Raising Boys in the Modern World: Let’s Be Honest About What’s Not Working

Welcome back to the ACT OUT podcast! In this episode, host Adam Tomlin sits down with Shaun Dawson, host of the Raising Men podcast, for a powerful and honest conversation about identity, healing, and what it really means to navigate life as a modern man.

What starts as a discussion around personal struggles quickly opens up into a deeper exploration of self-awareness, emotional growth, and the stories we tell ourselves. Adam and Shaun dig into how men often feel pressure to “have it all figured out,” and how that can lead to disconnection, avoidance, or staying stuck in patterns that no longer serve them. They explore the idea that we are not the stories we’ve been telling ourselves—and that real growth begins when we’re willing to question those narratives and take responsibility for how we show up.

Listeners will hear an honest breakdown of what healing actually looks like—not as a straight line, but as a personal and often messy process. Adam and Shaun talk about emotional regulation, the importance of community, and why spaces like men’s groups and circles can play a critical role in helping men reconnect with themselves and others. They also dive into shifting from judgment to curiosity, breaking old patterns, and building a more intentional way of living.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your own patterns, struggled with identity, or wondered what it really takes to grow as a man in today’s world, this episode offers a grounded and relatable perspective on doing the work—and why it matters.

Learn more about Shaun Dawson and the Raising Men podcast: https://raising.men

Tune in every Thursday for episodes that inspire, challenge, and entertain. Whether you’re here for laughs, lived wisdom, or action steps, the ACT OUT podcast is your space to rethink growth, embrace self-awareness, and act out your passions.

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Transcript

Introduction + Meet Shaun Dawson (Raising Men Podcast)

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the Act Out Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Tomlin. Today's guest is the host of Raising Men Podcast, Sean Dawson. Let's roll the tape.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Sean, how are you, man? I'm doing fantastic. Adam, thank you so much for the invitation to be part of your podcast and your movement. It's it's great to chat with fellow like-minded people. And uh it's a it's a subject that I'm really passionate about. I can't wait to get into it.

Masculinity Crisis & Raising Boys Today

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Yeah, uh, you know, I told you a little bit earlier before we started uh recording that as soon as I saw your biography, I was like, I have got to talk to Sean. So I'm I'm really glad that we could get this uh organized. Uh do you want to uh start off by telling the uh the listeners what you do?

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the host of a podcast called Raising Men. And I uh, you know, that's not that's not what I do for a living. It's what I I took on as a passion project. And uh, you know, I'm kind of in a career transition right now. And one of the things that I kind of has been working in the back of my head uh head ever since my son was born is that we're in kind of a masculinity crisis right now. And it is absolutely exacerbated by the by social media and just kind of the timber of politics and and social cohesion that's going on right now. And there are a lot of voices that, to my view, are in these extremes. Either you have this sort of extreme left viewpoint that masculinity is evil and should be suppressed, and or you have the reactionary, blackpilled response to that, which is no, no, no, we embrace everything that's just ugly about life and about being an asshole. And masculinity is just being just amplifying and valorizing all those things. And obviously, neither of those things are true. Our boys are the casualties of that. And when I look at my son and I look at my daughter, my daughter is not gonna have trouble working herself into our culture. She is the culture is going to embrace her with open arms. And I mean, she's gonna be a force to be reckoned with, no question. My son has an equally strong personality. But as he gets into TK and kindergarten and and uh now first grade, it's clear that our culture is trying to turn him into something that is not. And it's like trying to beat out of him some of what is making him, what makes him a boy. Okay. And I need to figure out how to manage that. And and the way that the society that he's graduating into is so different from the one that I grew up in. It might as well be a foreign country. And so, you know, I just need to I need to figure it out. And frankly, I started the podcast as a way to try and have this journey with other like-minded folks, um and uh make friends with guys like you.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

So let's kind of uh start off. I I don't want to uh label you with any age. I'm uh I'm 39. Yeah, 30. I'll be 40 and uh in September.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Old enough to tell you of that age where you stop remembering what age exactly it goes away. By the way, it goes that goes away when you turn 50. So between 35 and 40, you can't remember how old you are because you're still young enough to like, you know, I'm pretty young and you're 28, but you're old enough so that it doesn't really matter all that much. And frankly, there's not a whole lot of to be gained by by claiming age that's that's bigger than you are. As soon as you turn 50, you're like, holy crap, I'm 50. And and you feel you're age. And so I'm 51. And uh and I never would have guessed that. I I I haven't forgotten since I turned 50, I haven't forgotten how old I was one time.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Well, I the thing is, I have a uh two-year-old son. He'll be three in just a few weeks, actually. So every single day by the by the end of the day, I feel like I'm about 78 with how much I'm having to bend over and run around.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

So it's yeah, toddler stays 15 years later than you. And uh, I'm telling you, man, you the earlier you can have kids, the better. And and also the more kids you can have, the better. That's another thing that I've discovered. It that is not something that's obvious because the problem is you have your first kid and you're like, oh my god, that is so much work. I don't think I could do another one. But then you have the second one, and it's not twice as much work. It's it's actually to some extent later on, it's less work because they can play with each other and you don't you're not their only friend. And it it there's an interesting dynamic there.

SPEAKER_03 4:45

It's not less work to have too, but it definitely there is a uh economy of scale there that whenever I was uh uh I used to work at a uh a recreation department whenever I was in college, and uh the director of it was uh he was uh I think in his 50s, and you know, I was just like early 20s. And or at first I was like 19. And uh whenever I was a freshman, he was like, Adam, do not have kids until you're at least 40. You know, uh that way you're more established, everything, you know, you'll you'll feel better. By the time, by the time I was 21, he was like, have kids as early as possible. You're gonna run out of energy, man. It just is he completely flip-flopped.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

That's hilarious. Yes, that is me. That is me.

Masculinity Then vs Now (80s & 90s Perspective)

SPEAKER_03 5:34

So whenever uh whenever I'm I'm gonna lump you and I in the uh you and me in the same generation, we practically are anyway. Absolutely. Whenever, uh, whenever you we were growing up, how would you define masculinity? You know, 80s and 90s.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, the metaphor I like to use is like a castle. And back in 80s, 90s, 70s, right, we were thinking about masculinity as how strong is your castle? How strong are the walls? How impregnable are those walls? And the problem with that is if you want to maximize the strength of the walls of your castle, you have to decrease the size of the courtyard to where it's it's very, very small, which means that nothing can thrive inside the castle. It really is just a stronghold. It's also quite brittle. Meaning, like if anything does get through the walls, or if you end up with a threat that isn't physical, then it's useless. Nowadays, I think and I mean, I don't think it's ever not been the case that this was true, but it's a little bit more obvious that it's a lot less important how strong your walls are in the castle than how much area they encompass. How much is your protected zone, right? How much how much community is able to thrive under your domain? And so if you think about it that way, then your walls are gonna be a lot bigger. They're gonna be a lot, you know, you're gonna leverage the terrain more, right? You're gonna make sure that you cultivate things within the castle. You're gonna have nice gates that open up 99% of the time, but can close if they need to be. And you're gonna have a garrison, and you're I mean, you're gonna think about your castle design differently if you're not just focused on withstanding an attack that, by the way, might never come because our society is so different than it was 2,000 years ago or whatever. And so that's that's the metaphor that I like to use. So back in the 70s, masculinity, I think, was primarily defined as a show of strength. Like how strong can you demonstrate that you are? And the downside of that is oftentimes you're brittle.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

Yes, very much so. And uh, whenever you're talking about strength, you're talking exterior, aren't you? I mean, there's not really Yeah.

Emotional Suppression in Men & The Cost of “Being Strong”

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Not even talking about necessarily actual strength, but the implication of strength. Outward trappings of strength.

SPEAKER_03 8:15

I don't know about you, but as far as uh as far as emotions or feelings were concerned, the way that you could show strength for me growing up would be how well you could contain those motion emotions inside of you.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah. You you're not, you as a man, you're not allowed to show emotion other than anger.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

And even anger, it's very specific. You know, there's there there's certain rules to it as well. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, at least for me growing up. Uh my dad was a police officer. So wow. Sure. Yeah. But that's uh that that's something that I have kind of thought of a lot, where uh it's sort of this kind of machismo idea of strength. It's either how much you can bench press or how well you can kind of keep that uh calm, steely demeanor. And like I tried that for uh 30 some odd years, you know, not very good at uh counting. But all that that did for me, though, was uh get me a uh spinal fusion in my L5S1. Wow and and a therapy bill that I am, you know, still racking up to this day. Wow. You know? Yeah. So I think that what that kind of mind frame did for me, and I'd kind of like to get your uh opinion on that as well, is like it put me so far behind the eight ball with being able to regulate myself that by the time I started, I was doing basically like the CNSA therapy, like uh, you know, the horse says nay, but it'd be like with happiness or sadness, like, where's that my body? And that that was in my 30s.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Uh do you would would did you have a situation like that? Like, did you kind of like slowly start changing to where you felt more free to express your emotions? Or is that kind of something you did?

Personal Stories: Fatherhood, Fertility, and Identity

SPEAKER_00 10:11

I yeah, you know, I I haven't I haven't thought that much about that. And I I was always uh a fairly emotional person um compared to a lot of other people. I, you know, I when I was when I was growing up and I was in high school and stuff, I I was in I was in drama, I was in speech, I, you know, that those I I I kind of played sports a little bit. The rest of my family is very athletic. I wasn't back in those days. And then I ended up getting into athletics much later when I got into my 30s. And so it was, you know, I I think that I think I've always kind of had this bent towards, man, I mean, that kind of outward display of uh I don't know, physical prowess was never really part of my and then and then it kind of became that way. But I was I was self-aware enough at that time to recognize that it wasn't everything. And and it wasn't everything for me. And I I had always I had always really proud my proud prided myself on my intellectual capabilities more than my physical ones. And I and I thought that that was better suited to your modern challenges anyway. And so I kind of always had kind of a sense that that overall sense of of masculinity that our society was trying to cram down everyone's throats wasn't exactly right. It wasn't until I had my kids that I realized that unless I'm careful, I'm gonna impart some of the same mistakes that and issues and and and weaknesses that I have that I've tried to overcome. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give those to my children if I'm not careful, if I'm not intentional about what I'm doing. And so that's I decided to make a study of it.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

That uh that's uh so like so very similar to uh to my story. Uh whenever uh uh my wife and I tried uh for uh for about a year and a half to have a kid. Wow. Um and so you know, we did the uh you know, the the assisted uh reproductive technology, whatever it is. Uh as we uh we we finally got to uh to IBF. And uh, you know, luckily uh the like first um implant implantation or whatever the right word is, it's been a few years now. I can't remember it all now. Uh luckily that that took and you know uh she she got pregnant with Camden.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

And uh so fortunate. Many couples entering into that just really struggle with that. I I have a bunch of friends who've been doing that, and uh really totally fortunate.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

It's it's unreal to to want something so bad and you see uh see other couples who just you know it just kind of happens naturally and stuff, and you get it's very frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah, it is can't imagine. Yeah, and and your and your your wife, I imagine, feels responsible. You know, we find she feels like a bad person, I imagine. I imagine also that that there's there was a real challenge to your masculinity as well, because what am I what kind of man am I? I can't even sire a child. Boy, I I can imagine what what that must be like. Yeah, I I'm I'm eager to hear about more about this and ask about it.

Becoming a Dad: Expectations vs Reality (Early Fatherhood Struggles)

SPEAKER_03 13:43

Yeah, man. So it uh you're you're right. There was uh especially for me, I I actually haven't asked Kaylin how uh how she uh you know, like if she kind of felt like you know, like a little like lesser than or anything during that process. I certainly did though. Um I I uh so there were like you know a couple of tests that like I would have to do. So like I would go to different kinds of doctors, and every doctor I went to, it would be the most embarrassing experience of my life. Of course. Uh like I could barely even like bring myself to say why I was even there in the first place. I'm with you. I'm with you. You know, yeah. And so it it's so it's it's so weird uh to me to to think back now, like on that uh that frame of mind. But I mean it was absolutely almost like I is is Camden even a real kid if I can't, you know, if if we can't do it like you know on our own. Um but uh trust me, he is he's very real and I have he's very have the mess downstairs to prove it.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Yes. You know, so let me ask you something about that experience because one of my formative situations was that when my son was born, my wife fell madly in love with him the instant he came out of her body, but I didn't. And in fact, I felt felt that there was something wrong with me because I looked at that thing and I felt nothing. And it wasn't until about six weeks later that I started connecting with him and I started being able to teach him things, and that's when I was like, ah, now I have the twinge. But I also we didn't struggle, right? We didn't have rounds of IVF and and and all of the the uh the therapy and the tests and all of those things that you that you talk about. So was your experience different? Or or or did you do it? What I discovered, I discovered that 80 or 90 percent of men are the same as me. And I thought I was weird. I thought I was sociopathic or something like that. It turns out that I'm the rule. The exception is the dad who just falls magically in love with his son, but those are the ones that post on Instagram, and so those are the ones we see. And so, what was your experience like with that? Does the did the IVF aspect change anything for you?

SPEAKER_03 15:54

Uh, first of all, the ones that post on Instagram are probably the most insecure and like stuff out of all of us.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

But uh, so I was actually that's kind of what uh what I was like originally getting at though. Uh Sean was where like, you know, we tried so hard uh to get to get pregnant. And I I in my head I wanted it so bad. And then whenever we got the news, like she was ecstatic, and I kind of had like this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, like, shit, I'm like this, I I'm gonna be a dad now. Yeah. And so it was this like weird thing where like in my, I mean, ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I wanted to get married, have kids, have a family. That was like, that was what was in my head, you know, from the jump. And then whenever I was married and my wife was pregnant, uh, all of a sudden I'm like, I I don't think I'm ready for this. And it uh to kind of uh go back to your point, I I noticed that there were patterns that I was repeating that I I saw I saw like had a detrimental impact on me as a kid. I knew that they shouldn't be done, but I saw myself doing them and being absolutely powerless to stop them unless I got help. And I was um never forget this, man, painting the uh the nursery closet and uh Creed, the song that uh the lead singer of Creed wrote about is uh whenever he just found out his wife was pregnant, like the the second verse of that song was like, I hope the kid's not like me, I hope he'll understand that he can have a great life, essentially that. And I remember having that song on repeat and like just like blaring out that like second verse almost at the top of my lungs, just like tears like pulling down my face. I'm like, if the lyrical genius of Scott Stapp is uh affecting me this much right now, I need some serious help.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

No question. Yeah, that is that's the thought that occurred to me as well is man, look at this guy's life. This guy, how does he not have everything he ever wants? And he's struggling with this stuff. Like, what chance do I have?

SPEAKER_03 18:12

Yeah, and uh, and just like you, man, the I feel like a psychopath saying this, uh, the very first time I held Camden in my arms, I knew on an intellectual level that I loved him more than anything and that like I would give my life for him. Like I knew that, but at the same time, whenever I was holding him, I felt absolutely nothing. There was no like rush of joy or like hope or like I I didn't like dissociate and see stars. No, I felt like my my heart rate was perfectly steady. Yeah, and I was like, yeah, no, I'm there's something.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

There's a little bit of anxiety there. It's like, okay, now that I was another mouth to peep.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

Right. So how uh you you said it took about six weeks for you uh and like being able to kind of like start teaching?

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, for me it sort of started to click and it and it didn't it didn't really click until a little bit later, but it started to click. I was changing his diaper one time and um yeah, I kind of got finished, and then I held my fingers out for him to reach up and and pull them up. And I basically in that moment I trained him to reach up and pull himself up rather than have me like just pick him up out of the thing. And and that's when it started to click. It it didn't fully click. You know, when my wife and I were um thinking about having kids, we first got together, we really weren't going to. And um, and then after we got married, she came to me and said, listen, you know, I I think I might have changed my mind about kids. I I'm I'm interested to know if, you know, I'd like you to think about it. And, you know, if if you decide that you're up for it, I would like to, I would like to have kids. And that kind of threw me for a loop. And so I'm an engineer. And so I did basically a field study. I was traveling a lot at the time. And so I asked everyone I met and everyone I knew, whether they had kids or not, I would ask them how they felt about their decision. And the good news is that everybody was pretty happy with whatever decision they'd made. The non-parents, though, were mostly happy because they had a lot of money. They could go on vacations whenever they want. They didn't really have to worry about anything. But the parents were happy in this almost spiritual way. And uh the guy that was a friend of mine who's the CTO of the company I used to work for, I was meeting with him and we were watching, we were sitting on his deck watching his uh beautiful wife and their at the time their three-year-old son was out there playing in the yard and they were throwing frisbee for the dog. And he says to me, he goes, He says, you know, I love my wife. My wife, I mean, she's great. But that boy that boy's my soulmate. And I kind of like I was like, that's that I get.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

That's that I want that.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

And it wasn't, I mean, like I said, when I'm sitting there dealing with the fact that my son is projectile vomiting across the room impressively, and now I have to clean all that stuff up and I s now I have to feed him again and like like like I'm I'm worse off than I was 15 minutes ago. I didn't feel that. But but I do now. And you know, I I can think of small emblematic moments that are like that. And actually, it's made me realize it's made me think back to my own childhood with my own father, and realize that there are Ways that he was trying to tell me the same thing. And I didn't get it. I didn't, but I was his soulmate too. And so I think maybe that's one of the things, the the the absolute keys to what we need to be doing as as fathers, is they need to come apart or they need to come away with that feeling, that understanding that you're their soulmate. And they're or they're your soulmate. You'll have to be their soulmate, right? They'll have their own. They'll have their own spouse and they'll have their own child children, hopefully. They'll have their own soulmates, but but but he'll always be mine. And and it's that way, you know, I have one son and one daughter, and I feel differently about my daughter. It's it's not any less, but it's done, it's definitely different.

SPEAKER_03 22:54

Where do you think the disconnect was between you and your dad to where you said that he was trying to tell you, but you couldn't hear him? Where do you think that disconnect came from?

Self-Awareness, Shame & Rewiring Your Inner Voice

SPEAKER_00 23:08

I I think that he just didn't have the words to quite say it the way the way that he would have liked to. Wasn't it wasn't permissible. I remember early on, my my son was about, I don't know, maybe two years old, and he came up and my wife said to him, Oh, go give your dad a kiss. And he came up and he and he tried he kissed his mom and then on the lips. And then he came over and and and my wife said, Oh, give your dad a kiss. And he came over to kiss me on the lips, and I turned my cheek and let him kiss me on the cheek. And my wife said to me, Why wouldn't you let him kiss you on the lips? And reflexively I said, Men don't kiss each other on the lips. And she goes, and that was it. But it stuck in my brain. Yeah. I thought about it, I thought about it, like, why can I feel that way? And I just cranked on it. And about in the next day, I was like, I, I, I realized and that that is coming from a place that's not healthy. You know, there's some aspect, oh, I'm gonna turn my son gay or something, and being gay is bad, and I wouldn't want to do that. And uh like like that's that's coming from a dark place in my history. And I want my son to want to kiss me on the lips. And by the way, there's I mean, there's uh, you know, there's there's health aspects to it. You know, there's not a cut and dried thing. Like I can see coming either way, coming down on either side of that, but it's perfectly fine to come down on the side that we don't kiss each other on lips because you're being intentional about it, not because you're being reflexively, you know, letting this this history, this baggage weigh you down. And and so yeah, I went to my wife the next day. I said, you know what, I've been thinking a lot about that thing about the lips kissing. And I I I realized that that was not coming from a healthy place, and I've decided to change my mind about it. And so, and I I said the same thing to the boy, and now he kisses me on the lips when he when he gets in school.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

So, Sean, how were you able to be curious with yourself in that situation? And so I I think before, uh, if if that would have, if that same thing would have happened to me, uh, and you know, like my wife would have said, well, you know, I kind of had that same interaction, I would have judged myself. I'm like, you're an idiot. Why didn't you, you know, and that would just kind of come hammered down on myself. Yeah, how are you able to be curious with yourself instead of judgmental?

SPEAKER_00 25:44

I love this question. I have been thinking a lot about the role of shame. Your reaction that you just described basically is a way for you to make yourself feel shame. And shame is a way that our culture and our society has of trying to influence our behavior by threatening that you're no longer gonna be part of the crowd. And that is an existential kind of threat feeling to us. And so being shamed is like being it's a it feels can feel like a threat to your life. Oh, yeah. And there's no place for it, almost no place for it. I don't know how strongly I feel that way. I think there probably are things that maybe would warrant it. But I actually think that you'll that wielding shame as a weapon does more harm than good. And then in fact, for a lot of people, it can inure them to being shamed, and then you start to get some of the behavior that we see in like hyper online people. Hyper online people get shamed all the time. And so they get resistant to it, doesn't really affect them anymore. And then they start to behave in ways that are really, really counterproductive. And especially when you're trying to apply shame to yourself, that's ridiculous. And so I I got this reflex at some point. I developed this reflex against doing that to myself. And it's not perfect, believe me. Um and but but it always when I start to feel that sense in my chest uh of starting to feel ashamed of something, I I I interrogate it. And, you know, why am I feeling this way? And and what is the appropriate way to feel? Because it's almost never the case that it's appropriate to feel shame.

SPEAKER_03 27:53

Yeah, I noticed what you said uh is that you feel it in your chest. So is that kind of like a like a somatic thing? You're like, oh, I noticed that my chest is kind of starting to feel a little tight. And then that's kind of like a ooh, okay, uh, this is gonna trigger a uh a certain uh kind of feeling here. I need to step down.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah, I feel it right here, right here. And when I have that feeling, I it it triggers analysis for me.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

So the brain is incredibly powerful in that it can design and shape your reality. And so something that you hear over and over again is going to be incorporated into your reality.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

So if this internal voice that you have, like, oh, I'm a piece of shit, or I'm terrible, I'm never gonna do this, if you hear that enough, your mind is going to create a reality in which you you totally feel as if you are a POS or if you're you're a horrible person.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

100%. Yeah. There is a um, there's a whole body of study around sports psychology. And um and there's this interesting finding in that little world about your brain can't even distinguish like if you say don't mess up, right? Your brain doesn't hear the don't. It doesn't hear the not there. It only hears mess up. And you will mess up if you do that. And and negative self-talk is the absolute bane of performance. It is the absolute bane of performance. And you know, I mean, like the world is perfectly happy to make you feel shitty. Why are you contributing to that? Like there are there are a zillion other people that are perfectly happy to to beat you down. Why are you gonna contribute to that?

SPEAKER_03 29:54

Uh to kind of go a little bit more on that uh point, uh, I think it's Michael Phelps before, like the night before every race he would have, he would sit down and imagine different possibilities. I, you know, him swimming and his goggles falling off, or him, and he had all of these different things, uh, different thoughts, like, okay, well, this could go wrong. And he would, he would imagine himself fixing his goggles or turning whatever it was, making adjustments. And his brain was training himself so like, okay, something bad happens. I just, I do this, I pivot, I get over it. That's right. So, yeah, so it's it's not just the negative thing that your brain creates a reality around. It can also be the positive, too.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Uh 100%. That's the yeah. That's the tension there. Your your brain can make whatever whatever reality you want it to. So you might as well make it a good one. Did you ever have to have therapy or anything?

SPEAKER_03 30:53

Or did this stuff just come? Okay, all right. I was about to be extra pissed if you were just like, if you just happen to be a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

You know, I was really fortunate, Adam. I had maybe the most amazing mother in the history of mothers. She was absolutely unbelievable. She was, I mean, you know, talk about my soulmate. She was that to me as well. She was an angel. And she she died when I was 21, which, I mean, there's just nothing I wouldn't do to have her back. She would love her grandchildren. But I was really fortunate and she was so wise. And in fact, it was almost a gift that she was taking from us as early as she was, because she never became mortal to me. She is ensconced in my brain in this movie that, you know, she's a fictitious figure now. She's she's been gone longer than she was around. And or she's been gone to me longer. To me, she's been gone longer than she's around. Right. Um and and so that that avatar that I have of her is it was it was very helpful to me. And so it is so so that's part of it. But yeah, I mean, it's also the case that that I knew I started in therapy when I was very young. And so I never I never had this kind of sense that, you know, only weak people go to therapy or whatever it is that keeps people from doing that. So I I don't, I mean, I I consider therapy like going to a coach and or a trainer. You know, you are you are you weak if you can't go to the gym without there being a trainer there to teach you how to do a bench press? No, you and by the way, you can do a bench press by yourself, right? But having a trainer focuses your efforts in a little bit more. You know, they're an expert. You don't have to become an expert in this thing because they're gonna be there for you. And by the way, they hold you accountable. These are all things that are really tough to do. This is why we need these people. And so, I mean, if you're willing to hire a trainer to train your physical body, why wouldn't you be willing to hire the hire one to train your mind? Because your mind is way more important.

Modern Masculinity, Social Media & Starting Raising Men

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Yeah. Um, I where were you five years ago, man? You could have uh could have really uh saved me some time. When did you decide to start your podcast?

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Yeah, I have been thinking about it for probably about four or five years ago now. And uh finally about um about seven months ago, I was on a walk and I was just thinking about it, and I was listening to some, I was listening to a different podcast. Um and I just felt like the content around masculinity that I have access to, I'm not happy with it. I don't think most of it does service to the problem. And, you know, some of it identifies the problem well, but then the solutions are either non-existent or too systematic or or just wrong. I was on that walk and I thought, I need to start the podcast. What am I gonna call it? And I said, I'll call it raising men, because that's what it's about. How do we raise excellent men in our modern culture? And I said, I'll tell you what, I made a deal with myself. I'm gonna go back to my hotel room. I was on a business trip. I'm gonna go back to my hotel room. I'm gonna see if the I found out during this walk, I found out that there was a men, a top-level domain. So I could get the raising.men URL. And I said, okay, if I can, if that URL, if that domain name is available, I will buy it and I'll start the podcast. And if it's not, then that's the universe telling me this isn't the right time or whatever. So I went back to my hotel and I typed the domain into my URL registrar and it was available. So I bought it. And it was that like it had been churning in the back of my mind for years and years and years. And I finally decided to bite the bullet. I decided how much it would cost me and scrolled the money aside, and I decided to do it.

SPEAKER_03 35:25

So uh I think earlier, uh, how you kind of defined the uh problem, and uh please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's uh kind of masculinity, almost a text from both sides where uh you got the left uh or the the extreme left position being that uh like masculinity is inherently bad. Yeah. And then you have uh the extremist right that is saying that it is only masculinity, go patriarchy forever.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Is that what you're kind of is that what you see the problem as or of uh stuff? Exactly. And I I mean I think that that's an encapsulation of what we see everywhere. I mean, like our the way that these messages end up getting amplified is all through social media. Social media, these people get rich by making us mad at each other. So they take the you know, we agree on 90% of stuff, but social media is expert at figuring out the 10% of stuff we don't agree on and making us snipe at each other about it. And masculinity is a really important thing. We need good men, and it is getting that treatment. And so what you see, the loud voices that you see are the ones on the extremes. The extreme hyper masculinity is evil folks, and the extreme hyper no evil is good folks. And what I'm hoping to do is be a part of the voices in the middle. And and hopefully, like you, right?

SPEAKER_03 36:54

And hopefully, we will outweigh the messaging from uh Yeah, that's literally one of the big reasons why I started this. I wanted to uh wanted to kind of provide that counterbalance. I'm glad that we got folks like you, uh like you helping me out.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Like, why? The more the merrier.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Yeah. So where do you see the sweet spot for masculinity? What's the what's the middle ground for you between those two?

SPEAKER_00 37:22

Yeah, one of the one of the interesting realizations that I've had through this entire process is that our our job is essentially to manage tensions. And so that extreme that I talked about is in itself a tension, right? You have the extreme of masculinity as evil, and you have the extreme of no, no, no, evil is good, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. And so if you what I've discovered is if you ever have anyone telling you, no, no, this is the way things are, there's always an opposite to that, that is in tension with that, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. And the real key strength and the real key intelligence is to figure out where that tension needs to be and dial it in appropriately. And masculinity is the same way. Masculinity is, you know, healthy masculinity is a way of taking the masculine virtues, right? You know, these are things like our desire to be a protector, our desire to be a provider, our our you know, our our way of doing things, you know, without necessarily needing to have it attributed to us. These sorts of things, like these are these are masculine virtues, and applying them in a way that is consistent with our modern society. And you know, we also have challenges associated with the fact that our institutions are crumbling. And so a lot of the institutions that gave us, turned us into men, that were these kind of like rites of passage or those sorts of things, those are gone now. And, you know, again, there's a tension there. That's a problem in the sense that we don't have rights of passage. My son is not by default going to get you know cast out into the wilderness to kill a tiger and bring him back. But that's also a good thing. He's not going to have to risk their life. But I better be I better be intentional about creating those rights of passage for him for him. And by the way, for myself, because I haven't necessarily gone through the necessary rites of passage to teach me about what it takes to be a good man. And and so that's you know, that that's another example of the places where we just need to be need to be intentional about how we're living our lives. We need to know what our values are. And those values are going to be different for me than they are for us. There's going to be a lot of overlap. And we need to set ourselves on the journey of making sure that we're contributing, not detracting from people's sense of peace and safety. And again, we're trying to build that castle and we're trying to get that community inside that castle to be as large and as vibrant as we can.

SPEAKER_03 40:33

You you mentioned a lot of things. Uh, but the two of the biggest uh that I that I caught were that there's like an innate desire for uh for men to kind of want to want to protect and to provide.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

That is certainly I've had that, and I mean still have uh you know, still have that desire. What I noticed before was that I think that my identity was tied into being a provider or being a protector. So uh, you know, there was a a period whenever uh I lost my uh lost my job in uh I think it was like 2018 or 2019. And I mean for a for like probably a solid like six months, yeah, I felt like I was the most worthless human being on the face of the earth because I was no longer the provider. Right. So I think that it's kind of it's kind of tricky to to have those like ideals, but not have them be a full part of your identity. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Yeah, and I would I would push back on that a little bit in the sense that there is a component about being a provider that is making enough money for the family, right? That's that's definitely part of being a provider. But it's not all of it, right? Being a provider is also making sure that you are present with your children and and that you again, we need to cultivate the village inside the castle walls. And so if all you're ever doing is going off to work and you're not a father to your children, are you really being a good provider? Even if you make all of the money necessary to provide for their physical needs, are you really being a provider? By the same token, if you're unable to bring in a paycheck for whatever reason, right? Maybe you've lost your job, maybe you were injured, maybe whatever, does that mean you can't be a provider? Does that mean you can't do those other things? No, of course it doesn't. And so I think that's that we need to widen the aperture a little bit about what it means to a provider and recognize that it's not enough just simply to bring home a paycheck, and that it's not if you're not bringing home a paycheck, that's not all of it. No, uh, that is a great point.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

And uh something that I had not didn't even consider until you had done the pushback. So thank you. First, I was gonna tell you to F off.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

You didn't work, Matthew.

SPEAKER_03 43:11

But no, uh that was very true. That in my head, the only way that a man could be a provider is with a paycheck. And you uh mentioning providing attention and time and being present with your kids as being a provider, I kind of completely opened up my mind to like a a new uh kind of a new angle on that that I'd never considered before, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Yeah. By the way, there's a there's a similar kind of dynamic with uh being a protector. You could you could caricaturize being a protector as being, you know, again, being a good fighter and being strong and having guns all over the house just in case an intruder comes. But but that's not I mean, that was a view of being a protector a thousand years ago. In our modern society, being a protector is a lot more about creating emotional safety. Yes. Making your kids afraid that there was an uh an intruder about to enter the out at any moment and having limbs around and you just doesn't want to fully train because, you know, the bad guys are coming. If that's not an actual risk, if that's not as much of an actual risk as you make it out to be, you're not you're not actually being a protector in that circumstance, are you? Right. It's one thing if you live in Fallujah. It's another thing if you live in Des Moines, Iowa. And, you know, I mean, there are physical threats and there are risks, and you do need to manage them, but you also have to manage them in a way that helps your children thrive and creates emotional safety. That's being a protector.

SPEAKER_03 44:40

How do we uh teach or how do we do we teach or do we provide an example, perhaps, to men to help kind of get the idea forward that being a protector is about uh providing, you know, emotional peace and emotional stability as well.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

Yeah. So one of the absolute truest possible lessons that I have learned in the amount of time that I've been doing this podcast is teaching, talking, writing, all of that stuff is 10% of it. The doing is the 90% of it. The kids will watch what you do and they will emulate you, and they will not listen to what you say. In many cases, they won't even hear it. And so that's one aspect of it. In order to raise good men, we have to be good men. That's 90% of it. And by the way, being a good man is not being a perfect man. It's it's it's actually recognizing the ways in which you fall short. I had an episode two days ago. I've been going through some some relatively intense emotional strain in my in my personal life and professional life right now. And so I'm at I'm struggling a little bit. And so I was putting the kids to bed. And they wanted one of the kids wanted this one book that he just loves. And and it's this kind of funny, like for some reason in this book, I was reading the book, and one day I decided to start screaming the dialogue. And the kids, like I yell at the top of my lungs reading this book. And the kids just thought it was the funniest thing in the entire world. And so every once in a while they want me to read this book. And this is, you know, they want me to scream the parts. One. So in this particular case, my son wanted me to read the yelling book, but my my daughter just wasn't in the mood for the yelling. And it turned into this real negative thing where my you know, I was yelling to my son, and my daughter was freaking out, and she went to the other room and and she started screaming at me. And pretty soon we were all screaming at each other and we were all mad. And I was like, I wanted to throw the book away. Actually, I did. I threw the book. I'm not reading this stupid book anymore. And I got really, really, really upset. I was at my wits' end when we started this whole thing. I just need to go to go to bed so I can get back to work, all of that stuff. And I just lost it. And I even recognized it. As it was happening, I'm like, what on earth are you doing, man? And I couldn't stop myself. And you know, I'm pretty self-aware about stuff, and I'm in the process of crapping the bed here. And so all I could do is get everything wound down and then go apologize. And I sat down with my son, who, you know, he looked really scared when I was doing this. And I said, you know what? I'm really sorry, man. I should not have blown up like that. I should not have yelled like that. I should not, that's not who I want to be. And that's, you know, I'm I'm really sorry that you end indoor that. I'm not gonna throw away the book. It's you know, like, let's reset here. I did the same thing to my daughter. And so, like, you know, ideally I would love to have never made that mistake, but frankly, it's probably better for my kids that I made the mistake because now they can see how to handle that. Right. And and I gotta model that too. So the first thing is modeling the the kind of behavior that you know you need and you know what to do, right? The second piece is your friend, your your your your children need to be able to see that in other men also. So surrounding your children with men, with other good men, like yourself. So be one yourself, surround yourself with them, surround your children with them. That's about 90% of it.

SPEAKER_03 48:27

And just in that example that you provided, then got a lot of things right there, but uh two of the big things. Uh there was the rupture, but the repair was right there too.

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:37

So I that that is more powerful than almost anything else, is to provide an example of like, yeah, like screwing up and then like showing your kids that afterwards you can actually repair afterwards, even if there's something big that happens, it's not insurmountable. If you can you if you come together and and apologize and get it right, you know, there there can be an error be a repair.

SPEAKER_02 49:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Imagine, imagine your kids had to learn how to drive by sitting in the passenger seat and watching you. And you drive totally perfectly. You never have to deal with, you never have to slam on your brakes, you never have to have to swerve to avoid anybody. You only go on certain well-wrown paths and all that stuff. What are they gonna? I mean, the instant they get out in their own, they're gonna have a car accident, they're gonna crash into something because they don't know what it looks like to deal with an exception. And so, you know, I mean, it's almost worth having the blow up to show them how to properly deal with it. Yeah. And you gotta give yourself the grace, man. Like we're all trying our best. And and, you know, I mean, you're gonna screw up. It's okay.

unknown 49:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:47

Uh another thing you did very well there. Uh you regulated yourself before you went to the apology. That's right. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Oh my gosh, that's so important.

SPEAKER_03 49:56

Because I've uh I've tried to, you know, uh Camden's too. Uh he can he can piss me off for a like full-time job if he wanted to, you know.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

So, and this is this is one of the things that I've had to learn to deal with. I am not an angry person, but I it's it's very difficult to make me angry. I've never gotten angry. And and so at first I was thinking, wow, that's a really good thing. I'm gonna be able to handle my kids just fine. But it turns out that if I had learned to regulate myself, if I was an angry person in high school and I had to, in order to get along with society, I had to figure out how to control my anger, then I'd be way better at it than I am now. I'm actually probably worse off than somebody who has trouble controlling their anger because I I didn't have the skills growing up. Anyway, yeah. Um, I forgot where I was. Uh Camden has a way of pushing your buttons. Oh, yeah. He has a way of pushing your buttons more than anybody else.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

And so what what I would do at first, I just thought of another thing too. What I'd do at first, though, is like, hey, he would make me mad. And uh I would be so upset, but I would build in my head like, I've got to apologize, I gotta apologize. So a go-to mall was still all worked up and like trying to apologize, and essentially be like, you're not letting me apologize correctly. Come on, man. You know, and like, dude, if you know, maybe you put your own oxygen mask on first. Yeah, and then you'll be all right.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

You got time, it's all right.

SPEAKER_03 51:23

But actually, I do blame one video on the internet I saw, like right before Camden was born. Uh, I had like seen one of those like Instagram reels where this guy was like, Anytime I'm angry with my kids, I uh pretend like I am 83 years old and I live in a nursing home and I have a time machine, and I can only go back to this one specific point. Uh and so all of a sudden I'm not gonna be angry anymore because you know, I'm gonna be remembering how beautiful the childhood was. I was like, oh my God, that is that's that's great. I'm gonna I'm gonna do that the next time. And uh, you know, next time Camden Right, Camden makes me mad, and I failed two things then. I like failed by getting mad, and then I failed by not being able to regulate myself, imagining being 83. Yeah. So if I could go I could touch that guy.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

It's like being on a diet. You're trying to lose weight, you know. Oh, I gotta lose 15 pounds. And you can tough out the first five pounds. Like it's fine, you can like not eat the donuts. I have a real weakness for donuts. And you can you can really, really, you can like you can grid it out. You can have the discipline and all that stuff, and you'll be able to do that for the first you know, two, three weeks, whatever it is. But in order to go past that, you need to have systematic uh changes. You need to make sure you you need to you need to uh adjust your consumption such that your cravings are different. If you keep craving donuts, you will eat donuts. Yeah. And so you need to get to a place where you don't crave donuts or whatever, and you need to, you know, where you crave the kinds of foods that are going to let you reach your goal. You have to set the thermostat. And the same is true. Like, I can't imagine, you know, I I have this, I have this other metaphor that I like to use about the we have two brains in our heads, and one of them is the the Sherlock Holmes brain. And that's the brain that that that the Instagram guy was talking about. I'm in my Sherlock Holmes brain. And so when I start to get angry, I think back to this, you know, magical time when I'm gonna be too old and you know, how am I gonna feel about how I acted with my kids? Okay, great. If you can stay in Sherlock Holmes' brain, then you've already won. That's the that's the whole game. The whole game is remaining in Sherlock Holmes' brain. Sherlock Holmes brain is your prefrontal cortex. It's the part that understands reward, it's the part that that can analyze through things and make appropriate decisions. That's not the brain you're in when you're mad at your son. You're in the cone in the barbarian brain. And the cone in the barbarian brain can't do anything but react. It can't, it can't predict, it can't analyze, it can't even recognize the long-term implications of what's happening right now. It is there's a saber-toothed tiger uh rushing me, and what do I need to do in order to stay alive for the next five seconds? That's the cone in the barbarian brain. That's the brain that your son is able to drop you into at a moment's notice with the so, so effectively. And so the trick is not what do I do once I'm back in Sherlock Holmes brain? That's not the problem. It's how do I avoid getting into cone in the barbarian brain in the first place? And that is, I don't know, maybe a lifelong practice. I mean, that is about precedent, it's about staying relaxed, it's about recognizing when you're in conin brain and then getting yourself out of that situation and having mechanisms to do that. Like, I gotta take a break here. And and, you know, I mean I I mean, it's just like saying trying to to solve this sort of thing by toughing it out or by by by having willpower, it just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_03 55:27

Yeah, and um this reminds me of uh something that you had said uh earlier. I think we were talking about maybe uh anxiety. No, shame, shame. And uh you said something about like I I can feel it, I can feel it in my chest. And so is that like kind of the the somatic response? Is that what's letting you know, like, hey, I'm moving out of Sherlock and I'm getting into Conan?

SPEAKER_00 55:48

You need to feel that physical sensation happening, and then you need to do something more productive with it. And and you know, I mean, yeah, I I am not as I said, I had this, I know all this stuff. I've learned this stuff really well, and I'm and I'm actually pretty good at self-regulating and all that stuff. And yet, literally two days ago, I had a situation that, yeah, I mean, I would love to live my life over and and and not do it that way.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

Yeah, oh yeah. No, I I got you beat, man. That happened like an hour and a half ago for me, you know.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Um Well, he's two. So yeah, it's it gets so much better, man. Your relationship with your son, it it it just it just gets deeper and it gets better, and it's just like, oh man, that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 56:36

I know that you're right. As angry, you know, as mad as I was, like, I think it was like five minutes later, he was holding a uh hairbrush and was saying uh dad that podcast, like, welcome to dad that cast. And I mean, like, I just melted.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

So yes, I I'm sure it does get better. Yeah, that's so exciting. How old are your kids? Mine are seven. My boy is seven, and my daughter is three. Oh God.

SPEAKER_03 57:02

That's that's like a pretty decent kind of age gap there. They're two like very different stages of life, I imagine. Big time.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

Big time. My daughter is now in that place where everything's no and she's asserting her independence all over the place. And uh it's interesting. So, you know, one of the one of the other things I've kind of come to learn through this process is that all kids essentially want two things. And these two things are intention, like I keep talking about. They want independence and they want connection. And very often they will want them both at the same time. And so they'll be like, get away from me, give me a hug, right? And you've got like like that can be maddening. That makes me really mad. If you say get away from me, well, then I'm gonna get hug from you. And then if you get mad at me for getting away from me, I'm gonna be like, Why the hell are you mad at me? You told me to get away. And actually, I mean, I like I kind of feel this reflex to like, okay, you want me to get away from you. I know that's what I want. And so I'm gonna punish you by getting away from me. It's so, so wrong. And so, um, you know, the key to figuring that stuff out, again, you got to stay in Sherlock Holmes' brain so that you can have the analytical capability, processing power to actually deal with this stuff. But if you can, and then you can say, all right, well, what is this kid trying to get to? Is he wanting does she want independence or does she want connection? Or to what extent does she want independence or connection? And and then I can kind of figure out how to thread that new. But, you know, it again, it goes back to you got to stay in Sherlock Holmes brain, and then you got to go meet the need.

SPEAKER_03 58:36

I was the proudest I think I've ever been as a um as a father. Camden was uh really upset in his room. And um I tried to like hold him and console him and no, dad, dad, go away. And I it was like hitting, and I mean he was really, really frustrated. Okay, so I like I sat him, I sat him down, and I took a couple of steps back, like away from his door, so he couldn't see me. But if anything happened, I'd be able to, you know, get to him. And I mean, I probably waited outside for uh five minutes. I mean, it was a pretty good bit. Yeah. Um, but then he uh finally he walked out of his room and he said, Hey Dada, me all better. And like came up, gave me a hug, and then like is like third, or let's go up to our floor and play, you know, play the player. Wow. That is you should feel a ton of pride about that. You can just send me my father of the decade trophy anytime you want to.

SPEAKER_00 59:32

Yeah. Yeah. That's I mean, that's that that's a real victory in the in the so you know. I mean, in front in that, in that um uh, you know, in that model that I explained about the about the connection and the independence, he was seeking independence. And the only way he knew how to do that was be ugly. Okay. You could be ugly, that's fine. I'm here for you no matter what. The the they need to understand that they can be as ugly as they can. And I mean, you will react, but it's not gonna change. I'm not gonna abandon you. Like I'm still here. Right. If you turn around and decide you need me, then I'm here for you, no matter what. That's one of the that's one of the things you have to convey to them, of course. But then so he needs independence. All right, fine, you can have some independence.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:17

And then we're gonna give him that. Love and connection are never conditional. I guess that's would be a good way of it. And it's so easy to make it connection.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

I say, but you have to recognize that it's all about your ego. You you feel bad for being treated shitty. So you're gonna punish him for that, and so you're gonna withhold, you know he wants connection, so you're gonna withhold that. All right, well, that's a recipe for absolutely destroying your kid. You want to do that?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:47

Yeah, I mean, I I've listened to Harry Shapin, uh Harry Shapen Carpenter's Cats in the Cradle enough time to know that's a bad thing to do, my friend. There you go. There you go. Uh Sean, where can uh folks find you?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

Yeah, so uh the website is raising.men. Like I said, if I didn't, if I couldn't get that domain name, we wouldn't even be here today. But we're on all the sites, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all that stuff. Just search for uh Raising Men Sean Dawson and and you will find uh you'll find all my stuff. We're we're on um on all the socials too at at Raising Men underscore podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:27

Uh how often do your episodes come out? Obviously, episodes come out every Wednesday. Okay. All right, man. And uh hey, I'm I'm just gonna throw myself out there as a guest. I've had an absolute blast today. I'd I'd love to come home, man. I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:39

You will absolutely uh you're you're on the list. My producer will be reaching out.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:43

All right. Sean, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate you acting out with me. Likewise. Thank you so much, Adam.