How to Treat Men Better - Alison Armstrong - #1026

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
You asked why it is that I wanted to speak to you and that you were surprised that I would. I can't believe that you're surprised that I would want to speak to you.
I think the stuff that I've learned about you and your work is, I think you're phenomenal. I think you're absolutely wonderful. I think the idea of working collaboratively to help women get more out of men, as in treat men in a way that they want to be treated, that causes them to behave in the best way that they can to serve their partner, to create this alchemy that ever refines and transcends and includes, I think is wonderful. I think it's fantastic.

**Alison Armstrong** (0:47)
Thank you. It's a privilege.

**Chris Williamson** (0:56)
What is it that you're trying to achieve with your work?

**Alison Armstrong** (1:00)
Heaven on Earth, love, people choosing love, again and again and again over everything else. It's probably the easiest way to describe it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:14)
There's a lot of different routes to Heaven on Earth. Yes. What's the one that you've chosen?

**Alison Armstrong** (1:29)
Oh boy, there's so many ways to go with this. I would say the one that I've chosen has to do with paradigms. Exposing paradigms, revealing paradigms, reverse engineering, how the way that a paradigm, every paradigm makes certain things easy, simple, obvious. It makes other things impossible.
If the results that you want are impossible in the paradigm you're operating in, get a new one. Devent a new one. And even trade them out. Like, ah, this gives me access. Okay, let's go there. And since I started studying men in February of 1991, when I found out I was bringing out the worst in y'all, which was great news. I don't know if you've seen that in any of the content you've watched. This is the best news. Can I swear?

**Chris Williamson** (2:34)
You can swear as much as you'd like.

**Alison Armstrong** (2:35)
Oh, good. We have a policy about swearing and that is that we do.

**Chris Williamson** (2:42)
We are pro-swearing, we are proudly pro-swearing.

**Alison Armstrong** (2:45)
But, but only because you can't separate truth from transformation. If you water down the truth, you water down transformation.

**Chris Williamson** (2:56)
And you are molesting the truth by getting in the way, by limiting people's ability to use language.

**Alison Armstrong** (3:04)
Well, you water down, you water it down. And I'm all about potency. And so precision and potency. I think like an engineer, so reverse engineering and then depending on the result you want, like there's such a thing as too potent for a particular result.

**Chris Williamson** (3:24)
Yeah, it's too refined, too condensed.

**Alison Armstrong** (3:26)
Yep.

**Chris Williamson** (3:27)
I love the word precision.

**Alison Armstrong** (3:28)
Yeah. Or there's, in some cases, like I'll generalize. I'll generalize and I'll swing the pendulum, the pendulum so people can find themselves. So it's purposely imprecise.

**Chris Williamson** (3:46)
Right? Yeah. The best songs do that as well.

**Alison Armstrong** (3:50)
The best?

**Chris Williamson** (3:50)
Songs, music songs. I think there's a degree of vagueness in lyrics. So for a long time, just because I hadn't thought about it enough, I assumed there was nothing that could be said in a song that couldn't be said in a book or a podcast. Because I have way more words. I'm way more precise. I can explain, I can revisit, I can loop back, I can come from a different angle. But there's tons of stuff that you can say in songs. Regardless of the fact there's a melody, there's stuff that you can say, there's a better way to say it. There's stuff that you can say in poetry that I can't say in a podcast. Yes. Well, the poem is limited by its pentameters and the syllables and the phrases and how is that the case? Well, because the vacuum, the absence of explanation allows people to inject themselves into the story and it sucks them in. So the purposeful vagueness resonates.

**Alison Armstrong** (4:47)
Well, that's why Keys of the Kingdom and The Queen's Code and the sequel to The Queen's Code, which will be The King's Code. That's why there's sex in those books. But it's vague. The more explicit you are in a sex scene, then people are judging like, do I want that or no, I don't want that. You just leave it just broad breaststrokes and then everybody finds themselves in there, they fill in their own pictures and then it can resonate and get through.

**Chris Williamson** (5:29)
Amen. Easy to please.

**Alison Armstrong** (5:33)
How rigorously are you using the word please?