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It’s time for the afternoon update with Jack Heald, The Dad You Wish You Had. 

This is my first day in over a week that I haven’t felt like I’m on the borderline of stepping into the darkness of death. And that is because today’s episode is brought to you by Rockwood Natural Medicine Clinic. My doctor – Thomas Kruzel – has kept me alive for the last 15 years with some brilliant medicine. He is not an allopath; he’s a naturopath.

Back in 2006-2007 when my health was failing and all the aleopaths also failed me. Dr. Kruzel brought me back from the brink. And I’m not exaggerating. I’ve had a nasty head cold or flu or something the last week and he made me some sort of magic elixir that has me feeling alive again. So, thanks to Dr. Thomas Kruzel at Rockwood Natural Medicine Clinic, I can breathe through my nose again.

Wow, that feels good.

Today, we’re gonna talk about women, life, and lessons that I have learned. I’ve had two long relationships. I was married for 25 years. That relationship gave me my four children of whom I am immensely proud. Those are my treasures. I would literally take a bullet for any one of them. I’ve got seven grandkids now. I would take a bullet for any one of them.

Those of you who have children and grandchildren know what I’m talking about. There is no greater joy in life than to see your children succeed. And mine – all four of them – have.

The mother of my children was a brilliant mother, but we just were not good together as a couple. After that, I got into a long relationship with a nurse who was a magnificent caregiver. We met when I was at the depths of my illness. And when I got healthy. the relationship got sick.

So, there’s a lesson there, guys. There’s a couple of lessons for me. The first lesson is: if you are not healthy body, soul, spirit, financially, mentally, socially, then if you get into a relationship, the chances are very good that when you get healthy, the relationship itself will no longer work.

My last relationship – that long relationship I was telling you about – ended about two years ago. It ended because I was healthy. Not because I was sick, but because I was healthy. That’s not a good foundation for a relationship, okay?

If you want to be in a relationship with a woman, be a healthy man. You will make better decisions about the women that you want to be in relationship with, and you will have better relationships.

Why did my first relationship fail? Well, there was a myriad of reasons. The biggest one was that I had four children with her. Secondarily, I was 19 when I got married. And frankly, with very few exceptions, that’s way too bloody young to be making that kind of commitment.

We know now – we didn’t know this in 1980 – but we know now because there’s been so many advances in neuroscience: the human brain doesn’t fully develop until we’re about twenty-five. And the part that develops lasts – strangely enough – the frontal cortex, which is the executive decision-making part of our brain. Until that’s fully formed, don’t go making life-altering decisions like getting married, joining the military.

I don’t want to open that can of worms. I understand it’s a great thing for a lot of men. It’s a very good thing, but… It brings discipline into the lives of people who need it. But it’s not for nothing that we send 18 and 19 year olds to war. Because, by the time they’re 25, they’re smart enough to know that’s probably not a great decision.

Some of the things I have learned about being in a relationship with a woman. As a rule, men are interested in ideas and objects. Women are interested in relationships and people.

As a rule. There’s outliers in both genders.

But the reality is that – by and large – as a man, you’re going to be way more interested in talking about ideas, concepts, and abstractions than any woman is. If you’re that kind of man – and most of you are – and you try to get into a relationship with a woman expecting her to provide you an intellectual foil for your ideas, your thoughts, and your abstractions, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

This was by far one of the biggest disappointments that I had in both of my relationships.

My first long relationship, she had a tremendous facility with language. I love language and of course being in a relationship with someone who is good at language really scratched an intellectual itch for me. But she had no interest in abstract ideas. She had no interest in the kinds of meta thinking that fascinated me.

Like most women, she was much more interested in the practical aspects of life. That’s not a flaw. That’s not a failure. It’s a very good thing. But I expected things from her that – frankly – it was foolish to expect. Not her fault. Not her fault at all. My fault. I didn’t know. I was 19. I was dumb as a box of hair and that’s what I wanted to have happen.

So, don’t expect a woman to be your intellectual foil in your relationships. That is not the thing that most women want or are particularly good at doing. It shouldn’t surprise you that they’re not likely to be good at it.

My second relationship, the woman – she liked to think she was good at those kinds of things. But like most women, she was not really compelled to follow logical arguments from beginning to end. Like most women, she tended to pull her points from a myriad of different directions. And whether or not those points supported any individual argument were kind of irrelevant to her.

I believe this is a function of evolution. Women tended to evolve to be gatherers, whereas men tend to be hunters. Women are focused in a myriad of directions all at one time whereas men tend to be single-focused. This is an emergently evolutionary feature. It is not a flaw. It is the way we evolution “designed” us, (if I can use that particular term.)

Again, the fact that she and I were not able to mesh in that area is not her fault. It was my fault for expecting it. I expected things of that relationship that she wasn’t created to do, She wasn’t evolved to do, her biology was not for.

What I have learned in my 58 years of relationships with women is: those types of relationships, getting involved in deep intellectual conversations, hashing out the abstractions of principles and ethics and how we should live – there are very few women who are interested in that or capable of sustaining it for a long period of time.

As it happens, the people that I have those kinds of conversations with – those deeply satisfying conversations – are men. And as it turns out, two of those men are my own sons.

I’ve raised two intellectual foils for myself. Both of my boys love those kinds of conversations. We talk intellectual. We talk economics. We talk theology. We talk big ideas and science and we love doing it.

Men, you know what that’s like to have an intellectual foil for yourself. My best friend is just like that. He challenges my ideas constantly.

But don’t expect that from a woman.

I know some of you guys have found that, and I could not possibly be happier for you. And I won’t lie: I would love to find a woman like that. I really would.

But I no longer expect it.

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