So, I was listening to a podcast recently, and the host asked the guest the question (my interpretation) "Do you have any thoughts on the causes of problems when a guy is not having success in more serious relationships with women". The incredibly detailed and well-spoken answer (with a little editing for length and clarity, and with a few comments interspersed) follows:

For a lot of men, one of the biggest challenges is to be in a relationship as a whole person who does not get validation from the relationship but who enjoys it, who loves it, who loves the girl he’s with, but whose validation comes from his own self, mission and path in life. ...

That to me is one of the biggest difficulties guys can have. To sum it up very succinctly, the neediness internally and the subsequent fulfillment they have from being in a relationship and how that woman addresses that neediness in their lives. They’ve never really fixed the core of the problem. They’ve never really found something bigger than a woman to give real meaning to their lives.

As soon as I got to this point, I started flashing back to my own past behaviors.

That results in all sorts of really bad behavior. On one hard, you’re in the relationship and maybe you’re either secretly or overtly, or maybe your outwardly not being cool to her, not being super committed. You’re just going out trying to subtly flirt with other girls and always thinking to yourself if that other girl ever came along, who knows what I’d do.

On the other hand, when things get a little tense in the relationship, you can get super needy and you worry about losing here. You rush back and you’re like no, please don’t. It’s just bad on both hands. ...

I can’t offer any great solution for it. Any great solution is basically going to be go find a mission in your life, and make that more important than anything. Then you’ll be in a great place to be in a relationship with a woman.

As I always like to say, the three most important searches in a man’s life, for a love, for a purpose and for truth, are never resolved at his convenience. These aren’t things that we can just snap our fingers and say okay, I’m going to go find my mission right now. It comes from overcoming these challenges, putting ourselves in difficult situations, being forced to make tough choices, being forced to go through some soul-crushing, gut wrenching, difficult periods and emerging with the truth of who we are and what’s truly important to us.

The very best thing I could say is that in order to avoid a situation like that coming up, a man should actively embrace very difficult and scary situations in his life. Things he thinks he needs to do but isn’t doing and go forward with them. Let me close this out with an example that I always like to tell.

This is something that has been said here before, but I think bears repeating: Any activity that a person is scared of doing (modulo some things that are obscenely dangerous) is probably an activity one should be running towards, not away from. With the corollary: It's even fine to do certain objectively dangerous things, just try to do them as safely as possible.

Years ago, I was offered a job by the man who was the former head of HR at Apple. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he brought this guy on and this guy recruited a lot of Apple’s top executive talent. I got connected with him through a friend. He was building this new company. I was living in Michigan at the time. He said move out to California, I’ll buy you a surfboard. I’ll buy you a Mac Book Pro. I’ll put you up. But I demand your loyalty and I need you to help me build this company.

I said I’d really like to do that, but I’m dating this great girl. I don’t think I can leave her. I knew in my heart the relationship was terse and tense. I was just afraid of losing the commitment we had. The stupid thing was we were in Michigan, we were both graduating college at the time. She was moving to New York and she was putting her career first.

I ended up moving to New York. She was about 50% of the reason I moved there. We broke up two days after I got there. ...

After hearing this example, I was kind of wondering if it was actually me giving the answer on this podcast . . .

I just think to myself that’s the sort of thing that’s such a perfect example of this decision where I didn’t put my mission first. I put the woman first. There are times when you can’t do that. In my relationship right now, I’m not going to sacrifice a wonderful relationship just because some guy says come work for me. This one, I knew in my heart it wasn’t a good one. I was just afraid of losing it because it gave me so much validation, because she was really hot, a “perfect ten.”

That is, no matter what, do not make her the sole focus of your life, or no pedestalling.

I had so much of my ego and sense of self wrapped up in that relationship that I was afraid to leave it and go do something I knew I wanted to do and that I knew was important to me in a bigger picture beyond the relationship.

citation: Dating Skills Review, ep 54

A few random thoughts:

• I have heard people say here that lifting, in particular, is a means to an end, and not the mission itself. To that, I would say that that is a fine attitude to have, but not the only reasonable one. If you want to be a competitive powerlifter, then make that your mission. It can be all kinds of other stuff as well: music, literature, mountain biking, shooting, kayaking, cooking, volunteering at an animal shelter . . .

• Another pitfall can to be to have a mission when starting a relationship, but dropping it as the relationship is going along. That being said, it is probably somewhat easier to keep your mission going (if you have one in the first place), but it still requires vigilance . . .

tl;dr: Have a mission, don't be deterred from it, and don't put women on a pedestal.