The Queen's Code - Sexpert on Sexpert with Alison Armstrong

[00:00:00] Introducing Alison Armstrong

Willow: All right. Welcome to Sex Reimagined. We are so excited. Leah and I are here with one of our dearest teachers, a woman that we have been following both individually on our own for probably close to two decades, Alison Armstrong. She's been exploring human behavior since 1991 when she made the decision to study men.

So she wanted to find out how she was bringing the worst in men out of them, and hopefully learn how to bring the best out of them. And she has had a lot of success in that and a lot of success in teaching many other women how to do that as well. And in her quest to understand men, she's also really studied women's behavior.

So I really learned how to make this vital connection between the two. Alison is an incredible speaker, thought leader. She's an author, she's an amazing teacher. 

She really brings this philosophy and approach to so many of us who teach in the relationship space and the sexuality space.

Leah and I reference her all the time. And today we're gonna dive into The Queens Code Audiobook, which is a new thing that you've released into the world, and I'm so thrilled because I'm an auditory learner.

I read The Queens Code with you probably, I don't know how long ago, long time ago. But now I'm re-listening and going through it again. And it's so different for me to hear it, and it's also making me realize how much it has changed my whole perception, and perspective, all those years ago.

So it's really fun to just be in the deep midst of The Queens Code once again.

[02:06] How The Queen's Code was a rebirthing experience for Alison.

Alison: I am so glad you're doing that, and thanks for having me here to talk about it. You were talking about Rebirth, right?

Your adventures while you were away and a kind of rebirth. And recording the audio of The Queen's Code did the same thing to me. It was so intense and emotional and I kept thinking, Oh my gosh, this is gonna be so different for people than reading it to yourself. Can I tell you something that someone said about that?

Her name is Candace and she's in South Africa, in Cape Town, South Africa. And what she said, because she'd read the print book originally, was that she realized that the male parts, because there's four male characters and four female characters, that when she read The Queen's Code to herself, the men didn't have emotion, the intensity, the sincerity that came through as I was reading it, and she realized it was because her prejudice against men couldn't imagine them being that emotional, couldn't imagine them being that committed. Right. I mean, and it's one of the things that had me record the audio book was realizing everyone was reading it with their own preconceptions of how that could be meant or could be said, or what the emphasis would be.

And I don't remember if when we were together last I told you how this, The Queen's Code got written that I didn't write it.

Willow: You did tell me, you told us.

Yeah, it appeared to you, right? Yes.

Alison: It's a movie, and the movie's still going. I've been being sent trailers of the sequel. So to, have watched it and have felt it and then to convey that, I did the best I could, typing as fast as I could, but still... it's really tricky to convey emotion in writing, right?

It's kinda like how many emojis it takes.

Willow: Right.

Alison: To really convey big emotion.

[00:04:26] The Evolution of The Queen's Code from book to audio

Willow: You wrote The Queen's Code over a decade ago, right?

Alison: Yeah.

Willow: So I'm curious if you, if there were parts of it that you were like, Oh, I wanna add more or shift this or change that or edit this.

Was any of that going on in your mind when you're audio recording?

Alison: Well, one thing that went on, is despite numerous spell checks and grammar checks by professionals, I still found them. Which I've concluded even if they get caught up in the story, and miss something, right?

But this really weird thing happened, Willow. It only happened when I was doing the parts where Klaudia was speaking. The teacher in this scenario. I would read it the way that I originally experienced it back in 2010. I would read it like that, but it wasn't right. So it didn't feel right. So I did a retake, and that still wasn't right.

So I did another retake. It usually took four retakes. And what was weird is, the original was exactly the way I heard it. I have a heck of an audio memory. But in the 10 years in between, Klaudia changed. Like, how could she have changed? But this Klaudia and that Klaudia, she's more intense, she's more compassionate, she's more playful. She's even more teasing. In chapter five when she's talking about you might jumpstart me, Right? Or when Bert asks, you know, should I take a blue pill? And she's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was so different...

Willow: I love that!

Alison: It really occurs like they all existed in another dimension. So I guess they can even change in that dimension.

Willow: They're living, they're living characters.

Alison: Yeah. Someone, someone said once, if they looked out their window and saw them hanging out like on the sidewalk, they wouldn't be surprised. They're so real.

I love, I love the characters and I love the development that you created and how it's very kind of slow and methodical. And there's plenty of development and Klaudia takes her time in teaching her two pupils. She never rushes. I love that. Because the goddess never rushes. What you just spoke to, one of your students or people saying, when I was reading I didn't hear the characters of the men in those tones. And I think what's so transformational about this book is that it changes your perception.

Willow: It changes the way that you view relating with males, relating with females. And so there's this perception shift that happens. And sometimes we cannot see what we cannot see, right? So we can't shift our perceptions until we hear or see someone else doing it in a different way. And so I think that's what's so valuable about having you read the book and bringing all that emotion through for the male characters. And how real it is for them. I mean, it's just so sweet.

I was just tuning in a moment ago with Karen's husband, Mike, and his dear sweet soul. So his heart is bleeding to be seen and to be understood and to be really held in his truth, which is what's so valuable inside of relationships.

Leah: Well, Alison, you may wanna comment on what Willow just said, but I've been like bursting at the seams.

I've listened to the whole thing and it's reminded me of so many good insights that I got from the original course. And when Mike, we were just talking about Mike, right? Uh, Willow. Yeah, Karen's husband... you hit the nail on the head. It was like they're just waiting to be seen. And I have so many reflections as I was listening to the men in the story, and thinking about all the ways I didn't see them.

I'm trying to see them. I'm trying to see my husband, Matt. I'm trying to see my ex-boyfriend Jeff. I'm trying to see my dad and my brother, and I now feel like I understand what I missed.

And I knew that this piece around respect was so important. But I, you don't even realize you're interrupting because you're so passionate about what it is that you wanna say to them, and that cuts them off. And you can watch the deflate.

And you have a way of putting it into words. So many pieces of the puzzle come together that I think we sense, but don't know what it is. It's like we're missing the key. And that's why Keys to the Kingdom is so well titled. So I wanna know, how did this, I mean, I know you said that the book kind of wrote itself, came through you, but you had all of this outlined in your courses before the book, which came first courses or book?

[00:10:07] Emasculating Men

Alison: Oh, great question. So what came first... like a year into studying men and finding out that everything I was learning, I was using against them because I still had this point of view that they're misbehaving. They were jerks, they had to be trained, taught, and controlled. And then I was confronted by, her name is Ellen Hurst, to give up, to give up emasculating men.

And she used the C word, you know Alison, you're castrating men. And she named every way she'd seen me do it. And knew I had because she saw the result. And so after I gave it up, I laid down my own sword. It wasn't even two weeks, I met my future husband. And father of my children and, you know, 28 years together.

So it was about, I don't know, a year after I started studying men, I'd been talking to women individually. I'd been interacting with them about why they emasculate men and found these different ways. Because they're stupid... because they have power and they use it against you... because they're bigger and stronger and they'll hurt me... right?

Everybody had a different justification for why we have to take men's power away. You cannot leave them empowered, or bad things will happen. Um, whereas one woman said they'll be burping and farting and sperm everywhere. And so I knew there was this book, I knew there was this book that needed to be written.

And because I wanted everybody to know they're not who we think they are, they're amazing. And you don't even have to do anything kind or empowering to them. They're so amazing. Just stop taking the wind out of their sails. Stop cutting them off at the knees, stop, as I would say in the way I speak now, stop forcing them from being these amazing providers back into protecting themselves.

They can't do both at the same time, right? And when we attack them, the provider disappears. They're being great and generous to us, and disappear. And they're just thrown back into having to protect themselves and like when we just stop doing that, their heart, their care, their generosity, it flows over.

It just flows over. And you get to see it in the men, you get to see it in the men in The Queen's Code, and it's so natural for them. They don't put much effort into it. It's like you, you know, take a plug out of the sink and the water flows down. It just, it just does.

[00:12:46] How the book was born

Alison: And so I knew I had to do it and I was trying to help my new sister-in-law.

I was trying to help her because I could see she and her husband were headed towards a cliff. He had become a king, like we teach in Keys to the Kingdom, and she was still acting like 20 years earlier. What worked then wasn't gonna work and she wouldn't listen to me. She paid no attention until I started telling her a story, and I just switched from trying to teach her about the stages of development to telling a story.

It's called The Princess and the Swamp Rat. It's really about, it's really about dating in a way that as a woman, you don't lose yourself. That instead of lowering ourselves to the level that they're operating at, being the inspiration that they rise to the occasion of being with us. So I started telling this story, and all of a sudden she was paying attention.

Leah: Wow.

Alison: Dan, Dan... wait, that was her husband's name, she's like, No... wait... Alison's telling the story, let her finish this. And sure enough, you know, they ended up getting a divorce. Couple years later, it was all over  for them, which is sad. But I knew it had to be fiction, and that's when it began writing itself.

And I just started being shown and then I realized I didn't know how to write it. I knew the beginning, but I didn't know how to write this book. I didn't know all the ways that women justify emasculating men. I didn't know all the triggers, right? The fear, the pain, the injury, the frustration, the despair that triggers us to emasculate men.

I needed to learn more. And that's when I told Joe, my best friend, who started PAX with me, I said, I think I need to do a workshop to teach women so they can teach me how to write this book. And she was in from the beginning. And what I didn't know, to your question, Leah, I didn't know it would take 15 more years before I knew how to write it.

Leah: Really?

Alison: So it wasn't until 2010. Yeah. It wasn't until 2010.

Leah: What a great story.

Alison: Keys to the Kingdom. Yeah. Keys to the Kingdom King came first because I had enough information to write that. And there's, you know, four characters that carry over into The Queen's Code and then one evening it just struck me, Oh my gosh... I know how... I know how to do this.

And what's weird though is that, and it's funny because weird comes from the Gaelic and it means foretold. What's weird is that I logically pursued my education, right? I logically pursued reverse engineering this whole gastly thing that happens in a misunderstanding, a misperception between men and women. And I did the thing you're supposed to do, wrote the book proposal, wrote chapter by chapter, outlined it, did all the stuff like you're supposed to do.

And there was a bidding. You know, a bidding between three major publishers and the whole thing. And yeah, it was really cool. And then I sat down to write the book, you know, chapter one, we're supposed to do this, it didn't happen... it didn't happen with Keys to the Kingdom, I didn't count on it for The Queen's Code, but The Keys to the Kingdom was a movie. I transcribed it as fast as I could.

And then I got to The Queen's Code. Not counting on that it would happen. Right. There's no reason to think something like that would happen again. And I sat down to do it very methodically. Nope.

Screen opened, movies started playing... these people, you know, Raul and Jack. Oh my gosh. These men who've been best friends for so long, such different lives, the way they interact with each other. I was just, ah, just type, type, type it as fast as I could. And Jack is so saucy you know, like, heck, she's gorgeous, but frostier than a shaken martini, you know?

Oh yeah. A manly, That's such a manly man. Right? Everything about it. And so that's where it departed, right? This logical way of pursuing writing... But then when it came time to write it, I didn't, I didn't write it. I typed it and I watched the movie and I typed as fast as I could until I was exhausted each day.

96,000 words.

Leah: Wow.

Alison: It took like three weeks. Three weeks...

Leah: what!?

Alison: Three weeks to type it? Yeah. You can't write a book that fast, but you can transcribe a movie that fast. And yeah, that's how long it took. Keys of Kingdom, took 10 days of doing that.

Leah: Wow.

Alison: And it's a crazy process. Oh my gosh. So I watched the movie and I wrote it. I edited everything I wrote cause it was a mess. Then re-edited the whole thing. Then the publisher wanted me to cut out 40% of the words. Unfortunately had a very interesting contract, so I gave them their money back and I took my book back. Because no way was I gonna... how do you cut almost half of that story out?!

Really? Which part are you going cut outta the movie?

Leah: Right!

Alison: That doesn't make sense. And then we proofreaded it. I did three book clubs with The Shift Network. I mean, I've read that book so many times. And then reading the audio book, I still was surprised. And I've been doing this thing called Your Queens Code Journey, where I'm answering questions while people are listening to the audio book.

Because I just kept thinking to myself, Oh my God, this is so intense. This happened so fast. Their whole world's gonna be upside down. I wanna be there for them. I wanna be there for them. So I listen, I re-listen to the chapter before I answer questions with participants.

Leah: Wow.

Alison: And I'm still surprised every time! That's in this book. That's in this book. I don't remember that. I didn't relate to the word channeling. Like I didn't. That was weird to me, channeling. But now I just had to accept it. Cause when I've edited videos of me teaching, I'm like, this Alison doesn't know what that Alison just said.

Leah: Right. Right.

Alison: Really? Wow, I should do that. There's this disconnect.

Willow: Ya just gotta own it.

Alison: I'm getting more... yeah... I'm getting more peace with it. And I'm like in the first trimester pregnant with the sequel to The Queen's Code and I'm just...

Willow: oh, exciting!

Leah: yeah!

Alison: ...you know, like, we're letting you know, we have an ultrasound... right?

Leah: Right, right, right.

Alison: And there's things that they show me about what's happening next. And I have three children, right? Three human children. And I can only take credit for a very small part of who they are. I've been in awe of them since they were born. And if I was gonna be proud of myself for something, it's that I didn't squish them too much.

Leah: Yeah.

Alison: They have, they've become tremendous versions of who they are. Right. And The Queen's Code is like that. I'm its servant. I'm not its author. I'm its servant. And what a, what a joy. And you can hear in my voice when I'm reading it, I had to stop and do retakes. Not just because Klaudia had changed, but because I was sobbing.

Leah: Wow.

Alison: And I had to get it back together. And one time I said something about the emotion that was in my voice. I said, should we retake it? And the sound engineer said, no, it was perfect for the part. Yes. And you'll, you'll hear times where I'm,

Willow: I know that moment.

Leah: Yeah. Yeah. There's this thickness that arises. It's so precious...

Willow: ...so powerful. And one of the things that I love is that you invite the listeners of the book to vow, to make their vow to stop Emasculating men, to stop Castrating men. Right. And to send you an email. I actually did The Shift Network with you. I did one of those book clubs with you. And when you invited us to make that vow, I just, the emotion, I was so surprised at the emotion that came from like deep within my soul. It was almost coming not just from within me, but from all women, of the whole lineage. You know? It was just so powerful.

And so I love how you engage the listeners and bring them in. Like, we're doing this together, you know, it's not just these characters, not just me, like, we're all in this together and this is a collective, this is a way to shift the entire paradigm of how we relate to each other.

[00:22:13] Tempted to change the book

Alison: You'd asked me, Willow, was I tempted to change the book right as I was recording it? And I had been attempted, because Klaudia talks about masculine and feminine, and as you know, I mostly avoid those words these days.

I trusted that it's what it's supposed to be, and there are plenty of people for whom those are the words that will allow them to connect to parts of themselves. So let it be.

One of the things that has happened since 2010 is the approach to the vow. And Kristin Sweetie Morelli was actually the one who did this to me on stage. She was like, well, wait a second. Don't we emasculate ourselves too? Shouldn't we give up the right to do that? And I, I burst into tears.

And so the, the process of the vow has morphed into women creating their own code of honor. And so women, I don't know how many years now, at least since 2017, we've been encouraging them to craft what the support that they need.

So one woman said, I give up the right to emasculate men forever, especially when they've hurt my feelings. Right?

I gave up the right to emasculate men forever, especially when it feels like they're trying to control me... especially when it seems like they're dominating me... especially when they're not listening to me... especially when they're getting in the way of what I wanna do. You know? Especially my brother, especially my father...

Because as women, our feelings trump, right? Our feelings seem to tell us the truth. And one of the things I learned from men is to be a man honor and being honorable is doing the right thing no matter how you feel.

But our feelings, we trust our feelings to tell us the right thing. But There's a difference between truth and the right thing, right?

I think we really can connect to the eternal "fore truth" through that place in our chest that women seem to be connected to almost without interruption, even if we're not listening well. But to craft that vow for our own kind of backstop, if you will, like knowing my weakness will be.... I'm gonna bring out my sword if they do "this"... okay, especially when they do that... I'm still not gonna justify taking their power.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna build muscle, I'm gonna become the kind of person that can interact with men head on. I don't have to steal their power first. Yeah. Like I am powerful enough to interact head on. Yeah. It's so important.

Willow: It's so nuanced. I love it.

Leah: Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple of things that really struck me.

In addition to what you're saying, this sort of plays out in a couple of themes within the book, and it really surprised me. Sometimes I'd have a visceral reaction both in listening to the book and coming to the course the first time. And it's almost like in order for me to be who I wanna be with men, I started to treat myself as if I were misbehaving, and trying to reconcile like, who's wrong here?

and so it was like my mind had to keep on pulling that thing apart that says it's either or, either I'm the one that's misbehaving or they're the one that's misbehaving. Meanwhile, I'm trying to reconcile that no one is misbehaving. This is an awareness on how to love, you know, and how to build each other's power, not take each other's power.

[00:25:54] How men take women's power

Who's Klaudia's husband? His name is Bert. So when Bert explains how men steal women's power through objectification, it was like ceiling shattering for me. And it wasn't just the objectification sexually, but all the different ways that a man will take a woman's power when he feels threatened, when he feels afraid. And in that awareness it helped me see, you know, finally, okay, this is where all the innocence is. We're trying to take each other's power because we feel afraid and threatened, not realizing that we have the power to actually support us all being powerful. and so how do we listen differently?

Leah: How do we accept that we are different and our responses are different and our reactions are different? And it was in those moments where I felt my nervous system go... Oh. Okay. I don't have to beat myself up. I don't have to beat them up. There can be peace on the planet. And I think this is it.

Alison: Well, and from the second chapter, when Klaudia says, regret is a good teacher, but self-recrimination won't be tolerated.

And if you take apart self-recrimination, it has the word criminal in it. Right? And what are people who misbehave? They're criminals. So when, so self-recrimination is us treating ourselves as criminals.

I'm wrong. I did something wrong. I misbehaved. I should have known better. I should have done better. But what if we just don't and didn't. Right? What if we, we just were given such and nobody even can source. Right. Our mother's, mother's, mother's, mother's, mother's, mother's mother. How far back does it go? The expectation that men and women are supposed to be the same and therefore when we're not like them, we're misbehaving.

Right? They have a little more forgiveness than we do because we're so mysterious to them overall. But they still can get so mad and bitter thinking that we're disempowering them on purpose, Right? That we're after them. And there are a few women who are after men for the most part, we're just reacting from fear and frustration.

And they don't know that, which is what's been happening is men have been reading and they're now listening to The Queen's Code and they're gaining understanding for themselves and why they need what they need. And so like they are not putting themselves down because men have been themselves emasculating and then they're gaining more compassion for why women do what they do.

And instead of it, you know, the ways they could objectify us. "What a bitch".

Leah: So yeah...

Alison: Thank you for noticing that.

Leah: Yeah. It was really like, oh, it strummed my heart. There's also this way that you talk about what happens when a man is repeatedly put down through the emasculation. You know, whether that is the look or the tone of the voice or the belittling or treating them like they're stupid.

I mean, there's all these ways that women respond that I think is really from their subconscious. We're not even aware of it. And I'm wondering if you can share how those stages escalate in terms of his reaction.

So I think one, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the first stages, they just kind of pull in and they get quiet.

It's almost like you can see them getting smaller and then when it keeps happening, what are the next stages that escalate their own feeling? And it seems like objectification ends up being further down the line.

[00:29:39] What happens when you emasculate men?

Alison: I think you're doing a great job. I'm so curious what else you're gonna say. If you kept going, would you try?

Leah: Okay, I could try to answer my own question.

Yeah. Well... well... okay. Okay. So, they go through that process of withdrawing, you can actually see their energy getting smaller, and shrinking.

Alison: Yep.

Leah: And then they start retaliating and getting back. And how do they do that? Well, in my own life, it seems like they have a subconscious dig. It's like sometimes I feel like I just got knifed and it's usually some sort of comment or a reference or talking over in such a way that what I have to say absolutely does not matter or counts.

And so I think that's where the beginning of the next part of the objectification comes. It's not sexual, it's you don't matter or it's patronizing. Treating me is if I don't have a brain. And that's where I start taking things really personal. And now the war is on. Then the defensiveness starts happening, right?

And so now we're both defended. And we can't even hear when he is giving me gentle insight into a preference. Perhaps... I just feel attacked and then I attack, and then they attack. And the next thing you know, you're separate. And so I have this vision of myself where it's like I got my dukes up and at some point I realized, what are these?

Like I know how to fight. I'm putting my dukes down. I'm not gonna win that fight to begin with. And then comes the process of repair, which is exhausting and humbling and important, and hopefully you get another chance.

This is kind of sounding like a tangent because the next piece around being a queen, is knowing how to clean up your mess, and being held accountable for cleaning up the messes that you make.

So I don't know if I got all those stages right, Alison, but that's what I can remember.

Alison: What I love about your expression of it, is that you describe yours. Right. You describe yours and your experience of getting deep down into the sewer. And what's interesting in the course I'm leading now, which is called Finding Humor in Being Human, the next topic has to do with what I would call sequencing.

[00:32:04] Fight, flight or freeze.

Alison: And so as human beings, when we perceive a threat or an opportunity, because they quickly become threats, you could waste a lot of energy and die presuming an opportunity. when we perceive a threat or an opportunity, we have fight, flight, and or freeze responses. And so it's more complex that what you expressed could actually go in a different order.

Depending on the woman and the man, so, Right. So you could have a man whose initial response to emasculation is attack. That could be his first response. If that's how he is. My first response is to fight. I am a fighter and I usually fight with logic and if that doesn't work, a lot of emotion, but my sequence, right, is fight freeze and I am frozen with a mask on my face.

Yes, this is all fine with me. Behind the mask, I'm trying to figure out a better way to fight. And when I can't think of another better way to fight, I'm figuring out how to escape this? How do I get out of here? But that's my sequence.

Leah: So interesting. Yeah.

Alison: My husband's sequence was freeze, flee , and then fight.

So when I was fighting, he wouldn't fight back. He was frozen and then he'd disappear. And then sometimes he'd come back and his ears would be up, his shoulders would be around his ears, Can we talk about this? And I'd be like, Whoa. Because now he's ready to fight, but his ears are up around his ears because he's ready to fight, but he's trying to protect me at the same time.

Leah: Right.

alison: Men described it as like having a Tasmanian devil inside of a trash can and you're sitting on the top trying to hold it in because you don't wanna hurt the other person, even when you're having a fight response. So a man could do any of these. He could experience being diminished and just disappear.

Where... where'd Joe go? Where'd Joe go? So it's something for us to be awake to. I know a man who, how he is with all women is how I was with all men. All men. He starts attacking. That's how I was when I started studying men. If I started with, hand me your balls and then we'll talk.

And I would use everything to throw them off balance, right? I use my intellect, I'd use sexual energy, I'd use confusion. because I was so afraid of them. I just started with an attack, and some women are so afraid or frustrated, they just are in withdrawal, a perpetual flee. Right.

Yeah, so it's really complex. And so there's an individual incident. How does someone respond, which is that objectification is actually really quick and it's not just men. Although in The Queen's Code, Bert's talking about men doing it.

Leah: Oh yeah. I totally see how women do it. Yes!

Alison: Oh gosh. And we do it to ourselves. You know, the voice in my head says, Alison, you're such an idiot. And we, we label, I call it listening to labels because if we can label it, it makes us feel like we have control over it, and then we're less afraid. What a bitch. What an ass, what a jerk. What an accountant.

You know,

Leah: That's what their problem is. Right?

Alison: Exactly. They're, they're so red, they're so blue, they're so typical and then we're less certain. We feel like we have control. It's all fake. It's not real power. But it's this false certainty and soothing. We're so compelled to soothe ourselves as human beings and to release the tension, right?

We feel tension when we feel threatened, and so we go about soothing ourselves, and labels are one of the ways we soothe ourselves.

Leah: Interesting.

Alison: It neutralizes what seems bigger than us, which by the way, that's actually the key. You know, cause I've been unwinding this now, right, for over 30 years. In our own imagination, when we think, I can't handle this, it's a different interpretation of, I think therefore I am. If we think I can't handle this, we can't handle it, we're picturing it being bigger than us, and then we'll have a fight, flight, or freeze response.

Leah: Right.

Alison: If we just picture it as, and this is part of what I'm trying to have people see, is if you can see that it comes from fear and frustration, both men and women, fear and frustration and sometimes despair. We get that far, right? But we... but if you can see that it comes from that, and then reach... Most of what needs to happen for human beings is to reach.

[00:36:57] The first time I said something that diminished my boyfriend

Alison: Like the first time that I said something that diminished my boyfriend, It's two years now, right? Greg died three years ago. Dan and I have been together for two years and the first weekend that we were together, I said something cause I was afraid. He was driving close to the edge and there's a ditch and I was trying to figure out a way to say it. But even figuring it out, it's a bad sign. If I'm trying to figure it out, that's strategic. And when I finally said something, he said, That sounds critical. And I stopped taking criticism a long time ago. And that he...

Willow: wow.

Leah: wow.

Alison: ...Could respond... Oh, if I had not already been in love with him, that would've been the moment, right.

Wow.

Willow: That's Self responsibility right there.

Alison: Yeah. I burst into tears and then the self-recrimination came in.

Oh my God, thee Alison Armstrong just criticized a man.

Leah: Oh my God.

Willow: It's a lot of pressure being you.

Leah: Yeah.

Alison: Then I finally went, Wait a second. So what was that? What was that? And I said, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I did that. I was afraid. And I just confess I was afraid.

And he, Oh, he blows my mind. So he's driving and he starts tapping on the steering wheel, when she sounds like that she's scared. When she sounds like that she's scared. When she sounds like that she's scared. He was learning. He was memorizing me. And he is like, okay, so, um, okay, so I'll try to remember when you sound like that you're scared and then...

Willow: Well done.

Alison: ...and then I'll ask you what you're scared of, right? Then I'll ask you what are you scared of?

And, and I said you could, but I already know you're so quick. You probably will figure out the things I'm scared of and remember them. But what if we did this instead? What if I just say I'm scared?

Leah: Right. You don't have to guess.

Alison: Cut right through it. I'm scared. Right. And sure enough, just like a year ago he was following someone really close and I was trying to, I caught myself trying to figure out how to say something in a nice way, and then I remembered I went, I'm scared that you're that close to that car. And he just immediately backed off. Oh, thank you...

Willow: backed off.

Alison: ...for telling me.

Willow: What a good man he provided for you.

Alison: I didn't attack and he gotta protect me from being scared instead of protecting himself from me. Because they're natural protectors too. It's just bad when it turns back to protecting themselves. They more naturally protect us from them unless we're attacking, then they have to protect themselves from us.

leah: Yeah, I mean, I imagine so many of our listeners are going, I have been in that car, scared, asking them, begging them to drive differently, and they just escalate and they become even more erratic. And so how do we reconcile that, when we are scared and we're begging them to respond to our fear by slowing down, or shifting the way that they're driving and then they're not?

[00:40:17] How to respond to your fear

Alison: Well this is one of the things we illuminate. This is one of the things we illuminate for men in our Understanding Women online course. Because there is a big difference between men and women, you could say a masculine approach, a feminine approach. You could say, when we're hunting a result versus when we're very connective and open, right, gathering mode. One of the biggest differences is the relationship to facts versus feelings. Right? And so when we say, you're going too fast, thinking that, just saying that you're going too fast, that he'll slow down. No. He checks this speedometer,

willow: What is too fast?

Alison: Exactly, it's not too subjective. Right? It's this speedometer, right? You're too close to that car. He checks this speedometer. The distance doesn't seem too close to him. Well, one of the things that I learned much later is definitely after The Queen's Code is the difference between men's and women's sight.

Or you could say how it's processed in the brain. The faster something's going, the bigger the difference between a man and a woman's ability to see it. So as a woman, our eyes tend to be wider. We have this peripheral prey vision, right? We're the ones that are startling... the sudden motion... we're gonna run, right?

We act more like horses, for example. This is why I say human beings are both predator and prey. We're both packed and heard. Men's eyes and single focus testosterone, right? They can follow the hockey puck. They can see. Yes, we're both going 80 miles an hour and I can slide in between these two cars, no problem.

And so when my husband, who was an amazing driver. Dan, they're both great drivers, very different. Sometimes I just cover my eyes. He's never hit a truck. He's never hit a truck. He's never hit a truck. He's never hit a truck. Like... pay attention to the facts Alison, the facts.

And then I teach men, we need to feel safe, which doesn't necessarily correlate to the facts. And your facts don't make me feel safe. You slowing down makes me feel safe. And we used to do these long road trips. And Greg would cross the bumpers, right? The little, what do you call those things? On the road in between the lanes, to keep people from falling asleep between lanes because we were going long distances, you know, Colorado to LA. And I would wake up every time he did. And finally I told him, I said, I really need to sleep. I get scared when you change lanes, if there's anything you can do about it?

I found out later he had spent about three hours in the slow lane behind huge trucks.

Willow: So you could sleep? Oh my God.

Leah: Oh my, that's just... Precious.

Willow: Now, that's love right there.

Leah: Yeah, like that's a provider. You know, it was Jack. There was something that transpired between Jack and Klaudia's granddaughter.

Why can't I remember her name?

Alison: Kimberly.

Willow: Kimberly.

Leah: Kimberly!

Alison: They're all "K". I dunno why? Klaudia, Kimberly, Karen. Yeah.

Leah: So she was communicating something. He goes, Yeah, I did like to get a rise out of you. You know, there was this admission to; it is kind of fun to poke the bear and see what'll happen.

Willow: Poke the bear.

Leah: Yeah. Yeah. There's that playful side that I think sometimes we misread. Yes. And we think it's mean, but it's just getting a rise. It's getting a reaction. Because then we're paying attention. We're giving them attention.

Alison: Exactly.

leah: We'll do anything to get it, right?

[00:44:19] Fiery attention

Alison: Fiery attention. Sparky attention from a woman is better than no attention. Yeah. And this is why, because our attention gives them energy, gives them life force. It can't help but do that because who women are, whether you give birth to children or not, we are conduits of life force. And so to ignore a man as if he's not worth noticing, that's why it's so emasculating. Because first, in his mind, he doesn't know that women won't make eye contact because they're afraid. Right? He thinks we're saying something. You're not worth my attention. His interpretation. Right. This is why it's so important for them to realize how afraid we are and how frustrated we are. So, if we keep ignoring them, when they're trying to interact with us positively, then they'll switch to, you know, dunking the pigtail into the inkwell.

Well, I mean, this is, this is ancient. Anything to get her to turn around and go, Ahg!!

Leah: Totally.

Alison: It was sparky, but it was attention.

[00:45:28] The magic of communication

When Klaudia starts teaching them about sexuality, and Karen and Mike are trying to get pregnant, right? And so Karen's turned it into this like, I'm ovulating, get home now. Like it's a project. Sex becomes a project to co-create a child and it takes all the fun and the joy and the pleasure away.

willow: And so then when Mike is telling her about what sex provides for him, you know what he actually gets out of it. He's like, it's nourishment. Like I can't get it from food. I can't get it from sleep. I can't get it from any other place. What I get from sexual intercourse with my wife. You know? So it's so powerful when the other party really understands that and can really finally see. Like, okay. Well then I'm happy to give that to you, You know?

And now I really see it, I really get it. So similar to what you're speaking to.

leah: Yeah. And that's such a... it's like there's the magic and the communication where... it's like, this is where we have an opportunity to really learn about ourselves and each other by connecting to; what do I get when this is supported?

Here's what I get to feel... Here's what happens to my body... Here's the sensations that change... here's what opens... Here's what closes... and it's brought all of that back and I've started to play with it with Matt last night. I've been kind of bugging him about, Hey, you're always leaving the car empty and you know me, I'm always like five minutes late, 10 minutes late to everything and it adds that little bit of stress.  And so I was able to say what it provided for me because he had filled up the truck and how I felt driving home knowing I didn't have to make that extra stop. And it was so fun to re engage the steps in the process.

And not just because it's helpful for him, but because it also connects me to me. And helps me be more present and intentional and to remind myself that nobody knows what's happening in my head. You know, don't expect him to be a mind reader. So I just have to say this piece around providing and what we get when you provide this, what it does, is just pure genius.

And how did that come into your awareness? How did that magic, you know, in your own lived experience, How did you bring that together? It's magical how that works in relationships, and I think it's not just men and women, right? That formula could be brought to any relationship and it would be effective?

alison: Oh yeah. Wow, usually I can recall the moments of things that are significant, and for whatever reason I can't right now. And it's different for different men and in different relationships. Like, once I called Greg and said, You know, there's something that I need from my office that I found here and I wanna know can I buy it because it's over $200.

And he said, Well, your question gives you the answer, so what do you mean? He said, You said you need it, so get it. He didn't need to know. He didn't care what it was. He didn't know what I needed to know, what it provided for me. I had a reputation with him by then, we'd been, I don't know, married for a couple of years, where I never asked him for something frivolous. If I said I needed it, I did.

And that was good enough for him. He didn't, he didn't need to know what it would provide.

Leah: Gotcha.

Alison: That's all. He just needed that word. And, but then there are others who will go, Why do you mean that? We may get defensive, but if we can shift and go, Oh, he's asking me what would it provide, and then spell it out.

And Leah, there's so much that men don't know about us, that we don't know they don't know. Like they don't know... say you had to fill the car, truck up with gas on your way home at night. How scary that is. How scary it is to pull in a gas station, and get out in the dark, and deal with that kind of exposure, and vulnerability.

Men don't feel that kind of exposure. I mean like one man said, Yeah, I was visiting my grandma. I was early, so I pulled up in front of a convenience store, rolled down the windows and took a nap.

What? What? Like a woman in her own home, there's only certain places she can fall asleep. She can't fall asleep anywhere. It's gotta feel really safe. Right. And so they don't know how much we're monitoring our own safety. They don't know of our weakness, that it doesn't matter how much we work out, our muscles still aren't gonna be as strong as what testosterone does.

And so to have them understand that, or even just handling the gas pump and the smell and if it overflows and then, oh, it's just so gross.

Dan and I made a road trip a few weeks ago, a couple thousand miles. In a very short amount of time. And it was for my dad's celebration.

So we took my car and I'm like, I've got the gas. I'm just thrilled that you're coming. And I was like, could I give you my credit card? Would you put the gas in? It's really stinky.

He looks at me, he goes, I think it's really stinky too. But okay.

And we went and did it and I was like, Oh, thank you so much for doing the smelly part. Thank you so much.

Well, then we get to the next place, right? And he gets out and he does it again. You did it again! Thank you so much.

By the time we were on the way back and he filled it up with gas, he went, I think this is my job. He just, he just took it over forever. Forever. He's putting the gas in the car and it's like, and it just took my consistency, with how much it mattered to me, how much I appreciated it. I don't take it for granted. I don't think you're a man, you're supposed to do that. I'm perfectly capable of doing it. But he saw what it provided and then he just decided, okay, that's my job. And they are like that. When you have clarity and when you have appreciation, but it takes both. You have to have clarity in the front end and appreciation on the back end.

And what we call it is clarity, consistency, and appreciation. So if you have a consistency between what you appreciated and what you asked for, don't ask for one thing and then thank for something else. That creates confusion. If you appreciate what you ask for, right, it's consistent . That's how people learn that you mean it. That you say what you mean and you mean what you say.

And it does work. It works with everybody. It works with young people, it works with women, and it does change everything. And then like Klaudia teaches in The Queen's Code, if instead of asking for what you think they'd be willing to give it, you ask for what really matters to you and therefore that appreciation is gonna be a lot of points.

So if I had it all my way, you would pump the gas.

Leah: The best thing ever! I love "If I had it all my way", or if you had it all your way, I mean, I have been using that since the day you taught it. And love it, love it, love it. So genius.

Alison: It's magic.

Leah: It's magic.

Alison: And it changes, it changes everything. And Greg actually invented that. My husband invented that.

Leah: Really? Thanks Greg.

[00:53:09] Intimacy and sexuality

Leah: I have a feeling you were gonna say something about intimacy and sexuality in Willow's prior comment about what sex provided, and I just wanna bring you back to that?Someone asked me how evolved does a man have to be, to be like Mike and get what he gets out of sex?

Alison: Uh, he just has to be a man. And it has to be safe to express it. Mike is typical. She thought Mike was an exception, of some evolved man. No. Mike's a man. Jack's a man. Berts a man. None of them are exceptional. They're men.

Leah: Wow. Wow. We could just talk for hours and hours.

Wow. Yeah. Love, love, love. Thank you. Thank you, Thank you. Best of luck with the book.

[00:53:55] Alison's Offering

Willow: So for those of you who are still tuning in, we have The Queen's Code and Keys to the Kingdom on audio for you. We've got Alison's app.

Yes, we do. We've got Alison's app, we've got the latest book.

Leah: We're gonna put it in the show notes, so you've got the links and you can get started with The Queen's Code. And it's quite the ride. It'll be really fun. You can either buy it, um, and read it if you, if you love the reading version or if you like to listen. It was really fun to listen to it this time. And she reads all the characters.

Willow: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I highly recommend listening to it. So we'll drop that link in the show notes and we highly recommend getting that audio. Those two audio books, they will change your perspective. They will change your life. They will change the way that you interact, not only with the opposite sex, but also with yourself.

Leah: Yeah. So many gems. As you could see, we could have hung out with Alison for hours and hours. I mean, I like so many things. I love to pick her brain, like can you just come over here and do free therapy because you are so smart.

[00:55:03] The dish

Voice Over: Now our favorite. The dish.

Leah: Welcome. It's a dish hour. We just had a wonderful time with Alison armstrong.

Willow: Yeah. One of our sheros. She's just such an incredible inspiration for both of us. I really felt like a geek asking her about her writing practices. Like, how was it reading the book? Because I know when I wrote my book, I had to rewrite so many times and I can't even imagine like 10, 15 years later reading the book out loud and thinking like, Oh, I better go change this whole other section too.

So that was fun.

Leah: Yeah, yeah. You know, it was, I bet it was really tempting because her work has also really grown. It's been less male / female, specific.

Willow: Yeah.

Leah: And that book was very much male / female specific. And so when she said it was tempting to wanna switch the language, but she chose not to.

Willow: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad she kept it as it is. It's such a deeply transformational book. I can't remember which one of my clients, but they came to me one time and they were like, Yes! I just finished The Queen's Code. And I was like, Yes. She's like, my whole outlook, my whole perspective, everything is completely different.

And it was so fun for me to re-listen to the book because I'm actually an auditory learner. I don't really read well and learn things with my eyeballs. So to hear her speak it out was like a whole nother layer and level of learning. Not to mention I got to see how much I've used that book in my journey over the past decade or more? I don't know when the first time I read it was.

Leah: And that was really fun to learn that you were part of one of the test groups or whatever she was doing when she first wrote the book. How did you do that? How did you get involved with that?

Willow: The Shift Network it was through The Shift Network.

Leah: Oh, right. What is The Shift Network? Is that still around?

Willow: Yeah. I don't know if it's still doing its thing, but they have like different teachers come in and do different programs and that kind of stuff. So I think I found it through a summit or something. I'm not totally sure. Don't remember.

Leah: Neat. You know, the beginning of the episode of course was really frustrating for me. What some of you may have noticed, uh, watching this episode was that we switched how we film. We are now with squad casts, where before we were doing things on Zoom and it was really fun for me to look at the footage and see the difference between the Zoom recordings and the squad cast recordings.

And in the beginning it was like my mic kept on echoing, so I was hopping on and off. And you don't see that in the episode, but you do see me missing for like, the first 20 minutes. And so I was a little ungrounded and a little frazzled trying to get the echo off of the episode. We finally figured it out and so that took me a minute, you know.

And one of the things I had asked Alison that I really, actually struggled with in the book was, I internalized on some level, I was probably really relating to the characters in such a way where it just felt like there was so much accommodating that the women had to like, restructure everything in order to support the masculine in that framework. And I wanted there to be more, I don't know, more like compassion or understanding for what the women were struggling with.

Willow: Uhhuh, yeah.

Leah: Which I think often in our relationships with men gets misunderstood. Like the heart of where we're coming from often gets overlooked.

And I wanted to feel that compassion. I wanted to feel that understanding coming from Klaudia.

Willow: Yeah.

Leah: And it was a real turning point that I finally got when the piece around what's really happening in these scenarios is the taking of power from each other through the objectification of women and through the castration of men. And then it was like, oh, it all came together and it's basically all the same thing. Yeah. We can castrate a woman just as much as we can castrate a man.

Willow: Absolutely.

Leah: We can objectify a man. Just the way we can objectify a woman. Yeah. And it's just the stealing of power out of feeling threatened, out of feeling insecure, out of feeling, um, misunderstood. And since watching or listening to the book I'm watching, I'm seeing it everywhere.

Willow: You Yeah, I know. Isn't it crazy?

Leah: Oh my god. I'm teaching a 10 day facilitator training right now. We have teacher training at Source Tantra, and so I'm watching the inner Dynamics even with those of us on the team.

Willow: Yeah. Yeah.

Leah: And it's giving me like, I'm really standing back and going, Wow, okay. So the things I've struggled with over the years are connected to this.

Willow: Yeah.

Leah: And the ways that I have behaved while threatened and the ways that my co-teacher has behaved when threatened. I didn't realize what the undercurrent was really happening. And the fear of love, or the threat of having someone take something from you. Yeah. Which is fascinating.

Willow: Yeah, it's really, it's like it's taking a power and it's also a shaming. It's just basically like making somebody feel bad for the way that they are, you know? And because you don't understand the way that they're, don't understand what's deeply underneath it. So how has that changed your 10 day experience, because you've done a myriad of these training sessions?

Leah: Yeah, I mean it forever, um, you know, two decades. And so we have a lot of inner dynamics, you know. And also, my colleague Charles, we've had a long history. You know, from being engaged, to being in love for eight years, and now we are, we teach from a place of friendship and being family. And I love his wife and she's on stage with us, and his son is on stage with us, and our dear colleague Judith is on stage with us.

We got a lot of people on stage and I, for the first time, I'm really standing back.

Willow: I bet that feels good for you in a way.

Leah: In some ways because I'm really evaluating where am I at and where do I belong and where do I want to invest my time and creativity and energy? So on the one hand, I felt really sort of pulled from my time here.

My, this chapter may be finished for me and it's time for me to really move on and make space for the next generation. Yeah. You know, when I first came to work. Caroline made space for me, and then I was the next generation. And it feels like 20 years later here I'm in another position. Like Caroline, it's time for me to pass the baton.

Because I really feel like Christie and Orion, they've got this. Yeah. I'm not needed, like I was in the past. And I'm so grateful for having the position I had for so long and it just feels like a sense of completion. So we've got level two starting in a month. That's exciting. And I'm like, Okay, where, what do I need to communicate?

Cause at this point, I have vacillated from, I think I'm finished, it's time to hand over the goddess cloak. And then I'm kind of, well... maybe if I just went for one class a day instead of three. You know, so it's kind of like, where am I? What do I need? What value can I bring to the students and what space will be made for me in order to provide that value?

Because if I'm not gonna be influential and really participating and offering my gifts. I got other stuff to do, you know? I want to invest my time where I can be of the most service. Yeah.

Willow: Help people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, interesting that you, that you had that sort of more Observatory perspective, you know, because of The Queen's Code and just recently listening to it again and just, you know, how that kind of shifted like, well, what really is a priority for me?

You know, because I think when you've been doing something for two decades, you can get very attached to the identification of that, you know? And there's that ego involved there. And I think one of the things that The Queen's Code really peels back is ego. You know, like, let's get to the heart of the matter.

Let's really get to the truth. Like what's actually going on in a male's brain compared to a female's brain. Like there are different corpus colossals is a different size, the amygdala is a different size. You know, we've got different chemicals and hormones running through our brains, which make our truth.

Different than the opposite sex, but it's hard for the opposite sex to even perceive that. So it's really a shift in perception as one of the gems of this book. You're just a living example of what that, how that shifts in your work.

Leah: Yeah. And you know, I'm really grateful for the book because it's giving me a touch of grace to not be sad, mad, or threatened by anything.

I'm just bringing my energy in and my ego is not charged up with having a need. Yeah. To get a need met for myself. I'm just, it's just an awareness of going, where do I wanna, where, where can I be of service? Yeah. And right now it feels like where I can be of service is leaning back.

Willow: Mm. That's sweet.

Leah: Making space and not being upset by it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like my ego really is standing back and really just being in gratitude. And I have to say my private session one-on-one work, I have been phasing that out the last number of years. And so I really only provide that in a V I P retreat style.

But when I come to these teacher trainings, it's the one place that I still offer like a one-on-one, a la carte experience. And I have treasured them. I mean, I'm having these rich, rich experiences.

Willow: It's so good.

Leah: And bringing back like, another part of my home. And it's also bringing back like a memory of this part of who I get to be.

Yeah. It hasn't changed my mind.

Willow: Right.

Leah: I'm still phasing that part out.

Willow: Right.

Leah: You know? Yeah. But I still, It's like so yummy. I feel so grateful for these bodies.

Willow: Yeah. And the healing of their bodies, the healing that happens through their finding their own pleasure, their own sensation, and their own sexuality.

They get to experience their sexuality through Leah's hands. I mean, what could be more healing and amazing and wholing than that.

Leah: Yeah. I mean, it's cool because like you have some of these that are total beginners, right? And then we've got some, like really, oh my God these beautiful older people who have a lot of maturity, tons of growth behind them.

They're so awakened. In fact, Off air, I can't wait to introduce you to one of the students who's a mad genius and I wanna have him. I'm gonna plant a seed with the audience right now because I wanna have him on the show.

Willow: Oh, good.

Leah: He's like the number one expert on parasites in the country.

Oh. He's a sexologist. A taoist sexologist, acupuncturist. Endocrinologists. Like totally your world.

Willow: Oh my God, my team.

Leah: Hey, I can't wait to talk about the relationship between parasites and sexuality.

Willow: Wow. Fascinating.

Leah: What the connection is.

Willow: So I can't wait to talk about that too. When's he coming on the show?

Leah: He's so cool. I know. I told him, I was like, I gotta get you on the podcast. When are you leaving, Maybe we can do it in person? Yeah. So, yeah, it's been really cool.

Willow: Awesome. Yeah. All right, everyone have fun. If you wanna re-listen to this episode or if you just listened to it, we hope you enjoyed it. And if you have not yet picked up The Queen's Code, be sure to use the link in the show notes to do so because it is well worth it.

Leah: Totally worth it, and love, love, love.

Voice Over: Thanks for tuning in. If the hosts seem to know what they were talking about, that's because they do. Leah Piper is a Tantric sex master coach and a positive psychology facilitator. Dr. Willow Brown is both a Chinese and functional medicine doctor and a Tao sexology teacher.

Don't forget your comments, Likes, subscribers, and suggestions matter. Let's realize this new world together.