sex, nature, cold/hot therapies, and laughter. Technically, you could stop reading after this, but where would be the fun in that? Additionally, there are experiments that show that if people receive oxytocin through an inhalation spray, they will be more honest and forthcoming about certain things, which is very interesting considering the implications of oxytocin on pair bonding.

Oxytocin and Social Bonds: The Role of Oxytocin in Perceptions of Romantic Partners’ Bonding Behavior

Oxytocin prosocial caveats from the book Behave

In Robert Sapolsky’s book Behave, he offers great insights into oxytocin function and some important caveats in that department. I’ve collected a few quotes from the book that help provide even more context around it.

“For starters, circulating oxytocin levels are elevated in couples when they’ve first hooked up. Furthermore, the higher the levels, the more physical affection, the more behaviors are synchronized, the more long-lasting the relationship, and the happier interviewers rate couples to be.” Given what we just went through and saw in terms of these mechanisms, that makes perfect sense. “Oxytocin inhibits the central amygdala, suppresses fear and anxiety, and activates the “calm, vegetative” parasympathetic nervous system.” Hence the calming effect, which would have positive effects on GABA too (the neurotransmitter of inhibition and calmness).

“Oxytocin elicits prosocial behavior, and oxytocin is released when we experience prosocial behavior. The caveat being it makes you more prosocial to people like you but spontaneously lousy to others (outsiders/outgroup/”not us”) who are a (perceived or actual) threat, it evolved to enhance social competence to make us better at identifying who is an us.” Which also shouldn’t come as a surprise since we have these spheres of attachment, closer bonds foster more “usness” where strangers are “not us” (which has clear divides).

“Oxytocin increases the accuracy of assessments of other people’s thoughts [Theory of Mind], these neurons that make these neuropeptides are regulated by both estrogen and testosterone.” This will highly influence how fast someone bonds, how deeply, their ability to be alone, and their ability to sync up and understand someone. In the book The Brain That Changes Itself, they talk about oxytocin’s role in brain plasticity, “Massive neuronal reorganization occurs a two life stages: When we fall in love and when we begin parenting”.

Which Walter J Freeman also proposes and has worked on “oxytocin melts down existing neural connections that underlie existing attachments, so new attachments can be formed”. I wrote in the Aspirational Self framework you can’t hate yourself into someone you love, but clearly you can love yourself into one (as per the functions of oxytocin). Walter J freeman is professor of neuroscience who wrote Societies of Brains: A Study in the Neuroscience of Love and Hate. Freeman's work suggests bonding is a dynamic brain process, not just a hormonal event In Societies of Brains, he describes pair-bonding as a neurochemical dissolution of rigid belief structures, opening pathways for new behavioral patterns.

This suggests bonding isn’t just a static hormonal surge (e.g., oxytocin release) but a complex, adaptive process involving the entire brain’s intentionality. Which is essentially the case this entire framework is attempting to make. The aspect of oxytocin that has neuroplasticity implications and thus neural reorganization is that it prunes synapses in the hippocampus during bonding, which is especially helpful when we need to rewire our brains to a new partner after we’ve broken up with someone, and restructure our identity (or rather relational identity) in the first order after the loss, and in the second order after meeting someone new.

Summary

• Oxytocin is a key regulator and driver of attachment behaviors.

• Oxytocin AND dopamine depletion happen with the usual suspects, amplifying compensatory behaviors.

• It is the buffer against anxiety and depression, can even fully mediate it/resolve it.

• It upregulates our sex hormones (testosterone, DHT).

• Has different effects on the genders, although it has a general overlap and then it has gender specific functions.

• Oxytocin is anti-inflammatory and anti-allergy, it lowers inflammation in the brain and gut, which is arguably one of its most amazing feats, and how the right person for you alters metabolism and gut-brain communication.

• It also mediates and connects to the endocannabinoid system, dealing with pain relief and euphoria.

• Oxytocin also makes the brain more plastic.

• It increases honesty and transparency in relationships.

• It also increases your Theory of Mind modeling.

• Makes you more social to your inner circle and less so toward strangers.

• Plays a huge part in neuronal reorganization, reorganizing models of self, other and the world.

Neurology of attachment

This part will provide the brunt of the biology and neurological exploration of attachment, although segments throughout the article will be supported with the mechanisms explored here. This section is built on the backbone of reading research over the years, books about attachment and addiction, Hubermanlab episodes and the book Behave by Sapolsky. I’m sure I don’t have to preface that the brain is complex, and secondly, I’m not a neuroscientist or neuroanatomist, the angle out of which I explore the brain has a lot more to do with functionality of understanding behavior, and affording people the insight none of these things appear out of thin air.

The application of this knowledge thus has a lot more to do with understanding how behavior occurs, and why focusing on the basics of health in terms of biology and neurology work the way they do. One of the biggest hurdles I’ve seen people face professionally and personally is this idea that it’s “just in your head” or “between your ears”. As this section will make clear, it is literally the case, but not in this phantom psychology perception, but in a real life brain function and wiring way.

Throughout this section I will reiterate that almost every part, area, connections and function of the brain is tied into attachment one way or another (whether directly or indirectly) because the brain is fully integrated and interconnected. To circle back to the intention, as the intention is to foster understanding of how these areas affect attachment, our behaviors, and even further our beliefs and perceptions around attachment, I’ve stuck to the areas and functions that have the most direct relevance, with the occasional note of other implicated structures or areas. As always, I feel it’s important to specify this so that there is clarity on the purpose, intention, and thus approach and angle to this section and the entire framework at large. This section, due it’s intention and aspiration is definitely going to be a bit more dense, accounting for this I explain and elaborate on the various quotes I pulled from studies and books.

Vasopressin and attachment

The previous section was heavily reliant on the scope of oxytocin because it is clearly important. I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but of course, everything is important neurologically and biologically for attachment. Which is why this part of the exploration will focus on vasopressin and then lead into the other neurotransmitters. One of the key things to understand is the concept of exaptation, which means biology uses the same compound (or area, organ) for different purposes. Vasopressin has a lot of functions, and has different receptors that lead to different functions. For the sake of our exploration, we’ll maintain the attachment and social behavioral lens. We’ll expand our exploration of neuroanatomy from this same angle and intention. There’s a lot of additional complexity that won’t bring any clarity or practicality, so keeping this in mind as we go deeper into the neurology.

This section is based on a few studies, most notably, the PNAS study Vasopressin increases human risky cooperative behavior highlights aspects of vasopressin in humans boosting cooperation. Another study Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and Social Behavior: From Neural Circuits to Clinical Opportunities - PMC," reviews vasopressin's role in social behaviors like pair bonding, and the study of Young & Wang, 2004, on vasopressin in pair-bonding in prairie voles, shows how this takes place for prairie voles (as they explore some more of the mechanistic elements from which inferences can be drawn).

“The neuropeptide arginine vasopressin (AVP) acts both as a neurotransmitter and a hormone with widespread targets including regions of the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the hippocampus and interacts with dopaminergic, reward-processing circuits in the ventral pallidum (VP) and nucleus accumbens (NA).” For the sake coherence, I’ll keep referring to vasopressin without the arginine or as AVP. Vasopressin regulates male mammalian social behaviors such as affiliation, aggression, monogamy, and paternal behaviors. Modulates social communication, social investigation, territorial behavior, and aggression (predominantly in males). Vasopressin is also present in females, although it generally has different effects. Seeing vasopressin regulates male behaviors, there’s links with testosterone and DHT due to expression and receptor activity. A receptor (or receptors in general) deal with binding of neurotransmitters (and hormones) so in this regard testosterone levels and DHT can influence the function or expression of these receptors. This has immense behavioral impinterlications, which is why we’re exploring this in the first place.

What makes vasopressin unique in a way is that one of it’s functions is to build or reinforce a bond under pressure, when we’re going through something difficult (where oxytocin seems primarily to be released when there is less stress or pressure). It stands to reason, that people have different effects on us, the regulation of those effects is largely to be found in the interplay and ratios between these hormones, neurotransmitters, and neuropeptides (and who knows what else). Regardless, the predispositions change the effect quite strongly so there’s both an amplification and a type of dominance that goes into this especially with men. Which is where the increase in risky cooperative behavior element really gets to shine. Let’s take a look at what they say in the study.

“Using functional brain imaging, we show that, when subjects make the risky Stag choice, vasopressin down-regulates the BOLD signal (measuring blood oxygen level-dependent activity) in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a risk-integration region, the known role of the left dlPFC in risk integration, high-level planning, and behavioral inhibition, and increases the left dlPFC functional connectivity with the ventral pallidum (VP), a vasopressin receptor-rich region previously associated with vasopressin-mediated social reward processing in mammals. These findings show a previously unidentified causal role for vasopressin in social approach behavior in humans, as established by animal research. Because under AVP treatment Rabbit (low risk low reward, catching many rabbits) is no longer the default strategy, choosing it requires additional cognitive control from dlPFC, coupled with brain activity in regions that are associated with inhibition of prepotent suboptimal responses (vlPFC), conflict (ACC) , and emotional vigilance (amygdala and parahippocampus gyrus). The enhanced functional coupling of the left dlPFC and VP during cooperative choices in the AVP group provides further support for the hypothesis that AVP increases the intrinsic expected reward associated with cooperation. The VP is part of the basal ganglia reward circuitry and has a high density of both AVP V1a and dopamine receptors. The ventral pallidum is located ventral to the globus pallidus and is heavily involved in processing reward, motivation, and reinforcement learning. It receives input from the nucleus accumbens (another critical reward-related structure in the basal ganglia) and sends outputs to areas like the thalamus and prefrontal cortex, helping to regulate the pleasurable or reinforcing effects of stimuli. This makes it a central player in the reward circuitry tied to the basal ganglia, alongside structures like the ventral striatum. AVP is also produced in other hypothalamic nuclei such as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, well known for regulating circadian rhythms, and the accessory nuclei/nucleus circularis region, a likely source of AVP regulating aggression and competitive communication. As human cooperative behavior is associated with self-reported measures of pleasure and satisfaction and neural activation of the reward system, it seems that our species has developed a biological mechanism that allows us to overcome the riskiness of cooperation to coordinate mutually beneficial social actions.”

Let’s unpack this starting from the most obvious part: vasopressin increase risky cooperative behavior. We’ve evolved under pressures, as such, that implies and means that there has to be some mechanisms to foster cooperation and bond building during periods of scarcity or conflict so that the tribe can survive. So there’s a link between vasopressin decreasing risk estimation or prediction and upregulating reward, which is highly adaptive when you have these environmental pressures, effectively this means high risk high reward, so getting a high reward needs that modulation of that risk brain area and circuitry. Interestingly enough, with high vasopressin, making a choice of lower ROI requires more cognitive control to temper or shut down that assertive risk taking drive. The interconnectedness of these brain areas and vasopressin with reward systems is truly a thing of beauty, because that’s (partly) how cooperation gets reinforced. The interconnectedness with the regulator of circadian rhythms, and vasopressin’s role in it, also offers some insight why we get more selfish with sleep deprivation, as there is a down regulation of these areas and energy sensing and prediction. We’ll explore a lot more on prediction and energy sensing in the coming sections.

Another reason to point out these mechanisms is how they influence behavior in people who are uncooperative in risky, pressure, or high-pressure scenarios and situations. Which is clearly highly modulated by several factors that go into vasopressin. There are two more parts to this that warrant exploration, which are the neurohypophyseal tract and gene polymorphisms. The neurohypophyseal tract is a bundle of nerve fibers that originates in the hypothalamus, specifically from neurons in the supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei. These neurons produce our two key attachment hormones: oxytocin and vasopressin. The tract serves as a pathway, transporting these hormones from the hypothalamus to the posterior pituitary gland, where they are stored and released into the bloodstream as needed. In simple terms, it’s the "highway" that oxytocin and vasopressin travel to reach the body. So if anything happens there, that’s going to have a detrimental effect on behavior. Furthermore, polymorphisms in V1aR and OXTR (these are the gene names) have been linked to variations in normal as well as disordered human behavior. All this to highlight that there is an immense amount of variance in people in A) the interconnectivity of the brain areas that deal with risky cooperative behavior, B) the level of pleasure/reward and predicted pleasure/reward one may get from cooperation under pressure, C) the level of communication of this pathway that transports attachment hormones, and D) the gene expressions that will strongly influence how people behave, respond and attach (more on this later).

From an anthropological and evolutionary angle, these integrated brain areas and pathways make a lot of sense, since you’d want your kin, tribe or brothers to survive during combat, and generally the best way to do that would be to stick together. A similar case can be made for hunting, seeing that is a high stakes and high pressure environment, something like vassopresin most likely got exapted to serve as the social glue in those types of scenarios. Beyond the implications or effects on male bonding, it’s equally important in making a romantic relationship robust. If there were vasopressin issues, from whichever level, that would impede on making the relationship withstand difficult periods. This interplay between oxytocin and vasopressin forms the basis of how and why some people make it through the most difficult circumstances. Which would occur across the spectrum of arguments to the loss of a child.

It stands to reason that it’s not just neurological capacity, but the work that people do together in this regard, when they work both on themselves and their relationship, and toughing it out together those are the behavioral drivers of vasopressin release and reinforcement of the bond (everything is “always” bidirectional in this sense). We’re always looking at both sides of the coin (or try to do so as best as possible), where someone who has a low disposition of vasopressin synthesis still has the possibility of mending this provided the brain is plastic enough. Though, as usual, the more injury, damage or negative alterations/adaptations have occurred, the more difficulty the individual in question will experience in attaching and bonding.

To further explore some of the other effects and roles of the neurotransmitters in attachment and bonding:
1. GABA is calming, so this is typically present in a secure attachment, especially when the other person “feels like home.”

2. Serotonin has time distorting properties in terms of dilution, it can manifest itself as losing sense and track of time when you are with someone, speaking to the level of serotonin present altering time perception, making a long time feel like a short time. Sysoeva et al. (2010) showed that genetic variations in serotonin-related genes can affect how we perceive time, particularly in tasks involving duration discrimination. Furthermore Research by Wittmann et al. (2007) found that psilocybin, which boosts serotonin activity, can lead to under-reproduction of time intervals, making longer periods feel shorter. Existing research on how this happens through relationships is lacking, but you get the gist.

3. Dopamine is a bit more of a double edge blade in all of this because of the complexity of its functions, it’s not really about pleasure, but rather reward and motivational state, this also means reward prediction, reward anticipation, reward reinforcement, and reward valuing (more on this in the Substack article: The Neuropsychobiology of Motivation). All to say, that it can easily go both ways: making the relationship rewarding, or making the relationship addictive with the negative connotation.

4. Adrenaline & Cortisol are also tied into this, making us feel anxious, uneasy, unsafe and or stressed around a certain person or group of people.
None of these are technically wrong or flawed, unless there’s deeper dysregulation and issues at different layers of these neurotransmitters, their genetics, synapses, and neural networks. And eventough there is a lot to say about the emotional addiction of attachment, there seems to be a preferred cocktail for people that really get them going in unique distributions of these neurotransmitters and hormones that gives credence to the quote from Ella Frank “The strongest drug that exists for a human is another human being.”

There’s also the entire hormonal interplay between DHT, testosterone, and estrogen will also dictate and or influence how bonding occurs, given their effects on both oxytocin and vasopressin.

Neuroanatomy of attachment

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a pivotal role in modulating attachment behaviors through a variety of mechanisms tied to emotional regulation, decision-making, social cognition, and stress management. Relying on the work of Dunbar, Kolb et al, and Bick et al, social complexity expands the frontal cortex. Let’s explore some of the mechanisms at play and build from there. First off, we have increased cognitive demand through socialization, we need to keep the behaviors of others in mind, predict their patterns, predict their experiences, take into account how they might react to certain stimuli, and everything related to this. So that’s a lot to work with cognitively. There are inherent neuroplastic mechanisms involved in socialization. Social interactions stimulate the release of neurotrophins (e.g., brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF), which promote synapse formation and strengthen neural circuits in the PFC (it can also prune synapses, which means “cut them” or tag them for “destruction”). When you interpret a friend’s subtle emotional cues or negotiate a disagreement, the PFC fires up. With repeated social engagement, synapses in this region multiply and strengthen, effectively "expanding" its capacity.

As outlined in the previous section, social interactions, especially attachment-related ones, engage the brain’s stress pathway (HPA axis) and reward (dopamine) systems, which interact with the PFC. Positive social bonds reduce stress and boost dopamine, enhancing PFC function, while chronic social stress (e.g., neglect) can impair it. Secure attachment activates the ventral medial PFC (vmPFC), which regulates the amygdala and calms stress responses. Which would obviously reinforce these circuits and mechanisms (of value-reward). A note on the amygdala before we continue, it does a lot of threat monitoring, there’s also a case to be made that in people with adverse childhood experiences, this brain region is typically enlarged and hyperaroused, the inverse is typically true for those who had secure attachments. The point is that the threshold for what is a threat to survival or a potential social conflict is way higher for those who have a “smaller” or rather less active amygdala and thus also have lower stress response to these situations, as the HPA axis is tied to the amygdala. Moving on, Social experiences can alter gene expression in the PFC via epigenetic modifications (e.g., DNA methylation). Genes linked to neural growth and stress response are particularly affected. Something we’ll explore a bit more later.

Let’s simplify this a bit more. Imagine your brain is a garden, to which are tending to in all ways. Every time you figure out what someone’s feeling, solve a disagreement, or feel deep connection, your brain gets to work. It’s the equivalent of tending to our plants/flowers in said garden, watering them, planting new ones, removing weeds, distributing soil and nutrition, creating paths. So we have enforcement of certain parts and the pruning/reduction of other parts, the better the models we have, the smoother this process becomes, knowing where to tend, knowing where to prune, knowing where to thread not to disturb our newly planted seeds. The more plants and flowers we have, and the more we put into the soil, the more enriched our garden is. As such enriched social environments have denser dendritic branching in the PFC compared to isolated peers. Human MRI studies similarly correlate social network size with greater PFC gray matter volume. The study Connectivity profile and function of uniquely human cortical areas offer insight into parts of this mechanism such as the multiple demand network (Assem et al., 2020), a network of mostly parietal and frontal regions that consistently activate for a range of high-level cognitive tasks. And the right posterior TPJ which has been often associated with the human ability to entertain others’ belief states, so-called mentalizing or Theory of Mind (Schurz et al., 2017) . Our human TPJ seems to process the more complex information associated with human social cognition, by either entertaining others’ belief states (Koster-Hale et al., 2017) or the difference between one’s own and other’s knowledge (Kolling et al., 2021).

Another important part for attachment is the Dorsal Raphe Nucleus (DRN) is a brain region linked to social hunger, and its activation can lead to cravings for social interaction, much like hunger cravings for food. This tells us, quite conclusively, that we hunger for attachment, although I don’t think most people reading this would’ve ever doubted that. Interestingly enough, there are other dopamine neurons in the raphae, when you stimulate them, animals don't seem to like it. If you stimulate those neurons, the animals will not work for a reward. They actually will move away from a space where they're being stimulated. These dopamine neurons condition, place and real time place aversion. “I don't like the feeling of these neurons being activated.” This obviously furthers the complexity of dopamine in terms of behavior, and there are still other regions and mechanisms in humans that deal with disgust and aversion that could facilitate the same type of behavior.

Furthermore, you have the ventral vagus nerve, eyes, fusiform, temporal and parietal lobes, arcuate fascicle (AF) & inferior longitudinal fascicle (ILF), directly wiring areas critical for language, empathy, and social rules. Then there is the insula, which is involved in emotion, perception, and self-awareness. It plays a key role in empathy, processing bodily sensations (like pain or hunger), and is linked to addiction and cravings due to its role in pleasure and reward (we’ll circle back to this link often). The insula also detects social rejection or exclusion (so it kind of functions like a social radar of sorts). The cingulate cortex is a part of the limbic system, which is involved in emotion, learning, and memory. It has two sections, though for our exploration and understanding, the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is the more relevant (though I’m sure that, as usual that the other one, the PCC, is also tied into attachment in some way). What makes the ACC stand out is that it is crucial for error detection, conflict monitoring, and decision-making, which are all obvious adaptive mechanisms for socialization. Lastly, the Nucleus accumbens (NA) deep in the brain is a central component of the brain's reward system, processes pleasure, reinforcement, and motivation, and as usual, anything that is involved with pleasure, motivation, and reinforcement is implicated in addiction. Even though it won’t be a central theme, it’s still relevant to how associated addictive mechanisms are in bonding.

There’s another important note that I’d like to add, and that’s how empathy works in terms of energy, resources and access. This is another one of these aspects of socialization and human life that seem to be relegated to “this appears out of thin air”. You have circuits that deal with empathy, which, surprise surprise, go “dark” (have either no activity or very little activity) in sociopaths and psychopaths as relayed in the book The Psychopath Inside. There are several factors that go into empathy, which is how energy, resources and stress dictate access to these circuits. We need to make a case for bio-individuality as usual, some people have robust access, others will have more fluidity in this access. In simplistic terms there’s an energy and resource prediction that takes place first (more on this in the free energy section), which means that if the prediction and sensing says to brain “low on fuel” it becomes resistant to expending energy beyond a certain point.

Energy is literally the substrates of energy that the brain and body use and resources are all the elements we need to create energy. Depending on both energy and resources, you either gain or lose access to certain areas of the brain, or put differently, the activation and communication level with and to these brain areas changes. This is evident in how, under pressure or with chronic stress, you have vasoconstriction, the tightening of blood vessels, in the brain, and the hyperarousal of certain brain areas like the amygdala, and a hypoarousal (lowered activation) in parts of the prefrontal cortex. I wrote a chapter on this for the Platonic Spirituality framework as it relates to your ability to access feelings of awe and wonder as they are related to spirituality and religiousness. And I use the same mechanisms to explain how one loses or gains access to personality aspects in The Path To Your Aspirational Self article. The gist of it is that it becomes a connectivity issue and so when you’re in a poor state, like feeling highly stressed or depressed (or anything else in that spectrum), then your access to these empathy circuits gets diminished, especially the further these things are removed from your core attachments. Psychologically, if someone keeps crossing boundaries, attacking your identity or is otherwise acting in ways that injure the attachment, you equally lose degrees of access to these empathy circuits, or at the very least the attachment gets injured due to their behaviors, which if it goes on long enough, a loss of empathy is experienced. All this to say that empathy can be quite plastic, and that it has many neuroantomical factors that drive it (accounting for dispositions).

Recap of brain areas:

• Hippocampus: Involved in forming and recalling memories, particularly those related to social experiences and bonding moments that strengthen relationships.

• Amygdala: Processes emotions such as fear and anxiety, contributing to the emotional intensity of bonds and the stress felt when connections are at risk.

• Hypothalamus: Regulates hormones like oxytocin, which plays a critical role in fostering social bonding and attachment behaviors.

• Vagus Nerve: Connects the brain to the body, supporting relaxation and social engagement through its role in the parasympathetic nervous system (note: while not a brain region, it’s a key player in attachment-related processes).

• Nucleus Accumbens: Part of the reward system, it drives the pleasurable feelings tied to social interactions and reinforces bonding experiences.

• Prefrontal Cortex: Governs decision-making, impulse control, and social behavior, helping to manage emotions and guide relationship choices.

• Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC): Handles emotional regulation, empathy, and conflict monitoring, assisting in navigating the ups and downs of social relationships.

• Dorsal Raphe Nucleus (DRN): Produces serotonin, which influences mood and social behavior, potentially shaping how individuals approach attachment.

• Insula: Integrates internal bodily states and emotions, enhancing self-awareness and empathy by tuning into personal and others’ feelings.

• Fusiform Gyrus: Supports facial recognition, aiding in identifying and remembering key people in one’s social circle, which is vital for bonding.

• Right Posterior Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ): Facilitates theory of mind, the ability to understand others’ thoughts and intentions, which is essential for empathy and strong social connections.

Pathways Relating the Neurobiology of Attachment to Drug Addiction

https://pvrticka.com/attachment-social-connection-allostasis/

Genes

We can’t escape the gene implications. Genetic predispositions or individual differences in hormone sensitivity are going to be present, alongside the epigenetic influences that occur due to the BNDF/brain plasticity aspect of oxytocin, and transcribing experiences (essentially experiences that are intense or acute enough to warrent epigenetic alteration). Considering they could change pairbonding through genetic manipulation in prairie voles with the nonmonogamous ones (who had their genes upregulated), it tells us something significant about the plasticity of these genes and their influences on our behavior and preferences. This is convergent with the plasticity of attraction and sexuality explored in the book How The Brain Changes Itself, partially through the mediation of oxytocin not just for BDNF but even altering genetics, and most definitely through BDNF. Given the complexity of our systems and structures, there are a lot more gene factors that play into attachment and social behaviors. A nurturing social environment (like a strong caregiver bond) "turns on" genes that support PFC development, while neglect or chaos might suppress them. "The relation between oxytocin receptor gene polymorphisms, adult attachment and Instagram sociability: An exploratory analysis" by Alessandro Carollo and colleagues: The study provides preliminary insights into the potential influence of genetic factors on social media behavior, particularly on Instagram.

It effectively highlights the relation between oxytocin receptor gene polymorphisms, adult attachment and Instagram sociability (in case that wasn’t evident from the title). Which is just one of many indications of gene involvement in social behaviors. Who you surround yourself with, and how they make you feel, literally changes your brain and genes. Let that sink in for a minute. But don’t sit with it for too long, because we’re going to explore this more in the next section.

Introjects

I strongly believe this notion doesn’t get the credit it deserves, other people are literally wired or grooved into us through these introjects, the neurological models we have of others are represented as a network of neurological pathways. When this is a physical neural network, it stands to reason this connects into our attachment circuits, there is no other way. But that means it connects into everything else: value, reward, narrativization, and every other aspect of brain function. Seeing these networks connect into the entire architecture of the brain, it is supposed to aid us in becoming and behaving. We model everyone that’s close to us; the closer they are, the more complex and precise the model is (theory of mind is important here, and the brain areas that produce it). We learn through mimesis and “osmosis”, or rather internalization of these models. In that regard, role models are a crucial part of our introject function. Because that’s how this function is supposed to work, you internalize your role models (even the metaphysical ones), and they are supposed to generate feedback (feelings, sensations, voices). Hence, when people who have an introspective practice typically say that some of these voices are the voices of their parents. The function in and of itself is not the issue here; it’s rather when this process has gone haywire due to predispositions coupled to childhood experiences and environmental factors that the introject becomes parasitic, and thus people experience negative co-identifications, beliefs, narratives, and perceptions.

Those who’ve had secure attachments with their parents and their environment at large (and had minimal environmental toxic exposure or were just generally healthier) have introjects that generate positive experiences, which they can use to adjust behavior and find inner guidance, and even experience an inner presence. This is an entire physical phenomenon, with biochemical and bioelectromagnetic functions. Why this should give us pause is that very often when it comes to overcoming attachment issues, people fail to realize the depth of how people are literally wired into us, brains, minds, and psyches. It helps us understand why it is so hard to get over someone, if it was an abusive person/relationship, whether this was romantic or not. These neural networks have to be “broken down” (synaptic pruning), uncoupled, and fade, bit by bit. In a more precise sense, energy and resources (bioelectrivity, chemicals, etc) need to stop flowing through those pathways so that they lose strength when they are parasitic.

This is established in the study The Long-Term Stability of Affective Bonds After Romantic Separation: Do Attachments Simply Fade Away? Where they found that it takes up to 8 years for an attachment to fade to the level of a stranger. Which was in “normal cases”, so the math quickly adds up if it was a parent or a partner who was parasitic. That’s also why establishing a stronger and more robust sense of self, which securely attached parents and primary care takers provide, makes it far easier to distinguish between our inner and native voice, versus the voices we’ve internalized for better or for worse. Regardless, it gives a lot of credence to the common saying that you are the five people you spend the most time with, because their introjects that you form in your brain literally become part of you. It points at some profound questions in regards to what we want to have internalized and wired into our brains, and those who we consider getting close to.

These models are going to strongly dictate your ability for reality testing, which is what we’ll look into here. John Vervake uses the term conformity processes, which is what reality testing tries to do, find conformity and convergence. I’ve quoted the passages from the transcripts of the video lectures.

“We regard a particular proposal or a construct or some way of trying to model the world as trustworthy if it's been produced by many independent but converging lines of evidence. Let me give you a clear, concrete example. You will regard as more real information that comes through multiple senses as opposed to one sense. If I'm only seeing something, There's a good chance That it's an illusion or a delusion caused by the subjectivity of my seeing. But if I can see it and touch it and hear it And smell it, Then the chances that each one of those independent senses producing an illusion is radically diminished. The fact that they all are telling me the same thing, now that doesn't give me certainty, but it gives me trustworthiness.” We do something very similarly socially, we’ll return to the cognitive/psychological aspects of this later.

“Think about how you try and determine if something was real. If it really is the case. So let's say you're interested in Susan. And you're talking to your friend Tom. And Tom and Susan and yourself, you're at a party the previous night and Tom tells you "Oh Susan... I think Susan really likes you!" Now this is important to you because you really like Susan! You'd really like it if Susan liked you. This would be a good thing. But you don't want to leap into this because your heart has been broken before and you've acted foolishly and impulsively so you want to make sure. So you say "wait, wait. Come on Tom. I saw you last night you were really hammered. Like you were drunk. Pfff... I don't believe you!" And Tom says "no no no no. I heard this way before I was drunk I heard this at the beginning. I heard Susan say this at the beginning." And then you say "come on Tom. There was so many people, it was so noisy. How can you be sure?" And Tom says "no no. This was in the kitchen. Susan was in the kitchen when I heard her say. It wasn't that noisy there!" And then you say "I don't know...." And then Tom says "yeah but Andrew and, you know, Jane also heard Susan say that". And you go "Oh wow. I think Susan likes me!" So you do these three tests! You make sure that the relevant organ of cognition, your - your attention, your memory, your brain - was functioning normally. Yes it is. It's functioning normally. OK. So I was sober. You make sure that the environment isn't creating distorting conditions - too much noise... No no it's an optimal environment! So, let's do this: Organ operating optimally. Environment optimal or really good. And then I look for "Did other people experience it?" Inter-subjective agreement. So, this is what you do!”

So the first route, as usual is checking if everything in your internal milieu is functioning well. Which is why I very often run clients through the basics: sleep, food, hydration, breathing, if the differentiation occurs there, we get all check marks, ok, great, now let’s go deeper into those other levels of biology and neurology. The second is, as Vervaeke points out, checking the environment for noise and thus distortions. And thirdly, if others are seeing /experiencing the same. Now, all of these can be parasitized and manipulated, which is exactly where reality testing starts breaking down, because unreliability on one or multiple levels. Before we get into the more complex territory, a more simple illustration of this is gaslighting. Effectively number one and number two are accounted for, it’s number three that throws things off. And generally they VEHEMENTLY argue their position. Trust me when I say I’ve been taken in by someone’s convictions a few times when it was all bullshit precisely because I’ve experienced a high degree of this in childhood, which leads to the kicker: an atrophy and instilled/conditioned refusal to believe your own experiences. So with a injured self authorization and validation, because a primary care taker injured/damaged this, it makes one more susceptible to this parasitization of the conformity process of reality testing.

Where cause and effect should be straight forward, it produces different outcomes (typical with a volatile parent) which throws of expectations and predictions. These processes effectively can’t do what they are supposed to smoothly or naturally to gauge reality, which tends to create even more suspicion and guarding. Because, well, “nothing” is real, I’ve been lied to, betrayed, abandoned, etc, so I can’t count on what is said. This highly influences the ability to appreciate and acknowledge when people are dealing in good faith, because there’s an inherent condition and internalization of being acted upon and against by a bad actor, and thus this prediction of bad faith becomes a dominant perception. This is the parasitzation of our own voice and models, that these parasitic introjects overtake, effectively weaving in perception, narratives, predictions, expectations, beliefs and co-identifications. This can manifest acutely or subtle (or a combination of both of course depending on situational context).

A subtle expression of this could be two people who are laughing as you are nearby or walking by, if your initial response is “They are laughing at me” than that could be one of these subtle parasitizations through narratives, beliefs and coidentifcations (that you are flawed or something of the sort), because there is an atrophy or degradation of the self image and self value with adverse childhood experiences. Those introjects essentially keep our sense of self model hostage, like a vine strangling a tree, suffocating it and potentially eventually killing it. The parasitic introject of the hostile and volatile parent or partner has similar effects on our psyches and our models of the self, as they constantly run interference on our sense making, reality testing and conformity processes. A more acute expression of this could be attention from a girl, if self image and self value has been damaged, an acute narrative could be “why would someone like that be interested/looking at me? I’m probably imaging things/wishful thinking”. Again, there’s a lot of individual variance here, I’ve written a framework/article for these narrative interventions based on the work of several psychologists and the Platonic-Stoic literature.

Functions

There are several neurological functions that couple to attachment, if we’re being pedantic we could say that most of them would in one way or another, but we’re not doing this exploration to get a major in neurology in regards to attachment, rather to understand the psychological and behavioral implications so we could make better decisions in the attachment realm. One of these functions is hedonic adaptation and habituation, essentially, us getting used to a stimulus. Habituation refers to a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated exposure, without necessarily involving a permanent change in the organism or system. It’s a form of learning where something becomes familiar, and the reaction diminishes over time. Adaptation involves a change, often structural, functional, or behavioral, in an organism or system to better suit its environment or conditions. It’s typically a longer-term adjustment, often with a purpose of survival or improved efficiency. In this case, both occur extensively in attachment. Again, the mechanism in and of itself is not the issue, it’s structuring and behaving in alignment of the knowledge of how this impacts us that is.

Hedonic adaptation is what we experience when you build a tolerance, especially relevant in terms of addiction and anything that leans in that direction. For things that are, let’s say, dopamine heavy, we have a type of “instinct”, or rather drive, to want more, bigger and better. This tends to differ for endorphin based stimuli, like a sunset/sunrise, panoramic views, etc, where we feel immense enjoyment, joy and fulfillment (of course, you can experience pleasure too). Habituation happens at varying levels and various time scales. Anything that has a low refractory period is clearly something we don’t habituate to very fast, something that has a high refractory period is something we habituate very fast to. For instance: it’s unlikely you’ll get sick of watching nature, or the sun cycles. You could turn away, and look back after a few seconds and you’d still experience that awe. With the external dopamine based stimuli, refractory period creeps up with the habituation, you don’t get the same response to the same stimulus. Furthermore, it’s a double edge blade, we get used to the good things and the bad things. For the latter, that’s definitely a good thing that habituation exists so we can survive deplorable conditions, even if we don’t want to get used to it, if it goes on long enough you will.

A contrasting function is also present, overall, that’s a relatively obvious one, as it extends in most dimensions of human experience: hot-cold, light-dark, close-far, you get the gist. Contrast sensing also feeds into comparison and thus the mimetic drive. The social implications of this function are many. One of such functions is comparing yourself to others, especially in terms of social standing, which a part of the brain constantly keeps track of, of where you fit in the social hierarchy. Which is exactly what it’s supposed to do when our social environment means survival. As per usual, this is a double-edged blade, as I reiterate many times: what makes you adaptive makes you vulnerable.

This feeds into, or leads to, comparing ourselves to others far outside of the constraints within which we’ve developed. Through social media and media at large, we are exposed to aspects of reality that we’d otherwise have very little contact with or very little insight into. This exposure and access can amplify the contrasting function and social standing sensing mechanisms. In the attachment sense, that generally presents itself as the “grass is greener” or “I can do better” when it comes to different relationship dynamics, whether romantic or friendships. Perhaps, there is an adaptive element to this that allows you to find your tribe, though at the same time, it can also contribute to behavior of cutting out people from your past when life diverges (again, there is a case to be made where this can happen naturally). From what I’ve seen, experienced, and even have done myself, if there is an undertone of immaturity, then you cut people out from a misguided sense of superiority, inability to integrate them maturely, assigning them an appropriate place in your spheres of attachment, and without due process of their value alignment.

All to say, that depending on the arrested development and maturity levels, it can lead to some asshole-ish and childish behavior. As most people find out with time, the grass was not greener (unless you were in any sort of abusive relationship, of course). Early deprivation of oxytocin can cause a type of scarcity of needs, starting with the most fundamental one, which can lead to a scarcity perception that persists all throughout life, with a drive to “fill the hole” (which might make them more sensitive to this contrasting function). This exists even amid an abundance of all other needs being met, which is, of course, subject to adaptation.

This also points to the depth of attachment and oxytocin levels/signaling in order to indicate that there is a type of abundance, even when physical or material abundance might be missing. We could argue that because of both adaptation and disrupted oxytocin, the percentage of humans who feel they have everything that they desire is low. How many people feel like they don't want for anything? The sensation and perception of abundance is more than or beyond the physical and material, that mindset clearly has some implications for attachment. Hence, the comparison function, although adaptive, can very easily color perception. This can influence a sense of mate scarcity. Generally, that’s tied into perception of low worth or low (self) value, seeing that hypergamy dictates the top of each gender (in terms of actual value or perceived value) has the most access and most choice, then it stands to reason that if you’re somehow at the bottom or perceived to be a such you’d experience a sentiment of mate scarcity. Of course, this can actually be the case, which then warrants some reflection

There’s another aspect of contrast that ties in quite strongly to hedonic adaptation (or really just adaptation) and that’s this hindsight sense that emerges of “was it really so bad?”. The formula presents itself as: contrast + adaption + time, and obscures events or periods like this. Once you’re out of the situation, and you get used to the contrast, the emotional intensity and negativity/pain fades (depending on the acuteness of course) which seems to play a role in how people sometimes end up retrying with an ex after some time. It has the possibility to make us question our experiences or even our involvement/control in them, and as the emotional intensity fades it makes us forget just how bad it really was. Of course, there are elements to this that have to do with a the depth of the attachment injury, the severity of fragile sense of self and people pleasing patterns. So these experiences aren’t an absolute, most people will admit to experiences they’d rather never experience again, regardless of how the emotional intensity has come down and faded. Regardless, it pays to acknowledge the impact and implication of this function on behavior, especially when it comes to repeating behaviors that have had detrimental outcomes. It makes sense given in light of the formula, that the perception of the event alters, thus removing some constraints that had inhibited our behavior beforehand. The practice of reminding oneself in earnest with potentially a simulation of sorts of the emotions (to whatever degree that’s possible) helps keep the memory alive, alongside the safeguards and the buffers, so that behavior stays aligned with the expierence, and we thus integrate the lesson of said experience into our behaviors. There’s another case to be made for the ability to integrate experiences which relies on several neurological functions, which can be injured or altered in certain people.

Contagious emotions, attraction, and bonding

That is, most of biology is “contagious” in that sense, not just emotions. What are these contagious emotions based on? Smelling pheromones and hormones, interpersonal synchrony, heart rate, brain waves, etc, and attraction. So, how does this factor into attraction?

There are different levels to this, although they (as usual) intersect and interconnect.

1. Hormones, pheromones

2. Microbiome/gut match

3. Thyroid level

4. Organ status

5. Looks as an expression of healthy and strong genes

6. Brain similarity in ease of syncing up: neurotype, bio-temperament, Intelligence, etc.

We’ll explore this level per level, seeing that the influences of others, on a biological and neurological level, carry a lot more weight than most people garner.

1. Hormones and pheromones

The research is pretty clear about how sweat excretes hormones, which subconsciously allows people to “measure” hormone levels like testosterone and cortisol. Men can smell and pick out ovulating women, and have increased testosterone smelling an ovulating woman. From what I gather the human pheromone aspect is quite contested, pheromones being defined as: odors that carry information about sex, age, reproductive status, health and genetic makeup. So there's something there in the type of “attractants” we give off to potential mates. How much of this makes it to the conscious recognition of an aspect of attraction is most likely a bio-individual thing. It's pretty well established how both women and men respond to smell.

2. Microbiome and gut

In sweat, there's also the excretion of metabolites that signal the status of the gut and the microbiome. In an evolutionary sense for selecting a higher probability of strong genetics metabolism and microbiome wise that most definitely fits. Again, a lot of information is found in sweat that doesn't necessarily make it our conscious awareness of what is driving attraction or aversion. Evolutionary speaking, it would make sense to be able to smell out a healthy gut and a matching one.

3. Thyroid

There are no direct studies done on this in humans, though intuitively, this would make sense. When the thyroid is the regulator of hormones, someone living in a higher gear is going to have a hard time with someone living in a lower gear. Someone with a great metabolism and great thyroid is more likely to feel bored or feel slowed down by someone with a slow thyroid. You have an energetic mismatch, in the traditional sense of available and expendable energy. High-energy people rarely match with low-energy people. And this is just from the energy level, the thyroid has a lot more health implications than that. To provide some extra insight, research on animals has shown that when manipulating hormone levels in female túngara frogs, including those related to thyroid function, affected mate choice behaviors. In this study, higher doses of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone that can influence thyroid activity, altered the frogs' receptivity and permissiveness when selecting mates. It’s not the end-all be-all, but it does give us an extra angle for attraction, assortative mating, and contagious emotions.

4. Organ status

This one's technically less obvious, but just like the thyroid, organs like the liver dictate energy levels and behavior quite profoundly. In essence, a healthy organ system and a healthy metabolism go hand in hand. So it's more of a subconscious proxy for someone's health and vitality, even when we might not pick up on it. I'd add the heart into this mix, in the primary sense of its state. Meaning that someone's parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves are solid, leading to a stable state rather than an anxious state (which is an oversimplification).

5. Looks as an expression of healthy and strong genes

This one doesn't need too much elaboration. Certain physical features serve as proxies of health and strong genes, which are what consciously and subconsciously play into attraction. Healthy is beautiful and beautiful is attractive. In the book Deep Nutrition, Catherine Shanahan speaks about how beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder but an actual biological and even mathematical phenomenon.

6. Brain similarities and interpersonal synchrony
This one came purely from observation, and I didn’t think it had that much supporting evidence, but lo and behold, it’s not as fringe as I thought it was. Even though in a technical sense it is logical, it’s easy to take for granted just how genius biology is in these regards. I believe that the more similar a brain is, the easier it syncs up with another brain, which turned out to be the case, and it even has a name, imagine my excitement! Homophily which refers to the brain's tendency to connect and synchronize with similar neural patterns, both within an individual and between individuals (that’s pretty insane).

This is probably an underrated aspect of attraction, even though it's expressed often as likemindedness or the feeling of flow or how natural it is to be with the person you just met. Let’s have a look at some studies that confirm this. The first one I think that sheds the most light on this is The anatomy of friendship: neuroanatomic homophily of the social brain among classroom friends. They found that students with similar brain activity patterns were more likely to form friendships. This suggests that brains with comparable functional patterns synchronize more readily, facilitating interpersonal connections. So far so good. In another study, Similar neural responses predict friendship, using fMRI revealed that friends exhibit more similar brain responses when watching movies compared to strangers. This correlation between neural similarity and social closeness supports the idea that similar brains align more easily. Two for two, last one: Brain-to-brain synchrony during naturalistic social interactions, which looked at shared experiences and similarity. They outline factors that enhance synchrony, and thus ease of which this happens. The groups they studied, musicians playing together and couples in romantic relationships, often share similar training, emotional states, or experiences, indicating that such similarities—whether from genetics, upbringing, or environments, showed synchronized brain activity during interactions, such as performing music or gazing at each other.

There are more levels to this, one of which is how quasi-telepathic communication occurs within close relations. A reason for this is that neurotransmitters and neurons can communicate electromagnetically, which leads us into interesting territory. But first, a little detour before I dive into the romantic implications and conclusion of this theory. Research has shown that neurons of the fetus land in the mother's brain, which in part explains the sixth sense that moms have about the state of their child, even from afar. This last part is the most important part, because if neurons communicate electromagnetically, and there's a quantum biological mechanism of action that establishes communication over long distances, then that could very well explain why moms get these hunches or prompts from afar when something is wrong with their child. This neuronal fetal exchange paves the way for understanding the potency of this interpersonal synchrony. The following is a stretch and speculative, it just serves as a plausible mechanism of how emotional attunement or synchrony happens at a distance. Each person you meet gets a representative model in the brain called a generative model or an introject. This is a network of neurons that is made to represent this person. Each person has an electromagnetic signature, their own unique fingerprint of electromagnetism, and their vibe/energy. What if this electromagnetic field (EMF) signature is imprinted in a set of neurons, or rather, they spend so much time in synchrony, they get entangled in the quantum sense?

Perhaps there is a subset of neurons that is more receptive to the EMF influence of another person, and essentially “absorbs” their EMF signature, so in that sense, you carry a part of their energy with you? Or put differently, you get entangled in that dimension. My conceptualization is that it would make sense if this would intertwine or interconnect with the generative model/introject we have. Also, seeing the heart holds a good amount of neurons, maybe there is an imprinting that occurs there as well, that somehow connects to the generative model in the brain. This could support certain experiences of being able to feel others out from a distance, or getting prompts about the others ‘ well-being from a distance, whether that's a gut feeling or intuition, or whatever other term we'd use for it. We seem to have a sixth sense for other people's well-being, especially loved ones, from afar. This could give some credence to the imprinting and entangling of their EMF signature, seeing we swap out microorganisms as well, who knows what else is being swapped out and internalized? The research from Heartmath Institute shows how people’s EMF fields sync up, so it could be an additional avenue for interpersonal synchrony and contagious emotions. If we’re leaping even further, we’d effectively look at quantum entanglement.

Leaving the quantum realm for what it is, let’s put these points together for when we’re interacting with potential mates in terms of attraction and interpersonal synchrony. “Men tend to attend to the visual cues much more than women. So women in their mates selection, they have olfactory cues. [There are other cues that are important.] So, what does the guy sound like? His vocal qualities [being one of them]. But olfactory cues, what does he smell like? And so women have a more acute sense of smell than men do. And so if the guy doesn't smell right, even if he embodies all the other qualities, women want that's a deal breaker.” David Buss explained all of this in his conversation with Andrew Huberman, which makes sense given the importance of information transfer through smell. Hence the contagion element that we started off with, because if people around you smell scared, your brain tilts toward including you are too. It, the brain in its interplay of smell, sight, and synchrony, tends toward internalization of these emotions, this can happen with virtually anything, it doesn’t have to be fear, although cortisol is a potent signal.

The entire socialization system is wired for functions like this, because we can operate as a “hive mind” of sorts, with group Flow (group interpersonal synchrony), which is highly adaptive for hunting and other organized facets such as society building, and especially present in religious experiences. Another insight from David Buss on these subliminal information cues, “Though we derive subliminal information from bodily cues, such as posture, we get the most information from faces. Why else evolve the fusiform? The shape of a woman’s face changes subtly during their ovulatory cycle, and men prefer female faces at the time of ovulation. Our olfactory system sends more direct projections to the limbic system than any other sensory system.” Which is why I ventured to put all of this together, because the intensity of the contagion, and similarly the intensity of the attraction, are multifaceted in this regard. Furthermore, in the book The Brain That Changes Itself, there’s a passage that offers an overriding mechanism which is quite profound: “Stendhal, the nineteenth-century novelist and essayist, understood that one could lead to radical changes in attraction. Romantic love triggers such powerful emotion that we can reconfigure what we find attractve, even overcoming “objective” beauty.” That’s commonly understood, or at least it was, that once an emotional bond is formed, that’s deep enough (hello oxytocin) that the perception of objective beauty changes, it adds “aura”, the person in question becomes more attractive.

The inverse of this is that other factors detract from attraction. Seeing that psychological aversion happens in the same part of the brain where physical aversion (smells, sights, etc) happens, it stands to reason you’re not apt to bond to something you find repellent. As a matter of fact, I present you with the underlying cause for the “ick”. Anything that induces aversion in a woman is a barrier between you and a bond with her. Where these lines are drawn is relatively individual in both genders; men have a higher aversion tolerance overall (though this significantly depends on the man and his intentions), meaning if he only intends to sleep with you, he might drop his standards to do so (intention-based). In general, women are more aversive, although that also has a lot to do with upbringing, health, and the sociocultural context in which they find themselves.

Attraction, in both genders, is relatively plastic, which is basically what Stendhal means, that it can overcome objective beauty to certain degrees when other parts of attraction are high/present. There’s an exploration here of contagion as well where people draw lines (although individual), if it’s too “loaded” or just “bad vibes/energy” it has alot to do with the outlined factors, when someone is experience depressive or anxious states for a prolonged period of time (or anything else on that spectrum) their biology changes at all these different levels, making them feel heavy or give of bad energy, or make others feel drained by being with them. To be absolutely clear, this is currently being weaponized to a phenomenal degree, with tolerance for certain things being at an all-time low, and this “good vibes only,” “toxic” and fake positivity crowd cutting people off or out with abandon because they are “too much”. There’s a real case to be made for when this warranted, and hopefully addressed and approached properly with a modicum of understanding and some empathy (though with a lot of people, that’s usually not the case).

Don’t take this as a hint toward “suicidal empathy” or bruteforcing/ignoring everything that goes into attraction and contagious emotion, rather to take the time to differentiate and analyze what it is that has given you a feeling that something is wrong or off (perhaps even the “ick”) and how a certain person makes you feel after the interaction(s) put in the contextual scope of who they are and their behavioral track record. I probably don’t need to clarify this, however, if someone is going through a bad time, and they’re coping with it poorly but are otherwise not “like this,” then it stands to reason support is warranted instead of running away or cutting them off. Which, I believe, when a secure attachment is present both ways, wouldn’t even be considered, so it’s another indicator of the level of attachment injury.

Contagious depression: Automatic mimicry and the mirror neuron system - A review

Free energy principle, entropy, and narrative

The essence of the free energy principle is that uncertainty creates energy loss in the brain (entropy). I think this makes sense intuitively for a lot of people. In uncertainty, we start generating scenarios and narratives in an attempt to resolve the uncertainty, which expends a lot of energy and thus creates a loss of energy. Especially if this goes unchecked, which can happen with rumination and parasitic processing. Narrative is deeply wired into how we make sense of the universe and the world. And forms or contributes to our religious sense, as we need a narrative to resolve or, at the very least, reduce uncertainty about the universe and reality, so we can get on with our day. This narrativization is highly present in our attachment. If someone doesn’t text back, the narratives will start spinning. We could argue that the more the models of attachment are injured, disjuncted, flawed, fragile, and or broken, the more uncertainty and thus the more entropy gets triggered with any shock or insult to the system. That's why interpersonal dynamics, or rather, attachment, is a key feature (and underrated) in prediction errors and entropy. Prediction error is a mismatch between the internal model and the experience in the world. Upgrading the models (the internal/psychological representation) is an important facet of being able to function in the world, and a part of why people keep making the same mistakes in coupling/bonding or in their relationships in general, as they don’t or fail to integrate the experiences into the model. This is convergent with Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over again expecting different results".

Karl Friston and Jordan Peterson had a conversation about this exactly that fits here beautifully, so let’s explore what they say and unpack it in light of the intention and the framework. I kept these quotes from the podcast intact, to maintain their integrity, as it speaks to many dimensions with implications you can extrapolate to most things. That means I let the jargon and technical terms of definitions stand so we can add them into the exploration and explain them in a more comprehensible fashion.

“To my mind, uncertainty just is a state of, or recognized as a state of, angst or anxiety. So, you know, that sort of imperative to minimize expected surprise just is choosing or can be complied with by choosing those plans that minimize uncertainty. And what would that look like? It would basically look like epistemic of responding to epistemic affordances that resolve that uncertainty. So I think that's the kind of surprise that we aspire to. It's the novelty that affords the opportunity to resolve uncertainty and thereby resolve angst. And if that's true, then taking it to your context, how would I do that if I were in a social hierarchy of chimpanzees, or I was in any social setting? In one sense, the simplest way to resolve my surprise and make the world as predictable as possible, would initially be to resolve my uncertainty about you by asking you the right kinds of questions that allows me to sort of put you in a particular category in one of my narratives, my social narratives about the kinds of people that I can talk about. But also, ultimately, I'm going to try and make you like me or me like you, because the closer we are, if we can share the same narratives and the same language, then together we're mutually predictable. So that mathematically would be, so like, a generalized synchrony from a social neuroscience perspective on dynamic interactions, it's basically aligning ourselves so that we come to know each other, and that we can dance and synchronize and exchange. And, you know, after a while, I don't need to ask you any more questions, you don't need to ask me any more questions. We are now on the same page, singing from the same hymn sheet, the same generative model, the same world model, the same kinds of narratives.”

Friston lays out the pathways to resolving and reducing uncertainty. In the first order: to make the world as predictable as possible. Secondly, categorization is an important function of us being able to make sense of the world and others in it. Thirdly, relating and relatability, this very often shows up as finding common ground and emphasizing our similarities rather than our differences. There’s an additional level to this, which is the literal version that we see in a more pronounced way in romantic heterosexual relationships, where the woman is usually far more malleable and adapts to her partner, using the same type of vernacular, internalizing his models, synchronizing lifestyle, etc. The higher the overlap of these elements, which would either start from value alignment or lead to value alignment, the more predictable we become to each other, the less uncertainty we experience, and thus, entropy is reduced or resolved. That’s why I often come back to interpersonal synchrony and alignment of values (and by extension lifestyle). The bigger the gap is between yours and theirs, the higher the uncertainty, the more energy has to be introduced into the entire dynamic to align. This coming to know each other will be explored extensively in the following section on stages of development. Couples who manage to do this, or even friends, get a quasi-telepathic understanding of each other. Which is what he points out about having to ask very few questions, and staying in alignment with the same model.

“The best way to make someone else predictable and you to them, which is also equally useful, in some sense, is to be inhabited by the same conceptual structure. And that's sort of what we do when we decide to play a game together. It's like, here's the game, here are the principles by which we're going to operate. Those are the rules of the game. And if you're operating by those principles, and I'm operating by those principles simultaneously, then we're going to share perceptual reality, because that's instantiated in relationship to the game. And we're going to share emotional response. And so I can now predict you, if you're playing the same game, merely by reading off of me. We establish a shared two people establish a shared narrative. And that shared narrative simplifies the world, and that simplification constrains entropy, then that shared narrative constrains terror.”

The conceptual structure here is basically the model, one representation of which is “the game”, the social contract we establish, and the constraints as rules. Basically: Don’t do unto others what you would not have done unto yourself. In that conceptual reality, we are playing the same game. Which is the basis of game theory: I will cooperate with you until you cheat, and then I will punish you until you cooperate, from that point I will cooperate with you again (until you cheat again, which would warrant a higher punishment and a stop to the game). Thus, when the constraints, rules, and outline of the game are clear we share conceptual reality, the perception of the world. Which leads to synchrony, and thus predictability, a shared narrative, and a reduction of entropy.

“So if entropy just is uncertainty, and as I get close to resolving that uncertainty, if it's an epistemic reward, it is just expected surprise, and the closer you get, the less uncertain you are. The closer you get, the fewer things you have to compute in order to get there. So, that's a good working definition of entropy. It's like I have to do less. I have to handle fewer doubts between me and my eventual destination. So, that reduces dopaminergic reward to a subset of entropy reduction. We should point out that living creatures are always fighting entropy. They're trying to violate the laws of thermodynamics in some, not fundamentally, but in some local sense by insisting upon the maintenance of order in the face of this proclivity for things to go every which way at once. And so movement towards a shared goal that's also going to reduce the entropy between us, say, because it means if I can rely on you to accompany me as I move forward. That means I can predict you better, it also means that both of us are now in a situation that's less entropic because there's less variability between you and me and the joint us (the we space) and that shared goal. And so I've fortified my belief in your reliability, and I've reduced my apprehension of your entropy. Yeah, physicists would love that because, of course, the nice thing about entropy and free energy, which we're here sort of reading as surprise and prediction errors, is an extensive quantity. So your free energy and my free energy, or your entropy and my entropy, we just have to add them together because they're extensive, and then our free energy is exactly the sum of our free energy. So if we can both render our mutual worlds more predictable and less surprising, then our joint free energy will fall.”

The case being made is reducing uncertainty, which requires transparency, honesty, straightforwardness, and clarity. Which, in the end, has a dopamine inducing effect, you have that with tracking goals in general when you get closer to your goal (as he points out: eventual destination), the same happens in relationships in this way, there’s huge dopamine implications in elevated states of uncertainty (dopamine reducing/depleting), and of course increased energy demand. The reduction of variability is clarity, which can’t happen without communication and alignment of values, vision, goals, and clear constraints to the relationship. This then orients towards the ideal “to render our mutual worlds more predictable”, to make our models similar or the same.

The flip side of this is that, to reiterate, the bigger the deficit, difference, and misalignment of these models, the more flawed and dysfunctional co-identifications, beliefs, narratives, and perceptions around these three models, the more difficult it becomes to afford a healthy and secure attachment. Here we return to a contributing factor to why people repeat the same relationship dynamics over and over, based on sub-optimal models that fail to upgrade properly (in other words, the lessons aren't learned or integrated). Talk about a lot of wasted energy, literally from an entropy angle. These people run into the same issues and or the same relationship issues over and over again, without any real resolve, constantly enforcing entropy rather than reducing it. These models of self, others, and reality are clearly plastic/pliable and generative. This means they can get changed and grow, and produce things ("voices", sensations, intuition, etc). The brain tries to conserve energy by being efficient, its adaptiveness at work (and not laziness, the notion is frankly laughable). So if there are dysfunctional and disorganized models, they leak energy in the current environment and situation because they were otherwise fitted to meet needs during childhood, in ways that the current environment or behavioral patterns won’t afford.

I wonder at times if morality is downstream from the free energy principle; it seems like it is at least a factor that goes into why we form behavioral constraints and social contracts, as to keep our models and narratives aligned so we can function harmoniously. For behaviors outside the contract, like cheating for instance, knowing this is going to cause massive amounts of entropy, amplify the narrative spin, increase the probability of projection, experience negative affect like guilt, shame and frustration, splitting the psyche in order to compartmentalize and not have a slip of the tongue, that’s a lot losing energy, it seems like the wisest and most rational move to avoid it at all cost.

Motivational states also influence these models and prediction errors, as we try to "make manifest a desire", which is really a hypothalamic drive, unsuccessfully due to the reasons we’ve explored. Furthermore, the free energy principle adds to the neurological mechanisms of how we experience anxiety (in the pursuit of these goals and drives).

“Anxiety signifies the emergence of entropy, like technically, which I was really thrilled about, because it gives emotion a physical grounding, like a real physical grounding. And Friston surprised me because he said he has a theory of positive emotion that's analogous. He also knew the negative emotion. He'd also been working in that domain. He said that you get a dopamine kick when you reduce the entropy in relation to a goal. And I thought, oh my God, that's so cool, because it means that uncertainty is entropy. When it emerges, you get anxious, but when you see yourself stepping towards a goal, you get a dopamine kick. And the reason that's an entropy related to entropy is because with each step, successful step, you take towards a goal, you reduce the uncertainty of the pursuit, which is manifested in that phenomenon you described, which is when you see the finish line, you start running faster.”

Minimize uncertainty
As it came up a few times, there are 3 main ways to minimize uncertainty:

1. Change world/environment/reality (ontology framework).

2. Change the model and the narrative, and thus the prediction (narrative framework).

3. Change how you feel about it (emotional regulation plus emotional intelligence framework).

In terms of relationships in general, that’s why the emphasis on communication is attempted to be hammered home left and right. How do you reduce uncertainty? You talk to your partner. In the absence of communication, one or either are left guessing, and the narratives that emerge from that can take on their own life. It’s important to note that, generally, early childhood experiences, which have shaped attachment and relational models, will generate the types of narratives and emotional responses congruent with said attachment and models. This can be addressed and resolved (to degrees that’s largely dependent on the individual), as one can alter or heal their attachment and change their models. Having that shared space, and goal, or specific individual goals relating to this, you pursue to contribute to reducing uncertainty, especially when these are value and virtue oriented.

Free energy and emotion

Lisa Feldtman Barret, in her conversation with Andrew Huberman, brings more elements of this to the table.

“There are some brains that are wired in a way that they don't predict very well. They don't create these categories very well. And so they're dealing with really unbelievable amounts of uncertainty. So that's one thing. That part of what the goal is here, if you could say there's a goal, it is to reduce uncertainty. So you start to realize that we might all be encoding the world slightly differently or very differently, and it's changing in time. So then the question becomes, what are the anchor points in terms of our understanding of emotions that we can work with?”

Clarity is gained through communication and behavior, and thus creates a minimization in entropy, that is, when it comes to the other in the equation (for the so manieth iteration of this). For ourselves, we need self-regulation (serotonin-based), self-soothing (oxytocin-based) narrative practices (PFC-based), and emotional capacity to handle said uncertainty constructively, that’s the emotion equation. Theory of mind, understanding, and empathy are important here in terms of understanding this difference in encoding the world, that is, if you’re attempting to bond with someone, of course.

Lastly, it’s important to understand this “encoding the world differently” as people often project their models of the world, self, and other onto others. Using yourself as the prototype for how things “should be” is admittedly a part of the process to try to understand others from a theory of mind aspect, but it’s only a stepping stone. Open exploration of how they function is the actual development of theory of mind, because then you start understanding how they operate, how their brain encodes things. I’ll illustrate with an example: everyone’s eyes are slightly different in the cones and rods that perceive color, which also has a genetic element. So even though we largely agree on the color shade, there’s still variance in this perception. When it comes to encoding the world, and specifically how people experience emotion, there are huge variances in this.

There are so many systems and mechanisms that go into this, which I won’t outline here, that set up and create the internal landscape and experience (sensory feedback, biofeedback, limbic cortex development, it’s a very long list). As such, even though we use the same words, they can mean different things to different people; the whole point of the open exploration is to figure out what it means to them. How they experience the world, others, themselves and their emotions, this is where theory of mind really becomes a fine tuned prediction machine. In my experience, understanding all of these neurological mechanisms coupled ot the extensive dialogues I’ve had and experience of 15 years of coaching, you build a pretty robust theory of mind. I’m able to differentiate these mechanisms and explore with them the implications, constraints and drives of processes and experiences, while bypassing my own processes even when an overlap of exists in terms of processing and experiencing, I still have my unique processing. The point I’m trying to make is this: If understand yourself well, you minimize entropy in this regard (being able to self regulate, self soothe, etc) and if you are able to openly explore the other’s experience in question, you can minimize entropy in this way by understanding them, because you effectively explore their models in earnest across those three orientations/dimensions.

Stages of development, trauma, and bonding

This section explores the stages of development, contrasted with bonding levels, and types of love. The exploration that takes place goes through the course of these stages and their expressions, so we can tie it together in a way that makes sense and provides context for how attachment changes throughout life and how these stages present or express themselves in trauma, and how it leads to situationships and trauma bonds.

Erik Erikson outlined eight main developmental phases in his theory of psychosocial development:

• Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy: birth to 18 months) - Developing trust when caregivers provide reliability and care.

• Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Early Childhood: 18 months to 3 years) - Gaining a sense of personal control and independence.

• Initiative vs. Guilt (Preschool Age: 3 to 6 years) - Asserting control through directing play and other activities.

• Industry vs. Inferiority (School Age: 6 to 12 years) - Coping with new social and academic demands, leading to a sense of competence.

• Identity vs. Role Confusion (Adolescence: 12 to 18 years) - Developing a personal identity and sense of self.

• Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young Adulthood: 18 to 40 years) - Forming intimate relationships while balancing independence.

• Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle Adulthood: 40 to 65 years) - Contributing to society and helping the next generation.

• Integrity vs. Despair (Late Adulthood: 65 years and older) - Reflecting on life with a sense of fulfillment or regret.

There are 6 main means of bonding:

• Proximity (rooted in the senses).

• Identity (sameness).

• Loyalty (shadow side: possessiveness).

• Significance (to feel we matter to somebody).

• Feeling (through affection).

• Being known.

• Values.

Another aspect we should integrate is Robert Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love, which describes three components of love that combine to create different types of love relationships:

Intimacy: Feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness

Passion: Drives leading to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation

Commitment: Short-term decision to love someone and long-term commitment to maintain that love

These components combine to form eight types of love:

• Nonlove: Absence of all three components.

• Liking: Intimacy only.

• Infatuated love: Passion only.

• Empty love: Commitment only.

• Romantic love: Intimacy and passion.

• Companionate love: Intimacy and commitment.

• Fatuous love: Passion and commitment.

• Consummate love: All three components present.

This summary only shows exactly how a lot of “situationships” arise, or how cooperative/strategic relationships form. We’re about to explore this deeper. Before we do, we have to contrast the bonding levels with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and we can see the parallels in terms of what is survival-based and what becomes necessary to thrive:

That’s why, generally, people who have high levels of childhood trauma have attachment issues, like codependency, because of the damage to the attachment circuits, altered baselines, altered responses and that their stress axis and threat perception are hyperaroused and that parts of the brain that atemporal are “stuck” in the past, which puts the entire brain in a constant state of survival (or at the very least something close to it). It extends to stress (distress) regardless of the source and fear(s). This alters stress perception and experience (there are significant biological and neurological alterations to systems), whether the threat to their survival is constant or it is always around the corner (amplifying pre-existing trauma conditions).

As such, they need proximity more than anything else, and it gets a higher premium, a deficit or lack in the ability to self regulate and self soothe also plays a large role here, thus their need for others to regulate them (which in essence is the foundation for codependency). It also speaks to the amplification of the mate-switching hypothesis, these types of women (particularly) will groom someone else establishing proximity to then ditch their distant or unavailable partner (less common in men, but it does exist). This is also why we looked at the stages of development, the more someone has arrested development, the more primative their bonding is and their needs are. They trend towards mistrust, need for validation, high need for proximity, will be loyal out of fear rather than love, tend to fear losing themselves in their relationship, or do lose themselves because of a fragile sense of self, typically display inferiority and unworthiness, are highly driven by guilt and shame, and very reliant on the physiological aspects of love rather than the spiritual aspects of love (will favor attraction over values and being known).

They also have issues adjusting their behavior in light of either comments from their significant other (on their behavior) or in light of the behavior of their significant other (abusiveness, disrespect, etc). That’s predominantly due to the injury to all these circuits, systems and brain areas that are involved in bonding. “vmPFC is all about the impact of emotion on decision making. People with vmPFC (ventral medial prefrontal cortex) damage not only have trouble making decisions but also make bad ones. They show poor judgment in choosing friends and partners and don’t shift behavior based on negative feedback.” from The Brain That Changes Itself. And again, seeing that these neurological alterations, will favor a bad attachment over an attachment void, as per the “Any port in the storm” principle goes.

Additionally, in your late twenties into your early thirties this entire orientation tends to flip toward relations and family. As a personal anecdote, this was something that didn’t make sense to me when I was in my mid twenties, partially due to lack of education and partially because my brain was just not there yet. In Oslo it wasn’t uncommon that Swedes that hit their late twenties would move back to Sweden to be close to family and start one themselves. Even Norwegians that lived abroad would return to Norway for the same reason. It wasn’t uncommon for Norwegians living in Oslo to move back to where they came from (or close to it) around that age for the same reasons. Depending on the gender, experiences and developmental stage this can occur earlier or later, but generally the flip seems to be inevitable. Which for men tend to be most profound in flipping from this dopamine fueled novelty drive into a GABA fueled stability drive (generally speaking of course). This is typically seen as a “pacification” from youngster, but that’s primarily because they lack the faculties to understand and appreciate that developmental stage.

The point here is that you typically have a healthy and natural development through this stages, which would also make it self apparent in the levels you bond at. This doesn’t mean the lower levels of bonding stop mattering altogether, but they sure are buffered by the depth of the bond at the higher levels. As an illustration, when one of the partners in a securely attached couple is away for an extended period of time, this won’t cause mistrust, doubt or the behaviors leading to find a placeholder for the lacking proximity and intimacy. In disorganized attachments, distance is very often a trigger for mistrust, doubt, insecurity, inferiority, and subsequently destructive behaviors, stalking, control, manipulation, and even infidelity of several levels (whether physical, emotional, or both). In general, those with disorganized attachments (or intense avoidant-anxious attachments) have relations that are based on lower levels and typically get involved with types where love and commitment are missing. “Any port in the storm” as I’ve reiterated many times: AN(Y) attachment is better than no attachment, regardless of how toxic, abusive or poor the attachment is (which is a contributor to today’s situationship scenarios). Another element of this disrupted and disorganized bonding and attachment profile is that they have difficulty closing the door romantically. They typically keep contact with exes or people who “hoover” around them, or those who expressed romantic interest they shot down, partly because of fear of the attachment void, disorganized attachment and mate scarcity (or rather attachment scarcity perception) they need to know they have ports to run to when the storm hits (and it always hits).

These developmental changes also influence and dictate personality changes. As such, there’s a shift in attachment needs, and what type of relationships become a preference. A part of the personality shifting with age exploration takes place in The Path To Your Aspirational Self framework, as that one centers mainly on identity and personality. However, we need to take a deeper look at this on how these changes in identity and personality (due to age and experience) drive different attachment needs, eventhough the core of it and fundamentals, stay exactly the same. Steve Stewart Willians makes a case for this in a blog post he wrote. The graph of which is presented as below.

-Blue: Neuroticism.

-Green: Extraversion.

-Red: Openness to experience.

-Orange: Agreeableness.

-Purple: Conscientiousness.

Contrast this curve with the stages of development we discussed. We can spot some strong changes leading into your 30s/ at 30, again at 45, and again at 60. This curve converges very strongly on those developmental jumps we discussed. Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young Adulthood: 18 to 40 years): Forming intimate relationships while balancing independence.

Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle Adulthood: 40 to 65 years) - Contributing to society and helping the next generation. Integrity vs. Despair (Late Adulthood: 65 years and older) - Reflecting on life with a sense of fulfillment or regret. Timelines vary depending on the person, however, the reason why the majority of their clients were in their 40s is this jump in openness, which is a potential driver of the infamous midlife crisis. Especially when it comes with further neurological changes like hippocampus, PFC and amygdala maturation and differences in the activation baseline (especially with the amygdala).

As such, you start noticing a whole reorientation and a re-examination of attachment itself. Think about it, very often they start looking at themselves different (most commonly the confrontation with aging), they start looking at the world differently (“I spent all of this time for company Y or X and it left me unfulfilled”), and alterations in their interactions with others (in cases of poorly attached partnership, cheating), these are obviously just a few examples, the point isn’t that these behaviors are inevitable, rather that given the cliches, they just tend to trend in this direction. There’s a host of men in their 40s who “all of a sudden” find themselves without a brotherhood, something that is typically built in their 20s and 30s. As one nears their 60s, legacy starts becoming more important (at the beginning of their 40s, men typically start to think about this).

Also represented in their 60s is that physical intimacy is less important than enjoying the “mundane” everyday life and everyday moments. With a sharp decrease in the red curve, openness to experience, this tends to converge with a significant drop in novelty seeking. There seems to be robust research on dopamine degradation in aging. Though I’m not sure if this is an actual age mechanism, or rather a lifestyle compounding issue, or to be even more precise: a lifestyle compounding issue exaggerating/amplifying an aging mechanism. My money is on the latter. In these later stages, legacy becomes more important to men, even though many lament either the absence of their brotherhood or its degradation due to their buddies dying. In the book Heartbreak by Florence Williams, she talks about Men's Sheds, which is a movement that originated in Australia but has gained traction in the UK as well. They’re essentially workshops where older men work on projects together, creating opportunities for socialization and combating loneliness. The ages varied, but generally were 60-plus, just to point out that men’s needs for brotherhood never actually fade, no matter whether or not they left and built a legacy. I’m partially writing this to challenge the portrayal that a man just needs his family. Again, it is important, obviously, but so is the brotherhood (as will be explored further in the section of its name).

There’s an additional neurometabolic and neurological maturation aspect here where when you hit your 30’s and beyond, your tolerance for bullshit and drama tends to drastically change. For me personally, that happened to me during my burnout. Seeing that’s effectively a neurometabolic injury, minor grade brain damage, which alters (or rather damages) the energy sensing, predicting and allocating mechanisms. So much so that my tolerance for anything that was misaligned, bullshit, childish or all around misaligned was just an immediate no for me. This made the social filtering process a lot easier and streamlined. This experience is common in both the general aging process and those who burn out. Seeing you have these developmental jumps in the brain, that also implies neurometabolic changes.

This has a lot of layers to it: neurotransmitter changes, hormonal changes, amygdala tuning down, further developing and maturation of the PFC and hippocampus (dealing with memory), and as I said, significant changes in energy sensing and prediction. This would and does drive social selectiveness, for good reason. At this point (or really any given point as these changes occur), there’s an aversion of sorts to waste time and energy, strongly leaning toward not wanting to waste energy. There’s a case to be made that the healthier one is and stays, the better these energy systems work, just to separate what happens due to age itself and what happens due to accumulative neurometabolic damage from lifestyle, when these effects have similar outcomes. For me, it significantly changed both social interactions, but also self-perception and worries around social standing, which is quite interesting. The degree to which people experience any of these will obviously depend on a host of factors, a lot of which are explored in this framework.

Regardless, this facet of developmental stages seems to me an underrated aspect, that when you’re in your early twenties, seems very foreign (being a dopamine and hormone “fiend”). Which is why I made the case in this section for the healthy and natural integration of these developmental changes and how it influences, impacts, and alters attachment and social interactions at large, and the three orientations. We should also account for plasticity levels in general and reductions in plasticity levels. Seeing stress, chronic and acute, reduces/depletes oxytocin and dopamine, it also depletes BDNF, particularly in the hippocampus, which, as we saw, deals with memory, learning and emotional regulation. Which would also tell us A) how fast someone moves through these stages, B) how fast they process and resolve challenges, C) and puts a limit on both the speed and scope of how rewiring takes place, D) partly explains why some people have such a hard time learning from their mistakes (as learning is impaired and emotions run the show) E) will also determine how long it takes for this neuronal reorganization to occur and how long it takes to move on from their previous partner as an attachment “anchor”.

Summary

• That should put a nail in the coffin for the “people can’t make you feel anything”, they do (through all the explored mechanisms) whether you want to or not, what matters is your ability to self-regulate, self-soothe, and differentiate which emotions are yours and which are the contagious emotions of others.

• Vasopressin increases risk-taking behavior for a higher shared reward

• Vasopressin also makes a bond far more robust, able to withstand pressures and shocks, and even grow from those.

• The brain is quite plastic, so is its circuitry; a lot of reorganization and rewiring can happen, although that depends on a host of factors.

• How the brain areas function and wired will have a significant impact on attachment behaviors.

• Who you interact with in which ways changes your brain and genes.

• You internalize the models of others, introjects, that will influence your own models and modes of being.

• Adaptation, habituation, and contrast are always present, and we have to actively navigate them.

• People affect you on each level, all the way down to the molecular and genetic level.

• People determine, dictate, and influence all energy signaling and neurological feedback loops involved in energy and resources.

• Certain people with arrested development will have a much harder time building secure attachments.

• Growing and moving through these developmental phases in a constructive manner is fundamental for integration and maturity.

Introversion vs extroversion

This section will also be heavier on the neurology, so hang in there. The most common perception is that this is a personality aspect or rather an identity, and is generally seen as “hard-wired”, or at the very least hard to change. A recurring theme in this framework (and my other ones) is plasticity, there is a fair amount of plasticity even here. Though, as usual, it has a lot of moving parts that need to be addressed. The two main drivers here are going to be the free energy principle in terms of prediction and dopamine. In Andrew Huberman’s dialogue with Laurie Santos, they talk about this extensively, which lays the groundwork to understand how these mechanisms work. So we’ll be working off quotes with elaborations, which introduce several dialogues of Andrew Huberman, research, studies and observations, so let’s explore what goes into introversion and extraversion.

“We have good data on what people predict, which is that people predict social interaction is just not going to be that fun. It's not going to be worth it. This seems to be a spot where our predictions about how good something is going to be don't necessarily match how good it ultimately will going to be [prediction error]. I put it in the context of the reverse of something like processed food, where I think for a lot of people, you predict this is going to be amazing. And you taste it, and you're like, now I feel kind of gross. This prediction error is highlighted with research done at the University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley has this term, he uses under-sociality, where he thinks we just kind of don't get the right reward benefit of social connection. He talks about examples of expressing gratitude to people, giving somebody a compliment, and even things like asking for help. All these domains where we can kind of connect with another person, such as expressing gratitude to people, giving somebody a compliment, even things like asking for help. All these domains where we can kind of connect with another person, it may be net good if I was rating it on some scale, but it winds up being way better than we predict in all these contexts. He does these studies where he has people predict how good something will be, like giving a gift to somebody. He offers the subjects of the study a hot chocolate and asks the participants to predict how good it will feel to give that guy over there a stranger the hot chocolate. Most people will say three out of 10. But then they do it, and then they feel differently, it's more like a six out of 10. It was much more rewarding for me, the giver, than I thought. Same thing with compliments, expressing gratitude, calling a friend you haven't talked to in a long time, reaching out to somebody that you care about but you haven't connected with. All these spots are ones where our predictions are off. It's not the valence that's off. We know it'll be good, but we just don't realize how good. And his argument is that if we don't realize how good, there’s a tendency to underestimate this. So introverts versus extroverts is typically thought of as a personality distinction, often thought of as sort of something that's built in, although there's lots of evidence that over time you can sort of change these things around, you could become a little bit more extroverted if you're introverted. But introverts tend to value deeper close conversations, one-on-one kinds of things, and a lot of alone time. They get a lot of benefit from alone time.”

So here we have the brunt of the mechanisms tying into the prediction of reward, where different people on the introversion vs extroversion scale will make different predictions. There seems to be a baseline prediction that most people have that there is a net benefit to this type of socialization; it’s just that the prediction undervalues or underestimates the reward. That gives merit to the under-sociality term, which is highly state-dependent, as we’ll explore later. Seeing all these mechanisms work on energy homeostasis signaling, which just means that your body has to predict energy, resources and rewards and weigh them up against each other, “Is this [insert event] really worth the effort?”. Let’s continue.

“Whereas extroverts tend to be more energized by being around other people, especially bigger crowds of people. And so introverts tend to be a little bit more deliberate, a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more, kind of want to have my own personal chill time. Whereas extroverts tend to like people. And so you might think that everything I've just said applies to extroverts, but not to introverts. Folks have gone out and tested this. And what they find is that there is a big difference between introverts and extroverts, but it's in that prediction error. Extroverts predict, ah, social connection, we are right, not that great. Introverts predict, it's going to be terrible. And this is a thing I think that we also get wrong about introverts and extroverts, is we assume, I'm born that way, you know, never going to change. And it is true that there are predispositions towards this stuff. But the data suggests that if you can maybe update your reward value of this, you as an introvert, try a little social connection. Don't go to like the hugest party ever, jump into improv comedy. Just try calling a friend that you haven't talked to in a while. Notice how that felt like it was a prediction error. “I actually felt better than I expected”. Then you might update your prediction and get, and so you can kind of update your introversion in part by trying things out and noticing the reward value you get. I think the thing that is different for introverts is that you definitely need your alone time. So you want to balance any social connection you get with a little bit of time by yourself but the research really shows that if you're predicting right now “I just don't like the social connection”, you might actually like it more than your prediction is suggesting. “I don't want social connection”. You might actually like it more than your prediction suggests.”

This drives the point home of how this feedback loop can change between the value system (the Orbital Frontal Cortex that deals with this) which can be updated through the reward system (dopamine) and our attachment circuits. So extroverts tend to predict higher reward, whereas introverts predict lower reward, which for both changes the experience due to the contrast of the prediction error. This obviously doesn’t mean that these prediction errors always have to be huge, they come on a spectrum, and surely sometimes you get it right. Right, meaning that the metabolic demand and prediction match the reward prediction. In the free energy section we talked about these models and that they can update, which does happen here as well, reward and value prediction are plastic. Which, of course, depends on the general plasticity of someone’s brain, and a host of other factors that always come back: stress, inflammation, resources, general energy signaling (which has a lot to do with leptin and the hypothalamus).

Dopamine sensitivity and baseline prediction

So why do these variances exist between the introvert and the extrovert, it has a lot to do with how satiating the interaction or experience is. Which is largely based on the interplay between a brain region called the Dorsal Raphe Nucleus (DRN) and the hypothalamus (and of course the OFC as mentioned in the previous section). So, for introverts, they tend to derive satisfaction from fewer social interactions, possibly experiencing a high dopamine release from brief engagements. Which means that their sensitivity is higher, and their baseline (generally) lower. Extraverts, on the other hand, tend to require more frequent social interactions to achieve similar satisfaction.

The involvement of the DRN, mediates serotonin and also has a small subset of unique population dopamine in a neuron cluster, consider it the social homeostasis mediator. When you lack social interaction, this drives the craving. Which will ultimately drive the frequency and intensity of social interaction as it causes us to seek out specific social interaction. If that level of interaction is not met, you will get a prosocial craving to meet that need/interaction, which of course ties back to prediction, this will and can throw off the required behavioral action for the missing interaction (when we lack what we expect). So there’s definitely a certain level of irony at play that the people who could use these interactions the most in many ways tend to “automatically” avoid them due to this prediction error.

Introversion and extroversion are predominantly determined by internal state, what type of interaction is draining, and who is draining/energizing, same for environments. As we saw, the introvert gets more dopamine from a social interaction, whereas an extravert gets less, so they need more. Thus, when you're feeling lonely, dopamine is released (remember that is a driver as well, a motivator to seek or chase), and it causes you to go out and seek social interactions (IF these circuits are firing properly and aren’t impeded by multiple factors). When this brain area has enough social interactions the neurons in this brain area shut down their production of dopamine, or rather the loneliness state turns off. So the signal and level of neurotransmitters that flow through the DRN and the hypothalamus then return to a level of homeostasis, where you feel satisfied. If you think of yourself as an introvert, it's very likely that you get a lot of dopamine from a few or minimal social interactions. Whereas if you're an extrovert, contrary to what you might think, social interactions are not going to flood your system with dopamine. They actually are going to lead to less dopamine release than it would for an introvert. And therefore, you're going to need a lot more social interactions in order to feel filled up by those interactions. Which is exactly what we’ll explore in the following section.

Social meter and fuel, and recovery time

We already saw that the dorsal raphe nucleus has a special type of dopamine, or rather a unique type that leads to the driver of behavior. That’s because the dorsal raphe nucleus is a brain region linked to social hunger, and its activation can lead to cravings for social interaction, much like hunger cravings for food. It stands to reason that when we are not interacting with people at the frequency or intensity that we crave, dopamine is released. And that dopamine causes us to seek out social interactions of particular kinds. This forms the basis for what is called social homeostasis.

Which works like this: if you're somebody who is accustomed to a lot of social interaction, and suddenly I take away that social interaction, you would feel kind of let down, you would crave a replacement social interaction. You might be upset that you had a lunch date with a friend, you're used to having lunch with them every Wednesday and they cancel and you would crave the interaction. This is called a prosocial craving, which obviously depends on your individual social homeostatic state. Which is why we circle back to the highlight that introverts derive significant dopamine from minimal social interactions, while extroverts require more interactions to achieve the same dopamine levels.

In terms of loneliness, that means that loneliness is not merely isolation but a discrepancy between expected and actual social relationships, driven by the dorsal raphe nucleus. So the absence of expected social interactions triggers a pro-social craving, similar to hunger pangs when a meal is missed. And thus we have our own social meters, how much social “fuel” we need, and how long it takes us to recover from socializing. An important piece of this puzzle is of course heavily reliant on childhood experiences, a part of introversion (next to the usual neurological pieces) has a conditioned element or internalized identity-belief-narrative structure to it of low self worth, and potential layers of guilt and shame, which makes it difficult to socialize to certain degrees. If they come from an ancestry of high dopamine baseline and thus less inclination to socialize like that, it can be a major threshold to cross.

A part of this exploration should take place in the formula or framework of the aspirational self, just as a differentiation process. Regardless, let’s look at it here in enough depth to make the conjoining points. Whenever it comes to the identification mechanism between the two, I offer people to explore to what degree these take place. So what determines IV and EV beyond genes and childhood experiences? State, environment, the people in question. First off, for state, when we’re in a poor biological and or psychological state, the energy conservation mechanism tends to enable, and the prediction of the interaction will also change. All that means is that energy regulation is going to favor saving energy instead of expending it. Which ties into these dopaminergic profiles quite strongly, because someone who has a low baseline and thus needs more stimulation is predisposed to distract themselves by socializing in low energy states, right up until they hit a significant low, from which they exhibit the same behaviors as most people and will socially isolate and withdraw to conserve energy. It’s less a question of if, and more a question of when, as in where the lines are drawn. Secondly, environment, it’s not exactly a surprise that cultures further down south are perceived as warmer and open. Climate, sunlight, temperature, and so forth have a major impact on our states, and thus our well-being. Lastly, the people you are socializing with are a factor (depending on the previous two factors influencing this dimension as well). Some people are highly extraverted with their close ones, or even when the ice has been broken with someone new. So again, it’s a function of degree.

If we’d look at a bell curve of population distribution, outliers on each end would be the hermit and on the other side the social butterfly. Everyone in the middle would more naturally cycle between IV and EV depending on the factors we outlined. Hence, I rarely attribute much meaning to the co-identification of these, nor do I consider them personality traits. I’ve seen people light up in the company of others, or in a different climate, or when they found their way to great biology. As such, when someone struggles with getting to extraversion, I make it a point to figure out what their state is like, their environment, and who they hang out with. For most people it is very possible to become more extraverted, or rather build the capacity and the ability to do so, with the building of confidence and awareness around the constraints and amplifiers. There’s a reason why alcohol is called a social lubricant, and it breaks this paradigm of extraversion vs introversion for a lot of people. As a matter of fact, it is so ingrained that people have been shocked when I tell them I don’t drink, and then proceed to ask how I manage to socialize or have the “courage” to talk to strangers (usually of the opposite sex). I’ve heard many iterations of the “I couldn’t do that without alcohol” belief and narrative (which generally stems from a co-identification of low self-esteem or self-image issues).

This is why drugs are interesting, because they break people’s internalized paradigms on the rigidity of their identity. I’ve seen some very introverted guys become trailblazers on cocaine. This is not an endorsement, it’s just an exploration and observation of the effects, because something like cocaine blasts those dopamine levels into the stratosphere and poof, shy boy is no more. All it points out is how much of this internalized belief is a psychological prison rather than a biological prison. We could say the same for substances like Phenibut, again, not an endorsement, but if you think you are one way or another and you take this, you’re going to notice some significant behavioral changes.

The major problem here, as is obvious, people will strongly gravitate towards their favorite crutch instead of working from the understanding they apparently have the capacity, and then work on accessing this sober. Additionally, we should make the case about sorting out neurology and energy levels, which has a high probability of making you more social anyway, and have a stronger drive to socialize. Whenever I had to socialize but didn’t feel like it, I would use something like B4 or Alpha GPC and an electrolyte blend, which was a great way to hack my way there without building a dependency. A lot depends on the combination of dopamine and energy prediction, which is why I always circle back to sorting out your biology/neurology, which smoothens all these processes so you work your way to an alignment of models which makes for more accurate predictions.

Summary

• Know thyself: how much socialization do you need? How much recovery time? Who best to socialize with in which state?

• Addressing identity-belief-narrative structures is a necessary part of this process.

• Addressing and resolving underlying neurological/biological issues is mission-critical.

• Analyze state, environment, and the people in question when you’re having socialization challenges.

• Shift your state if need be in safe ways, whether supplemental (nootropics, herbs) or through behaviors (breathwork), or using psychological tools (reframing).

• Be aware of your prediction patterns and how state influences prediction

• Account for this prediction error based on the state you are in
  
  

Types of love

It stands to reason there are different types of love, we’ve seen a few of them in the dialogue intro, Eros, Agape, Philia and we’ve explored the stages of development, bonding levels and Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love with its types. There’s a possibility for further differentiation, and that could have some merit, though too many classifications create unnecessary noise, and this division for categorization is practical enough for our purposes, so we’ll rely on Plato and add some aspects that are present in John Vervaeke’s work.
Love is a modal way of being (an existential mode, beyond a feeling); it is an agent-arena relationship. As the dialogue attempts to highlight, we love in different ways. So, to deepen this segment, let’s look at the definitions and then explore them in depth.

Agape: the love a parent has for a child (they turn you into a person), the love of creation / has a sacrificial element to it. It is a transformative power, that is turn the other person in more of an agent, amplifying their personhood.

Eros: seeks to be one with something, consummation, so this is not only sexual (as it is often portrayed). I’m aware I portrayed it as such in the dialogue, though at the end I add that it can align for the desire or conjoining with higher order values (and even a desire for life in a sense). Oneness can also take place in a spiritual sense.

Philia: seeks cooperation, reciprocity (more on this in infinite vs finite games) This can be taken as transactional, but friendships built out of this at all is hardly a friendship, because it is lacking Agape, further elaborated on below. The exploration that takes place will weave these elements together.

Pictured: Eros, Philia, and Agape.

Agapic love and personhood

“Love is a modal way of being. Love isn't a feeling and it is not an emotion. You love it because by loving it, you turn a non-person into a person. People loved you before you were a person that you have become the person you are. Love turns non-person animals into moral agent persons This is the love of creation. So the main metaphor for Agape, if you remember, is the way a parent loves a child. You don't love a child because you want to consume it in some way, that's hideous and vicious! You don't love your child when you bring it home from the hospital because it's a great friend to you, It can’t cooperate! It can't do that at all! In fact, it's not even a person. It's not a morally, rationally reflective agent. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. You love it precisely because by loving that non-person, you turn it into a person. This is the powerful, creative and transformative. It's, it's a godlike ability that we have! By participating through love in another being, we can transform that being from a non-person into a person. A person who could enter into a community of persons and find meaning, fellowship, and belonging.”

This is John Vervaeke exploring this concept in Awakening From The Meaning Crisis, episodes 15 and 16. He emphasizes both the profundity and the trivialization that have happened with love (and forgiveness). Even though I’m not a parent, this experience is highly familiar to me because it is the essence of coaching (at the highest levels). That is, you see certain aspects in people, and endeavor to bring those out, creating context for behaviors and emotions, and by doing all of this attempt to improve their agency. In friendships, this follows in a similar vein (if it’s not exactly the same). Seeing the good in each other, the potential, and bringing this to the surface in a nurturing fashion as a parent would with a child. Balancing tough love, as a confrontation of a direct correction, and understanding coupled to empathy, is not the tightrope that some people make it to be. I can attest to my bias as a coach, because I’ve been doing this professionally for over 15 years.

Regardless, very often men who are unable to show proper agapic love due to injured attachment lean too heavily on the type of dynamics their boomer parents did with tough love. This shouldn’t be the brunt of developing each other’s potential, I think that much should be clear at the end of this and just observational data, you get far more done with the carrot (positive reinforcement) than the stick (negative reinforcement), so most behavioral prompting is more alike a nudge than it is a push. Hence, the parallel I made with parenting, a good parent would intervene directly and acutely when there is real danger involved to self or other. And would develop context for behaviors, and only punish when it is absolutely necessary, because the context demands acute learning.

Plato makes a case for the Agapic soul in the genuine desire for the soul of the other (although this quote mainly aimed at a romantic relationship).
“There is further difficulty that he himself is confused and torn between two opposing instincts: one tells him to enjoy his beloved, the other forbids him. The lover of the body, hungry for his partner who is ripe to be enjoyed, like a luscious fruit, tells himself to have his fill, without showing any consideration for his beloved’s character and disposition But in an other case physical desire will count for very little and the lover will be content to age upon his beloved without lusting for her - a mature and genuine desire of soul for soul. That body should sate itself with body he’ll think outrageous; his reverence and respect for self-control, courage, high principles and good judgment will make him went to live a life of purity, chaste lover with a chaste beloved.” - Laws Book 8

As in parenting and coaching, the challenge of friendship is upholding agency, and sometimes that means taking a step back when they hit a wall. When agapic love is this fostering of personhood, and creating more of an agent, than it stands to reason we want to facilitate an increase of agency, not a decrease or encroachment of agency and what is generative. The previous sentence holds a common parental failing, that is to quell what is generative in a child. This can be on an interest, explorational level in the world, but most importantly, it can be in aspects of their personality that are supposed to be integrated into their identity. I’m confident many of us have had experiences where parents have either explicitly stated or implied “Why do you have to be this way?” or some version of this “Stop being this way” that made us feel, think and believe that this part of who are, that we were expressing at the time, is undesired, unwanted and unaccepted. And thus, the only way to be accepted is to suppress this part of our personality, leaving it unintegrated, causing havoc beneath our conscious conception of who we are.

That’s why bringing into personhood, the facilitation of agency, is of the utmost importance. Because the stronger the acceptance of the sense of self, and all these generative aspects, the stronger the agent. When that’s the case, this person won’t feel bad for existing, or who they are, or what they do, or how they feel, because they know that it is accepted, wanted, and desired. This experience, like most things we’ve explored and unpacked, occurs on a spectrum. So the expression thereof doesn’t always have to be this acute; that’s why it warrants reflection, observation, and careful introspection where there are behavioral elements and personality elements, where there are these sensations of unacceptance, elements that you fear to express in yourself, the world, and your relationship.

It can emerge in different contexts or be constrained by specific contexts, which further complexifies the exploration of patterns in that realm. In a secure attachment, regardless of the dynamic, there will be this facilitation to become more of an agent, and more of yourself and who you stand to become. To drive this home, this is what Vervaeke says: “It's because of Agape, because of the way other people have devoted themselves and participated in you, that you went from a non-person into a person. That you got the ability - it's almost like other people are mirrors through which you come to see and realize yourself, that you got a sense of self, that you got the ability to reflect on yourself, that you got a sense of your own ownership”. I highlight the relational dimension of your sense of self and identity in The Path To Your Aspirational Self exactly for this reason, and upon further reflection, it contributes to why I wrote this book in the first place, because without those relations in which you realize yourself, you are effectively handicapped of expressing identity and personality to its fullest extent.

Which is also why no one, as far as I can tell, has ever thanked anyone for impeding on their agency and generative drive (it’s actually the main grievance between adolescents and their parents). As a matter of fact, nothing deteriorates a relationship faster, regardless of the type of relationship. I’ve landed in a position where I was dealing with a situation where my PFC basically went offline because I was a fool in love. Knowing what was going on, I told my friend literally he had to be my PFC for a bit because I was unable to make the right decision. First of all, this never works, no one can do this for you. Rather, they should advise you to the best of their ability, and the person in question has to find their way to a center or balanced medium between their reason and emotion (ideally). Second: this is one hell of a bestowment, as such, it should be entrusted to someone who won’t or wouldn’t abuse this. If there is any semblance of superiority in your peer or mutual, it won’t end well. Thirdly, it’s wiser to invoke a “council” of sorts with a few members and look for the convergence on their wisdom and advice, and work off of that.

It’s a double-edged blade and a balance between knowing yourself and giving away authorization. Even though wisdom and cognition are extended, if it is extended into the wrong people, it has a huge price. Those who manage to uphold your agency whilst guiding you are truly in a class of their own. That entire relational aspect of our personhood is also a part of our cognition and wisdom, in its extended sense (meaning it is in others and our environment). So there is a case to make about where one has a superficial sacrifice of agency, in listening to the wisdom of others who have thread there before, although at a deeper level it’s still you deciding to follow said advice or not (and then you incur the cost of the decision, and there is no one else to blame).

Athenian Stranger (from X) brings up this example of the story of Samson and contrasts it with Odysseus. It highlights the power of distributed cognition. Athenian brought the social dimension to my attention when he highlighted the story during one of his spaces on X (which are on his website, Athens Corner, and Spotify). If you recall (I admit it’s been a while for me), Samson was a Nazirite, dedicated to God from birth with a vow that included never cutting his hair, which granted him extraordinary strength. Using his power to fight the enemies of his state, the Philistines , and overall acting impulsively. Falling for a woman called Delilah, who eventually gets bribed by the Philistines, and tricks him into revealing that his strength lies in his uncut hair. While he sleeps, she cuts it, stripping him of his power. The Philistines then capture, blind, and imprison him. In a final act, Samson prays for strength, pulls down a temple’s pillars, and dies while killing many Philistines. The story portrays him as a solitary figure, driven by personal desires rather than deep bonds. When Delilah tricked him into cutting his hair, no close friends were present to warn or protect him, underscoring his isolation, which is exactly the part that Athenians emphasizes and contrasts with Odysseus.

The Odyssey tells the tale of Odysseus’s journey home from the Trojan War which is fraught with challenges (kind of an understatement tbh). Athenian points out that he is not alone, there’s a host of friends and allies that provide him with practical help, emotional support, and strategic assistance, enabling him to overcome obstacles and reclaim his home in Ithaca, which speaks to the support and loyalty of these friends. Looking into this a bit more, the same type of patterns of attachment manifest themselves as we are exploring here, especially in terms of dimensions. He has a mentor in the goddess Athena, who offers divine guidance and friendship, she provides wisdom, disguises him to ensure his safety, and bolsters his confidence. When he returns home his two loyal servants, Philoetius and Eurycleia recognize him, keep his secret, and later join him in battle. Eumaeus welcomes him without knowing his true identity. He provides shelter, food, and kindness, and later also keeps his secret. Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, also plays a vital role in supporting his father throughout the story. Distributed cognition ties into this in how having trusted friends and allies, effectively make for better decision making, because we can rely on the wisdom, insights and warnings of others to do exactly that. Which is why I brought it up in the previous paragraph that a part of our cognition is extended, and it is extended through secure attachments. Imagine if Samson had a crew like this? It would be a very different story.

Back to agapic love and how it informs our relationships, especially when it comes to forgiveness, as forgiveness and agapic love are intrinsically intertwined. It seems unlikely you can forgive (at depth), if you’re unable to love in this way. “But Agape has a sacrificial element to it in that you give yourself, you "for-give", you give before the person earns. It's not Philia. It is not reciprocity. It is not "you and I are working together, you have earned my trust and love". Philia is great and it's important, right? And it's not Eros, "I love you because of how I can consume you and make you one with me". No, Agape has a sacrificial component to it because what I'm actually doing is I'm giving up, I'm making myself an affordance for your transformation from non-person into person.” This affordance can come in many ways, but it’s usually typified by time, energy/effort, and resources, which is part of the sacrifice. I’d argue that people who take any of those aspects lightly fail to understand the depth of the implications of what they are being afforded. In many ways, it’s a spiritual strength to forgive someone. That being said, all of this has limitations; if behaviors don’t change and they repeat their offenses, then another approach is needed. As usual, opinions will differ; some believe forgiveness is endless, and although I think that’s admirable, it sets one up for repeated abuse. Another perspective on this is that you can forgive them, and have stronger boundaries or even no contact, if you absolve them from their doings, that’s about how you feel about them. That you are ready to move on, and perhaps even let go (a different process altogether) that does not mean they have to be invited back in on the same level or at all. It is possible to resolve the hurt and damage they’ve done emotionally, so you can move forward without having them in your life.

From all of this, I think it would make sense that the best romantic relationships have enough of all three love categories (the proper ratios to maintain and build the relationship). Whereas for friendships, I’d argue that if Agape is missing, I wouldn’t consider this a friendship, but an acquaintance or strictly business (transactional). Perhaps one of the best examples of the scope of what a true friendship is all about can be found in the story of how a Pythagorean named Phintias wanted to overthrow Dionysius the Elder who was a tyrant in Syracuse, Southern Italy, around 350 BCE. Clearly, back then, that came with some risk. His plot was discovered, is it tends to happen, and accepted the death penalty from Dionysius provided he could get his affairs sorted, Phintias his friend Damon offered himself as a "human guarantee". Meaning he (Damon) would get executed if his friend (Phintias) didn’t show. Long story short, though it bears worth reading the full one, Phintias is late, even so, to maintain his word and honor, Damon argues for his execution. With Phintias getting into an argument with him that he is the one that should be executed. The full extent of which you can read here.

The point is that, as will be reiterated many times, there’s been a cheapening and watering down of friendships. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming everyone should lay down their life for you, however, the common parlance of our day it still exists as a “Ride and die” (for this very reason). This isn’t unknown in the military, though as “mere” civilians in a western society, surely this sense and depth has strongly eroded. There’s a saying in Dutch that translates to “I wouldn’t be able to bring him to war (with me)”, which is generally used for someone who is either incapable and or unreliable. It, on deeper analysis, points to exactly what are exploring, that if we had to rely on the men on our sides, nothing would be better than a reliable brother who would be willing to lay down his life for you in the equal measure you would. Plato and Aristotle, in their own ways warn about the colloquial use of the word friend (in modernity, we can add brother or bro to this). Even Seneca makes this case, echoing Plato’s sentiment in his letters to Lucius. The case for happiness depending on friends and attachment we’ve explored.

In romantic relationships this seeking to understand and being known is proven to be crucial for relationship satisfaction. The paper Feeling known predicts relationship satisfaction by Juliana Schroeder and Ayelet Fishbach. It also showed that those who signaled that they were more interested in getting to know someone were seen as more attractive profiles on dating sites. In it, they highlight the subjective perception of being known (feeling known) which outperformed just knowing facts about their partners. That’s why I connected the bonding levels of Neufeld and Mate with Maslow’s hierarchy, because eventually if one doesn’t orient to understanding the other, it will cause friction and distance.

Notes on unconditional love: this is a bit of a minefield to navigate, so the way I see it is that there are two elements that don't get covered enough: 1. The weaponization of it, and 2. Someone not believing in unconditional love. Lo and behold, in both of these cases, it comes from someone who has an injured attachment. Starting with 2. Parents have gone and go to the ends of the earth for their progeny. Very often sacrificing their own health, well being, peace of mind, and opportunities so their kids could enjoy all of them instead. It's hard to fathom the scope of sacrifice. I've seen my mom sacrifice plenty for me and my siblings, and we've unintentionally stoked her worries in various ways for decades, and have admittedly acted like brats on numerous occasions (plus other personal factors that pained her deeply that I won't get into) all to say that the three of us have felt unconditional love since we've been born, and I'd say were the better for it, and thus able to believe in it.

The romantic version of this is the white widow (I don't know if IM coined this, but he's the first one to bring this term to my attention, even though I've heard/seen the behavioral pattern myself), which are women who lose their husbands who never remarry. Although an outlier, we can use it to make the case that it is possible when such an immense and deep attachment is formed that nothing can override it. In case of point number one, the weaponization of unconditional love is an implicit function of most types of narcissists, they'll guilt and shame you in condoning, tolerating and forgiving behaviors that arguably shouldn't be. There's a type of expectation that whatever they do, it won't be condemned or at least that even if it will be condemned or judged, it will eventually be accepted by the other party. Because they don’t learn from their behaviors nor the behaviors of their partner (setting boundaries, withdrawing attention and or proximity, etc).

Notes on Self-love:

Self-love is not something a lot of men connect to, primarily because it’s been co-opted by the female self-healing space more than anything else. So maybe in terms of helping to clarify self-love, we can use the concept of agapic love as a quest for personhood, using that same machinery on ourselves. You can't hate yourself into personhood, arguably with hate and derivatives thereof you would move further from personhood because of the active and passive repression that happens on aspects of self. Hence coming back to love, as the integrative and driving force, because the more you can accept in and of yourself, the more of a person you become, or the more personhood is facilitated to emerge and thus be expressed. Because in the end, love and compassion like this, or the behaviors it comes with, is what makes you more of an agent, because of the freedom to express aspects and states of self.

“You can’t hate yourself in someone you love” because it diminishes you as an agent. Think about it, if you hate these parts and thus fear expressing certain parts, you are less of an agent, less of a person in the sense of scope of expression. Whereas love enables you to accept, integrate, and express these parts, and thus make you more of an agent, with a wider choice of expression and less fear. In this sense, the ability to self-soothe is part of oxytocin flow and orientation to this model of the self, when this is fully endogenously created. Because inevitably when these aspects start to emerge, you’ll experience degrees of fear, and being able to self-soothe (and the narivitization that comes with it) reduces fear through this oxytocin mediation and facilitates that integration. In this sense, multiple systems loop back on themselves here as well: oxytocin (self-soothing), serotonin (self-regulation), and dopamine (reward).

Using the parenting analogy we have before: you wouldn’t hate your child (or friend) into a better person or more of an agent, how could we ever conceive this works on us? Men are big on respect, because that also facilitates personhood, because is someone respects us, it means these aspects are valuable which reinforces more of these behaviors and aspects. And seeing that we overall value self respect a lot more, because of this agentic element, there’s a strong focus on preserving agency. As a matter of fact, I think for most men, their self-respect gets damaged when they fail to uphold or defend their agency. Self-love and self-respect are intrinsically tied in this way. As such, it also means setting boundaries or constraints with the self so you become more of an agent and not less.

Summary

• We need all three types of love to integrate and align them regarding the three orientations: self, other, and reality.

• Love is a way of being, an existential state, a lot of different emotions and feelings emerge when we love that don’t nullify our love for someone.

• Bringing, guiding, and nurturing someone into personhood is the highest form of love.

• The best romantic relationships have all three present

• The best friendships have both Philia and Agape.

• We rise above our base nature (lust, etc) when we can love someone for who they are and who they stand to become.

• Self-love is the love and desire for personhood, with compassion integrating aspects of ourselves so we can be and become more of an agent and thus more of ourselves.

Happiness and Longevity

“A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.”- Søren Kierkegaard

We’re playing with a bit of a paradox here, because it is both within and outside of you. Though, as most people will recognize, that if you’re unhappy with yourself and your life, others can make you feel better, but it sure doesn’t resolve these aspects. Thus we’re constantly pulled to examine this relationship, the relationship with ourselves and how that plays a factor in our relationships with others. The first step in this process is outlining and framing the effects people have on us, on our happiness and longevity.

Connection and Interpersonal synchrony

Interpersonal synchrony occurs at multiple levels, which effectively means how well we sync up with others on biological and neurological levels, which leads to higher connectedness. These levels reflect the complex nature of human interactions. Based on the search results, we can outline the following levels of interpersonal synchrony:

Behavioral Level

Motor Synchrony: coordination of physical movements between individuals.

Examples: mirroring body language, synchronizing hand movements, matching postures.

Temporal Coordination: aligning the timing and rhythm of actions.

Examples: synchronizing footsteps while walking together, coordinating speech patterns.

Physiological Level

Autonomic Synchrony: alignment of biological processes between interacting individuals.

Examples: synchronization of heart rates (cardiological interbeat intervals), breathing rates.

Neural Level

Brain Activity Synchronization: coordination of neural processes between individuals.

Example: synchronization in the brain's alpha-mu band between right centro-parietal regions during hand movements.

Emotional Level

Emotional Contagion: the spread of emotions from one person to another.

Example: feeling happy after interacting with a cheerful colleague.

Cognitive Level

Attentional Synchrony: shared focus of attention between interaction partners.

Example: maintaining joint attention during a conversation or collaborative task.

Social-Perceptual Level

Perceived Synchrony: the subjective experience of being in sync with others.

Note: this level is crucial for the psychological outcomes of synchrony, such as increased rapport and cooperation.

These levels of interpersonal synchrony are not isolated but often interact and influence each other, contributing to the overall quality and effectiveness of social interactions. The interplay between these levels highlights the multifaceted nature of interpersonal synchrony and its importance in human social behavior. Very often when people talk about connection, they’re effectively talking about this, because interpersonal synchrony is what facilitates the feelings of being connected. Higher synchrony, higher shared state, higher connection, that’s effectively the formula. What it takes to be connected is thus attention to these levels. We’ll explore how we get disconnected, and what the implications are for our attachments.

Devices, porn, phone usesage and loss of attachment

They’re all very similar in their mechanisms in terms of disconnection, which is why I grouped them together. Porn is obviously more insidious, but we’ll tackle that in a minute. The study "Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity," by Ward et al. shows that the brain automatically allocates attention to the phone, anticipating notifications or interactions, a phenomenon dubbed "attentional pull." Thus competing with the effort needed for deep conversation or emotional attunement. There’s an additional level to this, it takes about 15 min to sync up (depending on a host of factors), every time you get distracted, particular with the phone, this “syncing cycle” resets. This is highly problematic, because essentially it means you keep dropping out of sync and thus connection, the more distracted one is, the more one misses attempts to connect, the more frustration drives up for the opposite party. The example Becky Kennedy uses in her dialogue with Andrew Huberman is that it’s as if you the composite or collection of all your highlights/snapchats in a wheelbarrow right next to you and your conversational partner, and thus are tempted to go digging into it. The attention pull has a very strong dopamine element in there, and potential coping mechanisms strategy, so when a conversation is boring, or unstimulating, or the reverse too stimulating in a negative affect sense (strong negative emotions like anxiety) this increases the temptation to pull out to phone to get some “free” dopamine and essentially distract or disassociate oneself from the emotions. It seems to be very relevant that the more dopamine-depleted someone is, the stronger their gravitation towards this distraction-seeking behavior. Fried dopamine circuits also make it far harder to get the proper reward from connection and socialization when one is used to supraphysiological stimuli, especially when it comes to porn. Porn can equally be used as a distraction from the issues of life, or a means to cope with the frustrations that are present in modern life.

Loss of connection, general lack of intimacy, and infidelity

There are a lot of different resources on this, though I found the most convergence of several of our neurological functions in the conversation between Andrew Huberman and Jordan Peterson, not technically surprising given their backgrounds, so to follow is a part of the conversation we’ll explore in more detail on how porn impacts the brain and build towards the infidelity, lack of intimacy and attraction. We’re starting with the effects of porn on the brain, and make our way to infidelity, as it has a lot of moving parts, so we’re not attributing this to a single dimension or factor.

“When you see yourself moving towards the culmination of a desired goal that's accompanied by dopamine release. There's two elements to that dopamine release. Imagine that there are circuits activated as you're acting. What the dopamine does is increase the probability that the circuits that were activated just before the positive experience happened grow. If you're engaged with pornography and that culminates in successful sexual satiation, which it can. That's what masturbation does, then the whole personality that's oriented toward that set of stimuli is going to come to dominate. It's very much like an addiction, except it's what pornography does. It's a super stimulus. And it's not surprising that young males in particular are susceptible to that because male sexuality in human beings is very visually oriented. And a lot of our brain is visual way more than virtually every other animal, certainly every other primate and, and every other mammal. So we have a situation where any 13 year old boy can see more hyper attractive super stimulus women in one day than the most successful man who ever lived 100 years ago would have ever seen in his whole life. Yeah, well that's like an evolutionary ecological, radical ecological transformation. It's worse because it's easily accessible, so it takes no work. Pornography, any drug that spikes dopamine dramatically, like methamphetamine, for instance, any behavior that spikes dopamine dramatically, that very quickly hijacks these circuits, and to me, the way to teach those circuits a calmer, more prudent version of themselves. To enter a different hypothalamic activation pattern is to start breaking the things down into their essential elements. About the motivation, the pleasure, etc. To tamp all that down. I mean, we know that for pornography, if the pornography is very extreme, then less extreme pornography doesn't seem to work. Well, that's because there's also a novelty kick in dopaminergic striving. With any basic appetitive pleasure, there's a dopaminergic kick, but with any novelty, there's also a dopaminergic kick. So there's an optimized threshold for novelty and appetitive striving that plays out in pornography. So there's the direct effect of the stimulus as such, but there's variation in the stimulus that's also novel. It's a common pattern for pornographic usage to become more, what would you say, fetishistic. That's one way of thinking about it as it progresses, because that keeps the novelty alive. That's a very dangerous development. There's also a learning of those biological systems in the brain to evoke arousal by observing sex, as opposed to participation. I've wondered for a while whether there's something inherently rewarding about creating impact or action at a distance. When you think about masturbation and you think about pornography, and there is no action at a distance. And literally, there's not much action at a distance. It's all up close to oneself. There's no impact on anybody. It's almost as if the energy that we're born with, to be able to create positive things, to evolve our species through action at a distance, through creation of knowledge, technology, children, communities, culture, the ultimate expression, it's just loop back into oneself. It's as if all that dopaminergic drive is just kind of looped back into oneself and it goes nowhere. As one moves toward a target, dopamine increases en route to that target. I just want to make sure people understand that as that dopamine increases, the probability that your perception will go to something other than the target decreases exponentially. As you get closer and closer, you get more and more dopamine. The greater the elevation dopamine, the lower the probability that you'll engage in any other pattern of self.”

In the book The Bain That Changes Itself they talk about this aspect of the effects of porn on the brain and thus behaviors. One of the most common effects was the loss of attraction to their partner and the loss of stimulation/arousal (or significant decrease in stimulation) one experiences with their partner. The hormonal feedback loop is that baseline dopamine decreases, as prolactin (which is a hormone that deals with metabolism and the reproductive system with different effects in the genders) increases it suppresses dopamine activity. Dopamine normally inhibits prolactin release, but when prolactin levels rise, it can reduce dopamine’s effects, potentially causing symptoms like reduced libido and erectile dysfunction. Seeing you have a lack of action at a distance, behavior that goes nowhere, and the dopamine feedback looping in on itself without any connection, means oxytocin is either too low or too high (although I’m betting on too low).

Thus how men respond to porn, next to attachment style, has a lot to do with oxytocin levels and genetics, a study conducted by D. Z. Grassi et al. (2022) explored oxytocin and arginine vasopressin (AVP) levels in men with problematic pornography use (PPU). The results weren’t surprising in the least, men with PPU had higher baseline AVP levels and a lower oxytocin-to-AVP ratio compared to men without PPU. This suggests an imbalance in the oxytocin-AVP system, with AVP being more dominant, rather than a direct decrease in oxytocin. These men also exhibited a greater increase in salivary oxytocin when exposed to neutral or positive social stimuli. This heightened reactivity indicates a dysregulation in the oxytocin system rather than a simple reduction in oxytocin levels. But wait, it gets even more interesting. Another study examined men with hypersexual disorder (HD), a condition that can include problematic pornography use, which revealed the following: men with HD had significantly higher oxytocin levels compared to healthy individuals. These elevated oxytocin levels were positively correlated with the severity of hypersexual behavior, including pornography use. After undergoing cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), oxytocin levels in these men decreased significantly, suggesting that treatment can help normalize oxytocin levels. Which tells us something about the plasticity of oxytocin (which we’ve explored at depth).

Additionally, work done by Nathaniel Lambert converges on exactly this, for instance in his study A Love That Doesn't Last: Pornography Consumption and Weakened Commitment to One's Romantic Partner the highlight this loss of connection and thus weakened commitment, which of course converges with the neurological mechanisms we talked about, like oxytoin depletion or minimization. In another study done by him and his team, So Far Away from One's Partner, Yet So Close to Romantic Alternatives: Avoidant Attachment, Interest in Alternatives, and Infidelity, they explore how avoidant attachment predicts greater interest in romantic alternatives and infidelity, mediated by lower commitment. This obviously converges with what we’ve seen at the lower stages of bonding, dopamine and oxytocin mechanics.

So let’s return to the hormonal cycle: with these oxytocin and dopamine issues there will be more upregulation of prolactin, which then down regulates 5AR (5-alpha-reductase, is an enzyme in the body that converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT)), which further tanks DHT, which then decreases dopamine even more. Do you see the negative cascade we find ourselves in? Furthermore, we’re altering most dopaminergic signaling and the entire prediction cycle, reward prediction, reward anticipation, reward reinforcement, reward valuing, which leads to a strong narrowing of these systems (reciprocal narrowing). Addiction is primarily the loss of agency, which is why we highlighted how attachment injuries and disruptions alter oxytocin and dopamine circuits, signaling, etc. John Vervaeke outlines this exceptionally well in episode 13 of Awakening From The Meaning Crisis. “There’s you, the Agent and here's the Arena. And what happens is the drug use is associated with a particular Agent-Arena relationship. And what happens is always co-identification; we're always assuming an identity and assigning identity in a co-defining, interdependent manner. What happens is, you start to lose a little bit of your cognitive flexibility, perhaps due to a negative feedback loop. As you lose your cognitive flexibility, the number of options in the world starts to decline. As the number of options start to decline, you lose the variability for your agency. As you get a tighter, narrower, less flexible cognitive Agency, the number of options in the world goes down. And what happens is these two things reciprocally narrow to where you have no options as to who you could be or how the world can be. And that's addiction. It is a learned - not propositionally learned - prospectiably, participatory learning of a loss of agency.”

When we put all these mechanisms together, is it any wonder how this takes place? We have hedonic adaptation, habituation, neurological changes, neurochemical changes, all taking your further from agency and connection. Sounds like a nightmare to me.

This isn’t just dopamine mediated though, or a lack of oxytocin necessarily, it would be disingenuous to attribute this solely to “neurological misfiring” (although it should be obvious that if the injury happens to these circuits early or there are genetic alterations then this will create predisposition). The perpetuation of hedonism and degeneracy are a part of this as well. I wrote about this in the Ontology of Virtue, effectively stating that it is degeneracy and hedonism that get promoted, stimulated and enforced. This plays out very strongly among young males, but is definitely not exclusive to it. This socio-cultueral element is based in a lack of primary care taker attachment and the education that should’ve come with it. The family unit in that sense fights an uphill battle to promote and enforce virtue and higher order values. Neurologically that means we’re also dealing with modeling issues, which leads to valuation alteration (it changes what one values and focuses on to get accepted and selected). By and large modern day society seems to care very little for virtue and higher order values. This has been present in my environment too in my late teens and twenties, the encouragement of infidelity, and mainly general hedonism. It stands to reason young guys have the drive to hunt and prove themselves, but like anything, without constraints that’s a recipe for disaster. Here’s another insight that builds on the importance as a buffer for infidelity from a neurochamical angle: “Moreover, oxytocin caused males in relationships to spend less time looking at pictures of attractive women. Importantly, oxytocin didn’t make men rate these women as less attractive, they were simply less interested.” So when it comes to the implications of infidelity, Esther Perel has an insightful conversation around this with Andrew Huberman, which will use as the jump off point for our own exploration.

“I think that some people go outside as a response to a lot of discontent in the relationship, loneliness being the first one, neglect, indifference, conflict, rejection, sexual rejection in particular. But some people go outside and it has very little to do with the relationship. It sometimes has to do with how they organize themselves in the relationship to the degree that in order to feel a certain freedom or ability to think about themselves, they need to be outside. And I used to say, I have seen a lot of infidelity in happy relationships. It's not always a symptom of a flawed relationship by no means. And that in those situations, people tell me it's not that I wanted to find another person, it's that I wanted to find another self or to reconnect with lost parts of myself. And the word that you hear all over the globe when you interview people who are in affairs is that they feel alive. It's kind of the erotic as an antidote to deadness. They feel that aliveness. And that doesn't mean this often doesn't necessarily involve sex. It's about something. Aliveness is the erotic, not the sexual. And the erotic is the quality of aliveness, vibrancy, vitality, hopefulness, curiosity, imagination, playfulness. It's those elements that often people lose for a host of reasons. Life, work, children, dying parents, illness, economic hardship, you name it. You know, and there's a sense that they need to go elsewhere to find that. It seems that so much of navigating relationship in healthy versus unhealthy ways depends on this internal dynamic within ourselves of an ability to be in close intimate relationship with another, and yet hold on to enough of our own identity and evolve that identity within the relationship to the other. That is the definition of intimacy or a definition of intimacy. And that is probably the number one task of every relationship, a romantic relationship, is how do I get close to you without losing me? And how do I hold on to me without losing you? We grow up and we have both needs, togetherness and separateness. And then we come out of our childhoods and some of us need more space, freedom, separateness, and some of us need more protection, connection, togetherness. And so you find that in many relationships, you have one person who is more afraid of losing the other and one person who is more afraid of losing themselves. One person more afraid with the fear of abandonment and one person more afraid with the fear of suffocation. This is a recurring dynamic that you see. And does it swap back and forth across couples.”

Certain parts of this conversation rely on the multi-aspectual self, which I do an exploration on in the article: The Path To Your Aspirational Self. The part of this exploration that is missing, is the aspect of the sexual self. Which, for a host of reasons, is a part that many people find difficult to integrate, due to purity codes, social taboos and pressures, and of course religion, and effectively every other sociocultural layer that feeds into it. This is essentially what Huberman and Esther are talking about. There’s always this attachment piece of the orientation, the self (as Esther points out) which in various levels impacts the relationship dynamic.

An injured attachment to self, and an unstable and fragile self image has a far higher tendency to be afraid of losing themselves and abandoning themselves. Someone that has a robust sense of a self, and a secure attachment of Self, know where to set the boundaries and maintain those, and is less concern with being abandoned and self abandoning. So in the first order, there are their neurological dispositions and secondly (in as far as we can divide it as such) their identity and self conceptualization. Esther points out the depths of this: “Your sexual preferences, your sexual fantasies are a translation of your deepest emotional needs. Not sexual needs, emotional needs.” Seeing we’ve explored so much about attachment, this tracks quite strongly, as these attachment circuits that form with your primary care takers are the exact circuits you use to have a romantic relationship, so obviously sexual and emotional come together here. That gives a lot more dept to this idea that the most potent drug is another person, as this is dopamine and excitement novelty driven, as the saying goes “The chase is better than the catch”. We’ve all seen and heard many iterations of this. And a part of this is what Esther Perel points out, the erotic nature of it, which is exciting, which also a lot to do with dopamine and adrenaline, it makes you feel alive, and how much you need is closely tied to your oxytocin and vasopressin dispositions.

So depending on your neurological and psychological profile it will influence or even dictate, how much of this is needed, how it is expressed and where you go find this excitement and novelty. This, losing vitality, the eroticisms of life, the eros of the self even, is a major factor in “losing the spark” (another debate that has been raging for decades). So here we have layers and levels as to why this happens, and where it happens, and technically what to do about it, or at least structure towards the behaviors that maintain said spark. I have a certain amount of contention with this idea that happy couples cheat, because generally, when someone is fulfilled, they’re not exactly looking for anything outside of themselves or their relationship which the oxytocin part confirms and solidifies, which could then point to a possible oxytocin/vasopressin issue (this seems to be pretty robust to me). So if it is about reconnecting with another part of themselves, why aren’t they doing it in the relationship, situation and circumstances they are in? And if it is about aliveness, how are they not getting it within themselves, their relationship, situation and circumstances, and how does one divorce this from happiness?

So, except for the possibility I’m missing something, there’s a question about happiness here, in terms of how it is defined and experienced, and then of course the same for aliveness. I’ve worked with this professionally, and I’ve been on the other end of infidelity personally, so the experiences afford some insight into the questions and the type of neuropsychology that tends to get involved in this. In the book That Brain That Changes Itself they talk about porn, sex and the effects on the brain. In relation to what we’re exploring here they write about two different pleasure systems, “an exciting system relates to the appetitive pleasures that we get imagined something we desire such as sex or a good meal. Its neurochemistry is largely dopamine related, and it raises our tension level. The second pleasure system has to do with satisfication, or consummatoy pleasure, that attends actually having sex (with someone you love) or having that meal, a calming, fulfilling pleasure. Its neurochemistry is based on the release of endorphins which are related to opiates and give a peaceful, euphoric bliss.” Which weighs even more in favor dopamine, then a certain pattern emerges of where low dopamine and thus a homeostatic drive emerges (simply, bring dopamine up, by any means), if or rather when this gets paired with low oxytocin, then that’s fertile grounds for infidelity.

Obviously, we need to account for the entire childhood, genetic predispositions, upbringing, socio-cultural and value/virtue context around it, which could either be a deterrent for infidelity, or promote it. Additionally, there’s also sex differences in infidelity, where there robust patterns of the context within this happens for each gender, for men it is opportunity driven, the subject presents herself and the wife won’t find out, whereas for woman it is (largely) emotionally driven, if there has been a loss of intimacy and increased distance (for whatever amount of time that contributes to oxytocin depletion) the possibility of being with someone else opens up (enter mate switching hypothesis).

Additionally the neural circuits for sexual desire and romantic love are interconnected yet distinct, engaging different brain regions and mechanisms. Which also adds to the explanation of how infidelity can occur, accounting for attachment injury, dispositions and novelty need/baseline. It stands to reason there is a common neural base for these brain areas, and as usual, what fires together wires together. These overlapping brain areas of sexual desire and romantic love are related to reward, emotion and social cognition. Given that there’s a high amount of activation in the insula, in a posterior to anterior activation pattern, in english: back to front (of the brain) let’s call it more of bottom up to the top of the brain, it indicates that love evolved from a more primal sensation of desire, or a more “base”/rudimentary sensation. And while both states, sexual desire and romantic, share some neural pathways, their goals and orientation are different. Sexual desire is primarily driven by the endocrine system, with a higher involvement of the hypothalamus (as it deals with arousal in general), whereas romantic love activates in regions that are associated with reward processing and emotional bonding. It stands to reason that dopamine is involved in both in significant ways as reward and pleasure occur in both states, and so does motivation. Whereas oxytocin itself plays a bigger role in attachment and bonding rather than sexual desire in terms of a driver.

Seeing that romantic love is more complex and arguably goes deeper than sexual desire, it involves more of the emotional and social bonding mechanisms. This tells us there are things to watch out for in others and in ourselves as drivers or potential paths toward infidelity. Especially since this hypothalamic hijacking is present in basically all addiction behavior. All of this to say, there are a lot of ways to buffer and build distance between addictive behaviors and ourselves. Abstinence works for the obvious reasons is that you take away the superstimulus, which gives all the circuits and neurotransmitters a chance to bounce back to baseline and improve sensitivity from there (receptor upregulation). When it comes to porn and masturbation (especially chronic use) far be it for me to tell a man what to do with his own seed, though the practice of retaining it changes the sensitivity and the baseline significantly for many. It could lead to a reemergence of the eroticism of life due to that sensitivity increasing, especially when abstaining (as much as is warranted) from other cheap dopamine-abstaining activities. Then a mere glance can be enticing, and a mere touch exciting. Furthermore, dopamine depletion due to life circumstances is a contributing factor that can drive men to infidelity, which is exactly why a strong bond becomes a buffer to destructive coping mechanisms. The point being that connection becomes a very strong means for all of this, IF or WHEN one works on all these aspects, which obviously relies on the capacity and ability to get deep interpersonal synchrony.

Let’s look at how infidelity occurs at the different attachment styles, based on the work of Nathaniel Lambert:

• Avoidant Attachment and Infidelity

  • People with avoidant attachment styles are more likely to:

    • Show permissive attitudes toward infidelity.

    • Feel a greater attraction to alternative partners.

    • Engage in infidelity over time.

  • This link is largely explained by their lower levels of commitment, making them less resistant to romantic alternatives.

  • Avoidant individuals prefer emotional distance and are less comfortable with intimacy, weakening the commitment that typically discourages infidelity.

• Interest in Alternatives

  • Avoidant attachment predicts a consistent pattern of interest in alternatives, including:

    • Attentional bias toward attractive others.

    • Heightened interest in meeting new partners.

    • Positive perceptions of potential alternatives.

  • These tendencies are supported by multiple studies and mediated by low relationship commitment.

• Attachment Anxiety and Infidelity

  • Anxious attachment is also linked to infidelity, though driven by different factors:

    • Fears of abandonment.

    • Low self-esteem.

  • Unlike avoidant attachment, this is not primarily due to a lack of commitment.

• Commitment as a Mediator

  • Lower commitment in avoidant individuals increases the risk of infidelity and interest in alternatives.

  • Commitment is a critical factor in understanding these patterns.

• Implications for Relationships

  • Recognizing these dynamics can help couples address commitment issues and build stronger relationships.

Happiness, aliveness, fulfillment, and joy.

Happiness as an existential state, we could probably argue the same for aliveness. Giving precise definitions for emotions is kind of futile, in the sense that, depending on the person, they’ll have a broader/more developed emotional landscape or a narrower one. Then there’s an argument to be made about the original definitions and a modern definition, or rather, mutual understanding of these terms, which can differ more than we usually predict or assume. Additionally, emotional granularity (the differentiation of emotions into more precise categories) can be practiced, and of course, it will strongly depend on the state of your neurology and biology. So don’t take the outlined definitions as absolute or exhaustive, but rather as an orientation.

Let’s try to outline these concepts a bit more and see how it all fits together. Fulfillment is where you feel nothing is missing, and (perhaps) a certain type of satisfaction with life in general, so it has a specificity and generality to it. Whereas joy and enjoyment, beyond a certain disposition, are marked by peaceful and blissful euphoria. That’s why this eroticism matters because it obviously ties into all of them if it is defined as the quality of aliveness, vibrancy, vitality, hopefulness, curiosity, imagination, and playfulness. So perhaps it’s more beneficial to consider these aspects of our relationships through the lens of a lack of fulfilment rather than happiness in and of itself, even when they generally come together. Meaning, if we play this out psychologically: you’re blocked or otherwise restrained from a certain aspect of yourself that is screaming to be expressed, which the relationship and the circumstances won’t allow (or perhaps actively constrain), fullfilment tends to drop, the more one meets the same barrier, the more unhappiness is generated, until it reaches this breaking point. Who wouldn’t want to feel alive, and vibrant, and hopeful, and vital in their own relationship? First and foremost, who wouldn’t want to feel that inside of and about themselves, and about life at large, and then of course when there is a misalignment or obstruction in any of these dimensions it will impact the relational dimension, and to add some precision, when this misalignment is present in the relationship it will influence the other dimensions (self and life) as well.

Rediscovering and recreating this Eros in one or all three dimensions will be a practice and process dependent on the developmental stages we go through, and how well we stay in tune with ourselves, and of course all the other aspects that go into how we deal with our sense of self, our wounds, our attachment and everything that goes into it. The aspirational framework is orientated towards this by and large, so I won’t elaborate entirely on the exploration, you can kind of plug and play this part into that exploration and framework (especially if you listen to the conversation between Esther and Andrew). Additionally , from the book The Brain That Changes Itself on tolerance and habituation in romantic relationships “fortunately lovers can stimulate their dopamine, keeping the high alive, by injecting novelty into their relationship. When a couple go on a romantic vacation or try new activities together, or wear new kinds of clothing, or surprise each other, they are using novelty to turn on the pleasure centers, so that everything they experience, including each other, excites and pleases them. We must be learning if we are to feel fully alive, and when life, or love becomes too predictable and it seems like there is little left to learn, we become restless - a protest perhaps of the plastic brain when it can no longer perform its essential task.”

With so much talk about dopamine, it should hardly be surprising that novelty and all the dopamine implications we’ve explored from excitement, anticipation to expectation and prediction are pretty damn important. This novelty can also come from disclosure, I’d argue that’s a pretty common part of the experience when we get to know someone. Vervaeke points this out as well, that you have a mutual disclosure, that can accelerate. “Love is mutually accelerating disclosure. If you want somebody... If you want to fall in love with somebody - although you shouldn't/ you can never sort of pursue it that way, I think - but what what happens is if you get two people mutually disclosing from each other in a couple fashion: I just, I honestly disclose something about myself and then you, in response, disclose and then I pick that up and disclose more, and then you disclose... That reciprocal, enhanced, mutual conforming engenders love. And love is something you know by participating in it. Like your culture and your language. This is knowing by loving.” All of these aspects come together in terms of happiness, aliveness, fulfillment, joy, novelty and excitement in our bonding process. “Think about the things that really affect your emotions day to day. At least for me as a human in this society, the things that affect my emotions most day to day are almost entirely social interactions, very subtle ones, ones that don't seem to threaten my life or safety.” That’s the case we’ve been making and exploring this entire time.

The way I see it, there is a difference in the aliveness of this eroticism as the connectedness of life or in life (at every layer), and what people generally say that makes them feel alive, which is typically a high adrenaline, cortisol and dopamine mediated. They’re very distinct and different because the one relies heavier on oxytocin and endorphins, with endogenous dopamine being key. Whereas the other one relies less on oxytocin and endorphines. Again, it speaks to differences in of brain encoding, processing, neurological connections and neurotransmitter baselines and thresholds. Adrenaline forces resources mobilization to (rapidly) shift attention and increase information intake, processing and encoding, hence the rush, it’s all hands on deck because clearly the environment or situation warrants amplified attention. This clearly ties into aliveness because it forces you to be present, which then gets misconstrued as the main pathway of aliveness. This seems to be especially relevant for people who come from volatile, hectic and chaotic environments or primary care takers, because they need to rapidly shift attention, and have been trained in such a way that it gets wired into them that this is what it feels like to be alive. Whereas for others, they feel most alive in engaging and immersing in what is generative for them, even when very little adrenaline is present: a sunrise, an engaging conversation, moments of connection on whichever attachment level.

The higher agency and generative drive, the more aliveness one derives from living in alignment with that or enacting these elements. That doesn’t mean that there is no value in adrenaline and dopamine mediated aliveness, it just means that this not the only pathway. From everything we explored in terms of attachment and connectedness, as it relates to meaning and purpose, it makes sense that aliveness can be found here, within the mission, the task, the purpose, the tribe, the environment, the moment, the person you are with. When the dopaminergic system is so dominant and so fried in terms of exogenously mediated reward, it’s very difficult to feel these things in the more mundane or smaller moments when the amplitude of adrenaline and the external reward are so low (as in they don’t get stimulated by this moment). This dopaminergic drive essentially overpowers everything else. In the Platonic-Socratic sense that appetitive part was considered the monster, a multiheaded hydra, the more you feed it, the bigger it becomes, and as we’ve seen, the more stimulus it needs to FEEL something. Which aligns perfectly with the hypothalamic pathways that deal with all of this. In this way, the shiny new object is far more salient and attractive than what is right in front of you right now, which speaks exactly to this disconnection with these parts of life, and perhaps life in general.

There’s a case to be made for those who grew up in survival mode, then everything is seen, experienced and coded into this “life or death” modality. Which is another factor for the experience of aliveness, if attention is mediated through force in this way, with high adrenaline, cortisol, high acetylcholine and dopamine to reinforce behavior, it stands to reason this gets wired as “feeling alive” which is adaptive to survive, but highly maladaptive to thrive, because that means that when things are quiet and stable, these psychologies are disposed to create or seek this sensation (and thus have a high degree of unintentional self-destructiveness or attachment destructiveness), or they can’t enjoy that state or circumstance because it is “too boring”.

Parenting and fulfillment

One of the best examples of this is the fulfillment of women having children and marrying vs childless. Given the intensity of the biological clock and how that very often becomes so dominant it drives behavior, that’s a significant point in how much the body craves a baby (baby fever). There’s an entire biological-neurological cascade that takes over a woman’s psyche solely for the purpose of recreation. It’s only outliers who don’t have this sense, and it’s not uncommon that when they reach advanced age, they don’t have immense regrets as they come to find a huge void. This is not to say women can’t have additional layers or pathways of fulfillment that can have professional implications, even this can coexist with child rearing. The orientation of meaning in lives differs between men and women, although there is of course overlap, success and achievement for most men (not all men) is highly relevant to their well being. A man that can’t take care of his family, fails to provide, or is otherwise deterred from providing, that is going to take an immense psychological toll. This doesn’t mean they have to be the top of the top, it just means that they need to feel successful and capable, plus have the resources to provide for their family and be valued in their community. The biological wiring and presence of the biological clock, plus incentives and reward structures are quite different between the genders. This isn’t to say some men don’t feel the drive to be a father or have that sensation early, rather that can easily be kicked down the road to ensure their situation and environment is stable enough to provide.

There’s also a difference in temperament and personality here, some will build the plane on the way down. Some of these will succeed, others will crash and burn. Whereas on the opposite end of the spectrum there are those who want to make sure the circumstances are good enough to start this process of meeting a stable partner and potentially having a child. Just like in any demographic, the time frames can strongly varry and perhaps some miss out on opportunities to meet someone who is aligned because they were too focused on this process. The cliche of “There is no right timing to have a child” is of course, upon further inspection ridiculous. If you’re dead broke, in a very shitty situation, having a child then has a low probability of leading to a good outcome. If you doubt this, you might want to look at the demographics where this doesn’t play out very well.

The counter argument is that having the child inspires a man to finally reach his highest potential, as he has his spiritual transformation moment. True, there are some that get inspired or have access to a higher drive, although, given the prevalence of deadbeat dads, I would hardly take that as a given. Which is seemingly something that gets perpetuated as if it is a done deal, failing to understand that a child is an amplifier, it doesn’t necessarily create anything new in the man, but rather either gives access or amplifies their current neurology. Meaning if having a child guaranteed access to this drive, there would be no deadbeat dads. Again, a differentiation has to occur in the personality type of extrinsically motivated versus intrinsically motivated. There is a type of man that is driven externally by their partner and their offspring, and needs that to be held accountable and to have access to this drive. Then there is man that is intrinsically driven, who does all of the same things, regardless of whether or not they have a partner or a child, they have constant access to this drive regardless of the circumstances, and would experience an amplification of this drive (although that is not a given either).

I do occasionally wonder if there is an element of “fixing the past” in some who come from trauma background who are seemingly desperate to have a child, including men. Seeing we’ve already talked about compulsion repetition, it’s plausible this is going on in the background for certain people. There’s an additional problem in positing or claiming that having a child or being parent is a virtue. Anyone can get anyone pregnant, the virtue is not in the act or the having of a child, the virtue is in being a good parent, or more precisely being a virtuous human being that can foster the same in their child, and educate them to be a good human being, there is virtue there. That’s why understanding personalities and characters matter, those who have a decent moral,value and virtue baseline tend to go through an immense transformative process. Different psychologies handle this process quite differently. Meaning that someone with a type of trauma background, who still struggles with an inferiority complex, could lord their fatherhood over childless friends and posit it as the greatest good, all the while failing to realize this is what they are doing, and that they haven’t proven to parent in a virtuous fashion. I have close friends who had children who had no change in identity or personality, and treated me no differently. I have other friends who got children who become better men in the process, and still treated me as an equal. Then there are acquaintances who got children and treated me differently because they are now in a class I don’t understand nor am a part of, with a sort of implicit shaming that I am not as much of a man as them because I am childless.

Clearly what they base their identity in, and attribute virtue to, is off the mark (explored in the Aspirational self framework). In short, they see themselves ONLY as a parent, and have made this their entire identity, and believe that this is the only expression of virtue that matters or that this is the only (or the only right path) to virtue. We’ve already seen this is a flawed premise, seeing this type of psychology needs something to feel superior over somebody, and has hardly proven to handle the trials of parenthood in a virtuous manner, which would make itself clear when their child enters early adulthood. This isn’t taking anything away from them being a parent, and possibly even a good one, it’s rather about the paradigms they operate on and perpetuate.

Of course, having children could make you a better man if you happen to orient towards virtue and higher-order values. Although someone who does that rarely feels the need to show off as somehow superior to others, unless directly attacked. To circle back, men also experience neurological rewiring when their wife is pregnant, which is very adaptive. The study, How the Paternal Brain Is Wired by Pregnancy and the post that Nicholas Fabiano, MD made on X highlight these findings:

• A study revealed that childcare was positively correlated with the connectivity of the amygdala and superior temporal sulcus, regions associated with mentalizing and social perception processes.

• After childbirth, a father’s brain shows increased activity in the human caregiving network, which encompasses a mentalizing network, an embodied simulation network, an emotional processing network, and a subcortical parenting network.

Harvard longevity study

Given the depths of attachment, and how it is wired into us for survival and overall well being, it should come as no surprise that the conclusion of the Harvard study about longevity was the those who have strong communities live the longest with the highest life quality. This far more pronounced in Mediterranean cultures, for those who live in smaller communities, although this is of course largely represented in any population that has a tight-knit community (and decent access to resources). In these communities elders see each generation grow up, and are (and feel) needed by the community in various ways. Whether in biology or psychology, need drives adaptation, this principle seems to be all but forgotten in the West and how elders are treated by society, where very often they stop being a part of society, the community, and even get estranged from their own families (elder homes).

Furthermore, longevity was also seen to increase in those who kept having children, or still had children in later ages. Being needed was another driver of longevity. What else impacted fulfillment and satisfaction in life? The London School of Economics had a study about this exactly, what the best childhood predictor of adult satisfaction in life is. It turns out that the best predictor was emotional fulfillment (surely you must’ve been surprised). And the second was the child's conduct. The third and last was the child's IQ. All of this tells us something important about fulfillment and happiness at large throughout our lives. Another case about fulfillment is the Honeymoon period in a relationship. This period in theory can last anywhere from six days to six months. Although some people report that this feeling can last many, many years, even decades. Just feeling completely filled up and satiated by the experience of being with that person. So much so that cravings for food are reduced, even cravings for sleep are reduced. Now, there are all sorts of activities and things that go along with new romantic partnerships. That take up time, that might get in the way of things like sleep or things like food. But the point is that dopamine is the final common pathway by which we seek out things. And we end up feeling as if we are satisfied by certain types of interactions. It looks like the neurology of fulfillment looks something like this: low levels of pursuit states fueled by dopamine, that doesn’t necessarily mean that dopamine is low, rather that is reduced in the context of that function, we can suppose that oxytocin must be high, alongside GABA and or serotonin seeing this reporting of fulfillment or satisfaction is so high that you need nothing else, even reduced food and sleep, that’s pretty incredible.

The other effect of dopamine is that it changes the way that we interpret sensory stimuli. Our detectors actually change when we are in heightened states of dopaminergic activity or drive. Basically, what this means is that things seem better than they would. Which is partly why people feel so much more connected to life and get so much more out of the most mundane things. This of course ties back to everything we explored in terms of attachment, happiness, fulfillment and joy and how all of this alters the orientation of attachment. Unironically, dopamine shifts your attention outwards, whereas GABA shifts your attention inwards, which speaks even more to this sentiment of nothing have to seek much outside of yourself, or rather, your environment, when everything is accounted for.

Notes on personalized happiness

Convergent with the study Towards A Personalized Happiness Approach To Capturing Change In Satisfaction and the entire exploration we’ve done and will do on dispositions, it stands to reason that what makes people happy differs. This is exactly what this study eloquently illustrates and demonstrates. They talk about the bottom-up model, the top-down model, and the bidirectional model. Their definition of the top-down model is as follows: “is a situational perspective, where life satisfaction is conceptualized as a summary of experiences, events, and emotions experienced in various life domains. Therefore, a satisfying life is a result of satisfaction with domains of one’s life: a high-paying job, a loving marriage, and close social relationships. The bottom-up theory highlights the role of improving circumstances in promoting happiness.”

Whereas the top-down theory/model suggests that people who are generally happier tend to see different domains of life in a positive light. “In contrast to the bottom-up theory, life satisfaction is not a result of a fulfilling career, a loving marriage and close social relationships. Rather, people who are happier tend to see that trickle down into other domains and perceive their career, marriage and relationships as fulfilling, loving and close. Theoretical perspectives such as the set-point theory and hedonic treadmill, suggest that life satisfaction is an equilibrium or homeostasis point. Indeed, (1) although individuals do differ in average levels of happiness, they also tend to return back to those set points, and (2) major life events, whether positive or negative, only have a short-term impact. This perspective is supported by the high heritability of life satisfaction shown in behavioural genetics studies, the tendency for individuals to adapt to critical life events, and the considerable link between personality traits and life satisfaction.” The bidirectional one stands to reason that it combines the two models. According to their research, the majority of participants (41.4–50.8%) showed primarily unidirectional associations between domain satisfactions and life satisfaction, and only 19.3–25.9% of participants showed primarily bidirectional associations. Which means, whenever we’re talking about happiness, despite the emotional concept differences in sociological and cultural terms, we also have to account for what type of model dominance people have. That’s why I was apprehensive to give wholesale definitions.

Summary

• Interpersonal synchronization, and the depth thereof, is the fundamental driver of all connection.

• Devices, media, and porn promote disconnection.

• In an attachment void, oxytocin gets depleted, and so the drive or need for homeostasis gets replaced with a dopaminergic pleasure drive to fulfill lacking needs in a destructive manner, which potentially leads to addiction, or can pave the way for addiction like coping mechanisms.

• Oxytocin, connection, and interpersonal synchronization not only buffer addiction, but extend to infidelity as well (accounting for dispositions, where for some, nothing helps as a buffer).

• Endorphins and oxytocin set the stage for euphoria, enjoyment, contentment and fulfillment.

• Vitality and aliveness are important for well-being, in all 3 orientations of attachment.

• The highest amount of neural reorganization happens when becoming a parent (outside of falling in love), which speaks to the profound impact this has on men and women alike.

• Most of our fulfillment in life is found in our connections.

• Connection and attachment are key factors in longevity.

• Happiness is a byproduct of many things (or sometimes a single thing), joy and enjoyment are more “robust” as they depend less on outcomes and more on appreciating what is right in front of you or the process you find yourself in.

Assortative mating

This chapter will cover matching and vetting. It’s not necessarily a blueprint for dating or how to get a mate, although these play a part in the process. Rather, it is an exploration of the multiple layers and dimensions that go into how assortative mating occurs.

Overlap and difference

Birds of a feather and opposites attract, both of these exist at the same time, you need polarity. It’s more of a question of what you need/desire in likeness, and in difference. This dispositional matching has been well understood since ancient times. In Plato’s Laws he outlines a dispositional law (or at least social rule) that men should marry women with opposite dispositions, as to not amplify the natural disposition. As a hot head marrying a hot head would create too much friction in the relationship and lead to more hot headed children. Instead, if a man is hot-headed he should have a stable and calm woman. Something very similar manifests itself in terms of testosterone levels. High T men think high T women are a turn off. They don’t want to compete in their relationships for leadership or have a too similar disposition (this isn’t absolute, there are outliers). There’s a lot to be said for polarity but also the balance it brings to both genders in their relationship.

The complexification and differentiation needs to occur, or at least, has benefits when one reflects on what they are looking for in a partner. The most accessible and common level of overlap and “assortiveness” is socioeconomic status, which is a strong factor that datepsych points out. Think back to the bonding levels, identity is a factor (which socioeconomic status is a part of), and of course, values. Those serve as categories to navigate where someone falls on the potential mate spectrum. The bell curve of a population distribution persists even here. If you’re in the middle of the curve, as an average person, you have more potential partners to match with. If you’re an outlier, your margins get slimmer. In a technical sense the most hypergamous could just choose anyone across the spectrum, but even they often pair up in their own echelon (provided they have a secure attachment, that’s an important caveat).

One of these ways to run differentiation is to look at the 4 dimensions of attachment and attraction:

• Physically, we covered this.

• Emotional.

• Intellectual.

• Spiritual (religious, world views, models of reality).

For each of these dimensions, behavior is a proxy; it’s not the end-all be-all (they are not absolutes), but it will be a stronger proxy than what they say. The way I see it, you have three levels or three dimensions of this: values, polarity, and drive. This means that certain behaviors are a proxy for values, what we value ourselves, and signal the potential for long-term partnership. Other behaviors feed into the polarity of gender dynamics and are thus a proxy for their gender's nature. Then some behaviors are proxies for generative drive, which can be quirky, like obsessions with certain subjects or fields, or odd hobbies. Call it a proxy for authenticity and uniqueness, which is novel and can be attractive. Furthermore, there seem to be general traits and qualities that seem to be attractive for the long term:

• Intelligence

• Kindness

• Mutual attraction (&love)

• Dependibility

• Good health

• Emotional stability

This is obviously also facilitated by the socio-cultural and economic circumstances. If there is generally a higher overlap of these values and traits, that are valued and enforced by the culture, it stands to reason that you’ll have more people displaying these values and traits. It’s the paradoxical irony of our day and age, where you have access or at least perceived access to many more potential mates than any of your ancestors, and yet, fewer matches (or at least it appears as such, we need to account for demographics as well, which ties back into culture, society and politics at large). The important thing is to understand the strengths that likeness and difference both have, and how that complements a relationship dynamic.

Types of relationships

A part of what is missing in the discourse of dating is the type of relationship, which is a combination of circumstances and personality. There is a skewing of expectations in certain bubbles on the internet and a pressure exerted through this paradigm of “the right way to spend your 20s” as in get married young have children young. This isn’t to discount that there a good health reasons why that is more beneficial rather than later down the line, however, it is not feasible for some, or due to a host of circumstances that impeded on meeting a partner that has the potential for this. Esther Perel elaborates on these two types, “a cornerstone relationship and a capstone relationship. So the cornerstone relationship is where when we used to meet in our early 20s and together we build the foundation of our relationship. We grew together, we saved our first monies together, we got our first places together, et cetera. It was very much foundational. Capstone is the foundation has already been established because we tend to meet at this point later.”

Another element that warrants exploration is the projection of an ideal. This is something Jung discussed with Campell which Campbell highlights in his notes, on the projection of the ideal Anima or Animus on a partner. Essentially it means you project the ideal of “the essence” or vision of Anima (a woman) or the Animus (a man) onto a person, typically your partner. Interestingly, there’s research that finds you estimate your partner smarter and prettier than he or she is. Which, to me, points to a certain level of adaptiveness to this function. Although, it can be hijacked, I’ll elaborate more on the parasitization of attachment. The point he makes, that feeds back into agapic love, is that once you can see through that ideal, you get learn and actually love your partner for who they are. That’s a very powerful statement, as those who have high degrees of attachment injuries tend to have a higher inclination toward this idealization. Related to idealization (and romanticization) is this paragraph from The Brain That Changes Itself “He is describing a state akin to “romantic intoxication”when people feel the initial high, talk all night, and have increased energy, libido, self esteem and enthusiasm, but because they think everything is good, they may also have impaired judgement - all of which occurs with a dopamine promoting drug like cocaine. Recent fMRI scans of lovers looking at photos of their sweehearts show that a part of the brain with great concentrations of dopamine is activated; their brains looked like those of people on cocain” Which gives even more credit to what Campbell worte on seeing past the ideal and how people found and felt true love. Because you effectively have to ride out the honeymoon and idealization high.

Generally when it comes to idealization you have both ends of the spectrum: “the perfect partner is out there somewhere” (and I’ll either wait or drop someone as soon as he/she, the chosen one, appears) or “The perfect partner doesn't exist”. In both senses, it’s largely a coping mechanism (again, this doesn’t happen without reason, it is adaptive naturally, but these functions get altered). So, yes, the perfect ideal doesn’t exist, however, it's not about a perfect person, but a better fit. And understanding how this idealization functions. Even if we fall short of our ideals, we can still validate values, virtues, attachment, and self-regulation. Chemistry can be fooled, hacked, and hijacked. The latter? Try fooling someone you are virtuous. Try fooling someone that you stick to your values. Try fooling someone you are securely attached. Try fooling someone you are self-regulated. That’s why assessing and discerning attachment, values, virtues and self regulation, are all solid metrics based on behaviors big and small. There’s also a dispositional element at play that we explored in the beginning of the chapter.

One of these dispositions is self expansion. For self expansion people: they benefit from more self expansion type gestures and verbal statements. This can lower attraction to people outside of the relationship because then the relationship is novel, exciting, challenging. Which loops back to dopamine dispositions and novelty seeking elements of this function. These people, convergent with what we said on dopamine in terms of introversion and extraversion are person oriented, which can mean that the narratives around the relationship are rooted in the relationship dynamic. Essentially this means that if needs are met in those regards of novelty and expansion they thrive. The flip side is that if needs are not met they are more predisposed towards attraction outside of the relationship. If this is paired with some self image and self worth issues then they’ll tend toward needing more external validation. There’s a case to be made that when Self love/worth/expansion is mainly internal, it will be tethered less to externals (other people included).

Essentially, all of this implies we need to figure out where we are in life, and what type of relationship we’re about to enter into. Our own dispositions matter a lot in this regard as well, and how deeply our attachment injuries go or how intense the attachment void is. To add, it can also be that you experience both types in terms of capstone and cornerstone depending on the developmental stages you and your partner go through. You can even start as a self expansion person and settle more as you age, or rather as your values and orientation shifts. So we kind of circle back to the name of the book, the compass paradigm, so we can orient ourselves and adjust our predictions and behaviors throughout our entire lives.

Notes on the Anima blockage in men:

There’s a strong case to be made when men are disconnected from feeling, due to the accumulation of what we’re exploring here. When the entire emotion space is seen as unsafe, these types of men will avoid it at all costs, that doesn’t mean they don’t feel, rather it is reduced spectrum, a lot stays under the surface. Lauren made an eloquent post on this that feeds into this exact point.

Outlier Genius

Projection reflection

In interpersonal relationships and dynamics, depending on the maturity and awareness of a person, we’re going to deal with projection and reflection. Projection defined as that the other person is projection their coidentifications, beliefs, narratives and perceptions on you, effectively trying to push a model on you, whether that is a model of you (that is incongruent), a model of her, or a model of the world (basically, if they are highly narcissistic, all three will occur). Reflection is where the person will reflect behaviors and models back to you, which depending on maturity and awareness can be confronting (and of course, how it is approached in the first place). That’s why having a stable and grounded sense of self matters a lot, know yourself so you know when you are projecting or when she is projection, or when she is reflecting. A lot of these can be found in co-identifications or personality based communication, or character assassination, the typical “you are this, you are such and such”. Which is why HOW these projections and reflections are approached matters a lot.

Triggering someone’s sense of self defense mechanisms is not the most constructive route to make them aware of things. Hence, addressing patterns is a far better strategy. Which means that in the first order we need that have a pattern detection strategy. The rule of three is great for this , although with an important caveat: if these patterns persisted before the relationship, they will serve as the first infraction and thus need to be addressed and resolved as soon as they emerge. The other thing is that it serves as a litmus test and a part of filtering, if someone has a history of cheating, and is cheating on their current partner with you, the odds are pretty damn high that this will take place in your relationship. Then, and I hope this is obvious, you don’t need to give to three strikes. Knowing where to draw the lines has a lot to do with checking back in with your values, vision, agency and generative drive, plus, if you know what you want (and you have a sense of these attachment dynamics) then that should (hopefully) lead to clarity on where to draw the lines. Taking an explorative stance has also been proven to be more effective, because when emotions are high things are often said in a manner that doesn’t represent the underlying feelings or issues. Questioning where this things come from and what they mean adds a reflective prompt that typically puts people in a more detached space as they have to start piecing together what they mean.

“By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher” This is a humorous aphorism about Socrates’s difficult marriage. The reason why I added it is because it lends merit to the idea that a relationship can be used as an introspective practice. Precisely because you can sift through these projections and reflections, but it also exposes the co-identifications, beliefs, narratives and perceptions we hold about ourselves, our models of love and relationships and about our partner. If approached as such, you’ll be able to spot patterns and dig into finding their roots. This obviously helps when your partner is equally invested in this process with you. So the aphorism, although it made sense, lacks that crucial element, that with the right person, they can support doing the introspective and internal work.

The We space

We’re weaving a lot of things together here because, as usual, there’s a certain complexity to this that extends into interconnected notions and concepts. We’re exploring theory of mind, similarity (and the ability for interpersonal synchrony), shared narrative , playing the same game body budgeting and free energy. Essentially, it’s a part of what is happening during our coupling and relating. The following quotation the conversation between Andrew Hubemran and Dr. Immordino-Yang, called How Emotions & Social Factors Impact Learning.

“So we have a kind of like a dynamic conversation happening that's happening in very raw and direct ways, neurochemically and others, and also in broader, longer term, slower, fluctuating patterns around other kinds of hormonal changes and things like that. So along multiple timescales simultaneously, we have a kind of whole, a humanistic whole of brain and body and mind that are kind of co-conjuring one another in real time. And that leads to all kinds of dynamic possibility spaces for how we are and how we feel as we grow through time. And I think, as humans, the legacy of our intelligence is to tap into those possibility spaces and start to construct them into meaningful, meaningful sort of chains of ideas, chains of experiences over time that we call a story. What was a real surprise to us is that emotions based in pain and emotions based in something rewarding or pleasurable, like virtue, which is really inspiring, as people describe it, were actually recruiting the same brain systems, including the hypothalamus and other systems like the anterior insula, which is basically visceral, somatomotor cortex. It's the cortex that feels the state of how you're digesting your lunch, whether your heart's pounding, all these kinds of things, right? What we found is that these emotions, when they get complex, when they're about stories, the valence is no longer the defining feature. The valence doesn't even matter that much. Instead, what matters is does the emotion pertain to a story that is conjured in our minds, or does it mainly pertain to what you can directly witness by looking at the person. And then we start to build more and more facilities, more and more sort of wisdom around conjuring the story that makes the most direct, parsimonious sense out of the things that you imagine somebody else may have experienced. Given the complexities of the context in which they find themselves, it becomes more and more dynamic, more and more sort of inferential”

There’s a great metaphor that Lisa Feldtman Barrett uses, which is body budgeting, which is her simplified analogy of shared free energy. “So the metaphor that I use is your brain is running a budget for your body, and it's not budgeting money. It's budgeting glucose and salt and oxygen and water and all the nutrients that you need to stay alive and well. And so you can think about withdrawals from that budget, like burning glucose or using up oxygen. You can think about deposits, like sleeping and eating. You can think about savings. So when you're with a friend who you trust, and everything you do actually is just slightly less metabolically expensive. And you can also think about taxes. Like, if you are stressed, socially stressed, within 2 hours of eating a meal, that same meal will cost you the equivalent of 104 more calories in the inefficiency that you will metabolize it because of that stress, meaning you'll burn more energy, you'll be more inefficient in metabolizing the food.” This ties together coregulation, free energy and how this we space occurs on a neurometabolic level. Seeing we explored the effects people have on us, it stands to reason it has this entire scope of multidimensional effects on our neurology, metabolism and energy signaling mechanisms.

So how does co-regulation generally occurs between the sexes? Typically we’re looking at reducing neurosis for women, and increasing presence for men. Due to the adaptiveness of women to have more environmental sensitivity socially, crying babies, the needs of the tribe, you name it, they tend to rank higher in neurotocism (not that social media does this any favors). As such, their wiring in terms of regulation is far more dependent on regulating their neurotic tendencies (which obviously have a great adaptive origin) so it doesn’t go overboard. Men have their own version of this, meaning constant calculation of resources, and projecting into the future (plans on all levels), there’s far more mental mapping going on in terms of future predictive needs, structures, strategies, plans, etc, which makes it hard for them to be present, especially if the environmental demands are high. As such, the benefit from women pulling them into the present, to “shut off” or at the very least significantly reduce this heavy prefrontal cortical prediction and calculating mode.

Co-regulation occurs on many levels, it strikes me that this is the most fundamental mode(s) of doing so. Alan Schore also talks about how this coregulation occurs in terms of empathy and its therapeutic effects on us, in which he differentiates felt empathy and cognitive empathy (We need both emotional empathy and cognitive empathy, mutual understanding of how they feel and think for predictions of their behavior / what they will do). Trusting social bonds needs both. “Cognitive empathy is an understanding. It makes no changes because essentially what we're attempting to do is make the changes in the right [hemisphere]. Now the changes in the right are going to be in the right axis. They're going to be the orbital frontal cortex, which is the executive regulator of the right brain. The dorsolateral cortex is the executive regulator of the left brain. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) now starts to form new connections with the cingulate, the insula and the amygdala. And that's where you’re going to see the changes. But again, the changes are due to the regulation. So you'll see the person now starting to come into more regulated states. And the key is synchrony.” What he is pointing out is that our own state, ability to self regulate, and how we deal with others emotions is effectively the strongest driver for changes in their state and ability to regulate because of the way this interpersonal synchrony works on the parts of the brain (primarily in the right brain) that deal with emotional processing and even change of values.

So, when people are able to do this level of coregulation and interpersonal synchrony, the relationship gets a meta element to it. Which is the relationship as transjective, defined as a perspective that transcends the traditional subjective-objective dichotomy, and a cooperation as true partnership. To simplify: a thing that is above the object-subject, or in this case, the subject subject relationship. Typically used to define a space that emerges from the dynamic interplay or co-creation between the subject (the individual or agent) and the object (the environment or context). Though it seems play exactly the same between “agents”/individuals. As such we’re going to explore this in a romantic sense and in a more specific sense of a brotherhood. We shouldn’t go into this naively in 4 aspects: 1) women are still women with their natures, 2) men are stil men with their natures 3) Society-culture-religion-politics is going to try to dictate relationships for worse and for better, 4) The possibility of a genuine partnership is possible.

The red pill rhetoric primarily focuses on the first two aspects, and then primarily hammers strongly on the first. The original red pill makes good points about the nature women and enhancing your theory of mind, although it seems to be missing aspects 3 and 4 (as far as I can tell), I’d also argue that seeing this was picking up steam over 10 years ago, they we’re looking primarily at a demographic of men in their 40s who were struggling with their relationships for a host of reasons, where the theory of mind aspect was clearly lacking and thus probably offered enough value to resolve enough of their issues. That’s a very different context as there are certain generational constraints tied to this and constraints of the time period. This doesn’t mean all of it is useless, it just means that it didn’t seem to encapsulate other factors or aspects. To my knowledge anyway, and I’m not an expert on the red pill movement, however, I had to have my own red pill moments because of my upbringing, lack of good role models and a lack of models of relationships.

In this exploration, we’re attempting to account for our nature as men, for which virtue and faith can’t be discounted as a controller of behavior (and addressing and resolving biological/neurological issues, as always). We equally have to account for the influences from the social-political-religious-cultural dimensions, and explore what we let into this we space and what we discard or reject. The last aspect is, to my understanding, completely missing from the red pill movement as it has evolved. It seems like all it amounts to is learning to navigate a woman, and being the dominant force, so it sure accounts for gender dynamics, but it doesn’t evolve past this. That’s why we spent time on agapic love, because when both people want this best for each other, and love each other beyond the flesh and the transactional, than this “microcosm”, this we space, is afforded to emerge. It is this space that forms a type of additional dimension to the relationship, which we could argue is highly spiritual, and requires both to be healthy psychologically and securely attached. Which is why I brought in theory of mind, the shared narrative, shared free energy, body budgeting and coregulation. A couple that cultivates and practices this will inevitably find their way to this space. To borrow from Nassim Talleb, this type of partnership is anti-fragile, it will grow from shocks to the degree it can withstand and recover from them.

Vassopressin seems “uniquely designed” for this purpose: to bond under pressure, which is a great thing to understand that we can’t just rely on oxytocin or the set of behaviors that go with it, because the vassopressin (bonding under hard/difficult) circumstances is key to for strengthening bonds. That’s the main argument for building out a very strong and robust, and antifragile relationship before having kids, so they enter into a space where the relationship grows from whatever life throws at it. I’d argue this would be the ultimate goal, not just in terms of having children, but in terms of the development of the relationship. It’s not just speaking in we terms, but acting in we terms. Strong communication plus aligned action is then of course the foundation of building the circumstances for this space to emerge. I have intentionally focused on emergence, building, cultivation, and practice, because it is an ongoing process that needs constant renewal and nurturing, just in the same way as you wouldn't suddenly say you are done parenting your child.

“I think what's very clear is that the kind of background sense of the body, the mapping and the regulation of the body is a basic substrate, a kind of trampoline for the mind. And so we are managing our survival. We now have lots of evidence from across many kinds of science about the interdependence of our stress and social relationships and our immunity and our ability to digest food. And it's even now very clear that it's not even just us. There's a whole microbiome and all kinds of other organisms that are assisting us in that and that are collaborating with us in that.” In the Aspirational Self article/framework I talked about how a part of your sense of self is relational, consider the effect it has on our well being, we can safely assume this is a significant part of how we are a self. There’s an additional element to be aware of, that I’ll keep reiterating, the better your neurology and biology overall, the easier it is to regulate AND be empathetic. A brain in survival is compromised on both accounts, which makes theory of mind more difficult, it makes empathy also more difficult, and it significantly reduces regulation.

This is why “Stoicism” (I use this as the pop culture reference, and not actual Stoicism as a proper philosophy) has come to the forefront, surely there is a case to be made to be composed to navigate the neuroticism and coregulation of a partner, however, from everything we’re seeing of environmental influences on hormones, it’s largely (but not absolutely or exhaustively) a hormonal and neurological issue. Men, overall, find that when they fix their biology and neurology they start naturally behaving more Stoicly. As such, it’s a built in feature of being a man, to behave as such, and help coregulate our partner, when everything is working properly in our brain/body. Regulated and optimized biology is your biggest asset in this sense, not just for the sake of self regulation, but most assuredly for the ability to run higher levels of theory of mind and empathy, with aligned behavior (both the Platonic Spirituality and The Path To Your Aspirational Self have these neuropsychological levels outlined).

This extends beyond a romantic relationship, the we space actually is inherent in a brotherhood, where there is this “transjective” sense (a meta space, if you will) that is understood as a common vision and goal (it’s largely what tribes, cultures and certain societies were built on). There’s an integrative sense in these spaces where there is a feedback loop between the entire hierarchy top to bottom. Which speaks to the saying iron sharpens iron, because you are surrounded by people that not just share this vision and goals, but actively practice and guide others to improve and grow. It’s an often-echoed sentiment of veterans that they wish to be “back there” because there was a sort of simplicity and clarity in being in that space, where this we space is embodied and lived. Because of the intensity of this we space, warrior societies experienced this to a much higher degree than other societies. I’m not saying it’s not present at all in other societies or cultures, rather that, given everything we’ve explored, it’s at a higher level in warrior societies. That experience carries a lot of weight because it’s innate in our socialization systems.

Amplifier Effect

We’ve seen in part how the right romantic partner has the potential to change our attachment circuits to a phenomenal degree, changing our relation to the world, others and ourselves. There’s some merit to that “Behind every successful man, there is a woman”. The sentiment that the right woman is an amplifier is not lost, or at least it wasn’t in the past, as the inverse was a well acknowledged fact: being with the wrong woman leads to ruin. That’s why the section of assortative mating and vetting is important (in case that had to be pointed out), as we’re looking for the right type of woman that can attach securely. Now, I’m aware this opens up a can of worms, because there’s a lot more people that tend into the “insecure” attachment styles (anxious, avoidant, disorganized). So there’s an exploration to be had in that sense. In the book Reinvent Your Life (the title is really a misnomer in my opinion), they talk about how to mend, resolve, address or management the root causes of these attachment styles and most importantly, that they can be changed. Here we have another bell curve aspect that I feel needs to be emphasized. It will strongly depend on all the mechanisms we explored, which means there’s a segment of the curve, the outliers, which are highly unlikely to ever be able to form a secure attachment. Some people don’t think this biological determinism is warranted, but closer inspection on genetics and circuitry of personality disorders really doesn’t leave much leeway in this regard. A book that shines an exceptional light on this is The Psychopath Inside, as he explores the hereditary, circuitry and brain anatomy aspects of psychopath and sociopaths. Convergent points are made in the literature about narcissism, it’s a trait based spectrum, as the book Rethinking Narcissism points out, and there is what is pathological and thus unchangeable.

All of this to say, is that when you’re dealing with an 8 and above in either category, you’re entering into a very challenging situation (to put it so diplomatically). There’s an entire case and projection to make if it’s going to be worth the time, effort and resources to get them to come down on the spectrum and whether they have the right professional support from either one therapist or group thereof (because different therapies could work on different aspects of psychology). We’re in the probabilities game here, and the probability of fostering a secure attachment with someone high up the scale is low. You see versions of this dance across the board, most notable anxiously attached women triggering avoidant attached men, it’s a paradoxical match. The point is that the amplifier effect goes both ways, it can amplify the negative aspects of the relationship or amplify the positive aspects of the relationship, and in a disorganized attachment that’s quasi bipolar in that regard: both at the same time. The highs are high, but the lows are really low.

Keeping all of that in mind, women in their own right give men the affordance to grow and to mature. To take responsibility, to work on their self regulation and self soothing as to maintain their composure, improve their theory of mind and empathy, become a leader and more decisive. As usual, it’s an affordance thing, not a guarantee. Though the right woman (with a secure attachment) definitely makes these aspects easier because she would lead or prompt her man there in her own way. They very often embody both aspects of this: shit testing you and nurturing you. A paradox that we need to navigate as she both destroys you and creates you (or aspects thereof, as it’s not a full blown absolute in terms of identity). Just like men do or could with tough love balanced by mentoring. Though the balance (for both technically) is more precarious, and a finer line to walk when the attachment isn’t as secure. In order for her to feel safe she needs to know you are stable, and that the weak chinks in your armor are being addressed, so she’ll most definitely test those aspects to gauge how safe she is in your leadership. It’s important to note that these tests need to be balanced with the nurturing and overal care taking, otherwise the opportunity to grow is curtailed as there is no growth without recovery.

The interpretation or perception of these tests will then of course also rely on your attachment and all the other biological and neurological factors that go into self regulation and so forth. Sexual selection is a major driver for men’s behavior at the end of the day, and how one attaches and how securely it is is going to be a huge driver of behavior as we saw in the oxytocin section. So lust has the plausibility of leading to an attachment, but clearly it has to follow a few parameters or constraints before it can get to a secure attachment. Additionally, circling back to safety there’s another aspect to explore, which are aspects of oxytocin on soothing and emotional regulation, it shouldn’t came as a surprise that this is a major aspect of why women have a higher need for safety (feeling safe) and shielding (and the obvious vulnerabilities of the gender), and it in informs connection capacity.

The opposite of safety is shielding and controlling, which in one way or another most people do, in order to control the environment to make themselves feel safer, and as an extension control and manipulate others. That’s a very adaptive way to protect oneself, although that has its obvious limits. I’ve highlighted a lot of the negative aspects, though I’ve had the pleasure to experience what happens to men when they find the right woman for them. It makes them want to change, sacrifice or give up certain things, even have kids when they were completely closed to the idea before. For the first time in their ife, they feel like they have something worth striving for in a higher realm: infinite games, virtue, character. They experience agapic love from her for the first time, and generally get access or more access to their own agapic love. The very nature of what men say speaks volumes about this, expressed as: “she makes me want to be a better man” or “she makes me a better man” And indeed, the right woman would have that effect, it amplify the best in man, and inspire one to reach these higher levels and dimensions.

Parasitization of attachment

"Hell is other people" - Sartre

“Our deepest and most pervasive problems are generally problems with other people. Why? Because the thing that is - I've mentioned this before - that is most predictive of how meaningful your life is, is your meaningful relationships to others. The problem is human beings are endlessly complex.” - John Vervaeke

The lack of and desperation for a cohesive and coherent narrative, can be capitalized by anyone that tries to hijack or parasitize your attachment. Starting from the non romantic, let’s work from a note on Dostoevsky and build our case from there.

“The fundamental tragedy of men, according to Dostoevsky, comes from two kinds of actions: actions that shatter world unity and actions which attempt to attain a synthetic unity of artificial means. This last he considered particularly dangerous, for men consciously or subconsciously aware of the dangers of “isolation”, all clamour for unity and, in default of genuine brotherhood, are all too eager to accept a counterfeit model in the shape of socialism or the Catholic church, which can offer nothing but the brotherhood of an “ant hill”. But, says, Dostoevsky, both in Summer Impressions and in his capacity of Grand Inquisitor, even these men will gladly accept, for the alternative to an ant hill is a struggle of all against all, ending in cannibalism, when men will devour each other. Catholicism and socialism, Dostoevsky regarded as being basically the same, both of them ultimately emanations of the Roman Imperial idea, which insisted on a purely mechanical, external unification of men, in the hope that such unification would in time give birth to true spiritual fellowship.”

This isn’t me making a case against Catholicism, I maintained the integrity of the piece because this can be extrapolated to any religious and idealogical inclinations and expressions. You can find this anywhere or in any of those, where a cultification and parasitization happens of men’s desire to be a part of a tribe, to be part of a mission, part of something that matters, part of justice, Jack Donovan’s made a post relating to this on thumos, which goes into a bit of the psychological piece. We’ve talked about brotherhood, Jack talks about this as well and highlights both sides of the coin, because the parasitization of brotherhood is the gang. It’s so wired into us that in the book The Archetype of Initiation by Robert L Moore, they highlight that when the proper sense or higher ideal of a brotherhood isn’t accessible, in the void of parental attachment and initiation, adolescents will gravitate towards the gang in order to get what needs psychologically (emotionally). There’s an additotional level to put out and that is that certain dispositions gravitate towards this dark side of the brotherhood regardless of positive male role models or not. So eventhough a lack of positive social coherence is a factor, it is not the only factor.

On Thumos

When it comes to understanding men’s gravitations and dispositions Jack’s article (and writing in general) has a lot of value, because he’s making men aware of what happens of this parasitization of men’s attachment. Our need for the brotherhood gets hijacked, our need for justice and honor gets hijacked, it gets twisted in service of forces that have not an inkling of concern for us. As the writer on Dostoevsky stated “the birth of true spiritual fellowship is what we desire, and would get in a more naturally inclined society and civilization.” Every adaptive mechanism is susceptible to parasitization, our attachment, given its implications for our survival, even more so. In the current geopolitical landscape, it’s even more important to be aware of this.

When it comes to the romantic parasitization side of things, there’s a mix of the ideal, rose colored glasses, attachment through love bombing to establish circumstances to that make leaving hard. Trauma is strongly going to influence the aggrandization and idealization of a person. The latter also occurs non romantically, like men with wounded father attachments, who will pedastalize other men, unable to integrate them into a balanced human perspective. We’ve already explored how this idealization takes place in a romantic relationship in a healthy development (seeing through your own projection, loving the person totally for who they are). When the wounding, injury or trauma is dominant there’s this susceptibility to the idealization and the parasitization of said ideal. That’s why I mentioned love bombing, in the clinical sense, of someone effectively rushing into bond with you, overwhelming you with affection and attention (generally have sex on the first meeting), which is a way to leverage the initial stages of infatuation (which most people intuitively know this infatuation and dopamine high passes) and attempting to hyperstimulate these bonding, pleasure and enjoyment mechanisms to drown you in a blissful cocktail of your own hormones. This, depending on the persons’s susceptibility, stimulates, promotes and facilitates bonding fast so that it’s more difficult to take distance, keeping one’s rose collared glasses damp, decreasing the capacity to register red flags and worrisome behaviors, overriding rationality and logic. It’s quite a feat of ingenuity to be honest, of men and women of the sort, who can so easily and masterfully manipulate and hijack these systems consciously and subconsciously.

The intuitive understanding of hyperstimulus is that the come down is quite the contrast, so you get an amplified desire/craving effect as you drop back to bounce baseline (either the exact mechanism or a similar to what happens in addiction). Vervaeke often states “What makes you adaptive makes you vulnerable” , this is equally applicable to attachment. As a matter of fact, that’s why we had social system and traditions in place to vet potential partners through our social circles with our parents being the quite literal gate keepers (particularly when it came to their daughters). Human nature being human nature, it should come as no surprise that ancient people (most of this can be found in one form or another in Plato and other ancient Greek writes) and traditions understood to safeguard us from the parasitization of our adaptive mechanisms. The saying that the most potent drug in the world being another human being takes on a few new dimensions when we understand the depts of which this effect takes place.

An additional level of parasitization is these introjects becoming the dominant voice, we start hearing our parent, our lover, our friends. Effectively, anyone you trust, get close with, and build a precise/accurate model of (the introject) gets high generative capacity, to the point when this parasitzation occurs it drowns out our own voice and feedback. The case of how this takes place with a parent or lover is quite evident, the case for how this happens with friends is far more subtle. In general, there’s an element of superiority in it for them, undercutting you, down playing your contributions, calling on you when they need you and not extending the same courtesy to you, implicitly or explicitly saying and showing they know better than you (comes back to superiority), these types of behaviors can be indicative of this inclination of parasitization, because they rarely honor your agency, personhood, and generative drive. When the feedback of this friend’s introject is a negative one: demeaning, tearing you down, questioning yourself, then here we have the signs of parasitization.

This is very different from tough love, which has its time and place, and is generally the least understood and thus misapplied by people with injured attachments. Another layer of parasitization is being loyal to a fault, it’s basically stockholm syndrome, condoning, tolerating, empathizing with and enabling a parasitic relation, which can be highly confusing, especially when someone shows you their best side or their best aspects, making you feel the way you want to feel (or should have felt with your primary caretakers), which makes that feeling addictive in a sense, feeling all that warmth and love and then taking it away, which induces that desire to have it again, which opens the door for behaving in submissive ways to get the good stuff back. This is very regularly an endless rollercoaster of tension building (walking on egg shells, feeling on edge, fear of making mistakes), to the inevitable explosion, to getting blamed for the explosion and tension, leading to the reconciliation, which then facilitates the absence of tension and all those good feelings we so desire and crave. Very often the people in these cycles feel, believe and think they are the problem, and as such, stay loyal, when the behaviors of the other party most surely don’t warrant said loyalty. Hence, the more vulnerable you are in all these attachment levels, the more room there is for parasitization, and your loyalty being abused, and effectively weaponized against you. A weaponization of this is very often expressed as “Don’t you love me?” or “If you love(d) me you would…”, that has the tendency to trigger shame and guilt leading into compliance.

When it comes to our choice in mates, a lot of it has to do with these introject models. In the section Origin of Attachment I outlined 3 models: 1. Parent-parent model: How they behave with each other, 2. Mother-child: How the mother behaves with the child, 3. Father-child: How the father behaves with the child. These will form the “relationship model” (I’m simplifying, but the point stands). An important part to understand is that free energy principle underscores life and brain function, meaning we attempt to combat entropy (energy loss) by any means possible. The unknown equates to high energy loss. Typically, we crave familiarity, we like the known, because the known is safe, and it spares energy, so we maintain our energy homeostasis. This is largely why familiarity matters, and how strongly that is present in the parasitization of attachment. Because of the familiarity of this model, it is like a gravitational pull; it will dictate (or influence) who you are attracted to, because there is an unconscious gravitation and scanning for these models in other people. Effectively recreating childhood parental dynamics and models. So there’s both a gravitation towards these models for the sake of familiarity AND very often the subconscious need of this repetition compulsion to resolve these dynamics and models of the past through a present relationship.

When you put those together, including our star of the show the free energy principle, it makes perfect sense why people stay in toxic and destructive relationships. The alternative of the unknown plus what it takes to bridge all of this requires far more energy expenditure and a reorganizing of these models (which takes a ton of time and energy). Lori Gottlieb in her talk with Andrew Huberman points this out exactly. So if we add in everything we explored about oxytocin and attachment needs, it clarifies why people stay in these relationships and why they are typically afraid (at a subconscious level) to move on or make a break (even when they can’t articulate why they are afraid in the first place). A marker of picking up on parasitization of the We Space is where I is used instead we, and the inverse, when one uses we where it should’ve been I. It’s not foolproof but it can be an indicator.

Note on manipulation:
A lot of manipulation is about control, rooted in fear, as what is being expressed, brought forth or reflected is perceived as unsafe. This can be feelings that are being expressed, or behaviors that reflect something back to them that they lack or are poor at, or when you’re reflecting back their behaviors. Essentially, their manipulation is trying to control your behavior and feelings so that they don’t have to deal with the things that make them feel unsafe or are unable to cope with. People do this in varying degrees; it’s not always a sign of psychopathology, but it’s most definitely a very dominant and robust pattern in people with high degrees of psychopathology and personality disorders. Very often, their boundary setting is about controlling your behaviors and feelings so that they can continue to feel safe, and feel undisturbed by that which they fear or are unable to cope with. We’ll explore this in more depth in the boundaries section. If someone is telling you how to behave or how to feel, I would strongly reflect on the driver, circumstances, and patterns.

Summary

• The good news is that like seeks like, birds of a feather flock together, and what you seek seeks you.

• Understand what you seek, need and desire, and what this is based on (their drivers)

• Different types of relationships are open to you.

• Understand your own psyche and behaviors so you know when projection is taking place and when reflection is taking place.

• Invest in the we space, wisely.

• Beware of your attachment vulnerability, litmus test, stay vigilant, train yourself to not attempt to fill the void.

• Hence, the most sensible approach is to mold yourself into someone the partner of your dreams would date and marry.

• Out of sight, out of mind, and absence makes the heart grow fonder. This seems to depend on how securely attached and deep the love is.

• Insults or injuries to personhood, agency, and what is generative in you are a marker for parasitization.

• The right person will bring out the best in you and allow you to bring out the best in yourself.

• A relationship can become its own entity when synchronization and attachment happen at the deepest levels.

Infinite games: cooperation vs competition

“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”. Think about it, if competition was all that mattered, we would’ve perished as a species a long time ago. If there is no “reward” or utility in sharing resources, building and working together, then it would be impossible for bonds to form, units to emerge, tribes to merge, and societies to emerge. We’ve covered enough of the neurology to illustrate the case that we’re made/wired for one another, and thrive under social conditions. “Much human cooperation occurs where it is risky to cooperate for mutual benefit because successful cooperation depends on a sufficient level of cooperation by others.” From the study Vasopressin increases human risky cooperative behavior, makes this point equally clear. A lot of these games are based on trust, and for men a facet of this is reputation and another is honor. Inconsistency and breaking trust erodes a relationship at record speed. Effectively trust is the belief of a high probability you will keep your word, honor your commitment and deliver.

Even though intentions matter, good intentions without a follow through don’t mean much when we expect and or trust to be delivered something. That’s why we still use reputation as a proxy for reliability and honor. In the settings we’ve explored of building tribes into societies, if someone is unreliable, they are a threat to the survival of the tribe. If this is on a smaller scale, that person would be threat to the survival of the band or party (whether hunting or fighting). This speaks to why, generally, honorable men have such a strong aversion to the dishonorable, flakey, weasels, or anyone who portrays themselves to be honorable but yet fails to align their behavior as such. An unreliable man won’t be a desirable potential brother for the brotherhood, and a dishonorable one is an absolute write off from the get go. That’s why scoping out these behaviors of not living up their word, acting dishonorable, and general unreliability are important, so we don’t let wolves in sheep clothing into the herd doing potential untold damage to others and ourselves.

There’s a robust pattern here that for those who believe or think relationships are only transactional to play finite games. Because, of course, at some point, the other person loses value in terms transactionality. Often phrased as “They give me nothing” or “They don’t offer any value”. This is represented in game theory as well, to a certain degree, though there is of course a dispositional/personality aspect to this (I think that’s pretty clear at this point). Someone with injured attachments, an orientation and or a culturally/situationally enforced survival “mindset” (more like a state) has a degree of “infantile narcissism” in that they (most likely) never got the abundance of resources, which love and sustenance was the first representation of. As such, they go through life with a certain lack, deficit and internalized sense of scarcity (both in love and resources). Thus, it is not uncommon for them to have a more narcissistic way of looking at a relationship, even in the absence of pathological narcissism (we’re emphasizing behavior and traits here, not diagnosing pathologies). It’s only about the gain, because these people need someone to add to their lives in what their needs have dictated, and if their needs change or are fulfilled, the person is no longer needed. If someone has a new best friend every few months or every few years, that’s someone who is parasitizing on others for their needs in this way, going from BFF to BFF. The commoditization of relationships is about a transactional “value” only, what one can get, it is not about the person themselves. Utilitarian relations are not friendships.

If we have something as the “spheres of attachment” (this probably has an actual name) that goes from the inner circle (family and close friends) to other friends, to whatever else as these spheres vary in their representation. The point I’m attempting to make is that there is a case of utilitarian relations with acquaintances and there can be a utilitarian level to friendships (without it being the basis of one or the only aspect of it). The commoditization of relations is purely transactional and utilatartian in that sense, it has nothing to do with the person, only with what they can “give” or what can be garnered and extracted from this relationship. This is to me is the very definition of a finite game, and this is usually the case in these psychological profiles, as they “mine” and extract what they need and move on to the next person, like an attachment parasite. That’s why these types of people don’t have any real friends, or brothers, because no one stays once they realize what type of person they are, or people realize what type of person they are once they find out how they view their relations with others (through their behaviors). Their “means” to survive is to find a new victim to parasitize of, and repeat the cycle as soon as that attachment is drained.

“Bare is the back of a brotherless man” - Havamal

Infinite games require genuine cooperation and collaboration. This extends to romantic relationships, because trying to be someone you're not backfires (obviously), being who you are and who you are developing into (aspirational self framework) is an infinite game, you can keep doing it until your last breath. It’s hard to collaborate and cooperate over the long term without honesty, truthfulness, and transparency. Additionally, healthy competition and collaboration can co-exist, remember: iron sharpens iron. It can’t get sharper without contact. The right people are amplifiers and developers of certain personality and identity aspects, they draw more of these good things out of you. In these regards, It pays to understand dispositions (often called personality types, although that’s become a bit commodified and simplified). In the ancient literature this is generally referred to as “natures”, Plato makes this case in a few of the dialogues, most notably the Republic and in Laws. Even Dostoevsky makes this point in The House of The Dead (it comes up in a few books) how different prisoners dealt with prison life, and I do an analysis of what constitutes personality in the Path To Your Aspirational Self article, so I won’t go into the same depth here.

High agency, high truth preference, are typically markers of honor and integrity, though they can be gamed, so accumulating proof of work is a solid strategy here. The truth of the matter is that some people are just unable to have meaningful relationships, the point of saying this isn’t to blackpill you or imply this is about you. Rather, it is about arming you with the knowledge that outliers on the spectrum of our bell curve are going to be present to a certain degree in your life. In the sense you’ll run into these, and if you don’t know the warning signs, you might just get blindsided by their behavior like ghosting you or cutting you out, or using you as the previous section highlighted in terms of utilitarian relations. For some of these people, you will only ever be a tool, a steppingstone, and or a means to an end. For others, you’ll be a reason that makes life worth living.

Kindness vs Ruthlessness

Kindness is a strength because it’s easier to get jaded and bitter with many of the social betrayals and disappointments one can experience, so despite the fact that there’s this saying that a strength could be a weakness, I believe a better way of putting it is the way John Vervaeke does: what makes you adaptive makes you vulnerable. Kindness, extended to the wrong people, gets used and abused. Because they take kindness for weakness, and herein lies their identifier and failure of a litmus test. If you can extend yourself to others in good faith, and someone abuses that, great, they’ve shown their hand. On the other end of the spectrum are those who are kind, good-natured, pure of heart, but are very guarded. To use some more of Vervaeke’s terminology, it’s about finding an optimal grip, per person, per situation, not too tight, not too loose, or not too open, not too guarded, until they’ve proven themselves. Thus, whatever part of the spectrum one is on, the aim is to find the balance, both in general and specifically. To draw one more parallel to hammer this concept home, imagine your nervous system like an arch, the 2 branches of the nervous system representing each part of the arch. If my arch was underdeveloped on one side, your arch collapses, meaning that you are “stuck” in a state, or to be more precise: that state will be more dominant (which you mainly see in terms of the sympathetic nervous system, people being too wired or too high strung). Hence, we find balance through integration. Then ruthlessness here, especially when you are very good nature, might actually feel “against your nature” (though it is in all of us to some degree). It can be experienced as particularly unpleasant, which in my opinion is probably a good thing, should someone get joy or pleasure out of it, he (or she) would tend towards sociopathy. Seeing that we’d like to deal in good faith and be dealt with in good faith, having to be/act ruthless can be uncomfortable to some degree. I’ve had a few people in my life that I let into my inner circle that forced my hand to ruthlessness, a mindstate I switch into that I don’t particularly enjoy. A common perception is that it’s about punishing the other party when it really is about self preservation and adjusting your attachment to them. If they have proven to be unreliable (failing to deliver on their promises or word), inconsistent, or down right conflictual without good reason, and exhibit patterns that injure the attachment, then keeping them close or in your inner circle is effectively a failure to adjust to the behaviors displayed.

What you tolerate you condone, so if a boundary is set, and it is disregarded by the other person, than moving them further away from the inner circle makes the most sense (depending on the severity and frequency of these infractions of course). This is optimal griping in essence, without malice, pettiness, or the intent to punish: if someone behaves in a way that is misaligned with your values and virtue, when that’s been communicated and they fail to uphold the conditions, then it warrants a different grip. Not everyone deserves or has earned you given your all. And from a neurological standpoint, that’s metabolically unlikely to do: resources, energy, time are all limited (typically as one matures the tolerance for bullshit strongly decreases).

To illustrate this example in a more pronounced way, I’m not going to treat a stranger the same way I treat one of my family members. So far, so good, that’s a large contrast, there’s benefit in differentiation in the other layers of relationship dynamics. As I emphasized in the Agapic love section, in terms of what a real friend is, and drawing your personal lines to solidify those categories. A real bro will be a real bro, and from experience they show up and stick around for all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and they support you in becoming more of a person, they will, to put it so poetically, love you into being a better man. When you experience this, it makes it easier to draw the lines. When applying ruthlenesness, it’s not about being a dick, you can be ruthless in a diplomatic fashion, by this I mean you approach it with tact: A) framing the conversation (I need to tell you something that might be difficult to hear), B) calling out behaviors (When this happens, I feel or experience…), C) examples of the infraction, D) letting them know how you will change YOUR behavior (because of this I won’t spend time with you like before, or will do such and such). Expect people to respond to it poorly, which stands to reason if they’ve been treating you unfairly or unjustly, that’s generally not the type of person who’s going to take it maturely. As usual, the duality of man and life is learning how to “surf” that spectrum, and be adaptable in said surfing, affording others to move closer, and adjusting someone’s closeness when unacceptable behavior occurs. To quote IM on the morality of ruthlessness, “I’d say it’s an immunity to guilt and shame in pursuing what you believe is right, and a willingness to convey harsh truths without malicious intention.”

There’s a point to be made about agreeableness and disagreeableness in this regard as well. If you are being and or acting disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable, you are (acting as) a fool. Because repeated signaling in this regard wll turn people off to collaborate with you. Why would they? When everything is contentious and demands more energy and resources from them. There seems to be this perverted notion that these disagreeable people are doing them a favor, when really what they are doing is exacting unnecessary time, resources and energy from the other party. Asking, or rather, demanding through behavior for an investment that they prove not to be worth due to the repeated insult to people’s time, resources, and energy. In that regard it is foolish and immature, because it accomplishes very little but inspire resentment in the other party. Their prediction gets wired that this is going to be demanding and exhausting interaction, and at some point they’ll just take more and more distance, because when all of these factors are finite, why would they invest it in or with someone who is showing they’re uninterested to collaborate and pool their biological resources? Anyone that catches on to what is happening would equally be a fool to stay in a relationship like that. There’s an intuitive line that people draw for their kindness in this regard, when they find out little of that invest is going to return or is reciprocated at the same level or other levels. And thus, they’ll have to lean on their ruthlessness to protect their time, resources and energy.

Summary

• Be yourself, developmentally, or act as your aspired self.

• Honor your word.

• Build am honorable reputation based on integrity.

• Be intentional with your usage of the word friend (and brother).

• Collaborate and cooperate transparently and genuinely

• Ruthlessly protect your inner circle

• Agreeableness and disagreeableness need to be balanced

Social isolation

In this part we’ll explore the effects of social isolation, in a behavioral sense and a neurological sense, and of course how the one cascades into the other. Now, just like anything in biology and psychology, there are compounding factors. Meaning that very often there’s a sequence of events that leads to voluntary social isolation. Usually and generally that means a high amount of inflammation is present, that the energy signaling is disrupted and thus in favor of energy conservation as to attempt to stop the loss of energy (entropy), micronutrient depletion is usually present as well, from there the other factors like disrupted circadian rhythm and lack of sunlight are going to compound on the atrophy and breakage of several biological and neurological systems and functions.

These factors are intangible of the effects of social isolation, or what drives people into social isolation to begin with. Loneliness is not just being isolated. Another factor is loneliness, defined as the distress that results from discrepancies between ideal and perceived social relationships. An important aspect of this is perceived loneliness, not just actual being alone or on your own, as perception drives a lot of the emotions around all of this. Due to certain experiences people can have blinders in this way, that even when they’re being supported and are surrounded by people, the negative valence and biases are so dominant it gets most of the attention which impedes the ability to see the positives and integrate this.

Neurological impact

Let’s run through the effects on the brain and hormones, I’ve compiled this with the help of Grok and Perplexity, using their DeepResearch function to find the 5 best studies, with a short summary, and conclusions (it’s fantastic for this type of thing). Spoiler alert: it’s not good.

1. Impact of social isolation on grey matter structure and cognitive function (eLife, 2023).

Summary: This large-scale longitudinal study involving 1992 cognitively healthy participants aged 50-82 examined the effects of social isolation on brain structure and cognitive function using MRI scans and cognitive tests.

2.Effects of long-lasting social isolation and re-socialization on brain plasticity and behavior (Nature Scientific Reports, 2020).

Summary: This study investigated the effects of long-term social isolation on working memory, spatial learning/memory, hippocampal synaptic transmission, and synaptic proteins in adult mice.

3.Social isolation and the brain: effects and mechanisms (Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2022).

Summary: This comprehensive review examined the effects of social isolation on brain function, structure, and development across different age groups and animal models.

4. The Impact of Loneliness and Social Isolation on Cognitive Aging (Frontiers in Psychology, 2023).

Summary: This narrative review described the current understanding of how loneliness and social isolation influence cognitive aging and their link to dementia.

5. Affective Neuroscience of Loneliness: Potential Mechanisms Underlying Health Consequences (Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2022).

Summary: This review focused on the neuroscience of loneliness and its potential mechanisms for affecting health outcomes.

All the conclusions mirror each other:

So what are we looking at?

A negative feedback loop of brain atrophy, reducing key brain regions for everything we need: memory, focus, the will to learn, stress regulation and inhibition, the desire to connect with others. These mechanisms have a tendency to wreck the attachment to self, because of these altered behaviors and thus self perception and identity changing (for the worse), which amounts in behaviors that are either less social or anti-social which makes it even harder to connect to others (so that orientation is being injured then at the same time).

Hormonal disruption

In this part, we’ll explore the hormonal implications of social isolation and thus what happens in the body on a systemic level. Dynorphin is an endogenous opioid peptide that plays a significant role in stress responses and social behavior, particularly in relation to social isolation. Here's an overview of dynorphin's functions and its relationship to social isolation:

Stress Response Regulation:

Dynorphin acts as a key mediator in the body's stress response system. It is released during stressful experiences and binds to kappa opioid receptors (KORs) in the brain.

Mood Modulation:

Activation of the dynorphin/KOR system is associated with negative emotional states, including anxiety, dysphoria, and depressive-like behaviors.

Pain Perception:

Dynorphin plays a role in pain modulation, particularly in chronic pain conditions.

Addiction Processes:

The dynorphin/KOR system is involved in the negative reinforcement aspects of drug addiction and withdrawal.

Relationship to Social Isolation:

Increased Dynorphin Activity:

Social isolation has been shown to increase dynorphin levels and KOR activity in certain brain regions, particularly the ventral pallidum.

Promotion of Depressive-like Behaviors:

Elevated dynorphin concentrations in socially isolated individuals can lead to depressive-like phenotypes, including anhedonia and despair.

Anxiety and Stress Exacerbation:

The dynorphin/KOR system activation during social isolation contributes to increased anxiety and stress responses.

Inhibition of Social Behavior:

Dynorphin release can suppress social interaction and promote social avoidance behaviors.

Interaction with Other Systems:

Dynorphin interacts with other neurotransmitter systems affected by social isolation, such as dopamine and serotonin, potentially exacerbating the negative effects of isolation.

Cyclical Relationship:

Social isolation can increase dynorphin release, which in turn promotes behaviors that may lead to further isolation, creating a self-reinforcing cycle.

Another player in this field is tachykinin, which plays a diverse role in physiological processes such as pain perception, stress responses, and social behavior. When elevated, it produces further neurochemical changes and thus deterioration of the brain and body. Factors like social isolation significantly increase aggression by affecting underlying neuropeptide levels such as tachykinin, which alternatively influences moods and behaviors. Chronic social isolation leads to increased expression of the Tac2 gene encoding NKB across the brain. This upregulation is associated with behavioral changes such as heightened aggression and fear responses. Elevated tachykinin levels disrupt normal neural circuit function, leading to maladaptive behaviors that exacerbate isolation effects.

What you have here is a negative cascade, or a downward spiral, that doesn’t stop. In essence, you have dynorphin, tachykinin, cortisol, and GDF15 providing a neurochemical storm that degrades the brain and every other system, this affects our health and, of course, our mental health. Furthermore, David Anderson highlights: “there is a paper showing that in humans who have borderline personality disorder, there is a strong correlation between their self-reported level of aggressiveness and serum levels of a tachykinin.” That’s pretty significant in how deep these layers go of these hormones and neuropeptides.

Given all this, should it be any surprise why solitary confinement is seen as some of the worst punishment one could be subjected to? Furthermore, the compensatory mechanisms of social isolation tend to lean toward eating more, or change food sources. Because it’s a common circuit of dopamine release, if they can't get it from socialization, they'll get it from food. Taste of food expands and food seeking behavior when social isolated. Food, water, social interaction located in the Dorsal Raphe Nucleus (DRN). Other compensatory behaviors could be expressed, though generally it is something consumatory, precisely because of these dopamine circuit. This cascade then is signified by increase pain perception, amplified stress, fear and anxiety, inducing anhedonia and depression, and increased desire to withdraw. Curiously enough, but unsurprisingly, falling in love has the opposite effect, reduced cravings and has an overall satiating effect.

Paper on GDF15: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02078-1
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645302200292X?via%3Dihub

Sourced from: Martin Picard (https://x.com/MitoPsychoBio)

Survival: accepted and selected

“We’d rather be six feet under than be lonely.”
- Sleep Token

Attachment is so necessary for survival that any studies on withdrawing an infant from a mother got shut down due to ethical concerns (and fortunately so). During the bombing of London in WW2, babies and infants were shuttled away from their parents to safety, and even though they were physically provided for in every way, they still withered away and died. Given everything we saw about oxytocin feedback loops and the need for it, this effect on infants/babies is not surprising, though it expresses itself in adults very similarly here. Even outside of isolation itself, there is what I like to dub “attachment void”. This effectively means that you don’t have secure attachments in one or all of the levels: romantic, familial, and friends. Navigating this void, especially romantically, seems to be the more difficult one. The navigation of which strongly depends on your earliest moments (0-2 years old), and your gender. Women are more predisposed towards a higher attachment need and have a harder time overall being alone (generally, provisional in terms of dispositions). If you add disruptions of attachment in early life, and or injured attachment later in life, it seems almost impossible for someone like that to be alone. Considering the feeling of being alone hurts physically, as the pain circuits of physical pain and emotional pain rely on the same circuitry.

So it’s no surprise then how painful and how damaging an attachment void can be, and how much support and guidance it would take in order to navigate this void constructively without grasping for unhealthy and destructive attachments to fill the void. Because for this type of psychology and neurology, a bad attachment, destructive, painful, and toxic, is better than no attachment at all. Precisely because we need attachment for survival, and this survival mechanism is pushed into high gear when a void appears. This function is great for survival, but costs many the chance to thrive, as their behavior is reactive and instinctive, to ensure this void is filled as fast as possible, to bypass the pain rather than sit through it to come out the other side for a healthier and constructive relationship. “Any port in a storm” keeps coming back for this reason. When a caregiver is inconsistent, neglectful, or unresponsive, a child may develop an insecure attachment style.

Men who have an injured attachment with their mother more often exhibit this pattern (any port in a storm), precisely because of the damage done during these earliest years of life, and thus have altered circuits and systems. They have a hard time being alone, seek constant companionship, will be more proactive in chasing their attachment needs, a higher need for coregulation. Although you can also have the opposite effect on the spectrum of this, which is amplified avoidance and thus very strong self-protection. Typically, in a disorganized attachment you have a combination of both, that cycles or pendles between avoidant and anxious (or both at the same time). And because humans are complex, it depends and varies from person to person and circumstance to circumstance what gets expressed. Due to the relationship with the mother, what very often occurs is that the boundaries between the self and the world have not been properly built with the mother during critical periods, as one is supposed to individuate from the mother, and feel safe in the world during that transition with the guidance of both parents (and a major deficit in oxytocin). This is where individual dispositions matter a lot because in the “same” (similar) circumstances, one tips to approach (constant need to seek connection) while another tips to avoidance (still desires connection but is too afraid to put themselves out there). And this self protection mechanisms is obviously adaptive, if someone keeps injuring you, why would you afford them or anyone else the chance to do so?

It’s basic survival behavior, in the most adaptive sense. For the sake of precision: the complexity of attachment injury is found in that the injury happening with one parent doesn’t necessarily transfer to that gender, meaning if the attachment injury happened with the mother, that doesn’t mean all their problems are with women or are solely with women. Another factor is when the injury has taken place, the earlier it happens, and the more intense or acute, the more changes that take place in the critical periods to the circuits and systems that have to do with bonding. To me, there seems to be a specificity in the injury and a generality in the injury, so they can have specific challenges with women, and then have general challenges in attachment regardless of gender.

Which also means there are counterbalancing factors to these behaviors and drivers. Another robust pattern seems to be that men who have an injured attachment with their father have a tendency to pedestalize other men, in the desire for an ideal to be present in their life with a nurturing father presence. Although the flip side of this can be a deep seated distrust towards other men, so it follows that dispositional aspect of anxious and avoidance. One seeks to fill the hole, the other seeks to avoid the demographic that might injured him but fights the undeniable need to be part of the brotherhood and be mentored (it’s quite ironic and paradoxical). As we’ve explored, this pedastalization and idealization takes place either way to some degree with the Anima (female) and Animus (male), which is why it’s such an important aspect of maturity to see through this, which also happens on a neurological level being able to integrate these parts/sides.

The way this integration happens is that negative experiences and emotions get stored in the right hemisphere, and positive experiences get stored in the left hemisphere. So for negative experiences, we’re looking at the right amygdala, which heightens sensitivity to negative emotions and threats, and the right prefrontal cortex, which processes negative affect and withdrawal behaviors. So we already get a sense of what happens if or when a disposition becomes amplified. For positive experiences, we rely on the left prefrontal cortex associated with positive emotions, and the left amygdala is goal-directed behavior, and is more involved in the cognitive evaluation of emotions. This includes interpreting emotional expressions, sustaining focus on emotional stimuli, or processing emotions in a more deliberate, reflective way.

These two amygdalas have a bridge called the corpus callosum, the structure that connects the left and right sides of the brain. Effectively, when this bridge malfunctions, it impedes people’s ability to have an integrated and grounded view of a person. Hence, the idealization, to them, a person might be perceived as "all good" (left hemisphere dominance) or "all bad" (right hemisphere dominance), with no middle ground. When the corpus callosum cannot effectively relay information between hemispheres, the brain struggles to blend the logical, positive processing of the left hemisphere with the emotional, negative processing of the right. This leads to compartmentalization, where positive and negative aspects of a person or situation are kept in separate "boxes”, hence the splitting term. What we’re looking at in terms of adverse childhood experiences and injured attachments is Corpus callosum abnormalities, which has reduced connectivity or developmental issues that can limit hemispheric integration.

Early childhood trauma and chronic stress alter brain development, affecting the corpus callosum and emotional processing circuits (it affects virtually everything in the brain). And lastly, a hyperactive amygdala with overactivity in the right amygdala that tends to amplify negative perceptions, overpowering regulatory efforts from the prefrontal cortex. So clearly, for a healthy relationship and secure attachment to occur, this integration is necessary, because in most of our relationships, we’ll be faced with disappointment and conflict at some point. When this model or image of a person is integrated, we won’t think of them as all bad (because it would otherwise trigger that perception), able to constructively navigate this person and the conflict.

Attachment and socialization, social integration, are huge components in dealing with and recovering from trauma, stress, and burnout. If it wasn’t for my friends and family, my recovery from my burnout would’ve taken far longer. Considering the exploration we did on the mechanisms of oxytocin, this isn’t so much of a surprise. The depth of the implications is something we can explore further. In his book Tribe, Sebastian Junger uses examples of how trauma had been mitigated by social factors. Even though the hormonal and neurological mechanisms aren’t explained, it makes a lot more sense in light of our exploration. The two examples he uses is that WW2 veterans in the European theatre suffered far less PTSD than any other group. This is of course a mutlifactioral formula. However, one of the reasons why was shipping back together, literally. So they spent about 2 weeks together on a boat where they could process their experiences with people who understood what they went through. When they came back they were received as heroes, which furthered the integration back into society. Contrast this with Vietnam veterans, who had a very different war experience, not that much contact with the enemy (lots of boobytraps as an invisible enemy), being flown back and being thought of as “criminals”. According to Junger, as far as memory serves me, certain native American tribes had a reintegration process after going to war. Where they were first isolated, then purified, and then welcomed back into the tribe. All this to say highlight how much it matters to not just have social support but also social acceptance and a chance to be a part of society at large. And that the ability to survive some of these intense experiences has a lot to do with our attachments.

Summary

• The adverse health effects of social isolation and of the subjective experience of loneliness could be driven by the energetic cost of “feeling” disconnected, which steals energy away from growth, maintenance and repair (GMR) processes that heal us, isolation isn’t just a problem to solve but a driver of attachment needs, pushing brains to seek connection, until of course a certain point where maladaptive adaptions take place.

• Your dispositions will determine how quickly the energy conservation mode gets activated and withdrawal/avoidance happens, which also depends on energy signaling, homeostasis, body budgeting, and free energy.

• In a paradoxical way, those who tend toward avoidance will avoid and withdraw from the thing they actually need, which is more closeness due to prediction errors that are inherent in this type of state.

• Attachment means survival, I think that has become very clear, and thus, to survive, more connection and proximity are needed.

• If or when internal oxytocin and serotonin production is low, there will be a higher need to get this externally, whether that happens in a constructive sense or a destructive sense will have a lot to do with dispositions, attachment style, and the depth of the injury/wounding.

• These neurological processes are also a potent driver of addiction, which is further exacerbated by existing dispositions, genetically as well, in terms of types of dopamine which get stimulated by certain types of substances, plus a deficit in oxytocin that drives the need to feel good (by any means).

• There’s a feedback loop in pain perception here as well, which means pain gets amplified, whether physical or psychological, which further drives homeostatic signaling to make up for the pain and the emotions that come with them, which feeds into addiction, avoidance/withdrawal, depression, and anxiety.

• Socialization will play a major role in the ability to bounce back from adverse life experiences, alongside your dispositions of course.

• Integration of perceptions is necessary for a healthy view of a person.

Arena

In the Dokkodo, Miyamoto Musashi writes: “Be indifferent to where you live”. It’s been one of these precepts or guidelines I’ve been completely unable to practice or even believe. Although he might have a point in some way, contextually, Japan in the 1600s had to be a beautiful place regardless of where you lived (perhaps you could extend this “most” of the world at that time). From my experiences, and my reference points, it absolutely matters where you live. I’ve lived in several places in the Antwerp (Belgium) area, I’ve lived all over Oslo (Norway), I’ve lived in Bali for about 3 months in total, I’ve been across the spectrum in terms of opportunity and agency.

In some of these places I’ve been destitute, in others “wealthy”, in others completely taken care of financially. In a few of these environments I had absolute agentic freedom, in others I had very little agency. I’ve experienced a spectrum in terms of how rigid and plastic an environment is, how aligned it is with my values, how it responds to me and my intent to impress my vision. Between Antwerp and Oslo, in which I’ve spent most of my time, I’ve been lost, depressed, anxious and frustrated. All of this to illustrative I’ve spent an ordinate amount of time reflecting on the agent - arena relationship, the relationship between me (the agent) and my environments (the arenas). To build on this, Karl Friston remarks “You don’t have a model of your environment, you ARE a model of your environment”, just as a cell is a model of its environment. Though, I think we can safely posit that it is both, you have models and you are the model. To extend this line of thinking: You are the model of the macrocosm in a microcosm, which also brings us back to the metaphysical realm with all its implications.

Home

“Is there really a chemical bond between the human spirit and a man’s native land which makes it impossible to break away from one’s country and, even if one does break away from it, makes one come back to it in the end?” - Dostoesvky

What makes a place home? First of all, it is a feeling, which shouldn’t be a surprise, since we did an entire exploration on attachment and bonding biological mechanisms. This defacto means you FEEL something for someone, somewhere, something, you get it. As such, it follows the same rules as higher order attachment. A part of which is the alignment of values, how the environment responds to you, how much social affordance it has, the opportunities it affords, social alignment, cultural alignment, and geographical alignment (climate).

I’ve experienced Domicide (the feeling of the loss of home) first hand, in two ways: the pandemic severely killed the vibe in Oslo, it’s almost unreal to think back at how the energy, vibrancy, vitality, and mood shifted there. And secondly, due to circumstances, a combo of the pandemic fallout and a toxic relationship fallout, I was forced to move from Oslo as there was no way to make it work. I, to this day, feel like my life and my home were taken from me, which is one of the worst feelings in the world. I’ve wanted to live in Norway ever since I first visited in 2011, I fell in love with it when I saw the frozen fjords from the airplane. From the moment I had managed to move there, I was overcome with gratitude and a sensation of disbelief that stayed with me for my entire life there. This feeling that presented itself as “I can’t believe I did it, that I live here”, every time this emerged it came with this warm glow of contentment and gratitude. Even in my worst moments in Oslo, this feeling emerged often, because I’d rather feel like shit in a place I love then any of the alternatives. It’s a bold statement, however, I felt physiologically great in certain places, and yet, no emergent gratitude or contentment found me (because I either didn’t care about being there or I didn’t want to be there). I won’t say this is the experience for most people, I can only say I found those experiences very illustrative.

In Dostoevsky’s The House of The Dead he writes, "There is nothing more terrible than not being able to live in one's natural surroundings." He already understood this point, how a certain agent fits a certain arena.

Plasticity

I simply refer to this as how the arena (environment) responds to your efforts to change and influence it. How much resistance does it offer? How plastic is it? Does it require a lot of force? Does it flow with you? Let me illustrate, in 2018 and 2019 I felt there was a lack of initiative for men to get together and do things. So I hosted several events, one of which was a sauna on the fjord with breakfast after at a fancy hotel. I’ve also hosted and co-hosted cold exposure groups and movement groups. A lot of the things I wanted to see and help create had some measure of success, the arena responded, I got it off the ground, it happened. This isn’t to say it responded to everything with resounding success and unobstructed flow, I tried opening a movement/martial arts gym near the center in Oslo in 2019, which didn’t pan out for several reasons (dodged a bullet there with the lockdowns, so who knows if it is my guardian angel watching over me). Regardless, if you zoom out a bit, you can see how plastic certain areas in certain periods. Let me illustrate with an other example, people building their own house in a village, doing most of it themselves. That’s another level of plasticity and “imposing” your will on the arena, effectively changing reality. No wonder some people feel this strong connection and strong believe that have a say in how the world works. The threshold varies from place to place, a big city is plastic in some ways and rigid in others, whereas the middle of nowhere is rigid in other ways and plastic in other ways. The case I’m making is that within the same country, society and cultures the levels of plasticity will strongly vary.

Roots

The deeper the roots of a tree, the more difficult it is to uproot it, and for good reason. That being said, the internet gives countless people who are not very rooted or attached to their native country a chance to find and establish this somewhere else. The ability to put down roots is also relevant for attachment, for you attach to a place, and subsequently are able to foster close connections, that’s inherent in that familiarity and consistency gets a premium for people. When you move and you become a regular, it’s a very common experience that after some time, people will naturally start interacting with you. Seeing I’ve spent quite some time abroad in various places, it always plays out the same way. Whether it’s a coffee place or a gym, usually after 2ish weeks, and definitely after 4 weeks, people start conversations. This obviously has some geographic constraints, it happens faster in some environments rather than others. Bali is a lot more open and fluid in this way than Norway. Seeing we’ve spent all this time on connections across as many layers as possible, it makes sense that most people will feel the most fulfilled when they are deeply rooted in a place that affords these levels of connections: family, friends, community, etc. So even though mobility is a blessing in a way in modernity, it comes with some obvious pitfalls, digital nomads often feel disconnected and lonely, even though ironically places like Bali are quite easy to make connections in. Though, as we’ve outlined, deep connection and secure attachments matter a lot, which takes time, which for digital nomads can be an issue seeing there’s a higher level of transit and transient relations in this way.

A lot of this also depends on developmental stages, generally, people in their twenties aren’t that interested in putting down roots but exploring the boundaries of these attachments, self, other, reality. People further in their developmental stages might move with the intention to settle down, or at the very least integrate into the chosen environment which would lead to closer relationships. For some, like myself, I moved to Oslo (Norway) because I wanted to be there and felt at home. In the “other” orientation of attachment, or maybe it’s an overlap between other and reality, regardless, places are included in this. In the end, we use the same systems to attach to a place, which is partly how and why we feel at home in some places. Let’s take another demographic as an example, for expats, being too far removed from the roots can contribute to social isolation, seeing as I've come in contact with a host of expats, this isn’t exactly an uncommon sentiment. Especially those who’ve moved for work tend to have the hardest time with this, they’re not exactly looking to integrate and put down roots, they’re just following the opportunities (nothing wrong with this), though it comes with some obvious side effects, like this loss of rooting and disconnection.

In Oslo, this sentiment was very common because the winters can be quite hardcore, and the Norwegians aren’t exactly known to be the most welcoming and warm bunch. A facet of this has to do with this sense of integration and wanting to be there. I never had issues with being accepted by Norwegians because I wanted to be there, felt at home, and speak Norwegian fluently, so for them, that meant that I was either integrated or attempting to do so, which meant I was met and interacted with quite openly and even warmly. As usual, this demographic follows a bell curve, some will hate it and will have few connections with the locals, most in the middle of the bell curve will do alright and foster some connections with the locals, and others at the other end will fully integrate and have seamless connections. Accounting for all of this, as you mature your needs change, and then roots (returning or establishing them) are going to have a higher premium. This is why I’ve often used these tight-knit communities of the smaller villages in the Mediterranean as an example of how roots and life satisfaction are intertwined.

Polis

It, the polis, has evolved beyond a mere geographical point. It’s turned into a socioeconomic-cultural-political and often religious entity. When the concept of a polis originated, it still had a lot more value alignment even in its growth, but we can see that it kind of fell apart in their expansions into empires. It’s technically difficult to find where to draw the line. Dunbar’s number suggests you’re able to hold meaningful relations with about 150 people, a quasi-normal-sized tribe, let’s say (there’s personal and cultural variance of this number), and additionally, 500 acquaintances and about 1500 people you can recognize. Considering Athens at the time of Plato’s life was around 30,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, that’s a considerable city state, but still held together (largely) by religion, cultural values and traditions. History is full of varying degrees of success when it came to keeping this polis together, if you see the splitting/fracturing and merging of these city states, into states, into nations, into empires, there’s a host of reasons why that occurs. It’s not uncommon to lose attachment to a city when it no longer represented and feels like what it did before. I think the case for value alignment is pretty strong here, and that we see a loss of connection where values either shift at the top, at the bottom, or both.

Seeing I’m familiar with the Belgian and Norwegian zeitgeist, let’s use that as an example of this sense of attachment. Belgium wasn’t a country until it was made into one as a buffer state to stop France and Germany from fighting (much good that did). So they put together a bunch of territory and called it a country. A territory with very different people, cultures, and thus values. This value division is one of the reasons why, despite its 200-year track record as a nation, it has never inspired much nationalism, barely any actually. The Flemish are far more “nationalistic” in terms of their language territory (Flanders) and largely assign themselves a cultural identity based on the city they are from (kind of close to the old Hellenic city-state system). As each city and its surroundings were basically their own state (sort of, more fiefdom-like than a real state), and thus had their own culture. Contrast this with the Norwegians, who have a very strong nationalistic sense and unified identity, who are also proud of said identity and country (although that’s taken a bit of a hit post-pandemic).

It’s a day and night difference in terms of attachment. Belgians care about being Belgian as far as it extends to soccer and being able to travel quite freely. Inside Belgium, there is very little value alignment between the people, the government, and whatever culture is present. This lack of nationalistic sense is partially due to feeling like their vote doesn’t matter, and a reduced ability to imprint their vision upon the world. These concerns have been voiced over and over again, with a government (like many) that doesn’t listen or care for its people, and is getting strangled by the bureaucratic machine and its red tape. Contrast this with, for instance, the Balkans, which despite all their conflicts managed to maintain their individual identities for hundreds of years. All to say, there is a lot more in modernity that factors into this attachment, beyond speaking the same language and having the same culture, because clearly some European nations are still internally at odds even when that is the case. The suffocating political climate is why a lot of young European men make the move to places like the US, Dubai, LatAm and Southeast Asia.

Hence, coming back to how attachment functions at its core: if the attachment is injured either acutely, chronically (or both), eventually the damage mounts to a loss of connection and thus a loss of love. And it can change your attachment style towards that particular geography, something I’m all too familiar with my attachment to Belgium. The opportunity to leave is a bit of a double-edged blade in this sense, as many seem unwilling to want to fight for their country of origin, to “restore it to its former glory” or even just make it better. Which mimics relationships in general, if someone kept injuring the attachment through various means, at some point, you’d wisely cut them off. I suppose, or garner, that for the majority of people, they like their geography and culture, but have serious misgivings about the governance, and thus stick it out. An interesting thing about geography and attachment is that during the 1900s, when people risked the move to the US, most demographics found a geography that was consistent with their homeland, talk about a certain subconscious attachment and thus preference. Although there is a significant current dystopic sense, it looks like a protopic sense is slowly emerging. Protopia means we believe we can do better and make things better.

The Historical Brotherhood

The concept of brotherhood has come up a few times; there’s a reason why, because, as I mentioned previously, there was a natural presence of this when you went hunting, foraging, and fighting. Contextually, most of your life was spent with others, and most activities were done in groups. Men lived in close relation to each other, which was the normal course of things. This expression of brotherhood had many iterations and forms. The erosion of brotherhood has been creeping in the background of modernity. Our lives are getting more and more socially splintered, so we have to “diversify” our social scenes in order to get a semblance of the original need for brotherhood. It’s no wonder there’s a loneliness epidemic that has exploded among men (across the board, so girls and women included), especially with the advent and now domination of technology. Jack Donovan points out that the way of men is the way of the gang, and this is strongly represented in the book The Archetype of Initiation by Robert. L. Moore. You were either inducted into the family trade or inducted into an apprenticeship under a mentor for a trade, another aspect of life that has all but faded in most of the Western world. In a way, the brotherhood, or rather men banding together, formed the way for greater societies to emerge. Given the implications of vasopressin, that isn’t technically a surprise, but it sure is amazing that all of this has emerged.

Some examples of expressions of this:

Spartans and other warrior bands like the Samurai and Vikings
Military
Sport teams
Orders and secret societies
Associations and unions
Teams and clubs (or guilds and clans online)

Summary

• We, men and women alike, generally do better when we are socially engaged in every dimension and integrated into the socio-cultural-political matrix.

• Home is an attachment, just like anything else, and uses those same circuits

• The ability to put down roots forms the foundation to have more secure relationships

• In many ways, we are driven to be part of the impact and development of our surroundings, including the polis and politics

• Men thrive in environments where aspects of brotherhood are present

The Great Divine

It seems like there is a great divide between believers and non-believers. Believers, that is, religious people, seem to be buffered against anxiety and depression. Now, this is not absolute, meaning a complete absence thereof; it means a significant reduction of these emotions and a faster bounce back to baseline. Let’s explore this for a second:

“Miller et al. (2014) measured cortical thickness in high and low-risk groups of depression (n=103) to see if individual religiosity or spirituality could bolster against the detrimental effects of depression. In line with their predictions, self-reported importance of religion and spirituality was indeed associated with thicker cortices in several areas of the brain. Koenig et al. (2012) systematic review: Examined 444 studies on religion/spirituality and depression. 61% of studies reported that religious involvement was associated with less depression or faster recovery from depression. VanderWeele et al. (2016) 12-year longitudinal study: Discovered that religious attendance predicted a 29% subsequent reduction in depressive symptoms in women over the follow-up period.”

Those are significant stats. It’s also why I opted for the word divine, I explore this all in more depth in the Platonic Spirituality framework, because if you have a strong belief in the divine (or metaphysical), regardless of the jacket it comes in, it will do the trick. What I mean by religious is you deeply believe in what you believe, which in a normal life will probably be tested a few times in some ways. When we understand that our primary caretaker attachment buffers us from the worst the world has to offer, it makes sense that attachment to the divine can have the same effect if it is developed to a similar extent. In this case, whatever is in the metaphysical realm (god, divinity, religiousness) becomes this other dimension of meaning and purpose, which helps navigate the storms of life.

I’ve spent quite some time outlining this in the Platonic Spirituality article, and Jack Donovan does a great exploration of this, also in terms of ritual (which we come to in the practices of both the Platonic Spirituality practice and this one). It’s actually one of the more fascinating aspects of attachment as a place or a person is tangible, whereas the metaphysical dimension is not, and yet it is experienced as just as real, just as potent of an attachment, and sometimes even more potent. The amount of strength, endurance, and staying power people gain from this really defies all conventional logic. John Vervaeke makes an exceptional case for its potency in that in altered states we experience a new and or expanded realness, a dimension of reality that is just as real, or even more real than this dimension. Obviously, that perception has a loaded history, which is not something we’re exploring here.

Rather, it is those experiences, mystical, religious, sacred, spiritual, that reshape our sense of reality and foster this type of attachment (which is why I wrote the Platonic Spirituality framework in the first place). Integrating that new realness or expanded realness has led to some significant, reason-defying transformations of humans, with stories that still fill me with awe. That’s partly why I make a case out of exploring this with clients, as it seems downright illogical not to explore an attachment that can have such a transformative effect on people. As we saw, human needs are complex and varied; we can’t get all of these needs met from a single person or a single dimension. Each and every dimension is important. In many ways, people attempt to fill the hole of this dimension with other versions of religious-like ideologies. Finding god (or the metaphysical dimension), in whatever expression and manifestation thereof, seems to be an innate human drive. It’s also something that can give us strength when we feel the scope of the challenge is beyond us, and aids in accepting things beyond our control. Especially when we feel like we don’t have it in ourselves to overcome something that seems so beyond us, but this other dimension can offer us the strength or allow us to lean on its strength to carry us through. It seems to be very potent in that way to tap into a source of something that is both beyond you and at the same time inside of you.

There’s another expression of this through the rituals that Jack Donovan does.

Ritual Technology

Proxies and Litmus testing

My longest friendship is 25 years, closely followed by 2 others with 20 years, and many others between 10 and 15 years. We could make an argument that quantity isn’t everything, and that could be true; however, if the quality is there (a secure attachment), then going the length is typically involved (if it truly is secure). Considering I’ve lived abroad for most of my adult life, I’ve managed to maintain these relationships. That’s why secure attachment is a good proxy, because someone who is able to maintain close relations, even over a distance, is clearly capable of doing everything required for this to be the case. When people don’t have longstanding friendships, that is a tell. We’re dealing with probabilities here, so it’s possible some of these are outliers and that circumstances have interfered with this being the case. However, as a golden rule, whether male or female, if they haven’t been able to maintain long-standing friendships and secure attachments, then I’d be concerned about their attachment. This is especially relevant to parental attachment, although generally understood, for both sexes, if the attachment is off with one or both parents, that usually doesn’t spell much good. And from my experience, it has never failed to be a solid proxy. There are some who work their way out of this, and that would be reflected in the other relationships they’ve managed to build and maintain. Given where we started the exploration on attachment, the relationship with parents is a great proxy, or at least a good starting point.

Additionally, to bring in some elements we started with in our exploration of the mechanisms behind attachment, we will get a lot of somatic/emotional signals. We started this exploration of the mechanisms because I wanted to emphasize just how robust these effects are in this way. So, how they make you feel, how you feel about them, and how they make you feel about yourself, are important proxies for this process of vetting and “testing” (weighing the data consciously and subconsciously). If it feels wrong, it’s probably for a reason. “What stands out, stands out for a reason.” The key is that differentiation needs to take place on the types of drives and sensations one experiences, which is where an overreaction might occur based on previous experiences, or underreaction, that’s the true irony, depending on how one has been coping and adapting up until this point. This takes a lot more somatic awareness and emotional granularity.

There’s a case to be made for the resolution and definition of your emotional landscape: is it high fidelity, or vague and blurry? Are you taking one thing to be another? As we saw with Aphilodemos, are you taking lust or desire for love? That’s just one element, are you taking infatuation for genuine affection? It behooves us to have this practice and process to get granular. There’s a lot to say about how trauma and adverse childhood experiences alter this landscape, which we’ve explored in part and touched on at multiple levels. I often quote Musashi to my clients in this regard: “Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.” A lot of these feelings are fleeting, whereas others are consistent and present over a long period of time, which is why getting to know someone matters, to give this process the space it needs to do its job. Defining and navigating this emotional somatic space, with the biofeedback, interception and intuition it comes with, will be the subject of the next book I’ve already started writing: The Intuitive Self: Unlocking Subconscious Wisdom Through Interoception, Intuition and Emotion. Due to the scope, it warrants its own exploration.

Reflections on self-worth

There are good reasons why proxies like socioeconomic status matter: resources and security, these are valuable to women. It’s not the end-all be-all, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t matter. There is a “fine” line between value and socio-economic worth, and self-worth; they do intersect. The question is rather about a higher order of alignment with yourself, your divine task, aspirational self, and god. In the sense that if you are on such a mission, a high level of virtue, generative drive, ambition, and good character, this is valuable in a very different way. Having no money, no prospects, no ambition, and no resources is just not a desirable situation for long-term mates, especially if children are supposed to enter this formula. Having unshakable self-confidence and royal self-worth won’t change that it’s not a good situation. By and large, it seems like “not all that matters” gets equivocated with “it doesn’t matter”. Of course, it matters, it’s just not the only factor that matters. Every woman and man does this internal weighing consciously and subconsciously, and as the data points out, the criteria for short-term mating are different from long-term mating (surprise, surprise). Let’s highlight what women tend to look for in a long-term mate that are markers for high value:

• Good earning capacity

• Slightly older

• Resource acquisition (status, drive, ambitious), good long-term resource trajectory

• Attention structure (hypergamy, are other people/women paying attention to him, and attention to their mate)

• Work development

• Mate choice copying (when guys pass the filter of multiple women)

• Shoulder to hip ratio

• Health cues

Despite the gamification, pretending/faking and pretense that comes from guys for the sake of “the game” to bed women by leveraging these aspects, it really speaks to their importance in mate selection. And why a lot of the loaded platitudes and new age puff pieces or posts are of a low order. Confidence is important and most certainly can get you a mate, but if you are showing no signs of progressing in a healthy direction, as we explored in progressing healthily through the stages of development, then your confidence won’t save you. This sentiment is particularly present in the pop culture psychology “niche” in terms of self-worth and self-love. Which, for men, is difficult to achieve without (if at all) any action and progress towards a defined sense of success and achievement. That driver is strongly present through testosterone, DHT and dopamine, it’s a part of who we are, and arguably we’re the most fulfilled when we’re doing what we are fitted for, perceive that to be of benefit for our loved ones and immediate surroundings, and thus feel valued and needed through all our capacities and skills.

Note: High value is not high virtue; these are very different things, although they can overlap. There are high-value men who have most of the above outlined markers, who don’t particularly embody much virtue (if any). Most of the Platonic dialogues deal with exactly this, the importance of virtue above all other things, where true goodness, and thus value is found, rather than in the realms of material wealth and status. There are many ways to game value and status signaling, but there are few ways to virtue signal (in the proper sense), as it is a behavioral thing rather than a propositional thing.

Boundaries

Most often, boundaries as seen are something that extracts or directs a desired outcome from a person. When, in essence, it is something you say you will do, where the other party needs to do nothing. We’re used to seeing boundaries as a means to alter or manipulate the behaviors of others, rather than maintain order, principles, values, and virtues for ourselves. Even though it is about the behavior of others, it is about what we will do about it, rather than what they will do about it. We can’t control the reactions or behaviors of others, but we can certainly control what we do about those. If, or rather when, someone keeps crossing boundaries, as much as it says about them, it also says something about you. Primarily, the way the boundary is set is still an expectation on them, and granted, this is valid at times. However, when the boundary is set in our own “action potential”, then we enforce the boundary by acting on what we said we would do. The formula for this looks like “If you do X, or keep doing Y, I will do Z”. When these verbal statements aren’t acted out when the time comes, then the statement is hollow, and the person in question will know that soon enough and keep repeating their behaviors. Patterns of behavior are patterns of behavior, if you find them unacceptable, it’s about what you will do about it, as in: where you draw the lines for your presence, attention, communication, energy, etc.

There’s somewhat of a formula that goes into setting constructive boundaries: connecting (first showing empathy or at least understanding), analyzing (the behavior), responding (in an emotionally regulated way), and then setting limits as a part of the process of setting boundaries. Even though this works generally, it also works well when dealing with high-conflict people. Bill Eddy’s work highlights this and how you can structure or frame things in a way that takes the heat off of you. “Emotions kind of cloud their thinking. So we want to help them think. So you want to move to analyzing, give them a way to think. So you're kind of calming the emotions. And now you're saying, let's think about this. So present problems as a choice. You know, you could do this now, or do this tomorrow, or here are the options. I see there are three ways you could approach this problem. So you're getting people thinking about the problem rather than reacting. And when you give a choice, it kind of forces them into logical problem solving.” In a way, you have to guide people to behave in a non-conflictual way, or at the very least, reduce friction and conflict. Now, I realize, understand, and acknowledge this takes energy; a brain in survival mode is going to have limited and reduced access to this. So although it’s needed and warranted to practice this, making sure you have your biological and neurological boxes ticked is going to smoothen this process. Furthermore, setting the boundary is in and of itself a litmus test. So, how they respond to the boundary will give you a sense of how they respect these boundaries, you and your agency.

Potential

In a way, we’re always caught in paradoxes (such is being a human), “Don't fall in love with potential”, and yet we need to gauge potential in our potential partner. People grow and change significantly through the developmental stages, hopefully constructively if it is a healthy development (aspirational self). Men and women do this in their own ways with their own criteria, which is and stays an important facet because the sexes judge differently. Women look for capability, men tend to look for moldability. This is not absolute. We are, as usual, caught between opponent processing. A woman would like to see that the capacities, abilities, and behaviors are there that go into resource gathering and attention (status).

Consider this quote from David Buss:
“One of the things that we do know across cultures is that women attend to the attention structure. So the attention structure is a key determinant of status. So as people who are high in status are those to whom most people pay the most attention. So the attention of others to them, not how well a given potential may focus and pay attention necessarily. Yes, exactly. But women, look, I mean, is the guy, even in the modern environment, is the guy spending eight hours a day playing video games, eating Cheetos and drinking beer, or is he devoting effort to his professional development? So hard work, ambition, does he have clear goals, or is he in an existential crisis, not knowing what he's gonna do with his life? So those are some of the qualities that people look for.”

Ergo, they’re looking at the qualities that go into the usual provide-protect-preside matrix. We’re tasked to run a differentiation process, and rely on both the feeling aspects and the reason/analytical aspects when it comes to someone’s potential. Though there are behavioral markers that show us whether they are willing and committed to this process of growing and developing into their potential, one of which is the rate of change and speed at which they change behavior when being corrected and guided. In coaching, evaluating coachability is a huge factor in success with the client. At a deeper level, it is teachability, if someone doesn’t want to learn or is unable to learn (and those with bonafide personality disorders have huge issues in that regard), then it doesn’t matter how amazing their potential appears to be, because there is an unsurmountable barrier between their present/current self and said potential. Change is the marker of whether someone is moving toward their potential or not. To be precise: consistent behavioral change. Inconsistent behavioral change is usually a low-order change that has mainly occurred out of fear, so that the person in question makes a short-term change and then falls back into old behavioral patterns once their fear has abated. I’ve been on this rollercoaster with one of my girlfriends, where I held that short-term change as a full expression, valuation, and proof that she got it. She did not get it, at least not at depth; the fear of abandonment and rejection was the biggest driver for behavioral change. As such, after a little while, a few weeks to a month, we were right back where we started. That’s why I emphasized consistent change.

Vulnerability

Perhaps better termed as openness, although vulnerability could be present if said openness comes with a certain emotional state (that this can be used against you), and a prediction associated with this. Again, we shouldn’t be naive and assume that everyone is the right fit to be vulnerable with, though it is a good litmus test. Alan Schore highlights an aspect of this in terms of interaction regulation, or co-regulation. “There has been too much of an emphasis on autoregulation and not enough emphasis on interactive regulation. The real key to changing the right brain is finding people you can be close with. Finding people you can be open with. Finding people you can be vulnerable with. That literally, you can show your shortcomings and open yourself up to those people as they open up to you. It's literally to form that right brain to right brain communication system with someone else.” When someone can’t facilitate this, we have a better idea of where to place them in terms of our “attachment spheres/circles”. Those with high openness and the space, time, and energy to explore things with you will make it a lot easier to be open. Ironically, it goes both ways, right? So, regularly, you have to lead by example. You have to “take responsibility” and facilitate the opportunity to open up to you and with you. That’s also where agapic love makes an appearance, because you can guide and aid people in building these capacities. There’s a beautiful and poetic irony in that you need to trust others by handing over the very “weapons” that could harm you, as the ultimate litmus test of trustworthiness.

I’ve made the case, or at least broached, that men’s processing and approaches have been co-opted by women, parasitized by the pop culture psychology, which uses very different paradigms, as our wiring is not the same. So there’s space for the case that Jack Donovan makes on vulnerability, which is that for men, it is about humility, the acknowledgment that we are flawed (with the implications that come with that). He also points out that being aware of our vulnerabilities is part of acknowledging reality. The masculine processing angle is found in contextual openness, with a potential plan to resolve or address these vulnerabilities or weaknesses. Quoting directly from his article Vulnerability Is a Synonym for Weakness :

“But even if you trust someone, it’s better — at the very least it is better for you — if you open yourself up in the context of solving a problem, or coming up with a plan for handling or mitigating your own weaknesses. Otherwise, you’re just whining (at best) or giving someone easy ammunition (at worst). And you should never be proud of your weaknesses and shortcomings. To take pride in weakness devalues pride itself.”

Finding the optimal grip here will also depend on how secure you feel in yourself and these attachments. A lot of this becomes more natural and self-evident down the line as you get better “data points” (circumstances and people’s patterns). In order to bond, you need mutual disclosure; there is no other way, so it’s not about whether or not you should, but with whom and when. Again coming back to time: the more complex the psyche, and the richer and more defined the internal landscape, the longer it takes to get to know someone as this can’t all be explored or understood in a short time span, trust and safety would have to be built and layered disclosure will take place in that way.

Social complexity and demand

We’re in a time where the social complexity and the demand it imposes on us are unprecedented. And it’s evolving at a rapid rate, social media usage/platforms/design, AI, and the instant response and availability. Our attachment systems, even though complex, are oriented towards constrained social systems. It makes navigating the online landscape, in all ways, far more tricky. We weren’t used to being aware or becoming aware of every tragedy around the world, every second of the day, or people’s neurosis, fears, and downright asocial and psychopathic behavior. Which is, of course, just one facet of the entire thing, however, considering the negative valence, it definitely is a pressure/demand people experience. At the core level, generations that grow up terminally online, without parental intervention, have reduced socialization skills. They effectively have an atrophy and an injury to their attachment systems.

Virtual friendships are by no means insignificant and have become far more dominant, as people start finding their tribe online, whereas before they felt quite lonely. This is a double-edged blade, because it can lead to enabling, an echo chamber, and even exclusion/aggression towards others in the physical world, where they would’ve had to develop strategies and a modicum of self-regulation to navigate those relationships constructively. Even now, in the background, this notion of AI companions is growing quite rapidly, and even though it only currently extends to specific demographics, a the rate at which these LLMs develop, it will be woven into the fabric of our society (tutors for our kids, ourselves, etc). It will blur the lines between what is fake and real. We’ve already had to deal, and are still dealing with, our forray into online dating and the implications that come with it in terms of gauging what is fake and real, plus the demands imposed in becoming aware of the size of the dating pool and perceived options (which can lead to the one-leg-in-one-leg-out of the relationship). The sentiment on X is quite strongly in favor of networking there and meeting each other offline, which would be the healthiest way to form attachments. The access, scope, and options can be overwhelming to keep up with, precisely because our wiring is not really built for it. It’s true we have a lot of adaptability, however, it seems like it’s constrained when we’re talking about intimate attachments. The point is that it pays to be mindful and aware of the social demands and complexity, and to use these tools very intentionally.

That being said, how people show up in the online space is another proxy. That’s why I highlighted that study on oxytocin genetics and Instagram presence. Besides the fact that classes of personality disorders love those types of platforms, when we understand how all of this takes place on a spectrum (the traits of these aspects that is), the better we can get at scoping out the drivers in terms of attachment and the mechanisms we explored. A strong gravitation towards an online presence could mean different things, and regardless of what the driver means and whether or not it aligns with your own values and vision.

No one cares

This is one of the most prevailing sentiments in the men’s space. In essence, like everything else we’ve discussed, this is an attachment injury and void aspect. Why wouldn’t anyone care about you, or what you are going through? It speaks of men’s loneliness and isolation from their natural inclination to be with a tribe, no man is an island, remember? It’s innate to masculinity to have brotherhood in one way or another. Very often, this prevailing mindset comes from damage done to the attachment early on, which then gets replayed, repeated, and reinacted in close male relationships, which then, of course, becomes self-reinforcing with an undercurrent of predicted bad faith engagement. Though if you are friendless and tribeless, you can turn this around and foster deep meaningful and lasting connections, if you do the work.

There’s also a difference between asking for help, needing help, and expecting/demanding and relying on saviors or being saved. People, typically, will do anything in their power to help when/if they feel like you’re doing your part. Self-victimization seems to be the “ick” for men; they value agency, assertiveness, what is generative, effort, or, at the very least, the semblance of an attempt to resolve their circumstances. Remember that a part of this sentiment and paradigm is self-fulfilling. Relationships have a proactive element in any category: are you being proactive with yourself, with others, and with the world? So if there are very few proactive aspects on your behalf, that has a tendency to shut down the route that one would like to have some support from. When I was crawling out of my burnout, I was very vocal with my friends that I needed their support, because I couldn’t do it alone, and they carried me through it like troopers. The type of mindset someone has around attachment also serves as a proxy, good faith or bad faith, or will people support me, or will they abandon me?

Summary

• Self-worth coupled to affirmative action is key to setting up the configuration for a long-term mate to come in

• Constructive and healthy boundary setting needs to take place to safeguard every level of self and attachment

• Gauge potential, but don’t base everything on potential

• It takes being open to get to know each other and see how self-regulated and mature the other person in question is

• The online landscape is beyond our evolved faculties to deal with in full, filtering and practices to orient yourself back to what (who) is important matter a lot in this sense, as that will keep one grounded

• Be proactive in your relationships and facilitate others to show they care for you

Conclusions

Perhaps a slight misnomer of a title, as a summary is to follow, whereas for this section, the conclusions are more about the various aspects that have to do with attachments that are general pitfalls and contextual caveats.

Testing and time

It takes time to get to know someone. In your grandparents’ day, they most likely knew each other long before they became a couple, and had the social proof, plus, as we saw, the ability for more precise conformity processes in terms of trustworthiness. Your values and your lifestyle are a litmus test already, so are your other attachments. When someone comes into your life where there are misalignments, that tells you something. We already covered a fair bit of this in the proxies section.

Force vs Flow

You can’t force someone into loving, or convince them, that should be inherently obvious given the scope and parameters of bonding mechanisms. You could do all the right things, but if their heart is not in it, or their attachment circuitry is fried, then that’s a road that leads to nowhere. That’s a part of why the sentiment around trying so hard has persisted, because trying to force it or make it work when another party isn’t in it just doesn’t work. The neurological and biological parameters don’t allow for it. Sometimes it’s about them, sometimes it’s about you; in that sense, it is my hope that this book and framework allow you to differentiate which one is the case to which degree. So if it is about them, great, then it’s not personal. If it is personal when it is about you, then it’s time to formulate a strategy on how to improve the missing aspects, which typically have something to do with: health, wealth, values, and virtues. Especially if it is a misalignment of values, as we’ve seen, that can be a major dealbreaker. If you try to force a connection in misalignment, it is doomed to fail. I’ve had the (mis)fortune to attempt this, it was a misfortune in that it turned into an emotional hell, and it was a fortune in the sense that this experience was so illuminating it laid the groundwork to understand attachment at this level and especially my own attachment on why I attempted to force a misaligned relationship in the first place. I don’t want to give the impression or hidden implication that I’m perfect in this regard, nor that knowing and applying all of this results in perfection (that’s just another misguided way to cope), instead, it’s about improvement and the guide to troubleshoot, realign and restore your attachment through understanding yours primarily.

Advice

Advice is a state-dependent and stage-dependent thing. Someone can’t give you good advice when they don’t have enough data points, lack context, haven’t dealt with it themselves, or don’t understand what you are going through. So there’s an element here to be aware of, even when it comes with the best of intentions. Nor should we skirt or shoot down their intentions, just realize the limitations of the capacities of others, and ourselves in the same degree. Not everyone is fit to give you advice on a stage, and the same goes for us in this regard. That’s why we explored all of these interconnected layers and dimensions of attachment, because having a diverse circle or diverse circles increases the probability someone has gone through these stages constructively, or they learned from their mistakes in regards to these stages, and thus have value to offer in that regard.

Data “vs” life

For those of you walking around with wearable health tech, even though some of the metrics would reflect the positive influences of socialization and oxytocin, at the same time the very socialization takes place later at day generally with meals that are often misaligned with your given protocol, these situations are often portrayed as a trade off, although I’d argue against that unless: A) you have an autoimmune disease, and B) sleep deprivation becomes chronic, C) the relationship dynamics are unhealthy). It’s not a trade-off when the mechanisms of socialization hormones, and neurotransmitters are key to well-being. Which is also reflected in the ability of oxytocin to satiate other hypothalamic pathways, so when you feel socially satiated and fulfilled, it would balance out the other metrics (within reason of course, this isn’t a carte blanche to pull all nighters, throw your entire diet out of the window and stop exercising).

Self-regulation vs coregulation

It should be immediately apparent that there’s a strong relationship between them. Seeing so much of our regulation is based on others. This doesn’t mean that self-regulation is useless. It’s rather a matter of figuring out where and when you need self-regulation and where and when coregulation is in order. Seeing that the strongest, most stable, and most robust way of regulating would be a combination of the two. Society has moved so strongly to isolation or disconnection that the entire burden of regulation falls onto the individual. Which is a bit of a fallacy, you don’t self-regulate your way out of social isolation or states like depression, they need connection instead, ergo co-regulation.

Even when it comes to establishing habits and addressing addiction, most people understand the micro of this, like a gym buddy or something of the sort to keep you on track, hell, that’s what weightwatchers is based on, and why spaces like alcohol anonymous work (sober sponsor plus social support and accountability), that means that this stands true in the macro as well. If there’s integration socially at all levels, that means there are more thresholds (more resistance to do the bad stuff) and more reinforcement through attachment (feeling satisfied/fulfilled and thus not having to resort to compensatory mechanisms). You don’t need to do it all on your own at all, actually, we were never wired, built, or designed this way. Hence, it pays to structure for this co-regulation socially, so that you don’t have to mobilize all your resources to self-regulate everything. This brings us to body budgeting and the free energy principle, from which we can conclude that it is a waste of energy (entropy) to do everything on your own when others can help you regulate it.

Collectivism vs individualism

This tends to be inherent in cultural dimensions, the West is more individualistic, the East is more collective-based. The interesting thing to note is that those who grow up between cultures have access to both modes. Although the results of east and west can easily be muddied when you go further back in time, or find populations in the west that are more collectivists (like the Amish). So it’s far more of a cultural thing, and how that changes perception of attachment, and the valuation of attachments in general. Which is another aspect to be aware of in terms of theory of mind and cultural influences on it.

Competing attachments

In a technical sense, there is no such thing, if you aren’t chasing one, of course. A securely attached person is going to take it as a sign of healthy attachment; you have several secure attachments. This sense of competing attachments is generally an issue in other attachment styles, precisely because they are insecure and have injured attachment (depending on the scope and style, of course). It’s something to watch for when you are securely attached to how your partner or prospective partner responds to your relationships.

Co-dependence/Overreliance

Related to the above, given the complexities of attachment, expecting your partner to fulfill all your attachment needs is ludicrous. Perhaps, and I really use tentatively, this could be the case for some outliers, but I have serious doubts about this. Especially for men, it’s not just about “hanging with the boys” but having your needs met for mentorship, mentoring, community service, and brotherhood (there’s a female version of this as well). In an ideal situation, you’d have your parents, siblings, mentors, brothers, peers, partner, and children, making for a complete attachment scheme. The most common pattern is that the fewer significant attachments someone has, the more reliant and dependent they will become on the one that’s available. Any port in a storm fits even here; people will cling to their closest attachment like a lifeline, because at the end of the day, it is still about survival. So an example of that could be a young man without a true brotherhood, or close friends, who only has his partner and his wife becomes his world. Attachment injury and trauma are going to have these types of effects, either clinging to a person, or “best friend hopping”. There’s a big difference between interdependence and dependence; this book illustrates why we need attachment and thus depend on it. The dividing line is secure attachments in general, because they maintain a healthy sense of self with every aspect involved (agency, locus of control, generative drive), without a conjoining of identities or the fear of losing one’s self.

Practices

I’d argue that most of these practices center around being known, values, keeping alignment, and fostering stronger attachment (deeper connection). Love languages are a part of knowing each other and knowing how to express them. Although, to be fair, love languages are lower order in my opinion, if one doesn’t maintain alignment between values and vision, then the love languages focus is largely nullified. As usual, practices depend on what is missing or needed, or what fits the dynamic. The practices explored are for any type of relationship; some of them are obviously applicable to one kind only, like a romantic one. The practices to connect to God, reality, and the world are outlined in the Platonic Spirituality framework as an exploration. Shared experience is shared physiology, so it stands to reason that a lot of these practices will be based on that or oriented in that direction. Another key part is knowing how to handle conflict, and how to resolve conflict is key to strengthening and maintaining bonds.

Rupture - Repair

I’ve been here multiple times, I’ve pushed the very same people away that I built secure attachments with and understood why this was happening, and made amends. This is very different from being highly intentional about cutting people out of your life, which, of course, is warranted when it is needed. Trauma and wounding in many ways are going to inform these types of behaviors, especially if they are not thought and felt through, but are reactionary and instinctive/impulsive. There’s a high likelihood you’re going to drop the ball at some point in some way, which can lead to a conflict. Knowing how to repair the rupture (rupture being a loss of connection) is a part of navigating interpersonal dynamics and our own patterns and baggage. Reconnecting would be the first step, for which the expression can vary, though it usually starts with an apology (not exactly reinventing the wheel here). The aftermath of the conflict and the apology is a process that involves expressing feelings, identifying triggers, finding solutions, and taking responsibility for your behaviors and words.

I very often have to tell people that “it’s not how you feel that is the issue, it’s how you expressed those and how you behaved”. Given the immensity of these mechanisms of attachment, you are going to feel the way you are going to feel depending on all the outlined factors of this book (genes, dispositions, wiring, neurotransmitters and hormones, childhood experiences, everything else that’s unintegrated in the psyche). Navigating this is part of self-regulation and self-soothing, which then sets the stage to understand why you feel the way you feel and how to alter behaviors. When it comes to parenting, the principle stays the same. When one inevitably drops the ball and creates a rupture, the way to mend it is the same process. The other side wants to feel seen, heard and understood, and needs an explanation so their model and predictive mechanisms can understand what is going on, otherwise it leads to anxiety and entropy (when these conflicts happen out of nowhere, which is typically the case for highly injured people and those on the personality disorder spectrum). Making others understand why you felt the way you felt and acted the way you did helps create order and synchronize the models, that is not a means to rationalize or justify behavior. Very often, you’re going to have to be the first one to make the move. In many ways, you have to set the precedent, and others will follow.

Solo getaways

Hear me out, there’s a time and place for everything. I’m not saying abandon your newborn child and wife days after the delivery. These things get construed “easily” into these black and white ridiculous perceptions, which don’t bring anyone closer to the value and reasoning behind it. It’s a way to reset the adaptation mechanisms for all parties involved. It's also a great way to get back to yourself if you have a tendency to lose yourself in the hustle and bustle of life and parenting. The amount of me time and the duration someone needs will be highly individual. And it doesn’t have to be extreme in the expression thereof, short getaways are equally useful.

Novelty

Think about what induces excitement and some adrenaline, clearly, novelty is an important aspect of life and brain function in general, so it stands to reason it is important in a relationship. The expression thereof is a different matter altogether. This is a know thyself and know thy significant other type of case. This was brought in terms of personality differences, where a self-expansion person is going to need a lot more novelty to feel satisfied, fulfilled, and most importantly, alive and excited in their relationship. Obviously, not all novelty is created equal, because different people like different types of novelty (shocker).

Suggestions: dates, games, new activities, learning a language together, and reading books together.

Some outlandish suggestions:
1. Mystery Skill Swap Challenge

What: Each partner secretly picks a quirky, modern skill to learn online (e.g., beatboxing via YouTube, 3D printing basics on Coursera, or drone piloting tutorials). After a month, reveal and teach each other in a “skill swap night”—complete with a mini-project (e.g., make a beat together, print a tiny gift, fly a drone to deliver a note).

2. Mystery flights

You don’t know where you are going until you get on the flight, could be fun, could be a disaster = high novelty

3. Randomized Micro-Adventure Generator

Use an AI tool to generate a “micro-adventure” within 50 km of home. Input parameters (e.g., “outdoors, 2 hours, under 50 euros”) and get a surprise plan (e.g., “hike to an abandoned barn at dusk, bring a flashlight”). Commit to doing it blind—no vetoes.

Run this prompt through an AI:
My partner [state preferences] and I [state preferences] need novelty ideas, our budget is [?], we have this much time [?] on these given days [?]. Generate 10 ideas for us. Extend and customize the prompt where necessary.

Problem-solving in your immediate environment

“Be the change you wish to see,” without making this a hallmark card commercial, this holds a lot of truth. Most certainly, when you are deeply embedded in your arena, you’d want to make it the best it could possibly be, depending on the definition of the scope of your arena. Though it doesn’t have to be about a major scope, it can be as small as the next house over, this street, the block you live on, whatever. All that matters is that you contribute to problem-solving in your immediate environment. The Norwegians have this concept, “Dugnad”, a moment where everyone pulls together and helps. I’ve done a few of these in the complex I lived back in the day in Oslo, which meant doing some gardening work, digging ditches, fixing things, cleaning up from the winter, etc. All to say, to some degree, it is baked into certain cultures, and if no one is leading one in your surroundings, then perhaps it’s time to step up. Even if it’s about things that are bothering you that are the responsibility of the municipality, contact them about the problem with a set of solutions (especially given the access to AI, I’m sure it can help you come up with a few actionable things).

Asking for help, asking to help

This is the Philia aspect, if you will, the collaborative element. Cooperation is the basis of our species, if it were only competition, we’d have competed ourselves into extinction. Cooperation and collaboration are deeply encoded in our entire socialization wiring. This is often exploited by marketers and grifters alike by giving a small gift or something of the sort, in which this mechanism is activated by value exchange or the need to make up for the gift. This is only natural that such a mechanism exists to help further collaboration, if you do something for me, I owe you one, and I have a drive to make it up to you (generally as soon as I can or am able). Regardless, depending on the type of childhood you had, this can be a huge barrier to overcome. Men overall tend towards this bottling things up, “I have to do it on my own” type of thinking. Which, from everything we’ve explored here, should completely void that type of sentiment. We were never meant to handle things alone, and the threshold or barrier to entry for asking for help used to be lower when you were constantly surrounded by other men. For those in the introvert and avoidance category, it’s going to take work to trust and lean on others, and to ask for help before one cracks under the pressures of life.

Volunteering

This one is closely related to the problem-solving practice. It’s a great way to A) gain fittedness to the arena, and B) shift the orientation from self to other. The latter has merit and value for some people who struggle with depressive moods, This isn’t to say this is a fix for depression, because that has a lot of moving parts and different drivers. It just depends on what the driver of these depressive moods and states are, there’s an element of the orientation being stuck on the Self. And not even in a selfish type of way, but rather in a way that makes it difficult to shift. So there’s an element of neurological stuckness that can happen for various reasons, energy mechanisms, and predictions play a part in this. In a way, it’s a way to break that “frame”, or to overcome this stuckness of the direction of attention. Find a cause you relate to, or something in the neighborhood, no matter how innocuous it might be. Eventually, it smoothens the ability to reorient your attention and orientation of attachment.

Fishing in the right ponds

This is relatively straightforward, seeing we’ve explored assortative mating at depth, it stands to reason you will find similar people to you where you hang out (go figure, right?). Trying to find a virtuous woman in a club has a low probability. Value alignment is arguably the determining factor of relationship quality and longevity, hence, going to environments where there is value alignment. It’s more of a facilitation thing than a chasing thing, in my perception. It feeds into the force vs flow aspect, and precisely why I mentioned it. When the environment is set up for smooth interactions and meeting people, the easier it flows. This doesn’t mean that apps can’t be helpful, depending on how you approach them, and I know some who’ve done this constructively with a lasting relationship. So it’s plausible. As far as the environmental setup goes, it’s also easier to garner more social proof and gather more data (to put it so autistically) of how they (the potential mate) behave. In that way, it’s a great filter.

Leading and following

This is especially relevant among men. If you think you are the alpa of alphas, the chosen one and born to lead, but fail to listen or give the lead to the person most qualified for the circumstances or situation, the men around you will quickly deem that you are too egocentric and not interested in either the tribe, the mission/goal or both. The opponent processing is always present in life’s dualities in this way. To be a good leader, you must be able to follow and listen to the advice of those with more experience. And to properly follow would be to question when what comes down the chain of command doesn’t track with the goals, mission, or interest of the tribe. This occurs in some way in most dynamics; in certain scenarios, a woman could lead where a man would stand to benefit by following. In certain cases, the child could lead the parent (like when it comes to technology or what’s new in the world), which will foster more closeness between them. The black and white perception of leadership doesn’t track in reality, because as we said, it sets things up to be experienced as egocentrism and or rigidity. There’s a certain fluidity to these interpersonal dynamics that creates much stronger bonds when it takes place, because it signals trust and humility.

Interpersonal synchrony for couples

Ever since I’ve learned about interpersonal synchrony (which is a good 6-7 years ago), it boggled my mind that so few people structure for this or practice this. The deliberate synchrony seems to be constrained to watching movies together and having sex. In a technical sense, there is nothing wrong with it as much as that there’s a whole spectrum of intimacy and synchrony that isn’t being used that can facilitate far more connection in small and time-constrained ways. A little of this frequently goes a long way. As they say, “life is made of small moments” and “the small things are the big things”; life happens in daily life, not just the dates, vacations, or other big moments. Hence, being able to connect daily, frequently in small ways, fosters a lot more connection and overall satisfaction (which also returns in the ritual practice).

Suggestions:

1. Synchronized breathing:

   Don’t overcomplicate it, you can do it standing, sitting, lying down, just try to find a pace that you’re able to synchronize with.

2. Heart coherence (hand on partner’s heart)
   You can use those same positions, even for a very short amount of time.

3. Synchronized movements in general work as well, like dancing.
   
   You can also use tech for this, for instance, the Muse headband or Fitbit to monitor heart rate or brainwaves during a “calm-off” or “sync-up” challenge. Sit face-to-face, breathe together, and try to match rhythms—or compete to see who relaxes fastest—then discuss the data if you really want to geek out.

Male bonding and activities

Men relate differently with men than we do with women (shocker). Activities are better for getting someone to open up. And even if no opening up occurs, presence means a lot when someone is going through something. We’re far more predisposed towards vasopressin, bonding under pressure. Propensity towards anything that simulates the need to bond under pressure: airsoft, laser shooting, VR survival shooter games, obviously martial arts of all kinds. To be honest, the bar is pretty low, just go do things together. Training together is a hugely underrated activity to foster bonds for men because it’s highly vasopressin-mediated. There’s very little oxytocin involved in moving an iron bar that stands to crush you, whilst your bro is screaming “Light weight!”. I’d also add that, given everything we’ve explored in terms of oxytocin and vasopressin mechanisms, it’s a little silly to expect men to just open up by sitting down. Whereas, it makes more sense that something active is done first, which also allows for more activity in the emotional cortex as it makes its way into the prefrontal cortex, so a processing and access of emotions can take place, which will generally make men naturally open up and start talking. I’ve seen this professionally and personally across the board, so as far as therapeutic approaches go, this is a solid way to do it.

Understanding and forgiveness

Understanding and forgiveness are felt. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell someone if you understand them, if your behavior and response don’t show this. People FEEL understood, and forgiveness is an existential state (something you feel, and perhaps the other party as well). We’ve covered this as: understanding is mainly exploration with an adjustment of behaviors. Where forgiveness is this experience of an existential state of being able to access agapic love to move on (and perhaps let go) and change your behaviors towards them. I don’t peddle forgiveness as a practice, nor can I (wouldn’t even want to) because this process has to emerge naturally due to your own processes and developments on all levels. Obviously, I value forgiveness in myself and others. What I take contention with is the forcing thereof, especially platitude-based cermonization that often occurs. Good-natured people forgive when they are ready to forgive. I have faith in this. Understanding is a practice and process of deepening the exploration of the encoding and models of the other person, and how this informs their patterns. I hope this book brings you closer to that.

The We space

It’s this experience of us as a transjective entity, where the relationship is its own space. A part of this is framing the conversations “here’s what we will do” and a part of it is (the brunt of it really) is behaviorally showing the collaborativeness and willingness to put the relationship first in certain ways or areas (rather than your own needs let’s say as a more concrete example of this). A lot of it is built on building and sharing the same models and pooling resources in a neurometabolic way. Which obviously requires staying in the process of updating models and open exploration of what is going on with another, as a couple, and as individuals. This effectively needs space, time, and presence, created intentionally through these practices, unintentionally just through life, and possibly deliberately by dedicating time to sit down and properly talk about the state of the we space and you as individuals.

Council

In the Aspirational Self Framework, I wrote this as part of the practices as well. I’m highly in favor of creating a type of council. Composed of both elders and peers (if they’re aligned in values, lifestyle, and developmental phase). Primarily because you get perspective on how others have navigated these challenges successfully (your elders) and how others are navigating constructively (your peers). Of course, it stands to reason that one-on-one is an important facet of this exploration. A group could be a great enhancer of this process, depending on the stage one is in. The best people for the job are the ones who manage to create, maintain, and nurture secure and healthy attachments, wife, kids, friends, parents, etc. The people who have done it are the best equipped to guide you through the process, and proof of work matters a lot.

Natural Hierarchy

Men naturally gravitate towards hierarchical structures (that’s not exactly a surprise). There’s a natural hierarchy that is constructive for everyone involved, meaning there is guidance from mentors and superiors, there is supporting, developing, collaborating, and healthy competition with your peers, and then there is the mentoring and healthy competition with your subordinates. Men seem to do best when these 3 dimensions are present, which seems only logical to me. Men often find purpose and attachment in work or tribal structures, which is why we explored all these layers in the first place. Integration and connection into as many layers and dimensions as possible is usually a good idea, alongside a clear place in the hierarchy, with the potential for moving up and being supported in doing so. As you move through the developmental stages, there should be an assuming of the role and responsibility in terms of these three dimensions.

Appreciation

That’s relevant to any attachment, where you’re attempting to “bypass” or rather overcome the negativity bias (only focusing on the negative). This, to me, is an improvement over a gratitude practice, which usually is based on trying to evoke this feeling of gratitude (which I find rather forced). Whereas noticing things you appreciate about people and what they do is more awareness-based than feeling-based, even though, of course, a feeling can arise, there's very little force in this. This can be things you do or did you appreciated, liked, or respected about yourself, that’s obviously the self orientation, and it can also be turned towards others and thus noticed about them or the world at large. Unsurprisingly, in a study of spouses, they found that those who expressed appreciation more had a tighter bond, or rather, higher levels of oxytocin. That’s pretty low-hanging fruit in nurturing your attachments. Even though words of appreciation are helpful, showing appreciation and respect is the real deal through your behaviors. Do something considerate, know when they do something without being asked, predict their needs, respect boundaries, etc.

Suggestions: Leave a note, send a text,

More of Nathaniel Lambert’s work gets to shine here: Expressing gratitude to a partner changes one's view of the relationship" and "Expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior". The titles tell you all you need to know.

Play

Pankseep showed, for example, that play wouldn't emerge among animals if they were possessed by any other motivational state. Things have to be set up very carefully before play will emerge. “Your house is optimally structured if your children can play”. I’d wager your life is quasi-optimally structured if you can play. You could go there regardless of what type of close relationship it is. There’s an actual circuit for it spanning multiple brain areas, which generally doesn’t happen unless it’s somewhat important. “Freeman highlights music and dance as ‘ancestral technologies’ for forming social groups, suggesting they synchronize brain activity across individuals. This goes beyond oxytocin’s chemical role, pointing to rhythmic, sensory coordination as a bonding mechanism—something less tangible than a hug but potentially more pervasive.” Which goes back to interpersonal synchrony being a multidimensional experience, and that you can tap into this through many different avenues.

Suggestions: wrestle, acroyoga, movement games, dance, sparring, twister

Call your buddies

This one is also self-evident to a certain degree, and yet we need to account for prediction error due to social media. Where we see our friends and thus infer or assume how they are doing, and perhaps even shrug it off to call them, because well, “we saw” they were doing alright. It gives a very convoluted perception, especially when we know not everyone is equally forthcoming about their struggles and their states (that’s not a judgement nor call to post/communicate the deepest darkest secrets at will). Rather, we account for this prediction error and actually take the time to call them to hear how they are really doing. We know that life moves fast, “call next week” can easily become a 6-months-later scenario. Even when we can make good arguments as to why it has gone like that. Structuring calls, with a given day and a given time, is adaptive for people who are less intuitive in this way. In some ways, this is another erosion of the social dimensions and brotherhood, though people like myself have split time between different places that have secure attachments across the world are obviously constrained by distance. Which is what makes this even more of an aspect to account for. Although, as often said among those with secure attachments, that it’s like no time has passed when they do get in touch, there’s a “fine” line here in terms of investment and neglect. Although that’s a facet we can appreciate, we shouldn’t take it for granted.

Pick up the phone, man.

Rituals

Whether celebration, marking a significant event, there’s a lot of space on how you can make this your own. For couples, there are a lot of low-hanging fruits, morning, after work, and even end of the day. As an extension to this, read to each other. Take turns reading, or create your own story premise upon which you need to improvise in a turn-based fashion. There are the usual macro and micro dimensions that play into this. Such as weekly family dinners, monthly game nights, or annual retreats. Also mentioned in the hosting part at the end of the practices, something like weekly firepit talks. A time capsule could be a great part of this. When you create a message and set it to open at a determined date, you can, of course, make many of these set for different dates (1 year from now, 5 years, 10 years).

By and large, a lot of the rituals and ritualistic spaces have eroded, and have been automated in certain ways, in the modern world, or rather in a modern society divorced from its history and culture, very few of these practices remain. Similarly, with religious practices and rituals, which also have their place. They are supposed to mark significant events, or make events significant by the very nature of performing a ritual, which in a way is also tied to the romanticization of life and thus the eroticism of life as an extra qualitative layer to the experience. It can be present in brotherhood-esque ways (like the one from Jack Donovan linked below). It will also be present in parenting.

There’s an extra level to integrate when you read this:

Ritual Technology

As far as time capsules go, you can do this digitally as well:

Create a digital “time capsule” using an AR app (e.g., ARKit or Snapchat’s Lens Studio). Each partner records short video messages, sketches future dreams, or hides virtual “treasures” (e.g., a 3D heart with a note) tied to real-world GPS locations meaningful to your relationship (first date spot, favorite park). You can do the same thing for your children, or even groups of friends, with an email address that they get access to down the line or an app (https://mychildsdiary.com/)

Presence

That's been a factor of contention for women alike when it comes to men. A part of this is all the forward projecting men tend toward, planning, dealing with all the usual life stuff in terms of work, economics, etc. That’s part of the co-regulation, your ability to be present, but also helps for a lot of other aspects that go into attachment, lik attention bid awareness (when your significant other or close ones ask for your attention in small/subtle ways), humor, wit and responsiveness all feed into this as well. You’re more likely to be socially fluid and adaptable when you are present, because you are picking up on more cues. We covered that as well, with having the phone near you when you are conversing or just trying to connect in general. There are a few ways to get there, like digital detox (solo and together), like the usual: meditation/mindfulness, trips together, and a general practice of shiting your attention to your presence when you are with people. We are bombarded by signals trying to steal our attention, distraction is rampant and dominant, which is exactly why training our attention in this way becomes a skill and facilitates closeness. When you are absolutely present and immersed in the moment, there is far more room for interpersonal synchrony to occur at depth. The way we are in our minds and bodies will influence how others are in theirs. It is both self-regulation and awareness that lead to enhanced presence.

Emotional stability test

I’m not suggesting you create a Saw-like maze of tests for them to pass, although this is naturally present in some degree through all the parameters we’ve explored. Rather, one of the best options is a trip or a weekend together. This way, you can see how they respond to stress and how quickly they return to baseline.

Context over content

In this case, it is not so much paying attention to the content of the words, the logic behind them, the logical flaws that might exist, the analytic part, but rather how the words sound, how the words feel. This is going to be a challenge when you are as autistically literal as I tend to function. It can be trained, though, to tap into your “right brain” as it were, or the structures that deal with interpreting the emotion of words/sentences rather than their literal meaning (autists rejoice). There’s a section in the Aspirational Self article that deals with exactly this. The ability for the right brain to sync to the right brain structures of another person, and interpersonal synchrony in general, is what will allow this to emerge. It’s difficult to cognize your way there, you can, however, shift your attention to the heart center or the gut center, which hold neurons too that process information and thus deal with sensory feedback more than anything else. Which is most of the battle for those who are predisposed to be “head heavy” or in their head mainly (relying on logic). There can be a certain element of dissociation present because of an incapacity to deal with the emotions that can come forth from the dialogue or the contagious emotions of the other person in question (or both). Thus, building that capacity can surely be beneficial in figuring out the driving emotions behind your words and the words of others.

Connect before you correct

Attempting to give constructive feedback, or address someone's behavior, or set a boundary works a lot better when the other person is made receptive. Kicking in the door to lay down the law hasn’t really proven to be an effective strategy. Connecting first, getting eye contact, acknowledging their state or their struggle, and then broaching the subject gets a lot more done. Obviously, it’s not foolproof, but it’s a significant step in the right direction to preemptively de-escalate a situation when you lead with something that indicates it might be difficult to talk about, and that you think and feel is best to do it now (or something of the sort). Another aspect that fits here is not assassinating the character of your significant other, but calling out behaviors or behavioral patterns instead. Arguably, this is one of the major aspects or dimensions where you find this model prediction error and or internalized model of the parents’ behavior into their behavior, which then very often gets expressed in conflict. If the parent was attacking identity, that gets carried over in these situations and dynamics very often. Which is a difficult one to untangle in communication, to make it about what your perception, feelings, boundaries, values, and their behavioral patterns (instead of attacking their identity or turning things to them, using them as the orientation “you always”, “Are you stupid”, etc). Seeing it can come from how either parent behaved with you AND how they behaved with each other, that’s a very potent model to untangle. That’s why we started with connection, before addressing the issue, as most times the parent would’ve come in “cold” and started attacking (perhaps even screaming) out of nowhere. These “you are” statements are the identity attack default. Which is the very thing we’re watching for both in our patterns and in the patterns of our significant other (even our friends, really).

Biohack your bond

I see two main cases for this: A) If you’ve done everything else and you want to take it one step further, B) if the fire has become a faint pilot light and you need to reignite it (which could be because of a demanding life with kids or because you’ve been together for so long). I do not recommend jumping into this, and I’ve included it because it is a part of facilitating bonding. I would advise against mixing these. There’s an additional angle at play, that is that couples have often gravitated towards alcohol for this. I think that’s an extremely subpar or inefficient means to open up and bond when there are much better alternatives. This isn’t me saying you need to use the recommended compounds below, you can even use supplements like B4 for this instead of alcohol. Rather, the other compounds have far stronger effects on bonding neurotransmitters. Let me emphasize one thing very strongly here: if you are predisposed towards addiction or are in a bad place (psychologically, emotionally), this is not the place to start or something to jump into without the proper guidance.

Another aspect to emphasize is transparency, open exploration, and consent. Any of these (except for B4) should be approached with a we mindset, in that both people need to be aware of the implications and risks around using exogenous compounds in this way. The rationale behind mentioning these is to drive towards togetherness and intimacy when the barriers are high or difficult to overcome through traditional means, and ideally it should still be coupled with traditional therapeutic practices. If you’re looking for a quick fix, this isn’t it, nor anything else would be so. Resolving attachment and bonding requires a multidimensional approach and the actual psychoemotional work of digging into and addressing the injured/wounded aspects. Additionally, there are legal implications here as well. MDMA assisted psychotherapy isn’t legal everywhere, which extends to most of the other compounds. Using them in a therapeutic setting, with a professional, on top of having done the majority of the groundwork is key.

Oxytocin nasal spray
Mdma
Psilocybin
Phenibut
Outty (formerly B4 by Ramp health)
Selank

Side note: There’s also BowtiedUM’s Libido stack for extra fireworks.

Initiation

This is a large topic due to the individuality and cultural aspects, though it needs to be explored. In a more macro sense, initiation happens through a parent, brotherhood, or organization. Though there’s individual facilitation of initiation into, let’s call it, spheres of knowledge or lifestyles, where you are brought into the fold or niche. When you’re a parent, this is going to be a part of your job. When there’s a brotherhood of sorts, there’s a natural initiation process. All of these can be created and co-created intentionally for whatever the subject matter or rite of passage is. We’ve touched on the atrophy or erosion of ritual and how it signifies landmark moments in our development, initiations are those landmarks of these rituals.

Host

This aspect is so underrated and so simple that it almost makes me embarrassed to put it in this book. But most of these practices are about creating what you are missing. You want an intellectual philosophy meeting, great, host that? You want a cheese and wine night? Or a (board)game night? Even something like a cooking class, obviously not hosting it at home, but taking the initiative to gather people, get the sign-ups and do the communication between the teacher and the group. It’s all about ontological design, putting into the environment what you are missing. Hosting dinners is a very simple way of getting people together and bringing things to life. So perhaps instead of hosting, this should read: take the initiative, default aggressive, or at the very least: default assertive to initiate activities you want to do. You can extend this to crafts, workshops, think tanks, book clubs, icebathing clubs, hiking groups, whatever type of activity you’d rather not do alone, you’ll be able to find people for it. I mention some apps in the resources for this as well.

Summary

One of the major takeaways from doing all this research is the obvious fact that different brains encode in different ways, and clearly the entire biological and neurological backbone determines very different psychological responses and behavioral patterns. We’ve seen the line of consequences on how this backbone and brain are formed and how they inform attachment. There are very few aspects of biology and neurology that aren’t woven into socialization because socialization means survival.

In essence, that’s also the lens that Freeman uses or developed, that pairbonding is beneficial for evolutionary survival, rather than romantic ideals. So, to him, or at least as his work would imply, attachment is less about “feeling good” and more about these neural mechanisms developed for ensuring cooperation, oxytocin as a tool and not a goal. Perhaps it speaks to why people typically overlook mundane and practical teamwork, whether that is parenting or building something together, and how it forges stronger bonds rather than overt affection. There’s also an element of “instagramability” to this, and just general social proof, that overt affection is easier to see, fake, and display, rather than deep bonding based both in the mundane and the profound.

As such, sentimentality gets the spotlight, but survival-driven collaboration seems to be the real glue. That’s why focusing on shared tasks with tangible outcomes, rather than pure emotional gestures, has more longevity implications for the relationship, because as we explored, vasopressin makes the bond robust and perhaps even antifragile. The entire scope of these mechanisms developed for bonding at both ends of the spectrum, or rather, across the entire spectrum. This sentiment or conclusion was also relayed in the conversation between Andrew Huberman and Jordan Peterson: “How could it be otherwise than you would find your deepest satisfaction in pursuing the course of action that integrates you psychologically and integrates other people socially?” Again, this comes back in Freeman on a neurological level in that bonding requires ongoing brain reorganization. This would mean that fostering attachment isn’t about one-off acts but about creating conditions for sustained neural adaptability. Which is why we explored the implications of brain plasticity and bonding hormones in the first place, because these conditions for sustaining neural adaptability will rely on that AND the environment (arena).

In light of all of this, I’m confident that if you were completely socially integrated at every level, that sense of fulfillment, meaning, purpose and contentment would be far more present, so that we feel like we matter, belong and have a share in the ontological shaping of both our environment and our reality. It’s also why I keep highlighting the importance of the arena and the people in it and your state, because even though that oxytocin is obviously key, just boosting oxytocin alone (via touch or supplements) would not guarantee bonding if the brain isn’t primed for connection. Emotional context, timing, and mutual intent would matter more than the hormone’s presence, there’s an element to this of “force shifting emotions or states”. With that, I mean to highlight that a brain not primed for connection doesn’t want to be shifted, and hence letting someone cool down, or you cool down, until they are open to being shifted or to connect (which is generally a shift of states) is highly individual and circumstantial. Which is why we’ve focused on the scope of attachment and bonding, to bypass the illusion that just taking some compounds will change the nature of the relationship dynamic. Bonding is more complex than a singular mechanism and singular approach (hence all the different practices and dimensions we’ve explored).

In a technical sense, none of this is new, though, as usual, a lot gets lost over the ages. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s works, there is a lot of attachment theory present. As a matter of fact, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia Book 2, Chapter 6, he outlines a definition in a dialogue Socrates has with Critobulus:

“Critobulus: But Socrates, what kind of man shall we endeavor to make our friend? What is he like?

Socrates: He who has control over the pleasures of the body, he is kindly disposed, upright in all his dealings, very zealous is he not to be outdone in kindness by his benefactors, if only his friends may derive some profit from his acquaintance.”

Presence and proximity, plus being a role model, can have a significant influence. And as we explored, the quest for personhood in ourselves and in our relations, based on agapic love, is the main driver for secure attachments. And although this is expressed differently in the genders, to a certain degree, we still need both action-based loyalty and emotional intimacy. Even when women have a higher degree of need for emotional intimacy (in certain ways), if the action-based loyalty is missing or disrupted, then that is obviously going to have an impact. We can apply the same type of thinking to men, when emotional intimacy is missing (expressed differently for men to a certain degree), then the relationship is going to be more superficial and will have less staying power (longevity). That’s what I meant with navigating tough love vs nurturing (in our own way), if you’re being or attempt to be a hard ass when someone needs empathy, you’re not going to do them any favors, it’s a skill to know when to employ which one. These differences in the degree of needs also play a role in which practices to choose and which processes to improve, depending on your dispositions and relationships. Maybe you need more action-based practices, take your pick, or you need to foster more emotional intimacy. You know what to do. We always need both, I hope that this book/framework made that clear. We’re looking for an optimal grip as usual, which is dynamic.

It’s only the true exploration of a person that improves theory of mind. Because superior ToM effectively is the ability to understand how someone encodes and experiences the world, and not using yourself as the prototype projected onto others. There is IMMENSE variance in experiencing the world, as we saw through exploration of the layers of neurology and biology. So, the neuroscientific perspective of ToM is figuring out these coding differences and patterns of a person, and upgrading your models (introjects) to more accurately model their pattern, thus reducing prediction error and entropy. And of course, interpersonal synchrony, as it facilitates syncing up and a deeper connection.

To emphasize this again, this takes some serious time, and it doesn’t mean they can’t surprise you anymore, as times goes on you change and they change, that’s why continuous exploration is the lifeblood of attachment strength and longevity, as you are able to stay in sync and upgrade these models. Jumping to conclusions, projecting, or mindlessly assuming what is going on are the antithesis of exploration, and generally what rubs people the wrong way, especially in terms of co-identification or assigning identities. The same principle for filling in how people feel or how they are supposed to feel, that’s not explorational, and you don’t really know until they explain it. To be fair, or rather precise, it seems these encoding differences vary much strongly further up the spectrum of intelligence and neurodivergence. Meaning that it’s easier and simpler to predict behaviors and have more robust models of the middle curve because of common denominators and generally applicable patterns (I don’t mean this in a demeaning way).

Another reason why I outlined the neurological and biological dimensions of attachment, and in the article The Path To Your Aspirational Self, these dimensions in terms of the self, as we’ve kind of connected them here in terms of empathy as well, is that all of this is energy and resource intensive. Which means that when we’re in a poor state, all of this is going to be much harder, because you need to stay open, which requires energy and resources (you can’t skirt the laws of energy homeostasis, no matter how many people attempt to convey that’s possible). That’s why, regardless of the framework or book I write, I keep coming back to getting your neurology and biology sorted. And given everything we’ve explored about the ability to sync up, health is a significant factor in this. How one experiences reality, as we’ve seen, has a lot to do with attachment, not just identities, beliefs, and narratives, but also filters, perception, and perspectives, which are all part of these models (introjects) and circuits, areas, genes, hormones, neurotransmitters and so forth.

Furthermore, given that a part of your identity is relational, I don’t see how one can be their best self without these (secure) relationships. Seeing we have many different roles and many different needs, and need these roles to express various aspects of ourselves, I’d say to be “complete” or integrated, this is what it takes. We’ve covered social complexity and how that has contributed to cognitive and neural complexity, thus, there’s this identity complexity to it that gets to shine in our social and personal needs. The more of these that get to be expressed constructively and contextually fitting, the better. That’s why I said it’s ridiculous to expect your partner to fulfill all your attachment needs, it extends into the general: we can’t expect any one person to do so, we’re far too complex for this. As such, in a “normal” setting, you’d have a natural complexification and diversification of attachments, so that these different needs and their meters could get met. You also bring ALL your models into basically any relationship with you, there’s no way around it.

That’s why addressing and reorganizing these models matters so much, they will be an anchor, which would be fine if it were anchored into something good, however, when they are anchored into toxicity, abuse, and pain, that will have negative consequences to any relationship one finds themselves in. Therapy can be helpful here, which truly depends more on the therapist than the style of therapy. I’ve dealt with the fallout of a certified sociopath for a father and an ex-girlfriend who was less than stable, so even though I didn’t go into therapy, I had access to both the information and friends who are great at psychology, which made the interactions therapeutic. Regardless, I know what distance this is to cross, and trust me when I say, it is a herculean effort, it doesn’t come for free. It might take multiple therapists and multiple modalities, depending on the complexity of your psyche and the complexity of your experiences. That’s a point that is very often missed by standard psychology practices, you might need different forms/modalities, as (even though they overlap), they have different functions. The other avenue is the therapeutic effect of having and building these secure attachments, which can be healing in and of itself. This therapeutic effect is also largely why I added these practices, because I’ve experienced these therapeutic effects firsthand.

In terms of cooperation and collaboration, Game Theory has a lot of parts, and we’ve seen a bit of it in the risk-taking behavior in regards to cooperation. The most common pattern was that people collaborated and expected to collaborate (and share resources), until someone cheated, which they then punished until he started cooperating and collaborating again, and then people went back to collaborating as usual. This is fundamental to understand, although the caveat has to be mentioned in terms of attachment spheres, I’d expect this to extend largely within the same, similar or adjacent cultures (education and economics play a part in this), so that IN GENERAL in the West, you’d expect people to fulfill their social contracts and collaborate as well behaved strangers. This is the essence of good faith and the belief that others act together rather than upon each other. Now, we don’t have to be naive, there are obvious demographics where this is just not going to be the case across population distributions, regardless of where you are in the world.

It’s just supposed to illustrate that we’re predisposed towards cooperation and collaboration, and that people are even willing to forgive a transgression IF you correct course and get back to cooperation (providing the degree of transgression). As we’ve seen, there are a host of mechanisms that are going to determine this perception, paranoia or pronoia, expecting and predicting bad faith or good faith. There is an “optimal grip” per person and per circumstance. That is part of the complexity and nuance that most people lack around attachment and these spheres of attachment. Ironically, this complexity and nuance are the very driving reasons for cognitive load that helped build and expand our PFC. Of course, a brain under siege due to stressors, toxins, and overload isn’t going to deal well with this cognitive load and complexity.

When it comes to the health and longevity of a romantic relationship, values, vision, virtue, and cocreation of personhood through agapic love are going to be the central pillars. Which we can sort of measure through the effects that person has on us, in terms of calmness (GABA), contentment (endorphins), safety (co and self-regulation), and the effect of their presence on our well-being in general. From both ends, understanding, loving, and honoring each other’s “operating system” (encoding and experiencing), personhood, and agency is going to be the means of connection. In a non-romantic sense, platonic love is really that agapic love, the bringing into personhood of each other, which is valuable and inherent in any secure attachment. It will require open exploration and connection when all three entities change: you, the relationship, and the other person. When Agape is the love of personhood, then Eros in this alignment is the desire for personhood in others and ourselves. Furthermore, it is about intimacy, defined as the ability to be completely yourself (with the other person), feeling connected and safe while being yourself, that you make sense to this other person, feeling understood, and accepted in any regard where you might not make sense or are understood (which comes back to safety).

Attachment and outcomes

Now, again, it doesn’t imply that you are doomed, just that there’s a lot of work to be done, which should happen in as many dimensions as possible. There are many different ways of facilitating this, different types of cognitive and somatic therapies. I’m a huge proponent of combining them. I’ve done a somatic trauma release with Cliff Tang from Kaizen Project in Belgium, which is a combination of scraping, needling, and cupping, which was very intense. Another version of this was a release done by Dries at Vision4Body (also Belgium-based), who is a functional neurology wizard. In Bali, I’ve participated in a somatic breathing session (conscious connected breathing) at Breathwork Bali in Canggu. I didn’t have much of a release of negative stored emotions, whereas others did, because I already had a lot of somatic release on top of my introspective practice. This has been a major driver for me to write these frameworks or books, different brains, different encoding, different methods of release that fit. Again, I like to work through and with as many dimensions as possible, seeing that they are interconnected, and one changes the other (systems theory).

Which means that sometimes (but definitely not always) people resolved their major blockages through a single dimension (hence them promoting that modality and practice), which is understandable, though slightly naive. The truth of the matter is: you don’t know what works or what they need until a proper exploration is done. Which is why I come back to a multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach, bottom-up AND top-down work is usually superior. There are a lot of different modalities in the top-down approach as well. My inclinations and practice are heavily centered and oriented in ancient philosophy, and I have learned a lot from many people in terms of the psychological practices that are therapeutic. There are some things you won’t be able to think your way out of, so opening that gateway through the body can be very helpful. On the other end of this, there is a need to upgrade psychological models, guidance is needed to build a proper framework and practice around this. All of which have direct and indirect effects on your attachment. In this way, there are many paths up the mountain, you’ll have to find yours.

To close: the real sorrow and pain is the acknowledgement that we weren’t loved the way we should’ve or supposed to have been loved by a primary caretaker, or both. Considering how we started with the origin of attachment, here we have our “original sin” that was imposed on us: that we lacked the love to build the circuits and signals we would’ve needed to start and go through life as accepted, wanted, desired, and loved. And that we would share that gift with others as we go through our developmental stages. In essence, that is the point that Gabor Maté makes in his book In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts, and that many others converge on. That our coping mechanisms are adaptive, and that they become a “solution” for this immense neuropsychological problem that gets created by a lack of early secure attachment. I regularly have to orient and lead clients here, into the depths of that pain and dark hole, that attachment void that they would rather not enter, because it is the very thing they’re attempting to avoid confronting. I think the quote attributed to Rumi is apt here: “Maybe you are searching among the branches what only appears in the roots”. Which is what a lot of coping mechanisms and addictions have in common: searching among the branches. And something that people do subconsciously, in using others to get to that feeling we’re looking for, that only appears in the roots: love.

Epilogue

Philodemos: “Faistos! He called from the crowd of the theatre.” He quickened his pace so he would not lose Faistos in the crowd. “I would not recover if I let this opportunity slip by to honor you. I owe you a thousand thanks and a lifetime of blessings and offerings, every single one of my kin will contribute to make offerings to the gods in your name. You were a true friend when I needed on the most. You showed me I had to get right with and honor, not just the gods, but every other instance of what makes me a good man in my relations. And by the heavens, I have for these past 2 years made it my mission to address where I have erred. As a matter of fact, I have been judged worthy of a renaming, they call me Philodemos now, "Loved by the people", an unexpected blessing of wealth.”

Faistos: “My dear Philodemos, surely you left our last conversation with a blessing of the gods!”

Philodemos: “I want to introduce my wife.” He kissed her hands. Philodemos’ wife made a respectful bow in acknowledgment of Faistos’ contributions to her husband’s standing and disposition. She is with child. And through my renewed efforts with my friends and kin, I’ve been afforded an apprenticeship with a judge.”

Faistos: “It comes to show that true love transforms truly, where shallow love fails to make such an impression. Transformation, then, is a divine gift we can afford one another by loving at the highest order. Whatever your station in life, your kin will feel blessed and wealthy with a father such as yourself, and a wife to elevate your love.” A swarm of motes of pink, gold, and orange floated around Faistos’s head, forming a dynamic circling halo as he addressed Philodemos. “This is the light touch with which we impress on others’ souls, and in doing so, make them connect with the depths of their own love. And thus lead a life based on love, not based on fear, regardless of the source of the fear. If there were ever a manifestation of courage, it would be this: to know when to strip one’s armor, cast aside shield and sword, in the understanding that those who love you are not a threat, and that the gods neither are a threat to your life. So you can walk among your kin and friends in peace, and can love them in kind and offer the same sense of peace. In this way, we may bring them into higher orders of being and guide them through becoming more of who they are and what they stand to be, so that in the process, we too become more of ourselves. It is this that the gods sought us to understand, and ultimately embody.”

Aphilodemos bowed in the acknowledgement of the statement, and uttered a few words of reverence towards the gods of love who came to his aid when he was lost.

Resources

Peterson - Friston
Athens Corner - Philosophy and Friendship
Huberman - Peterson
Huberman - Laurie Santos
Huberman - Ester Perel
Huberman - Dr- David Buss
Huberman - Dr. David Anderson
Huberman - Dr. Immordino Yang
Huberman - Dr. Lisa Fedman Barrett
Huberman - Dr. Kay Tye
Huberman - Becky Kennedy
Huberman - Bill Eddy
Huberman - Lori Gottlieb
Hold on to your kids - Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
Jack Shroder
Reinventing Your Life - Jeffrey Young
In the realm of Hungry Ghosts - Gabor Maté
https://x.com/TellYourSonThis
https://x.com/datepsych
https://x.com/ItIsHoeMath
How emotions are made - Lisa Feldman Barrett
Gotmann Institut
Adam Lane Smith
https://datepsychology.com
The way of men - Jack Donovan (all his books have value in this lens)
The Archetype of Initiation - Robert L Moore
Tribe - Sebastian Junger
Xenophon - Memorabilia
Societies of Brains: A Study in the Neuroscience of Love and Hate - Walter J Freeman
https://substack.com/@stevestewartwilliams
Sam Vaknin
Awakening from the meaning crisis - John Vervaeke
https://pvrticka.com/attachment-social-connection-allostasis/
Never split the difference - Chris Voss
The Long-Term Stability of Affective Bonds After Romantic Separation: Do Attachments Simply Fade Away?
Plato
Murphy Macken

Resources I haven’t read that might be useful to readers:
Attached - Amir Levine
Why women have sex - David Buss
When Good men behave badly - David B Wexler
The evolution of desire: strategies of human mating - David M. Buss
IFS - Internal Family Systems
Jaak Panksepp
The Power of Attachment by Diane Poole Heller (2019)
Attachment Theory in Practice by Susan M. Johnson (2019)
The Attachment Theory Workbook by Annie Chen (2019)
Wired for Love by Stan Tatkin (2012)
Please Find Attached by Laura Mucha (2025)
Raising a Secure Child by Hoffman, Cooper, and Powell (2017)
Esther Perel books
Right brain psychotherapy - Dr. Allan Schore
Lost connections - Jonathan Haidt
Nathaniel Lambert

Groups and apps for socialization

Meetup
Nomio (Bali)
New York Dipper’s Club

Acknowledgements

There’s a host of negative experiences that I went through that feed into this. I don’t think you’ll catch me saying I’m happy those happened, I however can acknowledge and appreciate the value they have brought. In rare moments, even gratitude emerges, more so for the lessons and insights rather than the experiences or the people attached to them. I learned a lot from those negative experiences, regardless of where they fall on the spectrum, and it’s by contrasting them with my positive experiences and secure attachments that clarity emerged on these patterns, which the literature obviously converges on. This book is also informed by my failures and shortcomings, precisely because of the injuries to my attachment that I had incurred, which I had to learn to understand and mend. I’m immensely grateful for my family and inner circle of brothers and a handful of women who have been there for most of my life in all the most important ways. These people are truly the light of my life. I’m also grateful for my mentors, Metin Dabak (littlebeastm), and Dominic Rapson. There is a host of people who deserve a lot of credit for prompting me, proofreading this, having dialogues around the topic, who have made invaluable contributions to this book. Niko Caignie, for proofreading, and the dialogues that touched all these dimensions. Big T and Salticidae for proofreading the rough draft. All my mutuals on X as well, for the support, as I put out posts of my “neurophilosophical” style. A few other key individuals in the writing process that I’d like to mention: without Andrew Huberman and his podcast, this would’ve been a far bigger challenge; his guests paved the way for the access, simplification of the material, and the practicality of the tools. I’d also like to acknowledge Jack Donovan for paving the way in the realm of men’s bonding and attachment, and their hierarchy of values. Another honorable mention to “IM”, tellyoursonthis on X for the essays on the nature of men and women. And lastly, Nicolas Fabiano on X, who shares a lot of research that has been relevant on these topics.