62 | Andrew Bauman: I Want To Be A Good Man

Have Christian men been conditioned to accept behaviors that marginalize and abuse women? When does normal relational conflict cross the line and become abusive? Has the Church been complicit in creating inequity between men and women?

Questions like these represent much of the work of our guest, Dr. Andrew Bauman. Andrew is a therapist and the Founder and Director of the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health & Trauma. His dissertation was on studying the impact of sexism and abuse on women in the Protestant Church. 

Andrew is the author of seven books, and his newest book is called SAFE CHURCH: How to Guard Against Sexism & Abuse in Christian Communities.

Andrew's wife, Dr. Christy Bauman, is also a therapist and author. They live and work in Brevard, NC.

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Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health & Trauma website

Andrew's personal website

Man Land info page

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Andrew Bauman 0:00

I honestly think, and it's probably unconscious, but I think men think that, oh, if we allow women to begin to have a voice, then they're going to treat us like we treat them. And while I'm not advocating for a new oppressive class, I'm advocating for mutuality.

Announcer 0:16

Welcome to what we really want. Conversations about connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Finally Talking on the Third Try

Greg 0:32

Hi friends, welcome back to What We Really Want. Today is episode 62. Our guest is Dr. Andrew Bauman, and the episode's called I Want to Be a Good Man. I do want to be a good man. And if you're a man listening, I hope you do too. If you're a woman listening and you're in a relationship, I'm sure you would want your man to say that same thing. And if you're familiar at all with Andrew Ballman, you'll know that he has a passion for working with and helping men, particularly Christian men, actually live out biblical masculinity and the attributes of Jesus, being kind, being sacrificial, and not perpetuating some of the really harmful missteps within the church and within culture. Andrew and his wife, Christy, founded the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma. They work with individual clients, they host intensives for individuals and couples, and have really just been super active in helping people heal from trauma and really heal from the practice of being those who inflict trauma on others. Andrew's the author of many books, including Stumbling Toward Wholeness, The Sexually Healthy Man, How Not to Be an Ass, Essays on Becoming a Good and Safe Man, and a book called Safe Church, How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities. It will not take you long listening to Andrew speak to know that he is a passionate and intense advocate for helping people to relate to each other in kind and safe and godly ways. Hope you enjoy the conversation. Again, that's episode 62 called I Wanna Be a Good Man with our guest Andrew Bauman. And the conversation starts right now. How's your Wednesday so far?

Andrew Bauman 2:20

Good. Just got to play some pickleball. Got to do a little work and got to clean up, clean up the place before our our uh new group, new group of men come in tomorrow.

Greg 2:30

So well, the first time that you and I talked, turned out that I just had terrible problems with the audio and couldn't use it. That was that was almost two years ago. And then the second time we were scheduled to talk, Hurricane Helene decided to change the plan. And you and Christy are in Brevard, North Carolina, which is an area. Is that where you are right now? Yeah. So that was an area that was just slammed by the hurricane. And I remember that at the time we were supposed to record, I heard from your assistant, you guys were not only helping, but you were doing some coordination with a lot of hurricane relief.

Andrew Bauman 3:05

I mean, we were we were fortunate as far as our county, no deaths. We probably lost 25 homes-ish. Um, but then, you know, around us, Asheville, Hendersonville, you know, Asheville just got decimated. Swannanoa, just decimated deaths and all sorts of destruction. And so, yeah, we were in a privileged position where, you know, we just lost a lot of trees. Our house was fine. We lost power, water for about 10 days. And then we were able to kind of leverage our platform and raise some money for people in need and you know, just kind of help where we could, coordinate some resource gatherings and whatnot. So just did did a small part, just trying to help out our community that we care about.

Greg 3:45

I'm sure a part that feels small and how you're describing it didn't feel very small, the people who are benefiting from it. That's how it usually works, isn't it? Yes. Well, man, I can't wait to get in this conversation. I know we've been communicating some via email about what I hoped to talk about. So you kind of know what I want out of our conversation. With that in mind, I'd I'd love to ask you what I always ask is what do you really want out of the next minutes that we're going to be talking?

Andrew Bauman 4:10

Yeah. Yeah. I I love, you know, I get inspired by authentic engagement and authentic conversation and just love, love this work and yeah, love what I get to do. So I'm always pumped when I get to talk about it. So thanks for having me on.

Greg 4:25

For sure. Well, I met you in person for the first time almost exactly two years ago. I think it was right when you were almost ready to release Safe Church. Uh I don't think it was out yet, but it was you were working on it and it was closed. That's right.

Andrew Bauman 4:42

And I think that was the first lecture of the material. That was the first time I introduced the material. Yeah.

Greg 4:49

Well, for people who are interested in having conversations about abuse, gender inequity, yours is a name that more and more is coming up in those conversations. And it's something that I know that you care very deeply about. And so I guess before we start talking about the the feel-good topic of abuse, I would just love to know like how did you come to the place in your career and in your personal life where you kind of realized you were going to be one of the voices that was keeping the topic of abuse in Christian conversations?

Andrew Bauman 5:25

Yeah, I mean, like all good, good things that we care about that comes from my own trauma, comes from my own heartache. And so a few different, a few different doorways, entryways, probably the the most prominent is my father was a pastor and also an abuser, and also cheated on my mom for 25 years, yet was also vice president of a Christian college, pastor, a lawyer, you know, interesting combo. And my mom just wanted to be, you know, a a good Christian wife. We listen to James Dobson every morning, and and that was my upbringing. And so that all blows up when my father gets caught and somebody blackmails him and for cheating on my mom and gonna report it to the newspaper. Anyway, don't my whole life blows up and I'm seven years old.

Greg 6:16

Oh gosh.

Andrew Bauman 6:17

Right. So that's that's my origin story. Right. And so as that that kind of blows up fast forward, I kind of I discovered pornography around 12 when the internet became a thing, and you know, HBO late at night in my buddy's house, and uh slowly that begins to grip me for 13 years. But I was also uh, you know, studying Bible and religion in college and became a youth pastor and a college pastor. So that was kind of in conjunction as I'm becoming a pastor and you know, in the kind of a more conservative theological upbringing and awareness, where this kind of misogyny and objectification of women kind of merge with my understanding of theology, understanding of God, and my use of pornography. And so I don't really understand which is what, what is theology, what is misogyny, women are less than. I use women like perverting submission and all these different topics that I ended up abusing. And so that was kind of untangling that mess. And I was only uh a youth pastor for a couple of years before I was like, this doesn't feel right. You know, this does like I don't feel like something's off here. And so at that point, I kind of blew up my own life, ended up in the psychiatric ward, nearly taking my own life. And that was like the beginning of almost 20, 22 years ago of putting back the pieces. What do I want to do? How do I want to live? Who do I want to be? Beginning to tell the truth of my story, facing my deepest shame, facing my fears, and in that discovering the depth of my purpose that I no longer want to be an abuser of women, but I actually want to be an advocate of women.

Greg 8:02

How much community do you feel like you have versus how alone do you feel like you are in this space in 2026?

Why Men Push Back On Mutuality

Andrew Bauman 8:10

Yeah, I mean, I think it's been a long time coming, you know, I've been in this work a while now, you know, 15 years-ish. And I've had to kind of blaze my own trail, right? Of thinking of, okay, what what do I care about? What do I want to talk about? What do I, okay, I'm not Dan Allen, I'm not, I'm not, but I've I've studied under these guys and I've worked with them and I'm but like trusting in me, right? Trusting in my body, the God who lives in me. Like, no, this is my message. I can't be them. I can't, I can't be that, like, I gotta trust in my voice. What do I bring to the table? And that's that believing in my goodness, yeah, you know, and kind of the more public I get, the more hate mail I get, or the more, you know, angry husbands or whose wife like read my work and got free, or what it's just like I'm learning to to both kind of protect my heart more in a sense, the more public I get. And yet also it's like, okay, I believe in what we're doing. I hear too many good stories from men that are actually learning to be having integrity, learning to honor women rather than objectify them, and and actually learning to be courageous men. And it's just like, I feel like part of me is just getting started.

Greg 10:53

Yeah. When you said the louder you get, the more you talk about it, you start getting hate mail, you know, people who are really hardly, harshly pushing back. What do you think is the most common thing that that people feel like is being threatened when you're saying the things that you're saying? Because you can't, because it can't be that everybody who's pushing back is a terrible person. You know, something feels like it's being threatened. What do you what are those things?

Andrew Bauman 11:18

Yeah, it feels like we're we're I'm running up into this kind of masculine shadow that has to be addressed, right? Or the shadow parts that we don't want to see. And so a lot of it is it's a threat. It's a threat to power, it's a threat to the systems that be. So I honestly think, and this is probably unconscious, but I think men think that, oh, if we allow women to begin to have a voice, then they're going to treat us like we treat them. Oof. And why I'm not advocating for a new oppressive class, I'm advocating for mutuality. The 2,800 women that I that I studied for my book, Safe Church and That Research, they didn't want to take somehow power over. Yeah. All they kept asking, I just want a seat at the table. I just want to have representation. I just want to have somebody know what it's like to be a woman in this world of patriarchy, of objectification. And what it's like to be in this church where I feel sexism and abuse all the time.

Greg 12:22

Yeah.

Andrew Bauman 12:22

Where I feel like scripture is weaponized against me. I just want representation. And so that's what I heard, right? And yet some of the studies over what was it, 82% of women said they felt like sexism was in their church. Right. And when I say sexism, right, it's just simply prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping because of someone's sex. Yeah. Right. So 82% believed out of 20 over 2,800 women. Like that's wild. Right. So we have all these things going on. And I think that's partly, um, I mean, I think it's been happening since eons, but I think what's heightened it even more is in the last, you know, 25 years, the increase of internet pornography and the increase of the increase of that kind of what we do as men to feel big, to feel strong, to feel like a man because I actually feel really young and scared inside. And so to have a quick fix is to objectify, is to feel powerful and have that power over.

Relearning Masculinity For Real Connection

Greg 13:26

So there's church culture and then there's just culture culture. I mean, you're talking about sexism and the lack of mutuality between genders within the church, but the church didn't invent this. I mean, and and it's not the only place where it's happening. I mean, you talk in a society about pay gap, about opportunity gaps. I mean, it's yes, is the is the patriarchal culture of in general affecting the church, or is it more the other way around? Or is it just two things in parallel lanes?

Andrew Bauman 13:55

Yeah, they all they all intertwine, right? And so we also have to deal with as we're becoming healthier in our gender, right? We have to deal with, you know, I write about this in my in my new book, not only to the church culture, not only society as a whole, but also our family culture. What did your parents teach you about masculinity? What did your parents teach you about femininity? Yeah. Like what did you learn? What are we, what are the messages we're taking in? And so part of the healing for for me as I focus on the masculine is how do we undo these messages that we received? How have you been socialized, right? To have all these categories of socialization. But we have to enter into actually, who do I want to be? How do I, no, I don't want to be the nice guy? No, I don't want to be the asshole. No, I don't want like what how do I be an attuned man who is emotionally aware and uh not inept, not an inept caveman. So my wife feels incredibly alone and completely by herself in a relationship with me. No, so I can actually connect with my kids on a deep level, so I can actually have good sex. Like that's what we're talking about, right? And so so often, you know, in our practice, my wife and I work with a lot of couples, and so often it a woman will have done so much work, she's reading all the books, right? Seeking us out, doing that, and she almost drags her husband along. And we I just see it time and time again. And then it feels like emotionally, relationally, I don't use many sports metaphors. I use this one though. Basically, it feels like she's playing in the minor leagues and he's playing T-ball. Right. And so it's like, oh, you want to play on the same field relationally, and you haven't done any work to prep, to play ball at that high level. Right. And you want to, you want to meet each other and actually have good sex, actually have good communication, actually parent well together. No, yeah, you haven't done any of the prep work. Right. Your wife's been doing all the emotional lifting, and you're just kind of coasting. Yeah. And oh, I just work hard and pay the bills. Like, wow.

Greg 15:55

Yeah.

Andrew Bauman 15:55

I actually believe in men so much that I think we can set the bar much higher.

Greg 15:59

Yeah. I mean, you're describing like another analogy is she's been going through a course of study and she's at master level, you know, work on this. All right. And he's he hasn't finished yet his remedial English class, you know, in junior college, and he's trying to understand and participate and be a team member on something where he hasn't done any of the prerequisite work. Exactly. Trying to pass the 401 course when you haven't even taken the 101 course.

Andrew Bauman 16:26

Exactly. And that's what it makes healthy marriages is a good partnership, right? A good part, one not one partner just dragging the other one along, right? And so many men, so many women are overworking and over-functioning, and because their husbands are actually underfunctioning, right? And it's like, wait a minute. I've been working with men for 15 years in a very intimate way, and I believe in them so much. They're so capable. But here's the thing we have not been taught, and many times the church has enabled us to be underdeveloped, where the actually entitlement is applauded and it's actually promoted to stay underdeveloped. You know, I'm thinking of the research a woman shared that, you know, she went to her pastor when her husband was caught cheating and looking at porn, and the pastor said, Well, you've been a Christian longer. You you need to set a better example. You need to have more sex, you need to cook more. You need right, placing all the blame on the victim, not holding the man accountable for his infidelity. Yeah. Right. But actually enabling and an enabling a man who has no integrity to continue to act out.

Men Who Really Do the Work

Greg 17:42

Yeah. I call that the 1 Corinthians 7, 2x4. You know, that you that so many uninformed and poorly taught spiritual leaders will just look at the one verse that they know talks about marital sex and say, well, maybe the problem is that you're not having enough. And the violation has happened so long before the absence of sex. I mean, if absence of sex is coming from lack of trust, then that's a good thing, you know, until you until you get those deeper foundational issues addressed. Exactly. Well, you said, hey, I believe in the you, I I see your potential. I want to ask you, and I know that there's there's uniqueness and individuality from couple to couple. I realize that. But do you see a general trend among women whose husbands have been abusive, have subscribed to the old patterns, who maybe aren't at the same level, ready to do the work, but they have acknowledged, okay, I see it now. I have a desire to change. Well, there's going to be a learning curve, right? It's going to be clunky. How often do you see their partners willing to be patient, to show grace?

Andrew Bauman 18:53

All the time if they're actually if they're actually doing the work.

Greg 18:57

Yep. That's what I thought you'd say.

Andrew Bauman 18:59

Yeah, if they're actually heavy lifting. Now, what I do see often is, well, he's been in recovery for 20 years. Well, he's he still goes to his group every Monday night, right? And it's just like, you're not actually doing the work. You can read about it in my article. Uh, I forgot what I called it. Somehow the the secret of men's groups. I don't know what I said, something like that. Some article I wrote. But basically, it's the idea that we are pretending to heal, yeah, right? But when we go to these groups, but and really what it is is in a sense, we're just applauding each other's guilt and we're swaging each other's guilt. Nobody's actually doing the deep work of healing their core wounds. Yeah, there's, oh, you know, it reminds me of 30 years ago when our accountability group, right? And we would just, we just if we looked at porn, we just give five dollars and put it in the roof of the church, you know, the the whatever. We just we called it the jackpot. Nobody actually got healthy. We just put five bucks in the thing and tried to shame each other into not whacking off anymore. Yeah, right. That's not healing, you know. So a lot of these recovery groups aren't actually dealing with the core wounds. Yeah, the core wounds are what's driving the eroticism. Yes, the core wounds are what's driving the sexual acting out. So if you don't deal with the roots, you're never gonna get to it. And so that's what we do in our work, and that's we're having a lot of success doing that because that's what actually stops the acting out behavior. And once once you do that work, your behavior changes. So I tell women all the time, it's not what they say they believe, right? Don't listen to your husband's words, right? Behavior is a language. Actually, watch. Just sit back and watch. You don't have to do any work anymore. You've you've overfunctioned for far too long.

Greg 20:41

Right.

Andrew Bauman 20:41

Just sit and sit and watch, and you'll see this man be different. He'll engage you different, he'll engage his kids different, he'll engage his friendships, his relationships differently. Yes. Right. There'll be an increased humility. His face will literally change.

Greg 20:56

And it won't be a hundred percent in the first two weeks, but you'll see a trajectory. You'll see it changing. And you'll be able to tell over time whether they are an active participant in their own healing and recovery or whether they're what I call a recovery voyeur, you know, just somebody who comes and listens to other people talk about the work that they're doing. And they learn the language, but it's all hypothetical. It's all, you know, exactly.

Andrew Bauman 21:18

Yes. And and you'll feel different in their body, right? I mean, you'll see it, you'll feel it. I tell women all the time, trust your intuition, trust your body. And at what the point it shifts when he's no longer trying to please you, when he's no longer trying to make it about you, and when he literally just doubles down on, I want to be a good man for my sake.

Greg 21:40

Yeah. And I'm I'm gonna do this work whether we make it or not.

Andrew Bauman 21:44

Exactly. And I'm not looking for you to respect me. I hope you do, but I'm looking to respect me. Yes. I want to be a man that I can respect, right? And so that that comes with integrity and when you grow your courage.

Greg 21:57

Yeah. So drilling in a little bit more specifically in our conversation about abusive behavior. When abusive behavior takes place in a relationship, I mean, would it be a fair statement to say that not every person who behaves abusively is doing so out of the same underlying contributors?

A Spectrum Of Abuse

Andrew Bauman 22:16

Yeah, totally. So basically, and not all abusers are created the same. So I created something in this book back here called How Not to Be an Ass. There's a there's a it's a short, little easy read, but there's a spectrum of an abuser that I define there. And basically, I kept seeing all these men come into my office and their wives, my husband's an abuser, my husband's an abuser. And yet I've worked with this whole spectrum where I've literally had to move my family out of the house because I thought somebody was gonna come kill me. You know, where I've had to walk out into the parking lot with a key between my key between my fists because I thought he was gonna stab me. You know, it's like I've worked with violent men who I thought were gonna kill me. That's not the norm. I mean, literally, it maybe, you know, thought I was gonna die maybe three times out of 15 years.

Greg 23:01

But the norm That's too many times, by the way. I guess yeah, let's not let's not glaze over that. Uh I feared for my life professionally three times in 15 years. That's okay. Some people have it worse than thousands.

Andrew Bauman 23:16

Sure, but out of thousands and thousands of men, right, that I work with, that's a small percentage. And that's important to say, yeah. And yes. And so and and again, I'm working thousands of men that are narcissists that are right that are. Abusers. So there's a violent, there's an edge to them. Right. And so the norm is not that well, I call that extreme, a narcissistic coward. So he's violent. There's an evilness, and he he won't he most likely won't change. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the power to change. He's most likely not going to. He could, sure. A lot of stuff has to happen. Most likely doesn't happen. He doesn't stay in therapy either, doesn't stay in the work, and he leaves and he goes to does more harm. The norm is what I call the unaware fool. This is the man that I see all the time. This is the good Christian guy, the deacon, the you know, the usher at church, the you know, the the kind, the kind, nice Christian. He just hasn't done his emotional work. He has not looked at his own life, his own story. He has no awareness of his own body. Maybe he's relapsed in porn every now and then, or I did it, you know, a few times.

Greg 24:24

And also, how often is he replaying patterns that he saw in generations above him?

Andrew Bauman 24:31

Yeah, all the time. Unprocessed trauma is always reenacted. So if he hasn't processed his trauma, he's gonna reenact it, right? And so that guy is the norm. So I call that the unaware fool. He can change, but he also has to own his abuse that his unawareness has brought abusive patterns to his wife. His unawareness has been abusive, right? His lies or deception or whatever the nature, or just kind of refusal to engage his wife emotionally. And because you can't, if you haven't looked at your own life and your own shadow, you can't connect to somebody else at that level if you haven't done it for yourself, right? Yes, right. And so and so that's his work. And so those are the norm men. So those men can change, but sometimes it's not, it's so subtle. The abuses are so subtle that it's like, wait, I'm an abuser. Wait, you know, they have a problem with that word rather than just like, yeah, you are kind of getting hung up on the verbiage. Sure, yeah, they get stuck there, but you're an unaware fool, and you can change with awareness, and you can you can become a different man, and that's the work ahead.

Greg 25:37

Well, you know, whether it's therapy around really difficult things like you're talking about, or 12-step work, or even the gospel, I mean, all of them, all of those three things I just mentioned start with bad news first, you know, and then they transition over to good news. And and what you're talking about with the what you're calling the unaware fool, it it's bringing to mind something that a friend of mine told me about, William Wilberforce, who was one of the voices in England, you know, during the the slave trade. And, you know, we all hear hear the stories about John Newton and how he was a slave trader before he had that experience and was converted, wrote Amazing Grace. But I remember hearing the quote, and maybe it was from the movie Amazing Grace, but William Wilberforce, when he was speaking to Parliament, he says, Now you can decide whether or not you're going to act, but you can no longer say you didn't know. And so it's like taking the veil of ignorance away is what I hear you describing. That's right. That's right. So when people have that veil pulled away, it probably feels pretty harsh or violent because they don't see themselves as a bad guy. They don't see themselves as an abuser. How do you hold both compassion and accountability for the same person?

Accountability Without Toxic Shame

Andrew Bauman 26:46

For sure, for sure. Well, that's where we have to hold it. I believe that's the tension of the Christian walk, is we live in between the death and the resurrection, and we hold both of those. So if I'm all resurrection, if you've ever met those types of Christians, oh, God's good, brother, all the time. It's just like, oh my gosh, like I want to dig my eyes out with a spoon. You know, it's just like it's not true. There's no way you can be that happy all the time, right? Like, I hate you.

Greg 27:13

It's true that God's good, but it's not true that you're always feeling it that way.

Andrew Bauman 27:18

Exact, exactly. And the resurrection is just as true as the crucifixion. And if you're all doom and gloom and you're all death, that's not accurate either. Yeah. Because the resurrection is true. So can you hold the tension of both? And that's our journey as well. And in the healing process, we hold the tension of our depravity and our goodness. I have failed. I have harmed, abused, and objectified women, and I'm an image-bearer of God, and God lives in my body. Both are true simultaneously. So if I can hold that tension, then I can never become too prideful because I know my darkness, I know my shadow, and I can never become too self-contemptuous. I can't because I know my glory, I know my goodness, I'm an image bearer of God.

Greg 28:08

That's so important. I don't want to go past this too quickly because when you're acknowledging hard things about yourself that are going to tend to invite me to go to shame really quickly if I'm not tethered strongly to my image, you know, Imago Day, that I'm an image bearer. That it's going to be so hard to resist that invitation and not accept it. Living in Birmingham, Alabama, which you know was the focal point of the civil rights movement in the 60s, I'm grateful that that I didn't have parents who grew me up with messages of racism, but I still grew up in Alabama. And you know, as a 55-year-old man now, I've I've for the last four years gone to a church where our lead pastor is a black man, and I am being confronted with some of my latent racism that I didn't even know that I had. And I don't like saying that out loud. Like I have always seen myself as a non-racist. Exactly. Because I haven't been outwardly and actively hostile. Exactly. But I, you know, I've never known until I've gotten older how easy it is to be white, you know, and and just to forget about other people. And I I can see that happening in relationships too.

Andrew Bauman 29:22

Yes. And same is true for sexism, right, as well. And that's that's that journey that we all have to take. I just wanted to add one thing because you're talking about shame as as men end up kind of naming their darkness, naming their depravity. It's so important that we don't turn to toxic shame. And I call that the deflated narcissist. And so the deflated narcissism, because you have that typical grandiose narcissist, right? He's he's up here. I'm better than I'm better than all of you, right? That's that classic kind of narcissism. But we also have the the inverse of that. We call that the deflated narcissist. He says, I'm worse than you. I'm not only worse than you, I'm worse than everybody. I'm the I'm the worst piece of crap here. I've done the worst. The journey is the same. Healing is in the middle. The grandiose narcissist has to come down and the deflated narcissist has to come up. Well, both of those are kind of, hey, look at me. They're all about you. And they miss the victim. Yeah. Right? They miss the victim, they miss the victim. It's not about the victim, it's still about you. Either I'm the worst or I'm the best. But it may mean still all about me. Yeah. Yep. And we miss the actual one that we've done the harm to. So when you go to shame, when you go to toxic shame, you're still making the victim invisible. And if it's your wife that you've betrayed, what if we center her journey rather than making it all about you? And could you let healthy shame or guilt or whatever you want to call it actually humble you, not turn to shame, not turn to toxic shame, but actually humble you. And that's why the root word of humble humility, the word is hummus. Okay. It's not the yummy chipby hummus. It's it's it's the ground earth, right? When the dead leaves fall and the earth begins to decay and rot, and it creates this rich soil for new growth. That's humility. Yeah. That's the essence of new life for men who have failed and participated in destructive behaviors.

Greg 31:21

And that's the death and resurrection that you were talking about. The death prepares and enriches the soil for life to come out of it again.

Andrew Bauman 31:29

Exactly. And we don't we don't run around choosing death. We live in a fallen world. It's going to happen, right? If you are aware and alive, you will feel death, big D or small D. It will have happens all the time. Yeah. And so will you be just present to it and stop running from it, stop numbing from it, and actually begin to feel and grieve what you need to feel so we can become human again.

Greg 31:54

And so for couples who have been in this place where there hasn't been mutuality, there has been sexism, there's been abuse, whether it was, whether it was overt, you know, grandiose narcissism, or whether it was perpetuating the system and the power differential. When you've got a man who says, okay, I'm a part of the problem, I don't want to do that or be that way anymore, and starts doing the work. I know it's impossible to answer this the same way for everybody, but is there kind of a typical, hey, you're signing up for X amount of time where it's going to be really tough before it starts to feel more natural?

Andrew Bauman 32:32

Well yeah, it varies. I mean, literally, I've had I remember one guy came to six intensives, you know, and it's just like it doesn't matter, but but they all look the same, whether it's quit happens quickly or if it takes a longer time. All the guys that change their life, there's a similar and it's the same stuff. They go through what we just described. They go through a crucifixion, they go through death. Many times that's in person that we watch that as we're acting out their, you know, we're engaging their child sexual abuse, not just through narratively, but actually thematically in their body. And we're actually really in their healing, and we're watching them wail and shake and grieve as we're holding them as they cry, you know, as they're grieving their lost childhood, as they're holding their their internal little boys that were so abandoned. And so, but but there's a death, there's a grief, there's a pain. And so they're those are the men that change, the ones that actually that actually are ready to, in a sense, die so that they can live again.

Greg 33:36

And as they're changing and as they're healing and as they're growing, we got to do that with support and in community. We we don't do it in isolation, and we can't really do it as effectively as we want to if the only person around us is our partner. And so you talked earlier about some of the ways that things go wrong in recovery communities, but community is not the problem. It's how I'm showing up for community. You actually just launched on the day we're talking, it's like today or yesterday, you've just launched an online community for men called Manland. And I wanted to make sure to give you some time to talk about that.

Man Land Community & Getting Support

Andrew Bauman 34:13

Yeah, thank you. I'm so excited about it. It's it really just fits in with what we've been doing. You know, we've been running these running these groups the last eight years as far as in-person workshops, and now we finally have a bigger container to help all these men that we've helped. And it but it yeah, it's an online community. It's basically got all our resources, books in one place, you know, groups every week. We do live teachings every month. I do an office hour every week. And so we have a group of men. We just launched it, so I already got like 70 men in there. Uh you know, it's a low, low, a low fee right now, 30, 39 bucks a month. And it's just I'm so excited about it. But basically, men are so lonely. Yeah. Men are so lonely and authentic men that aren't this is not like we're not like sitting here trying to posture. You know, the the initial question you're asked when you go is, you know, your name, where you're from, and how do you sabotage intimacy? You know, like we're it's like that's that's the intro, right? So it's like we got to be able to do that. Exactly. So it's just we're trying to create something different of vulnerability, and you know, we're we got all sorts of free resources once you get in there. So appreciate your plugging that. But yeah, you can check us out. Uh Man Lan is the new online community.

Greg 35:27

Yeah, let's let's talk about it a little bit more. I mean, because when somebody who is realizing that I'm lonely, I don't have the capacity, the skill set, like to know even how to address my loneliness. Nobody's ever taught me how to do that. Like, I've never had masculinity healthily bestowed upon me. Yes. An online community like yours is gonna be a great place, and it sounds like yours specifically is gonna be a great place to learn about what's been missing and how to start moving toward it. But I'm sure that you don't want men's complete experience with this to be online. How is this gonna work with something else that you would say that they ought to be pursuing in their life?

Andrew Bauman 36:06

Yeah. And so one of the things that we suggest, you know, as this group grows larger, the hope is that yeah, we begin to connect regionally, begin to connect with people in person. A lot of the guys have already come through our program and some some of the guys already have been meeting years after our groups because they have such a unique experience. But the real connection, even if it's just again over coffee, not you know, not in person is obviously the best, the best care. And so that's what that's the hope is you know, eventually continue to do more in-person meet meetups, and especially with the work we do, you know, we call it narrative thematics, basically story work mixed with body work. And with narrative thematics, you know, we're we're hands-on. We believe your body holds the trauma. And so we actually have to tend to your body. And so that's the part of the work that online stuff will never be able to duplicate. And yet, again, it's not therapy, yet it is therapeutic, right? It is, we do need to we need to have meaningful conversations because we're not getting it, you know, normally at our church.

Greg 37:08

Yeah. How many men are ready to go from emotionally and relationally constipated, no experience of this at all, to letting somebody put their hands and do somatic work with me in one step.

Andrew Bauman 37:22

Exactly. Yeah, it's our entry, kind of entry level into kind of what we're what we're doing.

Greg 37:27

And when you take that first step, you're gonna be with people who have taken the second and third, probably. Yeah, and you're benefiting from them being a little further ahead on the road than you are.

Andrew Bauman 37:35

Yeah, well said.

Greg 37:36

So the way that people can find out more about manland, I'm gonna put in show notes, but I want to hear you say it too, just for people that are listening.

Andrew Bauman 37:43

Yeah, yeah. I'll send you the direct link, and you can find it on my blog, andrew jboman.com, or you can get it through Christiancc.org, which is where our business, we run the my wife and I run the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma. And so you can find it on that link as well, on all my social media accounts as well. But yeah, just click the link and uh you can just search it on Google as well.

Greg 38:06

And this is Dr. Andrew and Dr. Christy Baumann. And you guys founded your practice how long ago? About 15, 15 years now. Yeah, we've been doing this a long time. Almost as long as as I've been in recovery. And I just remember in 2009 when that started for me. I mean, there was so little out there. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you know, there was so little. Dan had written uh the wounded heart. You know, Dan was talking about before most most anybody else was. But for people who are walking through broken sexual experiences now, I'm just so grateful for voices like yours and Christie's and others who are in the space. And just thanks for standing up and speaking up for people who have been kind of beaten down. Yeah, uh, no doubt. No doubt. I appreciate you reaching out and I'm glad, glad we can make this work. I am too. Thanks for your work and thanks for spending some time talking.

Andrew Bauman 39:02

Awesome.

Greg 39:03

Thanks, Greg. Good seeing you.