So what are your thoughts on navigating just like the difference of the ratio?

I don't know if it's a mindset, Zara, or if you're actually touching on something that's pretty true, uh, pretty factual in terms of statistically, statistically speaking what is happening in the dating world.

Um, as we evolve and as we grow and become more self-aware and we-we're choosing to settle less and just be better versions of ourselves, generally the dating pool does decrease and that's not a bad thing, um, because as it decreases the quality increases, however it can feel pretty scary.

I think there are many reasons.

I, some or most of those reasons beyond the scope of this, this podcast I think socio-cultural reasons, collective reasons, what has transpired over the last several decades in terms of men's movement and women's movement, the way we relate to each other, the way that we've demonized our differences for so long.

I think that goes back thousands of years, particularly, um, how men have treated women generally speaking.

I think there's, there's a lot of repair that needs to take place and i-if I just look at it through a very modern lens, there's been a pretty big backlash again generally speaking towards men and this isn't painting men as victims, that's not my intention here nor, nor is that helpful at all.

So what about the thought that this is, that I hear a lot of women say, "I'm just gonna be single forever."

And it's for us, like has had to become a non-negotiable no matter what, you know, it's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So essentially the, the, the, the nature of the relationship or the style of relationship becomes more important than your needs, right? And even the needs of the other individual.

But that's part of what defines a conscious relationship for me.

And then another part is that coupledom.

How does that impact the environment around them in a healthy, sustainable, impactful, positive way? Right? Just having that in one's consciousness and asking that question about their relationship and the container and the vehicle of their relationship.

And I've made some of my own rules for myself and agreements to turn things off at a certain time, but like so that I can slip back into my feminine, go back into that place, because I understand we have both inside, so that I can allow my man to be in his masculine so that I'm not demasculating, as David Data talks about in his book.

Before we get into it, how did you end up here? Did you know this was where you were going to end up with your career or what were the twists and turns that took you here?

I knew I wanted to help people.

And if I have to be very honest with myself, that came from a couple of different places within.

It came from a compensatory place where from a very young age, I became my mother's savior.

There was entanglement and enmeshment there where her emotional needs were projected largely unconsciously onto me as the eldest son.

There was dysfunction in their relationship, my mom and dad's relationship, and violence and volatility.

And I assumed this role of just wanting to save, just wanting to make everything okay.

Maybe we shouldn't be together.

because you know that's what we need in order to have a successful relationship.

Yeah, so the guidance I would give for the partner and the woman in this instance is the request as you framed it there is very valid it's not an invalid request right it is lacking a couple of elements that could be really useful in that woman obtaining or embodying the objective that she wants as well which is closeness right so if she can lead with vulnerability like really lead with vulnerability make those earnest and honest requests And then really seek to understand what he needs to help him not switch off, but to help him reorient his internal self.

Now, he has to be doing his inner work around this.

He has to be in practice around what does it look like to be in an emotionally regulated, maturely relational dynamic with my wife or my partner.

And I need to be working on that as a man.

That's a given, right? But her seeking to, and again, both partners should ideally seek to understand each other, seek to know each other, feel each other.

But if she can really seek to understand what he needs, and again, he has to be willing to give this some thought because he can just sit there and go, I don't know.

Where does the infidelity come in to all of this?

Can you share a bit of your story with us? What happened and how did it lead you here?

Sure.

I was watching something before I came in and it was a side by side of a father and a daughter.

She must have been maybe 13 years old, 12, 13, 14.

And the person behind the camera was prompting a question.

So, you know, the questions were, you know, take a step.

They were both in line.

What do they need?

Ooh, tell me more.

Tell you more.

Okay.

So what I'm observing is happening, and, and I'm directly experiencing this in...

And I've been in personal transformation for 25 years, coaching, leading, teaching, 25 years.

And now more than ever, I've seen such change in my industry, in the space that I occupy, and work, and live in.

And people are going to AI.

When it-- those past hurts, how do we process them? How do we overcome them? And also, what impact can it have on our lives and our relationships if we don't?

Yeah.

And it's, and it's harsh.

That's the only experience they pretty much have, or that's the one they're hanging onto because of their own vigilance and their own nervous system because they wanna protect themselves from that.

They don't want it to happen again.

So the work that I do with people foundationally is meeting them as they are, and it's very surprising and shocking for people to be met with non-judgment.

"But what, what do you mean you're not judging me? I, I've cheated on my wife 20 times." "Okay.

Let's explore that." "But you're not judging me?" "No." "Why?" "Well, how's that gonna help you? Or it's just gonna reinforce the shame you're already feeling? Okay, well, tell me how useful that's gonna be.

Mm.

Yeah, I was gonna say.

Except for my physical health, which was what I also think kept me alive.

Like, having that focus of being physically in my body and having that pattern and habit, that there was also, there's also some compulsion and addiction there as well.

But just having that and not letting that go, I think really kept me alive through very tumultuous times, um, you know, psychologically and emotionally.

And so I, I spent a number of years just rebuilding myself financially, vocationally, everything.

Again, except for the health.

Mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

[laughs]

Who is this man?

Wow, what a question, man.

I think like all of us, I'm all the things.

Like I'm, you know, someone asked me a question earlier today around the high expectations that are placed on marriage, specifically question around marriage and how these expectations that we see in social media are really unrealistic.

And my response to her was that everything you see on social media, for the most part, from the majority, the vast majority of people, is simply a window and a snapshot into an aspect or a small part of their lives.

And it's sort of set up like that by default.

It's not necessarily anything malintent.

And I'd love to hear just quickly about your experience with how your own teachings have leveled you up personally, because I have a feeling there's a big connection there.

Talk about the role of that on people and what can we do about it?

Oof.

What a, it's a really big question.

I mean, I love the nature of your question.

There's, I think there's so many different places we can go.

So I think, like anything in life, there, there are, for lack of a better term, there's pros and cons to everything, right? There's, there's a, there's a light side, a dark side.

There's a side that is empowering, there's a side that's disempowering, and then we get to choose.

The grass is greener where you water it.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, meeting people where they were at, meeting w- with my own skill set at the time, and that just evolved.

Relationships just became so important to me because growing up my relationships were very dysfunctional, at least that was my perception.

My mother with my father, with our family unit, there was a lot of violence and volatility, a lot of uncertainty, enmeshment, codependence with my mother.

I'm the eldest of, of two boys, and I can break that down, what that means for your viewers if you like later.

And there was just a lot of violence and approval-seeking, uh, violence from my father to all of us, and then approval-seeking from me to my father.

And, and that really shaped...

Mm-hmm.

If you had to create, maybe you have one, I don't know, if you had to create a vulnerability formula that could work for most guys, what do you think it would be?

Yeah, so three steps, right? I'm often reluctant to say three stages here or four steps there, but it's three things to do, right? Start with yourself first.

And you touched on this a moment ago.

where you shared that, hey, you may just say something out loud to yourself.

And so if you're noticing a pattern in your life and we're making an assumption that as a man and as a human, you want to develop yourself, you want to be better than you were yesterday, just use very simple language.

Meaning that you're self-reflective enough, self-aware enough to maybe at the end of every day you spend five minutes thinking, how could I have done better today? What was the nature of that conversation? Did I really speak my truth today? Was I hiding anywhere? Did I have a productive day? You can just assess yourself, self-assessment, not through the eyes of judgment, but just through the eyes of curiosity.

So we're making sort of a base assumption there, right? Then you're checking in with yourself on a regular basis.

So how do we find our center?

But, like, you know, back to the question I wanted to ask you, like, how old is your dad now? And I mean, what, what's your relationship with him like now?

Yeah.

So he's, um, 85.

And, you know, his health has deteriorated a fair amount over the years.

Still, I mean, I say he's still pretty vital, but he's had cancer twice, some heart issues.

He was smoking for 60 years of his life.

The moment he found out he had cancer, which was non-Hodgkin's disease lymphoma related to smoking, he stopped smoking there and then.

Yeah.

Once again, thank you for listening to the episode, and now back to the show.

Yeah, you get to a point in life where, you know, we hear that saying, I'm sick and tired of A, B, and C, or I'm sick and tired of insert the situation, right? And really what we're saying is we're in pain with a thing that we want to change, but we're not willing to change it.

So we just keep saying, I'm sick and tired of it.

And we hope that that's making that statement will move us from an immature disposition or a stagnant position into a growth oriented position or in, you know, from pain into pleasure or or pain into peace or whatever.

But the reality of it is, is that we have to get really sick and tired of being sick and tired and take that leap, which can be very scary.

And the immaturity, if you like, is just an outgrown way of being.

But because it's so familiar to us and we're so accustomed to it, And it's latched onto our identity, right? Like maybe you're just tired of being a reactive, angry person, or you're tired of having very similar arguments with your partner over and over again, or you're tired of actually trying to control everything or people in your life.

But yeah.

powerful to hear other people share about some of the things going on under the surface and so I would really love to hear you share a little bit when somebody hits this moment where they're like okay I'm ready to reflect like what what have you learned are some of the things that are often going on under the surface especially for men who maybe are more like emotionally shut down in their relationships

and Fear, sadness, mistrust of other humans, mistrust of intimacy, loneliness is really what's even deep, deep rage at the world, at their parents, at themselves, at life, at other people.

They've suppressed and repressed, and they don't know what to do with it and how to be with it.

Deep insecurity and shame.

Shame's a big one as well.

I'm generalizing now, and more specifically, So many men aren't taught how to feel and how to be with their emotions, not even how to be with anger in a healthier way, not even with their frustrations.

There's such a distorted view of anger.

Like what – wisdom might you offer to maybe a female partner who needs more understanding of like the complexity of what really can be going on within all of that insecurity and fear and mistrust around intimacy that you were just talking about?

How can you tease that apart a bit?

I think so.

So I think part of what you're suggesting may be very, very true for that couple and those people in their pattern, right? In their, in their, in the way that their wounds are complementing each other.

But that's not the only way it needs to be.

That's not, that's not the, the only path to take.

And when we talk about rock bottom, it's not about d- let's not compare rock bottoms or trauma here either, or intensity.

Let's not even, let's not even compare intensity.

Mm-hmm

No.

I was quite overweight.

I wouldn't say I was obese, just quite overweight and very insecure and just self-conscious probably up until the age of about 15, 16.

And I started something called, it was a job, like it was a milk run.

Do you guys know what a milk run is? Back then, you just jump off the back of a truck.

The truck would have orange juice and milk and eggs and stuff.

Old school, you know, and you deliver it to people's homes.

So now you have so many individuals, or at least from what I see, are so confused on multiple levels where I don't think that's healthy either.

Mm.

And a couple of examples, she gave many, but a couple that come to mind was-I, it must be really difficult for men because women ...

She was advocating for men and really, not attacking, but we'll just call it attacking.

But she was attacking certain women that are saying, "Hey, I want you to be emotionally connected to me, but I don't want you to be weak.

I want you to make lots of money and provide, but I don't want you spending all your time there.

You have to spend your time with me."

Yeah.

Maybe that's a man thing or a masculine thing, maybe it's not, but I, I, I wanna, I wanna fix it.

Mm

...

so that you're not in this heightened, highly stimulated place where you're going to worst case scenario, catastrophizing, feeling very stressed, being dysregulated, making a decision from a survival pattern or a reactive pattern.

So for example, when you're feeling yourself like that, and you're circling or you're looping in your mind, because we often do that as people, do you have an agreement with yourself that you go hit a training session at the gym? Do you go for a 60-minute walk by the ocean or around the neighborhood? Do you do some journaling? You can maybe stack modalities.

Do you call a friend and say, "Hey, man, like talk me off the edge here because this is what I'm experiencing.

I need someone to help me see the forest through the trees.

I need someone to be relational with me.

Mm

And so what do you see as the evolution in relationship throughout history and then in the most recent, I don't know, 100 years?

Fuck, what a loaded question.

That's an awesome question.

[chuckles] Uh, I actually don't think relationships and, and mating strategies and attraction dynamics have actually changed that much.

I, I, I'd posit that they actually haven't at all.

The, the, the, [lip smack] the, the suit or the, the dress or the, the clothing, the exterior looks a little different maybe.

The tools that we use a l- are a little different.

And it's ironic when you listen to an, a woman say, "Hey, you know, I want this, that, and the other thing in a man," but then their behavior on average is the opposite.

See store online for details.

So I'll very often, and part of my daily practice involves either one of these three or all three, generally all three.

And so I'll have a breath practice in the morning.

Again, the techniques vary for me just because I choose to expose myself to so many different techniques.

But here's, I'll give you a stack that I think is pretty cool.

You sit down and you breathe like that.

And it's a five to 10 minute practice, like literally a five to 10 minute practice.

And when it comes to relationships, you know, I think a lot of times people create chaos in their relationships by way of self-sabotage, by way of communication how they handle conflict i can go on and on with the stuff that causes problems what are some of your top tips for for creating a a framework or creating a container for a healthy relationship

Like, I'm just gonna, as your friend, I'm gonna like pick your brain now in a, in a different way.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For sure.

Um, it requires us...

I'll just speak for me and I think it can, at least some of it will be translated to other men's, um, what, what is required of them possibly.

It's required confronting not just the convenient parts of me that I love the world to see because I think the world, my friends value that, and they're okay with that, and they're not gonna judge that.

These things need to be completely abolished, right? And so, so I-- and I think for a lot of men, it's like, well, is the juice really worth the squeeze? Like, why would I go down that path? And so as a fellow man that is married, as a fellow man that, you know, I think knowing your past history and, and dating life and whatnot, how did you come to the choice of deciding to get married?