What Happens to Daughters When Dad Never Says Sorry | First Hero Podcast EP005

Why do so many dads struggle to apologize to their daughters — and what happens when they don't? In this episode of First Hero Podcast, we break down rupture and repair in father-daughter relationships: the psychology behind why dads avoid saying sorry, the shame cycle that keeps fathers stuck, and a practical 5-step repair framework you can use tonight.

If you've ever yelled at your daughter and didn't know how to make it right, this episode is for you.

🔑 What you'll learn:
- Why rupture and repair is the most important parenting skill nobody taught you
- The real reason dads don't apologize (it's not pride — it's shame)
- What attachment theory actually means for fathers and daughters
- The 5-step framework for repairing after a conflict with your daughter
- Long-term psychological effects on daughters when dad never models repair
- How to break the shame-anger cycle as a father

📌 Chapters:
00:00 — Why This Conversation Matters for Girl Dads
02:15 — What Is Rupture and Repair in Parenting?
06:30 — Why Dads Avoid Apologizing to Their Daughters
11:45 — The Shame Cycle: How Dad Guilt Becomes Dad Anger
17:00 — Attachment Theory Basics Every Father Needs to Know
22:30 — The 5-Step Repair Framework for Dads
30:00 — What Happens to Daughters Who Never See Repair
36:15 — How to Start Repairing Today

Every daughter's first hero is her dad. But heroes aren't perfect — they repair. Rupture and repair isn't about never making mistakes with your daughter. It's about showing her that relationships can survive conflict, that apologies aren't weakness, and that her emotions matter enough for you to come back and make it right.

This episode draws on attachment theory research from Dan Siegel and Ed Tronick, shame resilience work from Brené Brown, and real conversations with fathers who are learning to do this differently.

First Hero Podcast helps girl dads build deeper emotional connections with their daughters through honest conversations about fatherhood, vulnerability, and intentional parenting.

🔔 Subscribe for weekly episodes on being the dad your daughter deserves.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The moment you lose it with your daughter isn't the moment that defines you. It's what you do in the hours and the days after that writes the script she will carry for life. Most fathers think the damage is done the second they raise their voice, lose control, or even say something they regret. But that's not how your daughter's nervous system works. She's not looking for a perfect father, she's looking for a safe one. And safety isn't built by never messing up, it's built by what happens after you do. See, rupture is inevitable, but repair, that's the optional part. And that choice, whether you repair or retreat, is the difference between raising a daughter who trusts men or raising one who's already learning not to. Your daughter doesn't need you to be flawless, she needs you to be accountable. Hey, I'm Rich. And I'm Corey. Welcome to the First Hero podcast. And today we're talking about a hot topic. Hot topic, lots of lots of info. We've got uh a really, really awesome jam-packed episode. We're going to be talking about rupture. And if you're not familiar with what rupture is, Corey, what's a rupture?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, so we're talking about rupture and repair. So rupture in inside of a relationship with your daughter means an altercation or something where disconnection happens, where you either snap, you yell. Um it could be a range. And I like to put it on a on a sliding scale, so it's a spectrum. So it can be as little, uh small, medium, and large ruptures. You know, you snap at your daughter, you yell at her. Um, that could be medium. Um you have an explosive reaction where you're yelling and screaming, or maybe even hit your daughter to you know, teach her a quote unquote a lesson. That could be a huge, I classify any um any spanking or uh physical abuse as a large rupture, or it could be something as like a like a like a comment, like a sly comment that talks about you know, a back-handed comment uh that uh about her identity. You know, she says she does a behavior and you say something about her identity rather than the behavior, that can cause a rupture inside the relationship. So, really, a rupture is anything that causes disconnection between you and your daughter. And then repair is repairing that rupture, right? It's restoring that connection.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Um it's reconciling, it's apologizing, it's you know, it's taking accountability. I'd like to I like to think of rupture and repair as like muscle in the gym, right? I think rupture and repair, if done well, it can create a stronger connection and a stronger bond with your daughter. It's like a muscle. You go to the gym and you do you do bicep curls, you're tearing and breaking down your muscle, right? For it to grow back stronger and bigger. Now, I'm not saying don't go out there and actively seek rupture and repair, but I want you to use that analogy, like, okay, this is an opportunity to create connection and even even better connection with your daughter.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah, it's necessary. That's why this episode is so prevalent. And, you know, when as we go through these topics and we give examples and we bring stories from our from our lives and how this has shown up, um, and very vulnerably just kind of discuss exactly what a rupture looks like in our in our situations. A lot of you men listening are going to be able to relate to this. And it's necessary. It's necessary for any relationship to know that rupture is going to happen and what happens after is how that how that relationship either grows or whether it stagnates or starts to die.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

100%.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

And so for all you fathers listening, I'm assuming you're tuning into this podcast because you give a shit. And if you give a shit, you're like us, which means that this information is crucial to ensuring that your connection with your daughter now and for for the future remains very strong and connected. So, first let's talk about we got to break this down from a fundamental level from a father's perspective because there's a lot of shame, and specifically there's some traps that exist in why fathers avoid repair, right? Yeah. And so let's let's break this down real quick. We all know that moment when you snap and you can see it in your daughter's face. You see her, her, you see her body language change. There's an immediate gut feeling you experience, right? And fathers listening, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know it. There's something that triggers in your mind where you snap, you lose that that trigger hits, you lose control for that moment, you say something, you do something, and you you observe the immediate reaction that your daughter has, and you know in that moment, fuck. You know what's going through your head. There's that immediate gut feeling of I messed up. But then what? Right? Then what happens after that? So here's the pattern that we all typically feel once this happens. Yeah you start a shame spiral. And so you start avoiding, and it can show up in a lot of different ways, but you know, to a certain degree, we experience it very similar. We start this shame spiral. We start avoiding eye contact, we give them the cold shoulder, we hope in our mind, you know, maybe this will just be brushed under the rug. Maybe she'll just forget about it. We start justifying it in our head, and mostly because we don't know exactly what to say. So feeling like apologizing, uh, you we might have a little bit, a little bit of that sense, but oftentimes it's because we're feeling such an intense feeling of shame and guilt. We just want to push past it, move past it, just just just move along, right? Let's keep the thing moving. And that that guilt and that shame oftentimes can avoid us from apologizing. To take a step further, some of us might be feeling that apologizing means that we're weak and we can't be weak in front of our kids. It it can't be, you know, for me in particular, I've shared this with Corey. This doesn't necessarily show up for me when apologizing, but it does show up for me. I I have, I recognize that I have a I have a little bit of trauma that I'm working through from my past around feeling like I'm getting taken advantage of by my children, by anyone. Like that's just my own thing. It doesn't, it's not exclusive to my children, but it doesn't show up for me. Sometimes it does actually show up for me why I delay repair after rupture. So I'm just sharing that with you very honestly, from my perspective. That's one of my that's one of my personal, you know, um internal fears is being taken advantage of. And as ridiculous as it sounds, when I'm looking at my four-year-olds and I feel like she's testing me, and I feel like she's testing whether she can take advantage of me, dude. I've I know I've already lost. Like, what the fuck am I doing? This four-year-old is not trying to test me on whether she can take advantage of me. I'm just projecting that. So, you know, it's this shame spiral, and and and a lot of it can be revolving, you know, apologizing being related to weakness. And over time, that delay in repair or absence of repair is gonna create a significant amount of distance between you and your daughter. And as that grows, it it becomes harder and harder to address.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Right, 100%. And I'm glad you talked about that because that repair, so talking about as it grows. So I have I have a uh I have a saying it's the one one degree rule. So if you're if it's the one degree rule, right? So I'm I'm trying not to get too deep, but it's the one degree rule. So say your daughter's zero, that and you're start if you're if you're flying a plane from Los Angeles to New York and you're off by one degree, you're gonna end up either in Canada or Maryland, one of the two, right? So as your as your daughter's growing and there's a 10, 15, 20 year relationship with your daughter, and you hold the belief that repair is an important, I'm snapping, she's learning her lesson, right? Then at that point, you're not repairing the rupture at that point. And over 10, 15 years, you're you're slowly teaching her that you're not safe, right? Is that what you're kind of talking about, Rich?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we don't feel that big gap on the initial avoidance. And we might not ever feel it until we look back 15, 10, 15, 20 years later, and we realize, holy shit, dude, my daughter doesn't want anything to do with me. She's created this whole life that doesn't involve me at all. There's very little interaction, there's very little connection, you know, and and hopefully at a minimum, your daughter, you're you're at some point in the future, you realize your daughter is is an incredible person uh uh uh you know on her own and is in his and is a deep connection with her self-worth and all of that. But that's not all that's not guaranteed either. If that connection is missing, that one degree could mean that she is she is lacking the tools within herself because of a lack of rupture, because of a lack of feeling worthy of repair, that that now that has started to dictate the decisions that she goes through life making around the people she invites into her life, the circumstances she puts herself in, the drugs and and um the things that the substances she starts to fall back on, the mindset she starts to adopt. And I mean, we all know the the versions of people that we've seen from time to time, we're like, man, what a rough life. What a rough life this person has had. And those are those are people's daughters. Yeah, many of those are people's daughters, and they they are a byproduct of of something that we're talking about right now at a fundamental level.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah, yeah, a thousand percent. It it's it's funny that you talk about the belief that your daughter is is somehow taking advantage or manipulating the situation, or she's you know, she's trying to get a rise out of you. And and and really that's a maladaptive response, right? That's that's a belief that you formed somewhere in childhood to protect you, right? And it's not it maybe it served you in childhood, but it's no longer serving you because it's creating that connection, that divide between your daughter. And this is this is why this this podcast episode is so important for you fathers, because for me, I didn't think repair was very important because I I hold I held a belief the same as you. If I admit that I was wrong or I made a mistake, I admit defeat. I'm weak. I I I formed a belief in childhood, probably much like everyone else here because of the way we were parented and the way our parents were parented, that if I mess up, if I fail, I'm bad.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I think we were taught that messing up is failure.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

When it's not.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

It's not.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

As entrepreneurs, we've learned that. Any entrepreneur is learning, you know that your biggest lessons and your biggest successes are built on the failures.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

On the failures, on the on the mistakes. And I've I've held up uh I've held uh a strong belief that if I apologize, I'm weak. I'm wrong, and I don't want to be wrong, so I avoid. And that oh my god, and and and and the this concept blew my mind when my when my uh mentor was talking to me about was teaching me and guiding me through this, right? Because justifying it or hoping she forgets about it, that's you're creating more harm than not. So I kind of want to talk, I kind of want to get into why do we avoid repair? Like what's the main like what are what are some of the main things for fathers to avoid repair? And I believe it's a lack of self-awareness. Because when I when I was going through this, I held these beliefs like I didn't want to, I didn't want to make repairs because I'm weak. Well that I'm trying to do I'm trying to do a little self-work here. Um so that lack of self-awareness, that belief led me in the beginning to not to not want to repair with with my daughter, right? Because I held a label that she was manipulative, right? Kind of like what you what you went through with Ella, right? Can you kind of explain a little bit about it?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Yeah, I mean, um so if anyone if anyone listening has taken one of those personality tests, I've taken a lot. Uh Corey has as well, you know. If if you if you're familiar with them, like the disc assessment where they like analyze your personality. And in those personality tests, I first I first connected the dots or was was was given awareness around this, where it it this personality test report gave me feedback and it said, you know, these are your strengths, these are your weaknesses, these are the um, these are where you show up the best, where these are where you scenarios where you show up the worst, these are your biggest fears. And one of those fears was the fear of being taken advantage of. And when I read that, it was, it was like lightning. Like it just zapped me between the eyes. And I was like, whoa, that's true. And why? Why have I never thought about that? And from that moment, um, I think that that has been something that that awareness has now, you know, it's been a huge gift in the sense that that in moments like this with my daughter, I recognize now that my hesitation or my my delay in repair, and oftentimes my from my from my perspective, I can walk you through the actual strategy that's going through my mind when I have a rupture with my with my four-year-old. And um usually it's it's it's a lot of anger is brought in. Anger and frustration. And that's the first cloud that I that I experience. And it's really hard to kind of see the next steps in front of me in terms of repair while that storm is brewing. And so um that that what I've identified is that that storm of of anger and frustration and and sometimes even rage. Um that is that is created and multiplied by a internal fear trigger that was that was hit on this person's trying to take advantage of me. And what's wild is that as you guys can imagine, my four-year-old is not a master manipulator. You know, she's not a world-dominating, you know, uh ego, egotistical, you know, mastermind. True manipulation takes quite a bit of computing power.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

But toddlers don't really have.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

And it takes a lot of it takes a lot of brain capacity, it takes a lot of processing capacity that, you know, I mean, at their level, right? You know, what are they what do they possess to be able to do that anyway? They just know it's skills.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

It requires skills. So manipulation in my definition is having the skill to overcome the challenge or get what you want, and not using that skill. You're you're using another skill to cause uh deceit, or you're using deceit or lies to get your way, right? If you're a toddler and you don't have the skill set to overcome the challenge or the need or the unmet need or desire, that's not manipulation. They're just defaulting to the skill set that they know. They don't know if it's any better or not. And this is what I I walk parents through, or the dads that I've coached is like that that major belief is my kids manipulating me. And it's like, okay, when this this is a huge, this is a huge barrier to repair. I believe in fathers, right? Why fathers don't repair is because I think we we all have a filter of belief. We all see, we all see our children as uh labels uh tied to those beliefs. My kid is my kid is uh manipulative, my kid is spoiled. And what happens when my kid is manipulative or spoiled? I hold an internal belief that it's bad. And if my kid is bad, I'm a bad parent. If I'm a bad parent, I'm then bad. And then that triggers all kinds of internal limiting beliefs about self. I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, and then you have a trauma response, right? Now you're in this shame cycle, and shame is a precursor, in my opinion, mostly in men, to anger. For sure. Right? Because emotions are rel relatively inert. And most men are gonna fight. And they're gonna fight. And and and and most emotions are inert. They're relatively inert. It's just a chemical reaction that's going on in your body. What the emotion, what what what matters is the interpretation or the meaning that you apply to this belief or this this emotion.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

This is a really, really good connection, dude, because this has been one of the most profound. This has been one of the most profound lessons uh as a father is that the meaning that we assign to situations becomes becomes, you know, the catalyst to so many of the bad situations we we ultimately want to avoid as parents. Yes, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

And that's what creates that. Go ahead, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Putting, putting our putting our looking at a situation and then putting our adult interpretation and all of our trauma. You we have to understand that the stories that we tell ourselves, you know, in our head about why things are, it's why, it's why one story can be told from multiple different perspectives. And there can be a positive spin, a negative spin, an angry spin, a uh confident spin. The same story from different perspectives can be the same facts, same fundamentals, but with a different interpretation. With a different interpretation, which is the exact same thing that happens in each of our minds. And when something happens with our little girls, and we immediately, if we're not aware enough to figure out, or if we don't have the awareness level to understand that the our immediate reaction is going to be to put our story on it and our meaning on it, we are we we are not gonna be able to come back from there. Like we have to cut, we have to, we have to make the first cut there.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think this is like the main, this is the main reason why men avoid repair, because they're so convicted in their belief. Yes. And this is why it's understand to see rupture on a spectrum, because if it's a medium to low rupture, you know, you snapped, she did something, and you're trying to quote unquote teach her a lesson, I'm trying to teach her respect, teach a lesson. Those those hell-type beliefs are gonna get in the way of connection of you repairing because you're justifying them, right? Because you're saying, Oh, I'm I'm I'm I'm doing I'm doing her a solid. And what we are is we're meaning-making machines, right? So when when you're when you're uh when you make a rupture and you say, I'm I'm teaching her a lesson, there's two things here. They're great communicators, and behavior is communication, both nonverbal and and verbal. Great communicators, understand it's not the input, it's not what you communicate, it's the feedback you receive. Right? It's the interpretation or the meaning that your daughter took from it. So in your head, what you're talking about is two separate situations. One event, two different interpretations. You're going in saying, I'm teaching her a lesson, you know that that rupture is justified. I I don't need to repair. And your daughter's walking away saying, Fuck you, dad. Like, dad's not safe, altercations aren't safe, I'm not safe, I'm not safe to be myself in the world. And then that in turn creates all sorts of limiting beliefs that manifest themselves in behaviors and character traits down the line. And this is what I'm saying, like consistent, consistent non-repair after rupture over a s over a long period of time solidifies those beliefs. And then she creates behaviors to protect herself. Like you created a belief that if you're you're you're manipulating me. So if you're manipulating me, I need to do this behavior. Now, if you do that long enough, that just becomes a personality trait, it becomes unconscious, and that just becomes who you are, quote unquote. Right? So yeah, to go to not get so deep, you know, that's that I think that is why that's the limiting factor for men not not wanting to repair because they believe they're convicted. Oh, I'm just, you know, my daughter is spoiled and I need to teach her a lesson. When in reality, dude, like you need to repair after every single rupture. Like you need to repair after you snap, after you make a backhanded comment, after everything. Like it's fucking that important.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Yeah, and and we're gonna we're gonna break down in this episode, stay tuned. We're gonna break down the actual process of repair.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

And that will be super helpful. And it's it's critical. It's not rocket science either, guys. It's like it, it's it's doable. But there's there's a wrong way to repair and there's a right way to repair. There is a wrong way and a right way, and we'll make it really clear so that you're armed with this information to help in those moments and start this. But one thing that came to mind as I was listening to you is what if you're the dad who you don't have a whole lot of ruptures, right? You just you have an occasional rupture, like it's it's rare. It's rare enough where it's just like it's easy to say, I would test that. I don't, I don't think that's uh I don't think that we just don't have a whole lot of ruptures.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah. You know, so I would probably want to dig deeper if a father came to me and said, I don't have a lot of ruptures, I'd I'd want to dig a little deeper because maybe your definition of rupture is different than what it could be.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

It could be, or what I what I'm what I'm getting at is what if it's so infrequent that it's easy for a dad to say, Well, that's such a small percentage of our relationship. Like, you know, so I don't repair it. Yeah. It's okay. Like, you know, this might not be outwardly what they're saying, but internally there might be a dad listening who's like, all right, me and my daughter, like, man, I can't remember the last time we had a rupture. It happened so infrequently, like, it's probably not that big of a deal, you know. And so they just keep going about their happy go-lucky way. And what they're missing in this situation is that in those situations, I think it's even more critical if it's not happening frequently. Get in rupture is a spectrum, right? It can be happening a lot of the time, it can be happening almost never. But if it's happening almost never, don't fool yourself into thinking that that's security because your daughter is going into uh into a world where rupture is gonna happen in every single relationship she's ever gonna have to some capacity, in some relationships more than others. And if she's learning from you first, and she's learning that yeah, I didn't I didn't rupture a lot with my dad. And when I did the in the the couple times that it did, let's look over the whole 18 year, you know, let's say from zero to 18. If let's say it happens only four times, a rupture, a big rupture with you guys, then the emphasis on repair is multiplied because you only had four at bats to get it right. Right. And so I just wanted to highlight this for the dads that might have a pretty a pretty you know, they might experience this very seldom and infrequent. I want to put even more emphasis on how important this is because dude, right, if if if you're missing it, then she only had four chances. She only had four chances to to for to learn. To learn, otherwise, you know, yeah, good for you. You only ruptured four times, but every four times for the four times you did while she was before she was out of the house, she learned that repair never happened. Right, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Because this is a skill. Repair is a skill, like anything. Like you need to go to the gym and work out your bicep. You need to go to the mental gym and and or the mirror and rehearse and build your repair skill. And this is super important because it's kind of like, okay, we never we never have a lot of ruptures, you know. Um, but it's still it still doesn't it still doesn't you still need to make a repair because it it it's there's there's little T trauma, which is like you know, someone on the playground called you fat, and then there's big T trauma, you beat your daughter, right? If if you're making a rupture in your daughter's relationship with you, and it's you chalk it up to it's not that bad. I kind of equate it to the same thing as like a little girl, your daughter's on the playground and a little girl comes up to her and says, You're fat, like that is like that that creates a neurological groove in your daughter's psyche, right? She takes that in. It's the same way if you're just doing if you have ruptures every so often, it still makes a big impact because she's looking up to you. And if you don't have a lot of ruptures in your life, then you're probably a good father, and she wants that connection with you anyway. So when you disconnect with that, making establishing that connection is super important. It depends on what type of father fathering style you have, too. Right. You probably I mean, I'd probably peg you as you know, you're either a really great father with a lot of skills and has done a lot of work in his life, which is rare, or you're pretty much absent from your daughter's life.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Yeah, and you don't you don't rupture because you're because there's no opportunity to. Because there's very little opportunity and very little meaningful interaction.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Right. And and and this kind of segues into Rich. I'm gonna take the mic here for a couple minutes, dude, because this is again the my paradigm completely shifted when I was um getting mentored and coached by Rebecca. She's freaking an amazing, she was a my parent coach, and she she coached a lot of A-list celebrities. Like I'm not supposed to say, but she coached Brad Pitt, and we all know Brad Pitt needed it because he's a terrible father, apparently. But the point here is that rupture isn't the wound, it's the lack of repair, right? Time doesn't heal unrepaired. As you know, I'm sure a lot of you have daddy and mommy issues that are listening to that you know, you have unrepaired ruptures that that still sting when you psychologically think about it, because your body physically keeps the score, like it, which is a great book, your body keeps the store score. But it it remembers, right? Your body is autonomous from your brain, like it has a mind of its own and it remembers the trauma because emotions are physical, and emotions leave neural, neural grooves in your in your in your in your physical body, right? So, what I want to talk about now is what happens when you don't repair? What does your daughter learn? What does it mean to her? What beliefs is she forming? What, you know, what is she feeling? What is she needing? What is she left with? Because we're not we're no longer talking about ourselves, we're talking about our daughter now, right? What does she learn when you avoid repair? Well, when repair doesn't happen, your daughter just doesn't form beliefs about relations, like about you and like my dad's not safe, men aren't safe, relationships aren't safe, other people aren't safe. That's an external belief. What I want to dive into more is the form the beliefs that she forms about self, about herself. These are internal beliefs that dictate the narrative or the story that you're gonna walk through life with, right? Because I want you to hear me, father, listening now. There are deep psychological consequences when you don't repair. Whether they be small, medium, or large ruptures, they're all the same in my eyes. There can be huge, deep psychological consequences. And whether you believe it or not, whether you believe it or not, this is science. This is all rooted in attachment theory science with doctors and lab coats that are way smarter than us, right? This is research. This is relational neuroscience. We're talking about biology and how we're wired. So you can sit here and think, oh, well, this is, you know, she's just being sensitive or she's just gonna get over it. Like she needs to get over it, she needs to learn a lesson. You have to remember it doesn't matter what you do, it's how it's interpreted by your daughter, bro. Right? So just get out of your own way, get out of your own ego, and just understand your understand this. And some of you dads, because I know I used to say the same thing, and this is very rampant in the in the male psyche, in male in our culture, in the male culture, is like you're probably saying, Oh, well, she needs to learn a lesson. Like, I because I used to say that. I used to say that, I used to think that. Or my fucking favorite now is oh, well, my father and you know, my father beat me, my father yelled at me, and I turned out okay.

unknown 27:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Right, dude, I see that all the fucking time. And I'm like, oh my God, I just want to shake people because it's like, dude, I guarantee you, bro, if I sat down with you for an hour, if I sat down with you for an hour, I think we would both uncover you're pretty messed up. You have some cycles and some patterns that are that are probably getting in the way of you and your daughter, you and your wife and everybody you love, your friends at work. I guarantee you I would sit down and we can root it back to that. So, you know, I'm telling you, if you're not repairing after an altercation or rupture, there can be major psychological consequences. This is so important because children, they don't think in logic first, especially, I mean, adults, dude. Everybody. We don't think logically first. We feel it physically. Some adults more than others.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

We all know those adults were like, this fucking guy.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yeah, right. Like we're emotional beings. Like, especially the younger, the younger your your your kid is, they they don't think logically. They feel it, they feel it physically, emotionally. Emotions are physical. Remember, it's a physical chemical reaction. So they they they don't think, oh my God, my dad's having a bad day. They don't think, you know, my dad, he's just got bills to pay. He's thinking about the grass that needs to be cut. He's thinking about the thing he needs to do next week. Kids aren't fucking thinking that, dude. What happens is that after a rupture, your daughter is telling herself, I'm the problem. She can't, she's not, she's not saying, oh, dad's the problem, even though she's like, dad's a dick. She's creating these internal beliefs about self, not the behavior about herself. Because remember, we want to separate behavior from the child. Your child's a your daughter's a good kid. She's just doing quote unquote bad behavior, right? We have a we have a problem in this culture separating the two, right? So this is where, and this is so fucking important because I'm I'm not gonna go super deep, Rich. I'm not, but I'm gonna keep it surface surface level. But I need, I need to say this because I need you fathers to understand the impact. This is where identity beliefs are born if you don't repair in time to correct it. In time, right? It needs to be in there needs to be some sort of, you know, hours or minutes, right? The deeper the emotional, the deeper the emotional experience, the shorter the the time that needs to be that you need to repair. Because we're work we're gonna go deeper now. We're gonna go deeper into that emotional experience, right? So without repair, she feels your daughter. And even you, I could say think of the last time you got into an altercation or a rupture with your wife or your significant other or somebody that you care about. Now think about your daughter. Like you're thinking, okay, if if if there's no resolution to that rupture or to that argument or whatever happened, you're probably feeling confused, right? And remember, the the the younger your daughter is, the more likely these are apt to happen, right? You're confused. Hey, are we okay? There's a lot of shame. Maybe your daughter messed up, right? I messed up. There's a lot of shame, which leads to anger, right? Which we can get a little deeper on, but I'm not gonna do that. She's probably anxious. There's probably anxiety, she's probably riddled with anxiety. Is he mad at me? Did I mess it up? Am I wrong? Right. There's probably loneliness. She probably feels alone because you're not connecting, right? Where you're disconnected. She's probably feeling uncertain. And most importantly, she's probably feeling helpless. This is the dangerous one right here. Because when you're feeling this thing, helplessness leads to um leads to um uh the word, the word's escaping me, but she's probably feeling helplessness, right? Helplessness leads to desperation, right? This is when she starts grasping at straws because no one likes to feel helpless, right? Because she doesn't know how to restore connection. Most likely your daughter doesn't know the skill to restore that connection. So what happens is she learns to adapt. She learns, she she creates adaptive, she creates forming these beliefs about self to help her adapt to act. Because there is no action without belief and identity. You have to believe a certain thing to be a certain person, to do and behave a certain way. So what happens, right? And prolonged behavior over a long amount of time, Rich, creates character traits. It's just who you become, right? Oh, that's just how I am, that's just who I am. That's bullshit. That's a fucking that that is a that is a that is a conditioned response that you've that you've adopted and just have done over and over again. But we can un we can unravel that. We can unprogram and reprogram, right? But the character traits that form from these deep psychological issues, right? And here's where it gets deep. It's about as deep as I'm gonna go. I want to talk about these character traits that manifest themselves later in life. Right? When repair is missing long term, remember the one degree of separation, over years and years, these traits can form. This is these are some of the traits that we want to avoid, that I want to avoid my daughter. I don't want my daughter to have these traits. Right. So I'm gonna try my hard that I'm gonna try my hardest for that to happen. Obviously, a lot of things can happen, but when repair is missing long term, it's chronic self-doubt. Self-doubt is a huge one. Right? Am I good enough? I'm not good enough. Love isn't worthy, right? Difficulty trusting others, that's a huge one because she hasn't learned to feel safe with you, her provider, her caretaker, so she she doesn't trust other people, right? Over responsibility for other people's feelings. This is a huge one. Responsibility for other people's feelings. This is a fixing cycle. Your daughter learns, she she she the emotions of other people dictates her psychological well-being, right? So she has fear of confrontation, she has people-pleasing uh traits, fear of being a burden because I don't, I don't wanna, I don't want to upset anybody. I don't want to confront because I don't want to upset you, because any time that I confronted or something happened, I was met with shame. I was met with criticism, I was met with abandonment because not repairing after a rupture is the equ is the equivalent to abandonment. She feels abandoned, right? So she doesn't want to do those things that causes that feeling of abandonment. So these are the characteristics that we want to avoid, right? And I know this one for me, overachievement overachievement. I felt weak, I didn't feel feel good enough. I held these dot uh I held these tightly b tightly held tightly held beliefs of I wasn't good enough. So whenever I felt shame around that, I had to overachieve, you know, I had to do good, I had to be perfect, I had I had to win, I had to do all these things to secure belonging in my in my relationships. So one of the major things too that I want to avoid these characteristics in my daughter is settling in relationships. Settling in relationships, whoever she chooses to be with, these psychological effects of not repairing can get so deep as to settling in relationships and a high tolerance for mistreatment. So what I mean by high tolerance of mistreatment is she'll get in these shitty relationships, she can get in these really shitty relationships and get treated like shit. And she'll just tolerate it because I don't want to be a burden. I don't want to, I don't want to cause confrontation. Right? She lacks worthiness. I'm not worthy, I'm not enough, right? And then one of my one of my least favorite characteristics, because I I have beliefs that myself, is indecisiveness. She she your daughter could possibly become indecisive because she's scared to make decisions because she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to do the wrong thing. I don't want to make mistakes, which leads to also having difficulty repairing herself, right? She she's gonna view making mistakes as not good, not bad. So now she's gonna carry the trait is like, I don't, I don't wanna repair, I don't want to make mistakes because then I'm gonna make, I'm gonna look weak and I feel unsafe. Right. And all of these traits are not because she's weak or not because she's sensitive. It's because these are learned maladaptive behaviors that that served her at some point and it's no longer serving her in adulthood. Right. So that's the that's the that's the message I want to send. These were the paradigms. This was this was the information that completely changed my my paradigm on repairing because I didn't want to repair. I was like, oh, you know, my wife's being sensitive. My my daughter, she's being, she's overreacting. You know, so whenever I would I would snap or create rupture, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say sorry. Because one, I don't want to admit defeat, I don't want to admit it wrong. And two, I had a lot I had beliefs that she's just she's just sensitive. It's not. They're they're maladaptive behavior. So what repair actually teaches, you know, I think we're gonna talk about all this stuff here, but I do we're gonna kind of go into the the repair framework now. Um, but I want to kind of precursor this um, you know, the importance. I talked about the the bad stuff, about what happens when you avoid repair. Now I kind of want to talk about what it what it actually teaches. And then Rich is gonna go through the frameworks of what actually takes uh repair, a good repair looks like. So a bad repair is well, you should have done this. You like, well, you should have just listened to me, and that would have been, you know, that that that that wouldn't have happened, or um, you did this, so don't do that. Like anything that that attacks them or their behavior, that's not that's not a good repair. It starts with, hey, when when you as the father to your daughter says, Hey, I was wrong. We're gonna take responsibility here, regardless of what your daughter did. Teaching her the lesson, quote unquote, comes later when you guys are both regulated, right? I was wrong, I shouldn't have spoken that way, right? You matter to me, I love you, I I love you, your feelings matter. Let's let's try this again, right? What actually you're teaching is conflict doesn't end connection because we're connection-seeking beings. That's how we're neurologically hardwired, it's biology. We need to be connected to our provider, our caretaker, because that equals survival, right? So, especially the younger your child is, disconnection to them literally means death. It means I'm not surviving. So it's hard for it's a big deal for them when they when they lose connection with their provider, right? So she learns that conflict doesn't end connection. She learns that mistakes are survivable and more importantly, safe. So here's the kicker, Rich. And I know this is the trait that we wanna, we want to instill in our daughters is when she understands mistakes are survivable and safe, she can then apologize, right? She can then repair herself, and then she can learn from those mistakes. Because what happens when we feel mistakes and failure is is is bad and it's not good and they're unsafe. We don't take, we start brushing them under the rug and we don't take responsibility for them. We don't take accountability for them. And how do we learn from mistakes? We have to take responsibility, we have to take accountability, right? So she learns emotions are safe. She learns love is stable and it's not conditional based off of performance. Hey, my dad only loves me when I'm being good. Therefore, I don't want to be bad. Therefore, I have to people please at the, you know, I have to be this person that I'm not at the cost of my psychological welfare. So she learns that love is stable and not conditional. And then she learns that people can be accountable for their actions and that she's safe in the world. She can be safe who she is, right? This is what she learns when you repair from your daughter. So this is why this is such a big deal. I don't want you to just brush this under the rug and say, ah, you know, whatever. Like this has psychological consequences if you don't, but it's huge psychological benefits long term. Long term. These beliefs are what you can instill as her baseline beliefs. So I want to get off my pedestal now, Rich. Let's talk about what uh repair looks like and then the framework to do that.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah, let's do this. So this is this is a pretty simple four or five-step process, right? So the first thing you have to do is depending on the age of your daughter, you got to get under level and you have to own it. You just have to, you have to completely be accountable and show full vulnerability. And for us men, I'm speaking to you directly, being vulnerable with your daughter is the ultimate show of strength. And if you don't believe that, then try this out and then see how much of a superhero your daughter now thinks you are 30, 60, 90 days after you start to implement this. Because taking off and showing your vulnerabilities and allowing your strength to be seen even in spite of you being vulnerable, that's the ultimate show of strength. Ultimate flex. Ultimate flex. And so the first thing, the first step is you have to own it. You absolutely have to own it of what happened, right? I raised my voice to you, that wasn't okay. Um, you know, I picked you up aggressively. I, you know, I I I um I took that thing away from you too aggressively, you know, whatever it might, might not, whatever it might be. You have to avoid saying but. And this is what Corey was talking about. It's critical. In this first step, you cannot say something. I raised my voice, but you were making my me angry. Or I yelled at you and I took the toy away because you weren't listening to me. You cannot justify in this first step why you did what you did because that's not taking accountability. There's no justification. That's that's giving an excuse and a reason as to why you think you responded this the way you did. And that is not going to be that you're already going to screw up this repair. So the first thing is you just have to own it. Say what you did and nothing more. Say what you did. I yelled, I took the thing, I picked you up aggressively, I gave you the cold treatment, I hurt you, you know, whatever it is. Don't say, but because of this, or because you did this, or don't do anything beyond just telling her what you did. Take be 100% accountable for your actions. Step two is you have to name the impact. Typically, it's going to be some sort of a visual, visible thing that happened. She took off running and crying to her room. She sat there and you watched her entire face just break with tears, right? She fell to the floor. She went to hide in a corner, you know, for safety. You have to name what impact you observed. I saw your face when I yelled. I saw that you felt like you needed to get under covers and and and go away. I saw I saw that you just completely removed yourself and felt like you needed, you needed space and you couldn't take this environment anymore. So that's the second step. You have to name the impact that you saw. And this shows that you're paying attention to what she's experiencing, which is critical. That's step number two. Step three, you've got to take responsibility for what you said. So not just what you did in step one, which is naming what you did, but now you have to take responsibility for it. This is true accountability. That was about me and my stress, not about you, right? Daddy responded this way because I'm just a little overwhelmed. There, there was, I'm doing my best to navigate this and I just, I just reacted. I had way too much anger, and I reacted that way because I was, because I was feeling so much anger, right? You have to take responsibility and you have to make sure that it that you are saying it's 100% on you. And what that's going to do is allow her to understand that you're separating her worth from your behavior. Right. So now she's you're making a clear delineation and a clear line in her mind that this is on daddy. This is dad's thing. He experienced this and decided to act accordingly based on what was going on with him internally. And it had nothing to do with who you are, your worthiness, your self-worth, the love that I have for you, or anything else.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

So important.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

That's step three. Step four is gonna be you have to make a commitment to her to do better. I make promises to my little girl when I'm doing these ruptures because I think they're very, very critical, you know. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna promise that I'm going to work harder on this, right? I'm gonna be managing my stress better so that this doesn't happen again. Or I'm gonna be more aware. I'm gonna, I'm gonna snap my fingers next time I feel this, or I'm gonna take a step back. I'm gonna tell her how and and what I'm gonna do to commit to being better. And it's gonna show her that you're capable of change. And ultimately, like Corey's saying, it's gonna show her she's capable of change too when she starts to learn this rupture, this rupture and repair process. And it's and it's so much deeper than just a quick sorry. Step five, which is really easy, is you're gonna restore the connection, right? You're going to, you're gonna make a statement, a really heartfelt connection. Connection statement, you matter more than me. You matter more to me than my stress. And even though I may have reacted that way, I will always come back to you and we can always have this conversation. I will always repair it and I will always love you no matter what type of repair or rupture we may have. It does not change, right? You have to make sure you present to her that that's that this is the safety she's been waiting for, right? She needs to know that this is the safety that she's been waiting for. So that is the quick five-step process. It really, guys, it's very intuitive when you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

For most men who I don't know about intuitive, brother.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

For most men who may not know how to apologize, here's a spoiler alert. This is how you apologize to anyone. This isn't exclusive to your daughter. But the impact that doing this or not doing this will have on your daughter for the rest of your life is absolutely profound. So why not take it serious based on this context of how imp how impactful it's going to be for you and your daughter? But this is the framework. This is the steps to it.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

And I want to say that it's not, it's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to feel because you it'll most likely feel uncomfortable because you're you're you got beliefs you got to decondition. At first it was for me. At first it was super uncomfortable, but I want to share like it has fundamentally changed the relationship with my daughter. Like, dude, there'll be times where I'm melting down, my daughter's melting down, and I'll be whispering, it's not your fault. Like it's not, it's it's on daddy. This is daddy, and I'm still melting down. Or I've made it a habit now where it's minutes. Like, if if we're even if we're in a current meltdown, I'll say sorry. I'll I'll apologize. I'll do these this framework. I will go through this framework and I can literally. I was talking, I took my wife out on a date the other night. We were talking about this, about just this topic. And I can literally see my daughter's face change. When I go in there and I and I and I say, Hey, you know what, dad, this isn't on you. This is on me. This is daddy's fault. Um, you know, I love you, and we're gonna get through this. Um, I raise my voice, that's not okay. This isn't on you, and I can literally she'll she'll be full mold blown meltdown, and she'll just her her her once that connection's established, her body literally just relaxes, her face kind of like oh okay, and like it's infinitely better. And then we work through it. And what's so cool now is that when there's a rupture, my daughter doesn't really she'll still melt down sometimes, but there's a good chance that she'll she'll look at me and then she'll say, Daddy's fault? Is this daddy's fault? Daddy's at fault. Like she'll like automatically know like she's not the problem. And that's so like, dude, that's so cool now that she's like able to be like, was that daddy's fault? Like she'll still have like a reaction, but she'll know.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Yeah, I love that, dude. Wow, that's that's incredible that that you know, for someone like your daughter who's who's so young to have the awareness that she's not internalizing that. And that's that's that's such a cool metric, you know, to track. I'm gonna have to steal that, dude. I I I Ella does not do that. And now that I hear that from you, I'm like, man, I would love to have the peace of mind of knowing that Ella does have that awareness that I've taught her. Yeah. Um, so that's something that I'll continue to work work towards.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Right on.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

But as we continue to, as as we just start to kind of land the plane here, I want to, I want to just I want to mention something that I think is really, really powerful. You and I have been working on for quite some time now. And it's gonna be available for all of the listeners. And so uh before we close out, I just want to share something with you because if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I want to, I want to repair better, I want to be more present, but I don't know where to start. We built something specifically for you and it's called the girl dad quiz. So cool. This isn't a generic personality test. I mentioned personality tests in earlier in this episode. If you're familiar with them, you probably know how how cool the results are and how helpful it is to bring awareness and custom tailored advice to your situation. So you already know that. If you haven't taken a personality test, then this is a great place to start since you're listening to the podcast. It's not some generic personality test. This is a comprehensive assessment that will show you exactly what type of father you are right now, your girl dad style. And more importantly, it'll give you a detailed report. So you'll know your specific strengths as a father, your blind spots that you might not even see. And it's gonna give you a custom tailored suggestion on how to deepen your trust and connection with your daughter based on your fathering style. So it takes less than five minutes, and what you get back is a roadmap, not generic advice. So it's not one size fits all. Um, it's specific tips and actionable guidance designed for you as a father and um for the father that that you're becoming. So go to grab the link in the description below.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Yeah, link in the description below. And it's also if for you listeners, it's www.firsthero.com forward slash quiz. Forward slash quiz.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Yep. Love it. So go take that. And as we close out here, um we have one fun thing that we like to do at the end of each episode, and I believe the the quote hot take, it's up for me.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

Yep, quote hot take. So I'm gonna be giving out the quote hot take um to close up. Okay. Here's the quote. Maybe the journey, the journey of fatherhood isn't about becoming anything. Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that isn't really you, so that you can be the hero you were meant to be in the first place. So that you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

Yeah, man. That's uh I mean, as soon as you got halfway into that first sentence, it it it it hit me like a ton of bricks. This has been my experience as a father, and and this quote perfectly sums it up. Having children has been the biggest mirror I've ever experienced in my life. And it's it's allowed me to see a version of not only where I am currently, but but the the potential of what I have more clearly than anything I've ever done in my life. And um you know, standing in front of my daughter and experiencing being being being alongside her through her her developmental stages, both of them, has absolutely been transformative for me. And and it it really has to this quote's point. To be the to be the hero, the first hero for my daughters, which is what we're all about in setting that standard and holding that standard and committed to being in pursuit of that standard, it is, it's it's it's killing all of the behaviors that no longer serve the purpose that I require to become the first hero for my for my girls. And so that's what that quote means to me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

It's cool. Unbecoming everything you are.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

Unbecoming everything that you are. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that one, dude. I love that. So as we land the plane, I just want to remind you your daughter does not remember every time you lost your cool, but she will remember whether you came back. She will remember if you owned it or if you avoided it, and she will remember the love she felt, whether it was conditional or unconditional. She'll remember if the mistakes meant the end of connection or the beginning of a deeper trust. And if your daughter grows up believing when people hurt her, they won't come back to repair it. That's because you modeled it for her. How will that shape her relationships, her self-worth, and her life? That that if it if this hits you, it's because you're waking up. Maybe you've avoided repair for years. Maybe you don't know how. Maybe you thought the damage was already done. It's not. The next rupture is your opportunity not to be perfect, but to be present. So not to avoid the hard conversation, but to initiate it. And you're not alone in this, and you're not too late. That's also important to remember. You're right on time to become the father she can trust. So thank you so much for listening. And as we part ways, remember the distraction is the enemy, breaking the cycle is your duty, and legacy is the only thing you get to leave behind. You are one decision away from becoming the father she deserves.