And that is, is that I knew in my heart that I married the right person because we were together all the time, nonstop.

That is really an amazing and good indicator.

And it doesn't say just that you'd marry the right person.

It's that you really did things like work on sharing your experiences of criticism, what other people might consider criticism as an interpretation, and then ask for that in a way that made it safe for her.

What I do with – instruct in the Rolemate to Soulmate book is for couples to set aside one hour – two hours a week, excuse me, two hours a week.

And during those two hours a week, they share two appreciations of each other that I teach them how to do very specifically together.

And then they end the process with two appreciations, but in the middle, they share only one concern.

And I thought to myself, you're putting all of these Valentine's Day flower bouquets together, and that's your thinking? Is she wrong? Or have I been wrong?

Um, but it is, uh, fascinating to me how frequently younger men will say, uh, "You know, Dennis, you're a father figure to me." And I wonder if it's related in many instances to the absence of a father figure.

I would, I would say absolutely.

There is, um, an enormous amount of hunger among boys for someone to lead them constructively.

And what I found is that when boys grow up in a single-mom household, and they go from the single-mom household to a school in which there's mostly females and, you know, um, grammers, you know, ki- kindergarten through fifth, sixth, seventh grade, um, and the boys often feel that they have no constructive male role models, no Dennis Pragers, if you will, and they're, and they're-- Those are the boys who are very vulnerable to, um, the authoritarian personalities of a gang leader or a drug dealer saying that, "You can have reputation.

You can have identity.

Um, you know, just do it my way.

I'll tell you what to do." Um, and that type of commanding personality, um, becomes some- someone that is, um, uh, makes a boy very, uh, a, a boy is vulnerable to.

Go on.

What's happening with our boys? What's happening in culture? What's happening with their hearts?

Well, 40% of women who have children... have them without being married.

Some of them do live with a partner, but those relationships last an average of three and a half years.

So boys feel like they have a little bit of attachment to the father, and then the father has sort of abandoned them.

And then we have another group which is after divorces.

Usually what happens after divorces is oftentimes the mom has the right to the children and dad has to fight for the children.

And very frequently that means that dad gets left out of the children's life.

And how do we do a course correction here? And how do we step up and into this moment, especially if we are that important, that significant in the home?

Wow.

The women, about a little bit more than 80%, if children are not involved, say that.

So I have people before they hear the criticism of their partner sit down and do mindsets out loud.

And the first mindset is, well, if I would die for you, maybe the least I can do is listen to you.

And it's like puts the in perspective how easy listening is compared to losing your life or giving up an arm or a leg.

And then I'll give you one more mindset.

Another mindset is that is what I call the love guarantee.

Wow.

Why don't you tell us about this?

Yeah, it is.

And it, and it started back when I was on the board of NOW, the National Organization for Women in New York City.

And this-- So this is in the early seventies, and divorces were just beginning to happen in much bigger numbers.

And we had the first bit of research about children of divorce, and the first bit of research was showing that children of divorce that did not have father involvement, that were what I eventually came to call da- that were dad-deprived because every-- people would often say fatherless children, but there's no such thing as a fatherless child.

But a child can be dad-deprived by having a divorce, and then oftentimes after the divorce, the children, the mother and father would live separately, and the father would have very minimal involvement for com-complex reasons, especially in those days, in particular, equal shared parenting was not an assumption.

It was assumed that the children were better brought up by the mother.

Would you just, would you like to round that out for us?

(laughs)

(laughs).

And so, um, and so the boy...

And so why is the sergeant doing that? The sergeant is doing that because the sergeant knows that the war machine does not operate well with squeaky wheels.

Um, and when people complain, uh, that- that- that your job as being part of that war machine is being willing to die and do everything that you need to do, uh, without concern for yourself and your feelings or your fears, but to overcome your fears and to recognize that, yes, you will, uh, uh...

You have a good chance of dying.

And if you don't have a good chance of dying, you'll come maybe back with PTSD, and that is your job.

(laughs)