The Nice Guy Syndrome in Your Divorce Recovery - Michael Read || DPTSP 067 || David

[00:00:00] All right, welcome back to the Don't Pick The Sky Podcast, where we tap into awesome guests' superpowers and insights in order to help and engage my men over 40 to heal from divorce.

[00:00:10] Welcome to the show, Michael Read. He's a men's coach that helps men understand healthy masculinity through science, their psychology, and history.

[00:00:19] We talked about before traumas. We'll be discussing men's health, masculinity, mental health, along with societal and cultural trends.

[00:00:28] Also healthy versus toxic masculinity in terms of helping my men over 40 heal from divorce.

[00:00:35] And he also has a YouTube channel called The Adaptive Male, so he's busy.

[00:00:56] Welcome to the Don't Pick The Scab Podcast with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during, or after a divorce. Check it out.

[00:01:11] So, Mike, go ahead and introduce yourself, and I've got some questions for you.

[00:01:15] Thank you. Thank you.

[00:01:15] Yeah, I've just gotten into this work pretty recently.

[00:01:17] The coaching space, the scientific angle of the coaching space for me is more an answer to the idea that I personally don't vibe too much with spirituality, although I completely respect it.

[00:01:28] I think it has its place in the world. It's super powerful.

[00:01:29] I think science kind of is catching up on the things that spirituality figured out a long time ago.

[00:01:34] So the lessons are essentially the same, but the understanding of why it works in the first place is now getting updated through the lens of modern science and things like that.

[00:01:43] So it's much more approachable by a lot of guys who might say, talk about your inner child.

[00:01:47] And most guys go, that sounds like bullcrap and you're wasting my time and I'm a man.

[00:01:51] We don't have inner child bullcrap.

[00:01:53] But if I say to somebody, okay, you want to say inner child, for example, I personally would hear that five years ago to have heard that and be like, you're full of crap.

[00:02:01] That's just some nonsense.

[00:02:03] But nowadays, a better interpretation through a scientific lens, by something like the online lines of understand that you have a framework of how you act and behave in certain situations that was laid out and built out in childhood.

[00:02:15] That is still in your brain, still in your system, is still wired into you.

[00:02:20] And it starts to manifest in weird ways in your day-to-day life until you recognize what it is.

[00:02:24] I like to call it the algorithm.

[00:02:26] Essentially, it's almost like how are you programmed to act the way that you do?

[00:02:31] Why do you respond the way you do to certain things?

[00:02:33] It's not you being a bad person, you want to do certain things.

[00:02:36] It's a matter of how were you trained on that algorithm by your parents, by your culture, by your society, by your neighborhood, your family, whatever it was.

[00:02:44] And then how is it either helping you or hurting you in your modern age?

[00:02:48] And then how do we go about changing that?

[00:02:50] Correct.

[00:02:51] I was browsing your YouTube channel.

[00:02:53] It was very interesting.

[00:02:54] Let's talk about my new question.

[00:02:57] My first question is, wow, here we go with the editing.

[00:03:00] Where is it?

[00:03:01] Did I move it?

[00:03:03] So you talk about men getting out of their own heads.

[00:03:06] What does that mean?

[00:03:08] Yeah, that's more of an emotionality thing.

[00:03:10] So we as men, we're very much problem-solving machines.

[00:03:15] We love it.

[00:03:16] It feels good to knock things off the list and solve a problem.

[00:03:19] It feels good to be needed in that regard.

[00:03:21] The problem with that comes down to the fact that oftentimes what we'll try to do, this is all very subconscious, very quick and behind the scenes, so to speak, that we'll try to become very logical about something that happened.

[00:03:35] Whatever it may be.

[00:03:37] I have a short temper because that's just who I am.

[00:03:40] Or my boss was pissing me off.

[00:03:41] Or when I was growing up, this happened to me.

[00:03:43] It's just the way it was.

[00:03:44] It's fine.

[00:03:44] That's just how life was back then.

[00:03:45] It's just okay.

[00:03:46] It's okay that I explode and lose my temper every other day.

[00:03:49] I have a drinking problem.

[00:03:50] That's just how life goes.

[00:03:51] It's whatever it is.

[00:03:53] And there's a good line.

[00:03:55] There's a good way of thinking about it.

[00:03:56] A lot of guys, what we'll do is refer to as storytelling where basically we'll create a narrative in our head to explain what happened in such a way as to not have to feel our feelings that happened associated with what happened.

[00:04:10] And you might say to a guy, oh, I heard you mentioned this in the divorce podcast.

[00:04:15] I heard you're going through a divorce.

[00:04:16] Like, how are you feeling?

[00:04:17] Oh, pretty stressed.

[00:04:18] I haven't been sleeping well.

[00:04:19] I haven't talked to her and the kid's going to pull all this, could have pulled away.

[00:04:22] And it's never just sort of, okay, how are you feeling?

[00:04:26] I know the story.

[00:04:28] What are, what have you been feeling?

[00:04:30] I'm stressed, but who is the stress nowadays?

[00:04:32] It's just how it goes.

[00:04:33] Life happens.

[00:04:34] Okay.

[00:04:34] And it's, you're avoiding the question.

[00:04:36] And odds are you've got some pain in your system.

[00:04:40] You've got some tension in your chest.

[00:04:42] So you want to scream, you want to yell, you want to pound the table, whatever it may be.

[00:04:46] And you're not letting yourself do that.

[00:04:48] And essentially you can understand whatever traumatic experience happened.

[00:04:52] If you had a death in the family, you lost your job, you were abused as a child.

[00:04:56] You can understand that it happened, but you have to give space for the emotions associated with it to also breathe and get out of your system.

[00:05:04] And so it's very common that men will try to subconsciously without realizing it, avoid the emotional aspect of a problem and just jump right to the logical explanation of it.

[00:05:16] Like I've had some crazy stuff happening in my life nowadays that I can talk about without losing my shit and crying about it because I've given myself space to cry about it or to be angry or to yell or whatever it may be.

[00:05:26] But it's at that point of having letting that myself feel those feelings.

[00:05:31] And so we've heard of guys being stuck in their own head.

[00:05:33] It essentially means like you're not your body.

[00:05:35] Essentially, it's like almost like where you're going to feel your feelings, whatever it might be.

[00:05:40] You might you and with a good methodology we try to do where we try to teach men about emotional language, essentially.

[00:05:47] Because a lot of guys, a lot of men in the last 100, 200 years or so, even stretching back pretty far, we've lost the ability to communicate or really understand what's happening.

[00:05:58] You can become emotionally numb to yourself.

[00:06:00] It's referred to as alexithymia.

[00:06:03] It's a fancy scientific term for basically emotional color blindness.

[00:06:07] Or basically the guy, you've got a good example.

[00:06:12] It might be like shell shock or like severe PTSD where they just have that thousand years there.

[00:06:17] It's almost like the emotional trauma of the event was so overwhelming.

[00:06:20] Your brain just cut off the connection and said, we're not going to have a good deal with this.

[00:06:24] We're just going to numb you out.

[00:06:26] And it's not uncommon, but you'll have those guys who have been through a lot of really heavily stressful events of some sort.

[00:06:31] And you ask them, how are you feeling?

[00:06:32] I'm like, oh, I'm fine.

[00:06:33] Your house just exploded.

[00:06:34] Your wife just divorced you or cheated on you and you're bankrupt.

[00:06:38] You're feeling fine.

[00:06:39] I'm fine.

[00:06:39] It's all good, dude.

[00:06:40] It's whatever.

[00:06:41] Just life.

[00:06:42] And really, you've got a massive just well of...

[00:06:46] Anger and rage and frustration and grief and sorrow that needs to come out.

[00:06:50] Because it's almost like your body needs to digest it.

[00:06:52] Let it happen.

[00:06:54] But you're just bottling it up.

[00:06:55] You're pushing it down.

[00:06:56] You're doing that by just saying, if I could just stay in a logical place and keep telling me that it can create the story.

[00:07:02] That's why it's okay.

[00:07:03] I want it to feel my feelings.

[00:07:04] And as long as I can just stay up here, I don't have to feel the feeling.

[00:07:06] But oftentimes, that manifests as health conditions.

[00:07:11] High blood pressure is a big one.

[00:07:12] Heart disease.

[00:07:13] Stress-related disorders.

[00:07:14] So often, people...

[00:07:16] I do massage therapy.

[00:07:17] And I've had so many times where I've had people come in.

[00:07:20] If they have an autoimmune disease, eight at a time times, they had something crazy happen in their childhood.

[00:07:26] It's crazy what the correlation is.

[00:07:27] It's ridiculous.

[00:07:29] And so, getting out of your own head essentially is learning to reconnect to the physical feeling in your body of what it was and putting a language to it.

[00:07:39] So, most guys don't know what healthy anxiety feels like.

[00:07:43] They know that there's a feeling.

[00:07:45] I just feel nauseous.

[00:07:46] They're like, oh, you might be anxious.

[00:07:48] No, I'm fine.

[00:07:48] I'm just nauseous.

[00:07:49] I ate a burrito.

[00:07:50] I shouldn't eat.

[00:07:51] Whatever it is.

[00:07:52] Or they feel like heat and anger.

[00:07:54] I can do another one.

[00:07:55] Or whatever it may be.

[00:07:56] Learn teaching them to associate physical feelings in your body with emotional experiences.

[00:08:02] And then giving yourself permission to essentially let those emotions run their course.

[00:08:06] As a kid, as a child, when you had an emotional experience, oftentimes you throw a tantrum.

[00:08:12] That's your body's way of rectifying what the situation happened.

[00:08:15] It's, I wanted a piece of candy.

[00:08:16] They didn't give it to me.

[00:08:17] And now I'm pissed.

[00:08:19] Because I had an impression of what I wanted to happen.

[00:08:21] This is what actually happened.

[00:08:22] And I had to get these two pictures to now line up.

[00:08:24] The process of those two lighting up essentially is your body letting that emotion out in the moment.

[00:08:29] But as we grew up, especially men and women are fantastic at this.

[00:08:32] They're basically, they're very emotional.

[00:08:34] So they're friends.

[00:08:34] They tend to just let it rip as much as they can.

[00:08:37] Guys just keep it all in their head.

[00:08:38] They don't want to talk about it.

[00:08:39] They feel weird.

[00:08:40] They don't want to create that space.

[00:08:41] And it ends up being detrimental not only to themselves, but to the people around them.

[00:08:45] Wow.

[00:08:47] Explain the concept of toxic masculinity versus healthy masculinity.

[00:08:52] So there's an interesting line of thinking.

[00:08:56] There's a famous psychologist referred to as Carl Jung.

[00:08:59] He coined this concept of the shadow.

[00:09:02] And the shadow essentially is the parts of ourselves that we threw away in order to,

[00:09:09] simplest way to think of it is we sacrifice authenticity, like who we actually genuinely are,

[00:09:15] in order to achieve attachment.

[00:09:17] It's more important as a child that everyone, that you are bonded to your family,

[00:09:22] you get what you need rather than being authentic at that age.

[00:09:26] But it's not unusual that people, a lot of men, people, women too, but people in general will

[00:09:30] basically say, I'll become who I need you to be in order for you to like me, even if it's not who I

[00:09:34] actually am.

[00:09:36] I think the modern version of toxic masculinity essentially is like the shadowed version of

[00:09:41] masculinity, which essentially is a lot of different things we could point to.

[00:09:47] But toxic masculinity in today's day and age, I think the biggest things I could point to is a

[00:09:55] real hatred for femininity, hatred for...

[00:10:02] It's tough to really nail down exactly what toxic masculinity, as far as I understand people

[00:10:06] will talk about it, is more through the lens of because you're a man, therefore you are a problem.

[00:10:11] Because most of the physical violence in the world is because of men.

[00:10:15] Most of the sexual assault is because of men.

[00:10:20] And I personally don't think it's masculine or toxic in this regard either way.

[00:10:26] I think it's more there are certain...

[00:10:30] Tenants of being a human being, scientifically, evolutionarily, that are just inherent in how

[00:10:36] we operate and things we have wants and needs that if we don't get them met in a healthy way,

[00:10:41] we will find unhealthy ways to meet them.

[00:10:44] And a simple example of this is like the male sex drive.

[00:10:47] Any guy that's ever been 21 knows like the reality warping power of high testosterone male sex

[00:10:53] drive.

[00:10:54] Yeah.

[00:10:55] And ideally, throughout history, that sex drive essentially was designed by nature, by evolution,

[00:11:03] by mother nature to motivate the crap out of you to be the best version of yourself to then

[00:11:08] hopefully attract a mate.

[00:11:14] And that like the problem comes down to this feeling of thinking like, oh, I'm a bad person

[00:11:18] because I'm attracted to women.

[00:11:19] I'm a bad person because I have a sex drive.

[00:11:20] I'm a man who has sexual needs.

[00:11:23] Maybe in the context of talk about the marriage and the divorce stuff, that comes up as a problem

[00:11:26] that like they don't know how to articulate.

[00:11:28] Like I have a need for intimacy.

[00:11:31] I have a need for sexual expression in the context of the relationship.

[00:11:34] But if it's not being met in a healthy way, some men might go off the rails and say, this

[00:11:38] urge is getting so bad.

[00:11:40] It's so powerful.

[00:11:42] So impactful in my head.

[00:11:43] I don't know what to do.

[00:11:44] So they might go towards pornography.

[00:11:47] They might go towards prostitution, sex workers, or an actually absolute horrible worst

[00:11:51] case scenario, sexual assault.

[00:11:54] And so some of these might be like tenants of healthy masculinity might be like a healthy

[00:11:58] ability to get what you want and need in life.

[00:12:01] It might be a healthy ability to express your emotions in a healthy, productive way.

[00:12:05] It might be a big one for men is emotional self-regulation, being in control of your own

[00:12:13] nervous system, being in control of your impulses and things like that.

[00:12:17] And then toxic masculinity might be more interpretation of guys who can't do that because they weren't

[00:12:21] taught how to do that because they didn't have the childhood experiences or just have the

[00:12:25] guidance or the mentorship in life to learn.

[00:12:27] We're not really born with many blueprints as to how we're supposed to operate optimally.

[00:12:32] A lot of things we do figure out through time.

[00:12:35] But the toxic masculinity thing, I think it's a misnomer on the idea of what masculinity is

[00:12:39] itself.

[00:12:40] And it's going to attack them.

[00:12:41] Like men just want sex.

[00:12:42] Maybe at the very bottom of like how you look at nature and evolution.

[00:12:48] Yeah, we're just trying to reproduce.

[00:12:49] That everything built on top of that is just a matter of, oh, we build nice cars.

[00:12:53] Why?

[00:12:53] So I can go and screw my girlfriend.

[00:12:54] So I can drive to work.

[00:12:55] So I can bring back home money.

[00:12:56] So I can sleep with my wife.

[00:12:58] Like we do all this crazy stuff technologically to make life easier to then get easier access

[00:13:03] to things like sex.

[00:13:05] And it's not inherently a bad thing that you have a sex drive.

[00:13:08] You have sexual needs.

[00:13:10] But the question is, are you actually able to articulate them in a healthy way and get

[00:13:14] them met in a healthy way to put yourself together, to find somebody to find a perspective mate

[00:13:19] and be in a long-term relationship?

[00:13:20] So I got a guy going through a divorce.

[00:13:22] What's some of the hits that the masculinity takes when you, especially if the rug is pulled

[00:13:30] from underneath you?

[00:13:31] What are some of the hits that masculinity can take?

[00:13:36] And what are some of the ways they can combat that?

[00:13:41] Purpose can be a big one for a lot of men.

[00:13:43] A lot of men are very, most men would say are very purpose-driven human beings in general.

[00:13:48] But losing your sense of identity, a sense of purpose in the relationship can be a huge

[00:13:54] one, thinking I woke up every day and I went to work to get resources to provide for the

[00:14:00] household, provide for the marriage, provide for the kids.

[00:14:02] And now you just took away half of that from me.

[00:14:05] And then I almost wonder, what am I doing this for anymore?

[00:14:07] What's the purpose beyond myself?

[00:14:08] What's the bigger thing that they can do?

[00:14:10] Identity can be a big one that can get a little bit shattered.

[00:14:12] Let me ask you, how was it when you went through your divorce?

[00:14:15] What did you feel like you had the hardest time working through?

[00:14:19] It's almost like I felt less of a man.

[00:14:22] I had less masculinity and it was a blow to my ego.

[00:14:27] It took me down for a loop.

[00:14:30] It took me a while to almost, I tell people it's almost like losing a man card.

[00:14:35] Someone took it out of my back pocket.

[00:14:37] But over time, I was able to overcome that.

[00:14:40] And then I got the feeling that I had my man card back.

[00:14:44] Yeah, I think a big one inherent in that statement is like status and reputation.

[00:14:49] That's a huge one.

[00:14:50] Our brains are very wired.

[00:14:52] We're naturally wired to seek status and reputation.

[00:14:56] Because arguably, if you have, it's almost more important than food and water.

[00:14:59] Because arguably, if you have good status and reputation, somebody will come along and bring you food and water if you really need it.

[00:15:07] And so, when you said there's a bit like the man card thing, it sounds like this is what the other men are expecting of me.

[00:15:14] I'm expected to be a provider and now I can't provide for anybody.

[00:15:17] I'm expected to be a head of a household and I don't have a household anymore.

[00:15:20] What the fuck happened to my identity?

[00:15:21] What the hell am I supposed to do now?

[00:15:22] And I think part of that is learning to understand that your identity is not attached to a person.

[00:15:29] It's more to yourself.

[00:15:30] Like I said, you reclaimed it eventually.

[00:15:32] And understanding that the problems that got you to where you did in the relationship that kind of blew things up are not inherently just who you are as a person.

[00:15:43] Those problems may be separate.

[00:15:45] There may have been a lack of information along the way that you didn't get growing up or understanding of what the emotions or the problems were in the relationship and why to have to navigate through it.

[00:15:54] And it doesn't mean any less of a man or of ability to be a man that being that their relationship didn't work out because there's a million factors as to why that could have happened in the first place.

[00:16:04] But it can be devastating blows and not have that feeling of a purpose bigger than yourself in the eyes of other people.

[00:16:10] But ideally, like you went to that group, you met other people there who also went through the exact same thing.

[00:16:15] And it's almost like wondering what the hell happened.

[00:16:17] I thought this was like weird.

[00:16:18] I thought it was just me.

[00:16:19] The other guy, the other people were doing, oh, it's you too.

[00:16:21] Cool.

[00:16:21] It's not just me.

[00:16:22] And then looking at the wreckage and wondering where the hell does this all go wrong?

[00:16:26] But understanding that your reputation is not.

[00:16:31] I've worked with, I've had my family have had a marriage therapist who was divorced.

[00:16:37] And then it's thinking, do I want to be talking to you?

[00:16:39] Is this the kind of guy to be talking to you?

[00:16:42] But he made a good point is it's easier to see through the fog when you're not the one steering the ship.

[00:16:47] And so the idea being that when you're in the midst of marriage, of emotions, of conflict, of things like that, everything seems rational until afterwards.

[00:16:56] And you're like, what the hell happened?

[00:16:59] But yeah, I think in that regard, it's a matter of understanding that your reputation is just a small part of the piece of who you are, just not the entire thing.

[00:17:07] That is, you have more to contribute to the world than just the people in the grants of the people in your family, your kids, your wife.

[00:17:12] That is a big part of you.

[00:17:14] But it can be fixed.

[00:17:16] It can be mended.

[00:17:17] You can create something new in that place.

[00:17:19] Whatever was happening before clearly wasn't functional enough.

[00:17:22] Otherwise, it would have kept compounding.

[00:17:23] But if there was apparently something wrong with it and it wasn't going to work in the long term, it doesn't mean you are any less of a man in the eyes of other men.

[00:17:32] Ideally, you have healthy men and people around you that can help you see that too.

[00:17:36] Yep.

[00:17:37] Self-care is a big one.

[00:17:38] That's one of my most important ones.

[00:17:40] Why do men and their masculinity have a hard time with that?

[00:17:45] Especially after going through a devastating divorce, things like that.

[00:17:48] But I see it like when the plane's going down, you put your mask on first and put the kids on mask.

[00:17:54] But these guys are putting on their kids' mask on and not paying attention to themselves.

[00:18:00] The ones who are going through divorce?

[00:18:02] Odds, if I had to guess, I would wager part of the reason for the divorce was the fact that he wasn't taking care of himself in the first place.

[00:18:11] That's not uncommon that we refer to something as nice guy syndrome.

[00:18:15] Oh, yeah.

[00:18:16] Man, you beat me to it.

[00:18:17] Keep going.

[00:18:18] Yeah.

[00:18:18] So it's a bit of a paradox for some men to really wrap their head around.

[00:18:22] But the simplest way to think about it is like you're better off filling up your cup until it's overflowing and give out the excess than it is to pour from your own cup.

[00:18:30] In relationships and life, you do want to be the person that's helping out in the household and this and that.

[00:18:34] But if your life becomes, I am only defined by how other people perceive me, then I'm going to do everything I can to make sure everyone else perceives me in the way that I want them to perceive me.

[00:18:47] Instead of being authentic and that mismatch is going to show up in people's eyes.

[00:18:51] They're going to see it a mile away, especially women in particular.

[00:18:53] Women are super, super well attuned to mismatches between words and behaviors.

[00:18:59] Ten times better than men could ever be.

[00:19:01] So if you're not being authentic about how you're really feeling, and maybe you're a little stressed out one day, it's one of two things.

[00:19:08] It's fine.

[00:19:08] But if you've spent like years and years of obviously bottling something up, essentially, and then you say, as long as you're happy, I'll figure out how to be happy.

[00:19:18] I'll figure out how to have my own thing.

[00:19:21] And this was a good quote I heard from one of my patients a long time ago.

[00:19:24] She's been married for 40-something years, two kids.

[00:19:27] And I remember asking her, how did you do it?

[00:19:29] How did you stay married for so long when the divorce rate is exploding everywhere?

[00:19:32] And she said, in the long run, he has his life.

[00:19:35] I have my life.

[00:19:36] And then we have our life.

[00:19:38] And the idea being like there is a relationship you need to nurture, but there's also a you that you need to nurture and take care of.

[00:19:43] So you have to have your own hobbies and things you do and men you spend time with, as an example, to show to your family and kids that you have more you're working on and building in the world than just the family.

[00:19:54] But if you pour all your energy into making sure everyone else is happy, the moment that comes along when they're not happy, you're going to take it on yourself to make them happy, which is going to create this dependency issue.

[00:20:03] And it's going to cause it to just blow up in the long run.

[00:20:05] That's where the nice guy syndrome comes from, this idea of I can't be happy unless you're happy.

[00:20:10] But you can't make anybody else happy, only they can make themselves happy.

[00:20:13] And especially if it's something emotional or something difficult that they're going through.

[00:20:18] Sometimes the best thing you can do, especially this is a big one for women.

[00:20:21] A lot of guys make the mistake of understanding.

[00:20:23] It's like a lot of women, when they have a problem, they don't want you to solve it for them.

[00:20:27] They just want you to listen.

[00:20:28] Just listen.

[00:20:29] Just listen.

[00:20:31] And that's essentially a mismatch between male and female psychology.

[00:20:35] But what's happening there is that women are just women are very highly attuned to social status and social rankings within groups.

[00:20:44] And knowing that somebody is actually acknowledging not only what you're going through, but can emulate.

[00:20:49] Like, have you ever seen a woman crying and then her friend just starts crying too?

[00:20:52] It's like a resonance going on between the two of them.

[00:20:54] It's like, I'm emotionally feeling what you're feeling.

[00:20:57] Therefore, I can confirm that what you're feeling is true.

[00:21:00] And you can trust me that I'm feeling it because you can see in me that I'm feeling the thing that you're feeling.

[00:21:04] By way of crying, by way of flushed cheeks, by way of the high-pitched voice and being emotional and things like that.

[00:21:10] It's like a confirmation, visual confirmation that you're not lying to me.

[00:21:13] You're genuinely feeling what I'm feeling right now.

[00:21:16] Therefore, I can trust you.

[00:21:17] Therefore, I can talk to you.

[00:21:18] And if I know I'm still socially included in the tribe and the group and the society, then I can lower my defenses.

[00:21:24] Because being abandoned or being kicked out of the group is a death sentence to a caveman, to our ancestors.

[00:21:29] A hundred thousand years ago, you needed everybody else to survive.

[00:21:33] They didn't want you around.

[00:21:34] You're basically dead.

[00:21:35] And so those things are still follow through to today's day and age.

[00:21:38] Same thing with the women.

[00:21:39] Sometimes it's like the best thing to do is just either listen to her, let her talk, let her vent it out.

[00:21:42] Or encourage her to go talk to somebody who's better equipped to hear her out.

[00:21:46] There you go.

[00:21:48] How does the perception or the concept of masculinity change with age?

[00:21:55] Age through one person's lifetime or through the ages?

[00:21:58] Lifetime.

[00:21:59] Lifetime.

[00:22:00] Lifetime.

[00:22:01] Okay, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s.

[00:22:05] I think your role in ideally in a super healthy, normal, perfect world, your role in the group will change with time.

[00:22:15] As you get older, in my opinion, you exchange physical strength with wisdom and things like that.

[00:22:23] So you might not be the fastest, strongest guy when you're in your 50s versus when you're in your 20s, but you've got a lot of time and experience at your hands.

[00:22:30] You become an elder to the group.

[00:22:31] So in that regard, masculinity regard, it's more about educating the younger groups of guys who are coming through about what it means to be a healthy, self-led man at those ages.

[00:22:44] What it's like to be a father or an uncle or a parent or a member of a society.

[00:22:49] What you're going to do.

[00:22:50] How you're going to contribute.

[00:22:51] How you're going to learn to control your emotions.

[00:22:55] I remember speaking to my father about this.

[00:22:57] My father lost his father when he was 13 years old.

[00:23:00] So very young.

[00:23:01] And he had a business of missing a father figure for a long time.

[00:23:03] And a number of times that I talked to him about raising kids because he had me and my sister.

[00:23:07] He was like, yeah, for the most part, you're just figuring it out as you go.

[00:23:10] And I laughed and I was like, if we had to figure it out as we go, we would not have survived as a species.

[00:23:15] Which means there was something of intergenerational wisdom going on that's being passed down to the ages that we've really lost in today's day and age.

[00:23:23] And there's a good, if you're familiar with Ben Shapiro, he talks about this with him and his kids and how he has like a, he has four kids.

[00:23:31] He's a political commentator.

[00:23:33] He's got four kids.

[00:23:34] The oldest, I think, is like 13, 14 years old.

[00:23:37] The next one down is nine years old.

[00:23:39] And he made a point to say how I know how to get a nine-year-old to 13 years old because I did it once.

[00:23:46] I don't know how to get a 13-year-old till 16 or 20.

[00:23:49] But I can talk to my parents or my grandparents because they did it with me.

[00:23:54] And so they could become like this repertoire of wisdom and things like that that you can't find on Google.

[00:23:59] You can't find in the world.

[00:24:00] And so in this regard, you end up becoming, you end up giving back to the world by being a healthy masculine friend.

[00:24:07] It's like demonstrating what it means for the younger guys who are dealing with all these tons of testosterone and emotions and urges and feelings and sexual urges.

[00:24:15] Having the ability to educate them and guide them.

[00:24:19] This is the quote, it takes a village to raise a child.

[00:24:22] I think I would argue it's, you need more than two parents to raise one kid.

[00:24:26] And we really lost a lot of that, especially with young men nowadays.

[00:24:29] It's like young men need to see how their fathers interact, but also how other men in the community also do the same thing.

[00:24:38] Because it's very easy for kids to be like, you're parents.

[00:24:40] You don't know anything.

[00:24:41] You're stupid.

[00:24:42] I'm smart on you.

[00:24:43] I'm 10 years old.

[00:24:43] I got my shit together.

[00:24:44] I know exactly what it's going to do.

[00:24:45] We're 20 years old.

[00:24:46] I'm going to conquer the world.

[00:24:48] But when you start to see every single guy out there presenting themselves in a particular way,

[00:24:53] no matter what the age range and how they do it, how they respect each other and how they negotiate conflict and deal with things and educate them.

[00:24:59] That's how masculinity will essentially evolve as time goes on.

[00:25:02] It's like you're basically holding the line and demonstrating to them the things that you learned along the way.

[00:25:09] How can masculinity play a part with co-parenting?

[00:25:13] I did the 50-50 week on, week off.

[00:25:17] I have three kids.

[00:25:19] There were two in high school, one in junior high.

[00:25:22] And I went from the standpoint of I wanted to be the best father I could be because our co-parenting complex was just a shit show.

[00:25:32] So when they were with me, I was going to try to be the best father I could be.

[00:25:37] And then one of the therapists talked to me a couple of weeks ago.

[00:25:41] And I did this when I didn't have the kids.

[00:25:44] I was like jack in the box.

[00:25:46] I pushed myself back down.

[00:25:48] But then the kids come back and pop out and go back down.

[00:25:52] How can men prevent from doing that?

[00:25:54] And how can they use masculinity to be the best father they can be?

[00:25:59] I like the idea that you're trying to be the best version of yourself regardless of the situation.

[00:26:03] Because I think depending on how old the kids are, it's very easy for them to be more emotionally inclined rather than seeing the big picture.

[00:26:10] And I've heard a lot of stories of kids who were like, it wasn't until I was 25, 30 that I really understand what my father was trying to do for me.

[00:26:16] But it can be tough in the short term to continue trying to hold the best version of yourself out there when you're still dealing with a lot of stress and whatnot in your life.

[00:26:25] But outside of dealing with the kids, making sure you have a healthy man in your life that you can continue to interact.

[00:26:33] We have purposes, purpose beyond you.

[00:26:36] I've heard this before.

[00:26:37] I think it was Louis C.K. who was talking about this.

[00:26:39] How seconds before his kids would come to the apartment, he'd be half naked, covered in Cheetos, and just not even watching them.

[00:26:47] And as soon as they knock on the door, oh, I've got to clean up.

[00:26:49] All right.

[00:26:49] Hey, dad's here.

[00:26:50] Look at that.

[00:26:50] But the idea is to try to be the best version of yourself even when they're not around.

[00:26:54] And so in those regards, it might be good to find groups or people you can hang out with, people you can spend time with.

[00:27:00] Because it might be that when the kids leave, all of a sudden you go back into that feeling of, ah, I feel like I've lost my purpose again.

[00:27:06] They're not here.

[00:27:06] What do I do?

[00:27:07] Find other things to fill in the gap.

[00:27:09] It could be volunteering locally.

[00:27:10] Maybe if you want to a church or a congregation or some kind of religious group.

[00:27:13] Volunteer work at a local shelter or something like a home.

[00:27:16] Whatever your particular task or trait is, I used to use it as a dentist.

[00:27:21] Maybe there's some kind of voluntary charity work around people who need dentistry work but they can't afford it.

[00:27:28] Finding other areas in the world to continue to be generative and give back while your kids are out.

[00:27:34] Because it might be a chance that your kids might just hear, oh, I just heard about you.

[00:27:38] You're going to this volunteering dentistry thing?

[00:27:40] Yeah, that's what I do when your kids are not around.

[00:27:41] When I have more free time, I still continue to give back rather than fall into those darker places that maybe are still there that I'm working through at my own pace.

[00:27:54] So the crazy thing about that is that when I first started 50-50, it was horrible.

[00:27:59] I cried when they left this and the other.

[00:28:02] And after about a year or two later, I could not wait for those sumbitches to leave.

[00:28:09] And I talked with other men and they had that same thought because we were single parents because you were on, okay, go to your mom's.

[00:28:17] But yeah, now they're grown and they're leading productive lives and they turned out all right.

[00:28:23] And I was blessed, but it was a struggle.

[00:28:25] But I tried to tell men out there, don't give up.

[00:28:27] And so there's this one group where the kids have no contact with the father, alienation, parental alienation.

[00:28:39] And one of my podcast guests said, just keep reaching out, don't give up.

[00:28:44] And eventually when they're 20, 30, say, hey, I remember you reaching out to me, dad, you didn't give up on me.

[00:28:51] But it can be rough out there, really rough.

[00:28:55] Yeah, I had this thought.

[00:28:58] Let's see if I can tie this in.

[00:29:00] I had this thought experiment that went through my mind a couple of days ago, weeks ago.

[00:29:04] And it was like, if I got a time machine and I hopped into a time machine and I went back at some point in time, but I didn't tell you when I was going to go.

[00:29:12] And I hop out of the time machine and immediately I found two people, a man and a woman who just died a few seconds ago, like a fresh body.

[00:29:18] Take them in the time machine, come to the future.

[00:29:20] And I bring them to an anatomist.

[00:29:21] And I basically say, you can't look at their features.

[00:29:23] You can't look at their face.

[00:29:25] You can't look at their skin or anything.

[00:29:26] All you could look at is just their brains, nothing else.

[00:29:29] You can analyze their brains.

[00:29:31] How far back would I have to go back in time before you could no longer recognize it as being a human being?

[00:29:37] And so the idea essentially is that what we're experiencing in today's day and age, as far as like the divorce rates exploding and the relationships falling apart.

[00:29:45] And like in this case, parental alienation is very much not pointing at that.

[00:29:50] It's more often than not from an understand.

[00:29:51] I've been writing a few books on this.

[00:29:52] It's mostly women.

[00:29:53] Most of the mothers who are doing to the fathers.

[00:29:56] That's generally an expression of traditional natural female aggression.

[00:30:01] It's usually more through social tactics.

[00:30:05] Men tend to be aggressive by saying, I don't like you.

[00:30:07] We're going to talk or I'm going to fight you.

[00:30:09] Option A, option B.

[00:30:10] Women tend to use social aggression as an expression of aggression through social sabotage, social arbitrage, innuendos, gossip, rumors, using people, triangulation.

[00:30:22] That's not women being evil, malicious people.

[00:30:25] That's just women doing what women evolved to do under the current circumstances.

[00:30:30] And so that can be a tough one because it feels like an attack on you and they're trying to pin the kids against you.

[00:30:38] And even in the case you said before, you feel bad after a while.

[00:30:41] I feel bad they're gone.

[00:30:42] Now I can't wait for them to go.

[00:30:43] It's because you're never supposed to be raising them by yourself.

[00:30:46] It's like 10,000 years.

[00:30:48] Not that long ago.

[00:30:49] So even my father talking about when he was growing up, he still remembers times when he'd be playing stickball in the neighborhood in Brooklyn or in Queens where he grew up.

[00:30:57] Brooklyn in New York.

[00:30:59] And how even if his mom wasn't watching him, there was a grandma somewhere on a stoop somewhere just sewing but just keeping an eye on them.

[00:31:08] And it was like the whole group raised everybody.

[00:31:12] If I screwed up at my friend's house, my parents knew about it real quick.

[00:31:16] So they were helping raise your kids and you're helping raising their kids.

[00:31:19] And now we have a world that's very increasingly isolated.

[00:31:23] People are like the divorce rate skyrocketing for a number of reasons.

[00:31:25] There's a number of reasons you point out about the divorce rates skyrocketing.

[00:31:29] But yeah, the social alien parental alienation thing.

[00:31:32] Plus that's just essentially it's just women doing what they were evolved to do under the current circumstances.

[00:31:39] And then the other part of it being that you're understandably stressed out because one person is not meant to raise like one, let alone three kids.

[00:31:46] It's meant to be a group effort.

[00:31:48] It's not unusual if you go to another country right now.

[00:31:51] Parts of the United States where you see like grandparents, parents and kids and maybe even grandkids living in the same house.

[00:31:57] It sounds like chaos.

[00:31:59] How could they do that?

[00:31:59] Because they're all working together.

[00:32:01] It's not just, yeah, you get what I'm saying.

[00:32:03] But it's meant to be a multi-generational thing that we are like, per distermence, we are grandparents, grandchildren optimizing machines.

[00:32:11] Like we're one of the few species where the grandparents are very heavily invested where possible if they're still around in the health and wellness of the grandkids.

[00:32:19] And so that multi-generational thing is a big part of why it takes mom and dad and the aunts and the uncles and grandma and grandpa on both sides.

[00:32:26] Plus maybe the neighbors are all helping to raise your kids versus one father, three kids.

[00:32:32] That's enough to make it rip your hair out.

[00:32:34] Now I know why I'm in my kids' ass to have me some grandkids.

[00:32:39] No, I know.

[00:32:40] Michael, you have solved the paradox.

[00:32:43] Michael, I want to thank you for talking with us tonight.

[00:32:46] That was very informative.

[00:32:47] Thank you for having me.

[00:32:48] I've got a ton of more questions, but we'll have to do a part two for sure.

[00:32:51] For sure.

[00:32:52] Absolutely.

[00:32:52] Yeah, for sure.

[00:32:53] Yeah.

[00:32:54] So everybody out there, oh, where can they find you on the internet?

[00:32:57] There we go.

[00:32:58] Almost forgot.

[00:32:59] Yeah, you can find me on YouTube or on Instagram.

[00:33:01] It's The Adaptive Male.

[00:33:03] I'm starting up and working on building up a coaching practice.

[00:33:05] But if you have any questions, any comments, anything you're curious about as far as traditional masculinity or relationship issues in the modern age or how to work on emotional self-control or whatever it may be from a man's perspective through the lens of science.

[00:33:18] I'm happy to dive into the details and help you get some clarity on it.

[00:33:21] We will have this contact information in the show notes, and we'll go from there.

[00:33:26] But everybody, thank you for listening.

[00:33:28] And hold on, Michael.

[00:33:29] We'll close it out here in a second.

[00:33:31] But everybody have a good night.

[00:33:32] Thank you.

[00:33:33] All right.