Betrayal, Trauma, and the Man You’re Meant to Be - Part One

In this episode of the Men’s Divorce Recovery Podcast, Dale sits down with Ralph Brewer to unpack the deep connection between childhood trauma, adult relationships, and the path to becoming a stronger man. Ralph shares how unresolved wounds can shape our wants, needs, and behaviors—often without us realizing it—until they surface through conflict or betrayal. The conversation dives into the emotional impact of divorce and infidelity, and what it really takes to move forward instead of staying stuck. Together, they break down the process of rebuilding identity, reclaiming control, and developing discipline and self-respect. This episode is a powerful guide for any man ready to confront his past, heal with intention, and step into the man he’s meant to be. 

Bible Verse Inspiration: Joel 2:25 — “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.”

Resources: https://helpformen.com

Email the Show: Hello@MensDivorceRecovery.org 

Transcript

unknown 0:00

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey man, this is Chris. Thanks so much for tuning in today. We have a fantastic show coming up today with Ralph Brewer. Uh uh, and Dale's gonna be talking to him. He's the founder of Health for Men and the author of several different books. And it's just an amazing interview. I'm bummed that I didn't get to be there for this one as well. But um you're gonna have a uh good time listening to Dale talk to uh Ralph about some great advice. Um also wanted to remind everybody that uh Men's Divorce Recovery is a nonprofit organization in the state of Texas. Um we can't survive without your donations. We really count on them to help us and to ensure that we can keep all of our platforms up and running and all of the technology that we need. And uh our ultimate goal is to help men through individual coaching, but have it subsidized by donations. So um we uh ask for your generosity and anything that you're able to give at this time to help sustain the um the organization. And you can donate to the organization at www.men's divorce recovery dot or g slash give. That's men's divorce recovery.org slash give. Thanks so much, and uh let's get on with the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Welcome guys to the Men's Divorce Recovery Podcast, where we help men survive and uh through divorce and rebuild stronger, wiser, more grounded in purpose and faith. Today's guest is Ralph Brewer, founder of uh Help for Men and Dad Starting Over. These are certainly topics that divorced men are all about. Uh and the questions are what fixing your relationship started with fixing you? We talk about that, guys, all the time. Ralph Brewer is the founder of some amazing uh organizations, Help for Men. He's the creator of Dad Starting Over and author of five books, including the Dead Bedroom Fix. Uh it's a top-rated Amazon guide for men facing sexless marriages and disconnections. Oh man, we have that all the time. His latest book, Rebuild, continues that mission. So uh pick those books up, guys. And really, Ralph, through honest conversations and real life tools, uh you help men stop coasting and start leading. We have so much passivity today. I can't wait to talk about that. He's here today to share what most men are never taught but deeply need to hear. And uh guys, Ralph's story is one many men that will recognize, many of you guys, uh, but we often don't talk about it. Uh Ralph's been through a hard time, and uh through that hard time he has bounced back and he's gonna show us how to do that today. It's what we are all about at Minster Force Recovery, hoping to uh get guys back in the game. I always always think of Ralph of the guy on the field in the NFL football game who's gets knocked down and you know, um within five seconds, you know, teams run a team runs out there to help them out. But when you get knocked down as a man, you're pretty much left on the field alone to just try to survive that. So, Ralph, take us back. Uh, we want to welcome you to the show first, Ralph. Give us a little bit of background, maybe yeah, give you a little background, give us a little background and go from there.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Well, I was probably in the in the position. This happened to me about 14 years ago when I went through divorce. So probably something similar to what a lot of your listeners have gone through, but not so nice chapter of my life was that I was in I was in a very bland, normal, boring, but in a good way. At least that's the way I thought marriage, some 14 years ago. I had three little kids, a year and a half old, just turned six, and just turned nine. And I say just turn when it when it all went down, and how it went down for me was the discovery of infidelity on the part of my ex-wife.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

Oh, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

So it gets worse. It was I discovered while we were on vacation, no less. So one of the one of those cracked open the laptop and she forgot to log off, type of thing, you know? And it was like day one of vacation. I had to endure five days of what does this mean for us? I don't it was it wasn't uh completely clear on what was going on. It was something was bad, but how far bad it got, I wasn't clear. But that came out later in the subsequent weeks. And uh I did what a lot of guys do in that position. Probably if you had asked me, heck, probably days before that went down, like what would you do if you discovered? I'd probably say I'd kick her out and I would do her. No, I did what most men in that position do, which is I want to save my family. I don't want to throw this all away. What can we do to work on this? You know, what did I what did I do to cause this and everything else? And um, but my ex, to her credit, basically said, dude, this is over and it's been over for a while. We need to we need to go our separate ways, just like that.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

So unusual for a mom.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

I was a single father of three kids. Wow, whoa, and it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, like that. And I had the kids most of the time. I had to come up with you know money that she was over half of our household income went out the door. And um, she was going through some things that uh in hindsight were probably a lot of midlife crisis, a lot of stuff coming to the surface from childhood issues and things like that, all just all came out at once. So I had to deal with that and kids dealing with that, and mom's emotional disconnection from them. And it wasn't a fun time of my life. And a part of my recovery or coping, if you will, with it was to do a lot of things that I used to do pre-marriage. So rediscovering some things about myself. Got back into music and guitars and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Oh, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

And um, just as kind of hobbies, things to reintroduce some of that creative side of me that I let go so many years. And one of the things that I got into in a big way was writing again. I used to love to write for whatever reason. Okay. I got back into uh I got into blogging, and I chose the name of I'm a dad starting over in life. So dadstartingover.com was available at the time. Again, this was well over a decade ago, and I started writing. Got a little bit of attention, not much, until I wrote on the subject of sex and marriage. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

That that got attention.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

So everything I got I talked about, you know, starting over financially, physically, and raising kids and dealing with just nothing. And then when you talk about, well, here was my experience uh in marriage compared to dating, that blew up. So somebody suggested I write a book on the subject, so I did, and that actually took off and it did really well. My my first of five books, and that one book has outsold the other four books combined. Wow, wow, and so that's done well. I it's hard to say how many copies, it's a self-published deal. So around 300,000 copies or so is what it was great.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

As an author myself, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

And so I got a lot of attention via that. People messaging me saying, Can I talk to you one-on-one? I will pay you for your time to do so. I'm like, Well, this isn't good. So I started, and that just kind of and that rolled into it, it kept snowballing into bigger things. And then eventually that we got to the point where we created a brand called Help for Men, which was much more inclusive than just me, a dad starting over in life. Right, right. And because of that brand, I got some attention from some uh national press such as Forbes, uh, New York Post, New York magazine, uh News uh News Nation, which is an online or uh TV channel, cable news channel. And um, we talk to guys that are going through the divorce, been through the divorce, guys that are in marriage and would really like to keep it that way if they can help it, and then guys that um have zero luck in the relationship game at all and never have. And uh all of these guys have a lot in common, is what we've learned. And a lot of them have a lot of issues with insecurity. They don't like themselves a whole heck of a lot, is what we've learned. And so I've heard horror story after horror story of guys in terrible relationships and trying like heck to hang on, or guys that are just going through the ringer of divorce and everything else. And I help those men on a daily basis. And my group has grown to hundreds of guys all over the world. We have myself and five other guys that act as coaches for the guys. We we do uh live Zoom meetings, we get together in person. We just had here recently our sixth annual conference.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

We rotate to different cities. It was in Louisville, Kentucky this year, and we've been to Las Vegas, Austin, we've been to Nashville and everywhere in between. So we'll see where we go next year. But I love what I do, it's very rewarding. And it was a very painful process getting here, trust me. And I'm still learning on a daily basis how to run this organization and make a business out of it and everything. But uh I love it and I get to talk to great guys like you. I do, I know, like 15 to 20 of these uh interviews every month. So it's been awesome.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Yeah. And that is amazing. Where where are you where did all this take place physically? What city were you in when the if you feel comfortable? Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, when you think divorce happened.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

When when things went down, I was in technically that day in Florida, but uh we but we had our family and everything in in Kentucky. So just usable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

Okay. Man, what a story. You know, a lot of the cohort of guys that we get through men's support recovery are are are like you. They're not the ones who went off and had the affair, they're the ones who were cheated on or have by uh uh you know borderline personality disorder wives, like that sort of that's really unusual for a woman to do that with three little kids. Is is that you're finding that to be unusual or is that common in your in the grand scope of society overall, yes, it's still a minority by a long shot.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

In the in the world of anxiously attached men, which we can go into what exactly that is.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Okay, yeah, perfect.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Anxiously attached men who are seeking out self-help material and wanting to fix their relationships and trying to figure out why they keep failing at relationships. In that world, oh no, it's not unheard of at all. It's yeah, it's not the norm, but it's not unheard of at all.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

Yeah, I think we have the same group of guys we're we're working with, the ones who have blindsided and and shafted and are figuring out what's going on, which is probably a tiny, uh small cohort of all the divorced 15,000 divorced men each week that unfortunate experience that if those are the if those stats are still holding. But wow, man, you must have just been hammered. I can't did you have any warning about this or any? I mean, all of us sort of have well inklings, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, in in hindsight, of course, you know. In hindsight, you go, Oh, that makes sense now. That that now explains this, and that that's why uh something like uh infidelity is so insidious, it's so bad because it calls into question like, what are we? Are we a couple anymore? I mean, can we work through this? Okay, we can't. So what does that mean for me? Am I now a single dad? Am I what what what's my cause? I thought I had my whole life planned out, but the worst part of it all is it questions your past, what you thought you knew. It's like, no, remember that thing that happened last Christmas? Oh, that's why she did that. That's why she was gone until 3 a.m. It wasn't because she was just with her friends and now have oh, it's like, and then when you find out that other people knew and that they just they just kept their mouths shut, they kept out of the drama, they're like, I don't want anything to do with this, dude. And you're like, Man, I thought we were friends, you know, and it's just this double, triple, quadruple whammy of awfulness that just hits you. It just comes in waves, and it just hit me all at once, and yeah, very difficult to deal with.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

Had you ever experienced any kind of and I was just kind of working on the trust issue, any kind of betrayal to that, obviously, probably not to that extent, but with a job or anything, this was a big gigantic blind side. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah, as far as horrible life moments, I mean, I I lost loved ones, you know, to death and things like that, but as far as betrayal to that degree, not at all. Not even those. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

Yeah, we talk a lot about the difference between death and divorce and how even people who have gone through death, you know, death of a spouse that divorces feels worse because it's not only do you lose your spouse and they keep living, right? Well, I cannot imagine man Ralph going through that. That is not what happened to me. Mine just walked away. There was no infidelity at that point, but uh that betrayal is pretty intense. So you were, you know, I you know, when you think about the betrayal and then just loss, you know, you divorced guys just go through this a massive loss of money, finances, reputation. And then when you think of betrayal loss or your identity collapse, because you mentioned earlier you're you know, you wonder who you are. Which of those is the worst, or are they all equally just horrible?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Uh in hindsight, I mean all equally horrible, but probably the crux of all of it, like the underlying foundation of all of it, was very much identity-based and who I am. Okay, okay, and and and how I lost my sense of values, sense of identity, and what I stand for was just slowly eroded over time. And it was no fault of my own. I just allowed things to take over and I forgot who I was. And so you lose this is very common in our world, boundaries. What I will and will not put up with in life. Well, when you don't know who you are and what you stand for, you don't have much in the way of boundaries. You just you just go with the flow, you just become very passive. Yes, dear, whatever you say, dear. That's fine. Whatever. We're gonna go here, we're gonna do this, we're gonna spend that. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. That doesn't end well. You don't care if it's a friendship or a professional relationship or whatever, you need to have some kind of boundaries in your life. And I just I lost that completely. And from what I've understood from working with so many men over the years, I I'm in I'm in a big group of guys that can relate to that.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

Yeah. So you talk about that, I was thinking about goals here in the working with incarcerated men. We talk about if you have a goal, it tells you not only does it give you a direction and what to aim for, it also tells you what to say no to. But it just occurred to me that the boundaries are the same thing. It's the walls that you say, okay, here's who I am, and here's who here's where uh you cross this this boundary, and I know what to say no to. I I totally agree with you. I wish I had looking back in my own marriage, I wish I just stood up and said, Nope, that ain't gonna happen, or here let's talk about this and be more firm in in setting those those boundaries or holding to the boundaries. So do you what kind of background did you grow up in Kentucky and in uh or are from this area in that area or family, your own family background, parents stayed married, up, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, like I said, I have I have an interesting background. I was uh my father was American GI stationed in Spain, where he met my mother. So my mother's Spanish.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

Okay, wow.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

And and I was born overseas in in Germany, and uh we moved over here when I was very little to the States, and I've lived in several different states uh over the years, and uh most of my childhood was spent in Indiana, rural Indiana. Oh near an uh American uh Air Force base, National Guard base where my dad worked for he was in the Air Force and then Air Force National Guard for 30 plus years. He wow and he retired uh after 30 plus years of service and then died shortly thereafter, which from what I understand is relatively common in that world. Um so just a lot of stress and everything else over the years, and um but uh my mom and dad's relationship, eh, not the great touching her eye. That's they but to in their defense, they both came from very dysfunctional backgrounds, which is from what I have learned over the years, talking to men who attract certain types of women and go through kind of what I went through, this is par for the course. I mean, this kind of stuff doesn't come from nowhere. It's uh we learn certain behaviors and things we tolerate and everything else all through our childhood, and we bring that into adulthood, and we tend to attract and be attracted to certain types of people, and the rest is history.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

That is so true. My I'm remarried and uh celebrating today our eighth wedding anniversary. And my wife and I often will say we married our our mom, our dad, you know, and uh did not work out. So I've been just exactly what you're saying, what you're saying, Ralph. Guys, listen to Ralph. He's saying speaking the truth here. Um I really am sorry you went through that. That betrayal piece for me, even though I wasn't betrayed in that way, just it was hard to trust again, man. I mean, life when it slaps you around, you're like, wow, I don't, you know, you just start to really think maybe, and that's not a bad thing. You start to put up more uh you know, question things a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean then I was gonna say the pardon for interrupting, but the the the line I often give to a lot of men who are going through something like that, like a big holy poop moment for them, is like you're in you're in uh you're in a good group of dudes, a good crowd of men who basically every great man that I've ever known who is amounted to something in life has gone through such a moment. And it seems like us for a lot of men, we need such a moment to kind of wake us up out of our stupor of like, I what am I doing? I need to turn around, make a 180 here and go in the opposite direction, or I need to start saying no. I need to start saying yes to the right things. And it it takes that kind of moment to give us the momentum. Otherwise, we kind of just get we get lazy, we get comfortable, and we go through life and just say, eh, shrug our shoulders and say it is what it is.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

Comfort definitely leads to apathy. I mean, it really does. I don't know if you're familiar with Richard Rohr and some of his uh spiritual journeys of men. He talks exactly about that thing, but that uh every man goes through what he calls the crisis limitation, sometime between 30 and 60 years old. And it no matter who you are, you can be Steve Jobs and get the cancer diagnosis or whatever. And that you then you can choose who what kind of guy you're gonna be after that crisis. But you're right, only great people have really gone through the fire, and uh you come out on the other side knowing that uh these things can hurt you, but they can't if uh if you choose to do well, then they can't take you totally down. And clearly you have taken uh your mess, taken it and made it into your message, and it's pretty cool to be able to for you. I'm sure the reward that you have of uh taking your crisis and turning it into something that's really super helpful to a bunch of guys is amazing. So that happened 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Uh no, 14, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

14, okay. Exactly. So 20 2012, something twelve, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yes, you're right. 2012. 2012, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Yeah, mine was mine was 20 as 15, 2016. If I could come up on the 10th anniversary of the divorce being final, so it's kind of one of those those 10th anniversaries, you know. I've I've gone through a lot, a lot about two-year period, I went through a whole lot, and I've been counting this 10, the 10th anniversary of through these different events, and I think that's sort of a weird, helpful thing. Yeah, that's that just brings up sort of a so you're 14 years out. How long would you a question we get a lot with divorcement? How long do you think it takes for a guy to recover from divorce, whatever that looks like?

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Well, I can put it in terms of dating again. We can say that because a lot of men that I talk to, they're very anxiously attached men, uh, really want to replace that wife right away with somebody else because they put all of their emotional everything on the shoulders of a woman and she goes away and he's very aimless. And so the guy's like, What do you think, Ralph, about dating? And I'm like, dude, you haven't even been divorced yet. Like your wife just announced to you, and you and you're already on the dating apps. And I always say to men, give the women a break for about a year. Like, give it 12 months. It goes by fast, just set it aside. And then what every man says is, I'm a completely different person a short 12 months later than what I was then. I thought I was ready back then, mostly because they just want to get some. Let's be honest. A lot of men go through a lot of long-term dead bedroom relationships, so they feel lonely. They have they have needs, they're a human being, and they realize that was kind of the driver of a lot of it, plus just the emotional need of feeling wanted and validated again. And so they're trying to use all these women as what I call human band-aids to make them feel better. And it's not fair to those women, and it's not fair to the kids to bring these women into their lives and everything else. Just cool it, dude. You know, focus because post-divorce, you have a lot to work on, like logistically, like your finances, absolutely, taking care of the kids, taking care of yourself and everything else. So why bring another human being into the picture? Just complicates things. And like I say, it's not fair to them or to anybody else. So just give it a break. And sure enough, one year later, they're like, Glad I did that. By the way, most don't listen to me. They go and learn the hard way and introduce all kinds of characters in their life. Um, but then even so, another year after that, they're even like, you know, I'm still is that a process that ever you you eventually ever say, now I'm ready, now I'm good. I I don't know if that ever happens. I don't know if human beings are wired in that way, that we have a defining finish line. But I can say with time, usually it gets better, especially in one way to expedite that process of getting better is to limit your contact with the ex as much as possible, which a lot of anxiously attached men have a hard time with because they're always stalking her social media and and sending her, you know, middle of the night drunken text messages and always just reaching out, reaching out. And it's like, that's not good. You need to, as much as humanely possible, cut the cord, and you know, um uh basically what you're talking about is kind of a form of addiction. And so you know you put the bottle down. You can't take little sips of whiskey and just say, I'm sober now. It doesn't work that way. You gotta you gotta cut that cord. And so with time it does get better. That's what I tell a lot of guys. For the guys that are like, it's been two years and it's not better. Let's examine some of your behavior. Sure enough, they're talking to her friends and still friends with the family. It's like you're not you're not cutting ties with her. It's that's yeah, that's not how you get better.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Yeah, that is a great word. Um, you know, we do uh, you know, for me, by the time my wife left me, then I didn't like her very much at all and have not missed her a nanosecond. But it was still so hard, I was thinking, if it's this hard for someone that you don't like, how hard it must be for those guys like you who are blindsided in an affair and then you still like your wife. So we do refer out to a guy in uh North Carolina, I think it's North Carolina, uh Greg. I'm sorry, Greg, I can't remember your name. It's uh about uncoupling, how to uncouple from your from your ex. That's well, it's not a problem for me, but I know it really is difficult. And you're right, you have to do it. I mean, in a way, you know, I came home from a overseas trip and and my ex was gone and that was a shock, but I think it was a blessing too, you know. Instead of having having to live in the same house for a year with that person that you're struggling with and everything.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

So yeah, and you know, I want to make a point also of saying that you you get a bunch of guys in a room sharing divorce stories, and invariably the story comes out. If you had to summarize all the stories, it's we're a bunch of angels and we've been done wrong by this horrible woman. And and with a little bit of introspection, you say, No, I wasn't completely innocent and all this. I had my faults. Did I deserve getting cheated? No, I didn't deserve getting cheated on, and it didn't need to end that way. But I look back on some of them, I'm like, man, this poor woman having to deal with somebody like me. Jeez. So I mean, I I get this, let's go our separate ways, how she did it, bad, bad, bad, and everything she was going through and everything else. But you know, it's the we always talk about ultimate responsibility when you're talking about being a guy. That can go that can go too far. I see a lot of men just say, every horrible thing has ever happened to me is my fault. I'm a bad boy because a lot of their childhood baggage that they have, and say, No, good bad things happen to good people all the time. You're you're a good man, you didn't deserve this level. I don't, I don't care how alpha male you think you need to be or whatever it is, it wouldn't have solved the problems that you have there. And that but unfortunately for a lot of men that are very codependent in nature, uh there's an entire industry out there that is preying upon them, telling them, you know, give me $10,000 and I'll show you how to be an alpha male and no one will ever hurt you again. And it's it doesn't work that way. It's you got some stuff you need to work on up here. And eventually I think we all come to that realization it takes some of us longer than others, and some of us spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time to get to that point. But um it it's a it's a painful journey for a lot of folks, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

I think you know, post-divorce, you know, one of the things is is taking that opportunity to really, you know, do the self-examination, say what are the things that need to change, and and uh, but not just own the whole thing. I used to think as a pastor when couples would come into my office you know, going through divorce, and I think it's 50-50 pretty much. So after having gone through it, I think, no, it's like 80, 20, 90, 9, 90, 10. One person is more more responsible for it, but there is that piece of us that needs to change. And you know, Will Rogers said that most a few men learn by reading the books, and but most men learn by peeing on the electric fence. So this could be your peeing on the electric fence moment. I love it. Don't waste the pain, man. Don't waste the pain.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

So I tell you what I hear all the time, and this is you you run the risk of picking on a man or kicking a man while he's down. I'll have some poor guy who's very codependent in nature. This is the proper psychological term for all of this, and he will say, Um, I've caught my wife in her fifth affair. Whoa, you know, wow, or my wife has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and we're bankrupt, and she's there's no stopping her, or whatever horribleness here.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

And and he will endure that for year after year after year. And at some point, I tell these men, you gotta look at yourself and say, what is it about me that causes me to hang around and put up with this, not put up a single boundary, never say never you never say enough is enough. You just go with it. What is it about you that keeps you hanging around? And a knee-jerk reaction for a lot of men is there you go, you're blaming the man again. It's always the man's fault. It has nothing to do with man or woman or whatever. I'm seeing a person who, a secure individual, would put up with that for a matter of months and then say, adios, and but you hung on for 20 plus years, dude, and that's not good. You need to figure that out. Because what happens often, you know, statistically, we know it's more often than not the woman that files for divorce. So for a lot of these guys, it the end is coming whether they wanted to or not. They can keep trying to hang on, and eventually the wife's like, I've had enough of you, I'm I'm out of here. And he's left alone. And you know what those guys do? They find the next woman who is exactly like his elderly because they haven't dealt with all those issues of why did I do this in the first place?

SPEAKER_03 25:52

Yeah, that's that's really a good point. That you know, it's hard. I think our culture does detach quickly. Uh, you know, it used to be you lived in the same village for 80 years and you had to work the problems out, and you had you had a whole village to really help you the elder men, the elder women that would coach the younger men, host coach the younger women through it. And you know, that had definitely had its drawbacks too. But today, boys is so wide open. I mean, you are uh kind of the village elder that's uh helping guys get through the get through the mess. Fortunately, when you look at just uh I want to come back to um definitely date what dating's like now, and then the anxiously attached man. Um I wrote some notes down here, and then but then why do you where do you when you are in this wide world of manhood today in America, which is clearly I mean it's never been easy, right? Male, female has been always been a challenge. But today, what what is your kind of overall view and you know the 30,000-foot view of of just where manhood is in the West? You know, uh what what are your opinions about that? Because um, you're in it, man. I mean, you're in it with guys, you're in it in the research and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Well, I mean, you got another four hours or so. Yeah, I know that's right, yes. That is a five-minute entry. Can O worms, my friend, as they say. Um boy, I mean, we could go in so many different directions with this, but if I had to encompass all of this culture, I don't know if that's the right word, whatever, atmosphere is probably a better word. Um, it's in one word, it's probably confusion. A lot of guys are like, I I'm told one thing by one person, I'm told another thing by another person. My pastor, for example, tells me something, and yet people on the internet tell me something else. Yet my and what are we talking about exactly? Probably how to be a good man. Like you may go through your entire life thinking something, and then life hits you upside the head, and you're like, okay, I guess that didn't work. And then if you're like a lot of men that I talk to, these anxiously attached men, they love to research the heck out of everything. So they'll get online and just watch YouTube after YouTube video after YouTube video, podcast after podcast about why did my relationship break down? Why didn't my wife cheat on me? And he'll get messages. There's a lot of predominant messages out there, which are very popular, which is well, because you weren't manly enough. You weren't enough of a dude, you weren't enough of a man. So what you need to do is hit the gym, which by the way, I agree with 100%. Yep, yep, be healthy for goodness sakes. Yeah, um, uh, look good, God forbid. Be a be a man with some muscle, be able to take care of yourself. These are all great things, but they're not the be all and end all for what's going on up here in your head. And that's the crux of a lot of it. So we have a lot of societal messaging that is in conflict with each other in terms of uh being a softer guy. There is there is something positive to tapping more into your quote feminine side of things. Let's put that out there, for lack of a better word, which means maybe flex your empathy muscle a little bit more. Uh maybe learn to listen, maybe learn to emote, learn to be vulnerable. But can it can it go too far? Oh, yeah. It can go way too far. And what we've seen is a lot of men who take it way too far. And I'd say what's interesting is those are some of the most miserable, angry, resentful men you will ever meet, the quintessential nice guys, because they have been playing by a book of rules that they thought were supposed to get them all the girls and all the happiness. And then life says, No, man, it don't work that way. And they are irate, and those become the most angry of angry men out there. Okay, yeah, that's good insight. As with a lot of things, it's somewhere in the middle. Yeah, sometimes you gotta flex your man muscle and you gotta be the tough one. Sometimes you gotta be the leader of the of the relationship of the household. You know, I often use the um if if we if we look at what does it mean to be a man like all over the world cross-culturally, there are some constants, there are some things that are very familiar across culture. I don't care if it's a tribe in Africa or Wall Street or wherever it is. And one of those things is the calm stoic figure when everything gets chaotic. Everyone turns to to say, Are you gonna be our our stable force in this? All right. So the the calm stable force when things are getting squirrely. And so the the uh example I often use the imagery is the there's a fire in the house. And the man is typically the one that everybody looks to to go, what now? And he's the one that opens the door and says, Everybody out, single file, go, go, go. No, don't take your things, forget about your games, forget about your go get it, get out of here, go. And then if he's like a lot of men, he walks around the house, makes sure everybody's out, everything's good, and he's the last one off the boat, so to speak. We've all heard that phrase. That's that seems to be a constant manly thing, and it is somewhat sacrificial in nature, it's very the stoic paternal role for everybody. But there's a lot of men that hear me say that out there. Maybe you're more quote unquote progressive types who say, uh, that's that's old archaic nonsense. We don't do that anymore.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

The patriarchy.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

There you go. And so when they hear from some of the women out there, no, we like that. That's what we want. Yeah, sure, exactly. They're like, What the hell? You know, yeah, I've been told my whole life to set aside that stuff and be flex my more feminine side. And I'm I'm a sweet, soft, very, very emotive, very uh uh empathetic, very sweet guy, which are all great things, but they don't flex the other side of their of their muscles, so to speak, ever. And they wonder why people kind of step all over them. So it's a very confusing message out there, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

But join us in two weeks again when we hear the second half of this interview with Ralph. We will talk to you all again very soon.