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June 9, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
27:05
Virtue vs Lust! Listener Question
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All righty, righty.
Good morning, everybody.
Stephen Molyneux from Freedomain.
Great question from a listener.
And it goes a little something like this.
He says, Dear Steph, I sent this question here because I never catch the shows live.
Time difference.
I don't know quite how to phrase this.
One should choose a partner based on his or her virtues, not just lust.
But what if there's lots of virtue, but not much lust?
I've been dating a woman.
For a few months, she's kind, a great cook.
Her family seems to be really friendly.
She definitely wants to make this official and move forward.
So why aren't I feeling in love?
And how important is actually that in love feeling?
We're both in our early 40s.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
And I definitely say we're both virtuous, but I don't feel I can commit.
Commit to her.
Unless I'm all in.
Regarding looks, I'd rate myself an 8 and her a 6. Could that be the reason?
It's really ripping me up.
Because if I could just go for this, I think she could be a truly wonderful potential wife.
If I end this, it will break her heart.
And who knows when I'll meet another woman with all these great qualities.
I deeply appreciate any thoughts you might have on this.
Thank you for all you do.
Kindest, warmest regards, and donations from name.
Well, that's a very interesting question.
It's a very interesting question.
So, you want lust, and I'm, of course, a big fan of lust, but not at the expense of virtue.
Lust serves virtue.
Not the other way around.
So, I don't know.
I mean, you're both in your early 40s.
You've just started dating.
So, I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to assume that kids are not on the menu because she's too old.
So, you're looking for companionship.
You're not choosing on the basis of her fitness as a mother for your children because you're too old to have kids.
Well, she's too old to have kids with you.
So you are choosing someone based upon companionship rather than co-parenting and all these other things.
And of course, a lot of the virtues overlap, but it's a slightly different equation.
So you're in your early 40s.
Let's say you started dating 25 years ago, right?
16, 17. So you've run your whole life on this hot pursuit of bottomless lust.
And how has that served you?
Well, you're single in your early 40s.
So I don't know how many hearts you've broken.
I don't know how many women you've pursued based on lust, where it's turned into a Utter intergalactic tornado shite storm, but I assume it's more than zero.
So if you want different outcomes in life, you have to do different things.
And so you've run things based on lust that has not worked out for you.
You're single in your early 40s.
And what kind of trail have you left behind?
Now, look, I remember my teenage years.
I mean, It's been over 40 years since I entered my teens, but I remember my teenage years very well.
And the lust that grips you in your teenage years, particularly if you're raised in a chaotic household, is truly staggering.
I mean, you're deranged.
You're mad.
You're just lusting all the time, and you can't think about anything else.
And it's very R-selected, if you know the sort of nomenclature that we talk about here.
If you're having trouble letting go of lust, it could be because you're having trouble letting go of your youth.
Now, you haven't made very good decisions if you're in your early 40s and you're single and you want to be married.
Maybe you wanted to have kids.
I assume that you don't have kids.
You probably would have mentioned something about the challenges of a blended family.
So you haven't made very good decisions.
And I say this with all humility.
It wasn't like I made all the great dating decisions.
I got married in my 30s.
So it's not like I made all great dating decisions.
back in the day.
So I say this with all humility and sympathy, but you've made bad decisions.
And I assume you've made bad decisions based on lust.
So you have to make different decisions, and those decisions are based on virtue.
And you say, ah, but you see, if I have A virtuous woman, I don't feel the lust.
If you've been a pornography addict, you've programmed yourself one way.
If you have pursued women based on lust, then you have...
And now if you're a virtuous guy and it didn't work out, it's because they're not virtuous women.
So by pursuing lust, you have an acting upon lust.
You've strengthened the association between lust and dysfunction, right?
This is the biggest trap that men fall into.
Again, I say this with all humility, but the biggest dysfunction that men fall into is programming their lust to only respond to madness, to dysfunction, to chaos, to narcissism, to selfishness, to, you know, you name it, right?
And so, right, you know, like the meme of those two guys, like talking about, I know how we can get an exciting girlfriend.
And they're outside of a mental institution, right?
So the great challenge for women is to lust after super aggressive or violent men.
And the great challenge for men is to try and rescue crazy women by screwing their brains in, so to speak.
Complicated analogy, but I think you know where I'm coming from.
So yeah, I would assume that you've programmed yourself to associate lust and dysfunction.
And now you have a functional woman and you're saying, gee, the lust thing isn't really working.
Well, I mean, if you've been a chubby chaser for 25 years and then you find a woman who's slender, you've programmed yourself to do the chubby chasing thing.
So the slender thing isn't going to do it for you until you change your programming, right?
You have to reprogram yourself.
You've spent a quarter century chasing crazy women off a cliff and now there's a sane woman and you're saying, gee, I just don't feel the same spark and it's because you programmed yourself to do it that way or you were programmed by perhaps a dysfunctional mother and seeing how she related to men and in the world, right?
We are programmed as men to do what our fathers did because by definition they're sexually successful and our genes want to reproduce.
So our genes say, copy-paste the father, photocopy the father, do what the father did because whatever the father did works.
So, if your father chased your mother who was dysfunctional, you're programmed to chase women who were dysfunctional.
The longer you do that, the deeper the programming gets.
And of course, you know, pornography doesn't exactly help that.
And also, there are lots of movies where the guys are like trying to get these crazy women and so on, right?
So, I took a Louisville slug and four headlights or something like that.
Both headlights.
Recognize where you are after a quarter century of dating and the fact that you're not responding in the way that didn't work in the past is good, right?
It's good.
So if you are programmed to lust after dysfunctional women, then when you're around a functional woman, you're going to have to change.
These kinds of things.
Because you have a fetish for crazy, I assume.
or you have a fetish for dysfunctional, or you certainly have a fetish for dysfunctional, But you certainly have a fetish for what doesn't work out.
So if you have spent a quarter century, and maybe even before that, if your father was chasing after crazy women and got one with regards to your mom, then you had 40 plus years of being programmed to chase.
And lust after crazy women.
And so, if you've got a sane, healthy, happy, virtuous woman, it's going to take time to turn that super tanker around.
See how I complimented your penis?
That's how I communicate.
So, that's number one.
Bro, bro, I, you know, I know I've used these rating systems myself and they're not a bad shorthand, but honestly, it seems a little bit shallow in your 40s to go.
I mean, that's a little shallow for your 40s.
That's kind of a younger person's game.
I'm semi-ghoul.
I'm waiting for my nose to fall off, right?
And I don't know that anyone's objectively an 8 in their 40s.
You know, this rating thing, it's a little shallow.
And of course, this means that you've gone for looks in the past and women have gone for you based on your looks, right?
If you're in the top 20% of attractive men.
So you might want to revisit that kind of stuff where the looks thing should become less important as you age, right?
So like basic pair bonding 101.
If we solely focused on looks, we could not pair bond for a lifetime because our looks fade as we age, right?
There are no good-looking 80-year-olds.
I mean, there just aren't.
I mean, compared to 20-year-olds, right?
So, we have to grow out of looks as our primary focus or our singular focus.
And you are, historically speaking, you'd be old enough to be a grandfather, right?
I put you in the category, guys in their 40s.
You get married at 20, your kids have...
Now, as a grandfather, and I remember this, it's only happened once, but I do remember somebody asking me when I was out with my daughter, how old is your granddaughter?
And yes, I'm an older parent, right?
So that's just a fact.
It's the way it is.
So would you respect a grandfather who was kind of obsessively rating Men and women based upon a 1 to 10 scale of looks.
A grandfather, right?
Because that's your age, right?
So, I mean, my wife and I have been married for 23 years.
We don't look the same as when we got married.
I mean, I think we've kept herself.
I mean, no, she's kept herself fantastically.
I've kept myself fairly well, but we just don't look the same.
Now, I love her.
It's crazy.
I love her more and more every day.
She's just absolutely wonderful.
But we are not the same.
We went for a nice two-hour hike yesterday and then had a lovely dinner, and we were just sort of talking about aging and all that kind of stuff, and we're not the same.
But I love her more because she's grown in virtue and consistency, and she's just so kind and so thoughtful and so morally strong.
I worship the lilacs her feet touch because she doesn't touch the ground everywhere she walks.
It's just lilacs, right?
It's just lilacs underneath.
Booing her up.
Not much because she's Greek, so not super tall or anything like that.
But for pair bonding to work, you have to let the look stuff go, and you have to have that focus on the virtues, right?
So that's number one.
Sorry, that's number two.
Number three is that, let's say that the lust thing is a big deal for you, and lust is great, and I think lust is wonderful.
If the lust is a big deal for you, then you need to work to have a lifetime of great sex.
And the way that you have a lifetime of great sex is you choose a woman for something other than her looks.
Choosing a woman just for her looks is like a woman choosing a man just for his money.
Now, if a woman chooses a man just for his money, he will enjoy spending money on her.
Initially, and then he will start to resent it because he doesn't feel visible and loved for who he is, right?
So he's just used for his money.
So he'll...
It doesn't generally last in terms of happiness, right?
Whereas if a woman, you know, the man grows rich with her participation and her help and all of that, then, you know, he knows she's not just there for his money.
She's there for him.
And the money is a byproduct of their happiness.
So then he's going to love sharing his money because it's collectively earned and it's not the only reason she's there.
So I'm trying to sort of explain this to you as a man so that you can understand how it works for women.
That if you choose a woman based upon her looks, primarily, which doesn't mean exclusively, there's no such thing as one motive in something as complicated as a relationship.
But if you choose a woman primarily because of her looks, Then that's exciting for both of you in the beginning, and there'll be a fair amount of sex, maybe a lot of sex, and then the resentment starts to kick in, which is she does not feel loved and treasured for who she is, but she feels used for her flesh, which I suppose if she has a bit of a humiliation fetish she'll find sexually exciting to begin with but the resentment kicks in so if you choose a woman based upon lust you will get a lot of sex very early on and then it will
So, if you want to have a lifetime of great sex, choose a woman for her virtues, and then the sex is an added bonus.
If you choose a woman based upon her sex appeal, you get sex, a lot of sex at the beginning, and then you get...
It's like a drug.
If you choose cocaine for your happiness, you'll get a lot of happiness early on and then you'll get a lot of misery.
And it's the same thing with choosing a woman based upon her flesh is a sexual addiction.
It means that you want the high now and you don't care about the barrenness and the negativity and the destruction later, right?
So let's say you get married to a woman based upon lust alone, then you have a lot of sex and you get that sort of weird Bonding without the trust, right?
So if you choose a woman based on lust, you have all of the sex which releases all the bonding hormones, and then you end up bonding to people.
You both are bonding to each other without virtue.
And what virtue is designed for is to bring predictability, stability, and trust into your relationship.
because you have to really trust people to have children with them, certainly these days with the craziness of the government courts and how the woman can take you for...
You have to have a lot of trust in her virtues.
So you end up pair bonding and building a life that psychologically and emotionally requires absolute trust, but you don't have that trust, right?
Trust may rhyme with lust, but it's kind of an antonym if those are the only considerations.
So you end up bound together legally, morally, and morally.
Because you have children.
So you end up with a lifelong commitment, and a lifelong commitment requires absolute trust, not a little bit of trust, like absolute trust.
and absolute trust is only earned through consistent moral behavior.
Consistent moral behavior is only...
Like, my wife and I don't wake up in the morning and say, oh, gee, I wonder what mood my partner is going to be in.
I mean, it's not like we don't have moods, but there is a consistency.
There's a sort of return to norm.
Like a metronome, right?
It doesn't keep going, but it gets back to the norm.
And so we wake up in the morning and we hug and kiss.
Plan our day, and it's great fun, and we don't sort of sit there and say, oh, I wonder what kind of mood.
There's consistency and trust, right?
And, you know, I hope that you have that in what I do philosophically, that I'm not going to start making, you know, rageful emotions based upon emotion and reaction, right?
I'm going to try to be rational and work with all of that.
So, lust is great, and you want to plan for a lifetime of Of lust, of great physical contact.
And you do that by choosing a woman based on virtue so that sex becomes a celebration of your love and trust and respect for each other rather than using each other as semi-masturbatory devices without really liking the person.
A woman who feels used for her body will kill her sex drive over time.
It really will.
And I've certainly talked to enough people who chose a woman based upon looks who end up in sexless marriages.
Lust is like happiness.
You want to choose it for that which lasts, not for that which you buy in the present at the cost of the future.
Right?
Again, happiness, reason equals virtue equals happiness, and that's sustainable.
And it's the same thing with sexuality, with lust.
You want to choose it to be sustainable, which means choose a woman based on virtue so she doesn't feel used for her body and therefore will resent you as a whole.
So, that's number three.
Are you a status guy?
Are you a status guy?
Now, a status guy will choose a woman based upon her looks because he wants to be envied or to impress other men.
And that is a very high price to pay to be with a dysfunctional woman.
Now, of course, I'm certainly not saying that all very attractive women are dysfunctional.
I mean, I think my wife is very attractive, completely functional.
So, it's not like you have to choose, like, you know, the hot, crazy matrix.
It's not like you have to choose, but if you're an 8 and your wife is a 6, and you say, well, gee, you know, when I'm out and about, if I'm at a business meeting, if I'm, you know, having lunch with an executive, and my wife shows up, they're going to be like, oh, what are you doing with her, you know?
And I get all of that.
I get all of that.
but you spend a whole lot of your life not in status situations.
And if you are a You are too easy to control.
And you have to be willing to let go of status in order to have integrity.
I mean, status is fine.
Nothing wrong with status.
But I mean, I can tell you this from personal experience, having been severely cancelled, you have to focus on integrity and you have to be willing to forego status if you want to maintain integrity.
Because otherwise you have this big giant set of dials called status on your heart or your nads or your face, or I guess I could get a lot on my forehead.
And people will just play you.
They'll just flick switches.
They'll run up and down dials.
They'll turn knobs to get you to do what they want by just withholding status from you.
So if you want to have integrity, you have to be willing to let go of status.
And if you are hesitant to commit to this woman because of a status thing, well, I'm just more attractive than her.
Well, first of all, you're both relatively quickly going to end up pretty unattractive.
I mean, by the standards of people in their 20s and all that kind of stuff, right?
So, holding on to status based upon looks is a fading game anyway.
Again, think about when you're 70. Nobody's going to be looking at you and your wife and saying, well, gee, he's two points higher than her.
I mean, you're both low.
Just based on age, right?
Physical attractiveness is a lure to bring moral people together to pay a bond for a lifetime as they slowly decay.
It's just the way that it is.
So I Thank you.
I would say that if she is a moral woman, you need to, you know, and I sort of hate to be harsh, but we all need this, you know, slap with a wet carp in the face from time to time.
You just need to grow up.
I mean, in your 40s, focusing on, well, I'm an 8 and she's a 6 and all of that, it's a little shallow.
It's a little, like, you're too old.
You're a grandfather age, evolutionarily speaking, like you should be in grandfather mindset.
And if you had a grandfather who was like rating women as they walk by, she's a seven, she's a nine.
I mean, just be like, okay, I mean, you're not 15 anymore.
You're not 17 anymore.
And of course, you focusing on lust has not worked.
If you want lust for your lifetime, then you want to choose a woman based on her virtues because then sex becomes a celebration rather than a using of the body at the expense of an evaluation of the soul.
So, I think that if you wait for another virtuous woman to come along, I think that's a bad idea, man.
If you've spent a quarter century looking for a virtuous woman, and you finally found one, but she's two points below you in physical attractiveness.
Bro, that's a little fussy.
You understand?
That's a little fussy.
You're not going to get...
Fact.
reality, you're not going to get, um, You're not going to get even why Megan Fox drinks blood and Ayn Rand was a little nutty too.
But you're not going to get everything you want in a woman.
You're not.
And spoiler, you're not everything she's looking for either.
She probably wants a guy who's not disturbed by the fact that you're an eight and she's a six and less, less, less.
She probably wants a guy who falls in lust with her for who she is rather than Her flesh.
So, you're not going to get everything you want in another person.
She's not getting everything she wants because she'd like you to be just a little bit less shallow, I think.
And again, I say that having been down that road, I say that with all humility.
I also say that having, you know, like 15 years on you of maturity and aging up and becoming wiser.
Oh, and I'm old and wise.
So, You don't get to assemble people in ideal ways.
You take people who they are on balance if they're virtuous and moral.
I mean, it's been 25 years of you dating.
This is the first moral woman you've come across.
It's not like people are getting saner these days.
So, odds are you're going to be in your late 60s before you find another woman like this.
And then you'll miss out on 25 years of great meals, great companionship, great conversation, mutual moral inspiration.
And nobody's perfect, nobody's ideal, and neither are you.
So you have to focus also on, let's say that, oh, I wish she was exactly who she is, but a 10. It's like, okay, well.
Sure, whatever, right?
Of course, if she was a 10, she probably wouldn't be like this.
Also, in your 40s, this is like finding a Renoir at a garage sale.
So in your 40s, it's mostly broken people, scraps, psychos, and leftovers.
It is.
I mean, it's like the used car market, so to speak, to use a coarse analogy.
A really good used car is not on the market because people don't sell it.
Everything that's on the market is something other people haven't wanted.
Including you.
You're single in your 40s.
She would have every right to say, this guy's an 8, and he's still single in his 40s.
Why hasn't he been snapped up and kept?
Now, it could be the case that you both are just so moral that the general amorality or immorality of the world has spurned and scorned you.
Okay, that's certainly a possibility.
You know, given what you're saying, a little bit of the shallowness, that may not be the case.
So my guess is you spent, you know, 25 years chasing holes, right?
Holes being vaginas, and of course, the absence of a virtue, a void.
Avoid virtue, pursuing the void of the holes.
And that's left you with some scars.
And that's left you with some shallowness.
And that has left you with some immaturity.
I'm not trying to be superior here or wag my finger from some mountaintop of infinite maturity.
I mean, I don't know how many dick jokes I've made.
It's never zero.
So I'm with you there on some of the boyishness.
But so if in the scrap psychos and leftovers of...
Who don't have any capacity to relate or relax, or they're socially awkward or shy and can't connect with people very easily, or they have weird habits or hobbies.
They are secretive because they have things they do at home that they don't want anyone else to know about.
I mean, it's just in your 40s.
Why?
Why?
Why still single, right?
That's a very valid question.
And so if you're a virtuous man, and I don't doubt that, right?
I mean, a couple of tweaks we all need, but...
So if you both have found each other in the general detritus and refuse and asylum sloth from people in their 40s, you guys better hang on to each other like grim life because, Man, the odds of this happening again is virtually zero.
And I say this with love and affection, and I thank you for your support, but grow up.
She's a great woman.
You're a great guy.
Get together and love each other.
And I promise you, if you focus on getting together for virtues and values, your lust will be perfectly satisfied for the rest of your life, and you won't continue the mistakes of your last quarter century.
So go forth.
Don't multiply, but love.
Thank you so much, everyone.
Freedoman.com slash donate to help out the show.
I really do appreciate that.
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