Jordan Gray - Performance Based Sex

You've got some living yet to do. I won't give up on you.

Welcome guys and gals, to the Man Talks Podcast. I'm Connor Beaton, the host and founder of Man Talks. This podcast brings together the best thought leaders, teachers and extraordinary individuals to help teach and mentor you on life, love and business. Imagine having experienced mentors with decades of wisdom delivered right to your ears. On this podcast we'll talk about purpose, love, sex, success, influence and so much more. Don't forget to leave us a review. Subscribe and join the thousands of other change makers in our community on Facebook or go to www.mantalks.com for more blog posts, podcasts and of course, the live videos from our live events. On the podcast today, I have a very special guest and friend of mine. His name is Jordan Gray and he is the number one Amazon best selling author, public speaker, relationship coach and has nearly a decade of practice behind him. So his work has been featured in some crazy places like Huffington Post, BBC.

Psychology Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Elephant Journal, Entrepreneur. I mean, I could just go on and on and on. He's a contributing writer for the Good Man Project and countless other publications around the globe. So his mission, his life's mission is to make thriving relationships attainable to everyone. So his website is full of a ton of great articles and blogs. Jordan has actually spoken at our event before, live in person. And if you're tuning into the podcast and you want to see a live video, I actually interviewed Jordan so you can check that out. If you want to see that, that'll be posted up on our Facebook page for you to follow through or it'll be up on our YouTube channel. We have a YouTube channel by the way, just in case you didn't know. And I'm going to be interviewing people via video a lot moving forward. So if you want to see the in person conversation, you can definitely go to the YouTube channel or to our Facebook page and check it out there. So in this podcast episode we focus heavily on heavily on relationships and sex and intimacy. We also talk a little bit about managing depression and how to how to move through that. But for the most part it's about communication in relationships. We talk about connecting with our partner better in terms of a sexual place and we actually talk about sexual performance, which is a really, really cool topic. So we dive into some really juicy stuff.

All right. All right.

Jordan, thank you so much for joining me on the Mentalks podcast. I'm excited to have you.

My pleasure. Good to be here.

Yeah, man so you're kind of coming out of a hiatus from the podcast team. I feel honored. I didn't know that. I feel like, you know, like we gotta, you know, I gotta ask some serious questions for you here today because you've, if I'm not mistaken, haven't been on a podcast in like a year.

Yeah, it might even be a year and a half. I definitely took a break the early years of my online presence. I said yes to every podcast and at a certain point I'm just like, eh. I felt like law of diminishing returns. I talked about what I wanted to talk about. Didn't feel as creatively fulfilling anymore. And yeah, I'm happy to break the seal with you because I know that you'll be able to bring it.

I like that. Break the seal. So I've already kind of given our audience an overview of who you are and what you do and the incredible work that you do in and around relationships. And you kind of gave me some insight beforehand on why you do what you do. And I found that that was pretty profound and it unlocked something in me as well. So I was curious if you could share that with our audience of why you actually do this relationship work with people and that you've spent the last man, like dozen years, even more, maybe two decades, focused really heavily in on relationships, sex and intimacy.

Yeah, I've been studying it full time for over 15 years. I've been working in it professionally full time for about seven and a half. And yeah, there's, it's definitely a common question, you know, what made you become a sex relationship coach? And for the first maybe five years of doing this work, I had one stock answer that was true, but there was an even more true one. So the first layer was that when I was 20 years old, I went through a pretty emotionally devastating breakup that totally rocked me. And I remember feeling, I thought that she could have been the one and what could I have done differently? How could I have done better? And so that's when I crossed over from just.

A part time serious student to sexual relationships to actually wanting to make it my work. But the deeper, more real answer is that for.

Just over the first decade of my life, I was bullied quite severely by my siblings. And this was something that really gave me this kind of sense or foundation of not being safe in the world. I'm the youngest of three and I looked up at my older siblings as total superheroes, as many younger or youngest children do. And yeah, I just remember having this deep sense of if the people that I love the most in the world can resent me or hate me seemingly this much, then clearly I'm not safe in the world. I'm secretly hated or a burden or a mistake. All the dialogue that an egocentric child will pile on top of themselves and build stories and yeah, I didn't really begin to deeply unpack that until.

15 was kind of the initial turning point when I had my suicide attempt and I saw the pain on my family members faces and kind of woke up to the fact that oh, these people actually care about me and I must have just built a fault false store in my head. And then yeah, more deeply unpacking it just as of like two or three years ago and like really going deep with one of my mentors, a local therapist we both know and processing the shit out of that.

It's good, man. Well, I appreciate you sharing that because I think, you know, with the more and more that I work with guys and the more that I hear about their stories and their journeys, there is oftentimes, and I'm not too sure if you've seen this as well because I know that you've worked with a lot of guys, but there's oftentimes when there's hesitancy to get into a more intimate relationship, there's often a past transgression that's happened towards them. Right. Whether it's abuse as a kid, whether it's been verbal, physical, sexual in some capacity and it really limits their level of intimacy and connection with the partners that they want to attract in their life. Is that something that you've seen as well?

Yeah, 100% shame and ego and unprocessed pain from our past is absolutely collectively the number one inhibitor to any intimate connection. Because if we feel on some conscious or unconscious level that we're unworthy of being loved, then of course we're going to keep everyone away from us and only engage in service level relationships.

Yeah, it's something that's pretty intense. So you kind of touched on.

You kind of touched on the suicide when you were 15. And I know that that must have been a pretty dark space, especially at that young of an age. But statistically speaking, that's where most men. There's two age brackets that a lot of men will attempt suicide. It's between 14 and 21, I believe. And then the second set is between 40 and 44 where we see a lot of divorces. And so I'm curious if you can share. I know it's sort of a darker topic. But I think that a lot of guys struggle with this. You know, a lot of guys struggle silently with depression that ends up leading to this space of having suicidal thoughts. And I know that I've been in that space before, and I know a ton of people that have as well. And so I'm hoping that you're okay with sharing some of that insight of what that experience was like leading up to it, and then the realization that you had afterwards.

Yeah, 100%. It's easy and a total honor to share about it. So.

I think that the first thing that is important to touch on is that there are some people that see depression or anxiety or suicidal ideation as this thing that is potentially only applicable or only possible for a certain subset of people that might have it in their family lineage or that have really epic stuff go wrong all throughout their entire life. And really the fact of the matter is that human condition, we're very fragile, soft animals. And every person, you know can potentially be one or two or three major life crises away from having suicidal thoughts. It's one of the most.

Normal parts of the human condition is suicidal thoughts are basically just the things that happen when the level of pain that you're experiencing are exceeding your coping resources, or at least perceived coping resources of, I can handle this much pain. I'm currently processing this on a daily basis. You know, when people are in overwhelm, that's when they start to go, I can't escape my own mind. I can't escape my own wall of pain that lives inside my body. And I think that in terms of the gender split, and this is why I'm happy that I'm talking on the Man Talks podcast about this, is that absolutely men are less societally encouraged to be deeply embedded in community. And while it is absolutely one of the hardest things to do when you're in that deep of a well of pain, the most significant data point that you can do for your recovery or for. If you can only reduce your pain so much, but you can level up your coping resources. You extend to people. That's it. You find your one or two or, you know, if you're crazy, lucky five to 20 people that you feel deeply safe and connected to and say, hey, I'm having a hard time even getting out of bed right now. Can you drop off like a casserole? Can you come over and, like, hold me while I cry? Whatever the ask is. And a lot of people just don't have deeply close confidants to go to.

And, yeah, I mean, I feel like that's definitely an important piece of it, like having the people that we feel like we can go to. I think one of the other stats that I found was really interesting when I started diving more into this topic was that 50% of men over the age of 19 can't identify a best friend. You know, and that's just like, you know.

When we talk about the causes of things like depression and anxiety and suicide or even things like abuse, I think that a lot of it really stems more and more from social isolation or the perception of social isolation. And you know, the times that I have felt like I've been in that space and the times where I've worked with men who have gone through that space, it's like nine times out of ten, they feel so isolated in their experience. Maybe they're not alone, maybe they have friends they can reach out to, but they perceptually feel so isolated from the space of no one understands the pain that I have right now. And it leads them to this like very dark, dark place. So was that your experience as well?

It's interesting that age. So that depression, 14, 15, that wasn't as front of mind for me because if you looked at me like externally, I was not the poster boy for oh, he's obviously depressed. Like I wore, this is gonna like somewhat age me, but I wore orange track pants or like orange tearaways, Hawaiian shirts, puka shells. I had like blonde frosted tips that were like spiked up like. You know, it's pretty common for people that are depressed to wear very like dark neutral colors to kind of fade away from having attention.

Yeah.

Broadcast on them and you know, wearing orange full length pants and Hawaiian shirt. As a grade 8 and 9 kid, I wasn't necessarily hiding and I had a decent enough social circle for me that age. It was definitely just more. I was completely oblivious to all the repressed shame that I held onto for my bullying. That yeah, I was just completely unfaced and the deserving and permission that I gave myself to even be aware of it was close to non existent. But yes, my experience with clients and friends and family members and the people that I know that have gone through major depressive episodes, it absolutely, like you said, 9 times out of 10.

Is germinated or kind of spirals out of isolation and they might have a couple close friends, but as they start to get depressed because they feel like, oh, I'm like too sad and I'm being a burden now, they, they'll just retreat further and Further and further until the point they just live in their bedroom and aren't extending at all. And yeah, it's really easy to get lost in our mind.

When we're struggling that deeply. Yeah.

And I mean, you've talked about shame here. Let's talk about that a little bit because I know.

In a lot of men's work, shame is a huge piece of the work that we need to do in order to move through some of these past transgressions and actually, you know, step into confidence, step into our power, step into our, you know, quote unquote greatness, even though that, that phrasing kind of irritates me. But step into that space of, of our own personal sense of happiness and fulfillment. And shame really is one of the biggest things. You recently wrote an article, I think it was about, it was about depression and it was about naturally overcoming depression. And, and in there you, you kind of gave some simple ways to overcome it, but you did address shame. And so I'm. Let's, let's dive into that. How do you identify shame? Because I think a lot of guys don't even know that that program's running, that that shame mechanism is like running their identity and their ego. And it's like playing in the background, causing them to go out and drink and fuck wildly and just like be so unfulfilled in a lot of it. So how do you identify shame? First and foremost, to know that it's sort of got a hold of you.

How do you identify shame? I think that to me, shame is just the voice that it's very similar to ego. It's a pile of lies that we identify as. And with both shame and ego, there's a sense of specialness, of either I'm especially gifted or special in these ways. But more frequently with shame, I'm especially damaged or broken or unlovable in these ways. And so I'd say the first way to kind of self analyze for this process would be to ask yourself, how much, to what extent do I allow others to actually see me? And by others, I don't mean all people you cross paths with. I'm not telling you to share your shame stories with the person begging your groceries. But like you said, if they're. If 50% of men over 19 years old claim to have an average number of zero confidants, people that really know them, that's a good place to start. Is that usually shame is the inhibitor to that deep connection of, well, I'm not really worthy of being seen completely Truthfully as I am. So I'm just going to engage in surface level relationships or remove myself from the relationship sphere in general, whether that's intimate, personal friendships, et cetera.

Hmm. And then how do we work with and sort of process through some of that shame, like, once we start to identify it and because I think this is good for, you know, for all listeners to kind of understand and have an understanding of, of how shame shows up, impacts our relationships and then, you know, once we identify it, how we actually begin to process it, move through it. Because what we're talking about ultimately is the shadow, right? This is like the shadow side of our identity, of our ego.

So once we've kind of identified it actually first, what's the impact that it has on our intimate relationships? I think that's really important to kind of dive into. Since you have all of this experience in relationships. How does it manifest in our intimate relationships?

Yeah. So to both those points, shame is born in relationships and thereby shame can only be healed in relationships. So you know how it affects your intimate relationship versus your friendships versus your familial relationships versus your relationship to yourself? You know, there's really no, there's no separation. It's your relationship to relationships, your relationship to yourself. It's all the same thing. You know, the extent to which you allow yourself to know and accept you is the exact extent to which you can do that for any person. You're your best guy, friend, your intimate partner, your father, whether he's alive or dead, like, just all of it, it's all the same. And in our pre call, this is why I brought up that certain things about people asking about interrelation questions can be.

Probably frustrating for me is I'm just like, it's all the same stuff. There's no, like, oh, but these relationships versus this.

It'S all the same thing. So how it affects intimate relationships, relationships in general is the same thing with the confidant piece is you will keep yourself back from being known. Your sex life will be less fulfilling, because even if you're having sex daily, if you are energetically, emotionally keeping your partner at arm's distance, you can both only go as deep as you're allowing yourself to go. So there's a huge difference between, you know, robotically fucking a warm body across from you versus allowing your heart to be felt and expressed and seen by someone. You know, that's probably the biggest difference between, you know, having sex when you're like 18 versus 30 is, you know, one. It just is. It's entirely. And this is probably even more so for males. It's so performance minded. Especially, you know, if you're like a millennial or born after 1980, 85, you're raised with this sex as performance mindset. And that same thing can extrapolate into how we are in terms of our intimate skills, conversationally, emotionally with our partners is, oh, how do I perform? How do I be the best partner? As opposed to. Which is really like, how do I do being the best partner? How do I do the behaviors, how do I show up as? And just all these fucking magic tricks that we like, you know, pepper people with. Because what we're the most afraid of is saying, here's my actual self.

And you know, the fear resistance that we have to doing that is completely synonymous with the degree that we love and accept ourselves. Because it's only the pieces that we're like, oh, like here's this thing. Do you accept it? Like the amount of anxiety we have around them, accepting it or not, is a complete mirror for how much we have accepted and love that piece for ourself yet or not. So.

Oh man, you just dropped some serious bombs there. I'm like nodding my head away at this. I'm like, yes, yes. So good, let's. I want to, I want to unpack a little bit the performance based sex. Because I think this is really important. And I know for myself in my 20s, I was, I was only performance based. I like my version of intimacy. If somebody asked me what I thought intimacy was, it was just being like a cheap champion in the bedroom, you know, and that oftentimes didn't actually lead to the type of connection that, you know, my partner was looking for or what I was actually looking for. And it was very physical based. So can you unpack or just sort of define performance based connection or sex? Because it's, I think it's, I think it's predominantly a very like, masculine thing and sort of like point to maybe some of the masculine stereotypes that, that actually have created this sort of like, mindset.

Sure. So in terms of what performance based sexuality could look like, it's valuing the quality of the sexual experience and ultimately valuing yourself on the number of times your partner has an orgasm or how long you go for or really all the things that are most shown through sex or shown through pornography. And the 98% of what most, you know, very male focused pornography is not 100% of it, but pretty damn close. And yeah, that's it. It's not a feeling thing. It's a doing thing. Because what intimate sex looks like to kind of speak to the counterpoint is sex is about feeling, sex is about connection. And that's the exact same thing as to what infant relationships are. If on the more shame based, kind of unhealthy, masculine side of things, it's how do I do the behaviors of being a good partner versus how am I, you know, how am I able to be vulnerable? How can I show my heart and actually be present moment to moment? And that's all those words copy and paste the exact same thing about healthy sexuality. It's not, you know, most non shame based, healthy, intimate partners are not like exclusively evaluating on the fact that, oh, I didn't come 12 times, so you're a failure as a person.

That's not the point.

But we, but, but we go through that phase, right? Like, I think that a lot of men go through that phase of like, perceiving their worth and their value within the relationship strictly from a sexual standpoint and strictly from like, I mean, I remember in like my late teens and early twenties, like my, I would measure myself and my sort of like, partnership, how I showed up as a partner only on how long I had sex for. And so in my experience, I was a great partner if I banged for like two hours, right. And it was just like, sweet. I'm, I'm good. I'm great today. I'm, you know, I'm good, I'm good right now. And if it was like less than an hour, I was a failure, you know? And so I think that I'm curious as to how you recommend people move through that, because I feel like there might be a lot of guys listening on this podcast that are like, oh, shit, that might be me. How do I move through that and actually move towards connection and intimacy versus just the physical act of doing?

Yeah.

And I know that there's like no right formula.

Right.

Because there's some serious internal work that needs to happen for this transition.

Yeah, my face was less like scrounging for something and more like the overwhelm. Like, there's so many layers here that I could unpack.

So why don't we start with your journey of moving from that performance based on and into the more intimate, because I feel like that might be really, really powerful for people.

Totally. So, yeah, to me, that journey to put in a slightly different context was basically just the process of me journeying from living exclusively in my head down to also living in my heart. And I say also, not like, this is the wrong one and this is the right one. It's about building that bridge and actually connecting. I can't remember whose quote this is. I'm sure I'm going to butcher it, but I'm paraphrasing. The longest journey a man will ever take is the 18 inches from his head down to his heart. And that's performance based.

Which, to extrapolate further, that's almost like the conditional love that we were offered.

And everyone went through this experience. The conditional love that we were offered in our childhood is where we learn the lessons of, oh, I have to do I have to perform well to be a good human. Which then turns into partner. Which then turns into lover. And then, yeah, we're trying to impress the clock more than our actual partner. And yeah, three hours into it, she's like, I'm sore, can you stop? I already love you.

So, yeah, what that actually looks like in terms of the.

Mental, emotional and mechanical aspects of letting go of that more shame based performance mindset in sexuality was the first part was.

Just having like the 1% wedge of doubt that I allowed into my mind of like, maybe this isn't the only way. And you know, just like reality creation magic. The day that I entertain that thought that like, maybe I'm not just, you know, a walking penis with feet and like my entire worth is based on how many times they come or not.

When I really just was like, yeah, maybe that's not the only way. That's when I started to attract, you know, quote unquote healthier partners who were also reflecting that same thing back to me that they were like, yeah, I'm not looking for you to just like pound me for hours and have that be the thing that matters. But you know, they were ready to receive my heart, which was like slightly opening and it was not a. Okay, I made a decision then I went from like boom to boom and like two hours flat. No, this was a multi year process that, yeah, for me, probably between 25 to 27, 28. Yeah, it was like the people that I started to attract could receive me to the extent or to the depth that I was willing to go myself. So it had to start internally. And really. And again, I talked about how shame is born in relationships and it's healed in relationships. This is the same thing on all levels, not just in sexual performance, but with going from performance based relationship to vulnerability and openness and true intimacy. I could only attract partners that loved and accepted my sensitivity or my emotionality as I had already started to do. That for myself. So you go there internally first, and then you basically reality test that assumption of, like, oh, but don't I need to do this? And maybe the first time that you come in 10 minutes instead of at least an hour.

You might be internally like, oh, you fucked up. You're worthless. She's so pissed at you. That's the internal dialogue. But the reality testing of it is, okay, my mind might want to be doing this to me right now, but if I actually am present in the slightest and check in with her, is she pissed at me? Is she, like, red with rage that I came in under two hours? And that's the voice of shame that wants you to not check in because it wants to keep proliferating that story of like, no, here's how you stay stuck. Here's how I get to keep running the show, and you don't get to grow or evolve at all. So you start to accept yourself a little bit. You'll start to attract partners that also accept you to the same degree. And it'll be an upward spiral of healing. And instead of a downward spiral of self shaming, I like that.

I feel like that's. That's a. That's a quote right there. An upward spiral of healing.

I like it.

How important? I mean, you know, I think in these situations, what you're talking about is not only a deep sense of awareness of yourself and your mindset and what's going on for you and the internal narrative, but also an ability to communicate openly with your partner. And I feel like there's a lot of men that have the stigma around what is too much communication with their partner and what's not enough, you know? So how do we find that balance when we're starting to go through this journey? Because like you said, you're going to attract people who are ready for this conversation. They're ready for you to sort of like, step into this deeper space of intimacy. But it can be cumbersome and uncomfortable in these spaces where we're not used to communicating with our partner on this level. So how do we bridge that gap? Because I think that a lot of guys have this perception that if they talk about their perceived insecurities with their partner, it makes them less of a man. What's your take on that?

Yeah, some of the words we talk about the most is when you said cumbersome and uncomfortable and how it's difficult and challenging to do this and what else is life?

Yes, it's going to be challenging as fuck if for 20 or 25 or 30 or 40 years you've been run by this mindset of I have to keep my heart closely guarded and unavailable to people. Is it going to be terrifying to reveal yourself to someone, to offer them the chance to to some extent offer that softer, vulnerable piece of you, the love that you haven't been giving it? Yeah, it's going to be super hard. It's going to be challenging as fuck. And that's the only way through it. Like, yeah, if someone said like, oh, like I want to be self employed and have these passions to like give out to the world, but I'm afraid that if I do that it won't turn to a thing. It's like, well, you have one option, you can do it or stay stuck.

And not to like belittle the challenge or the difficulty, like it's some of the hardest stuff in the world to take your deepest core wounds or fears, insecurities and the parts that you've not to shame it but you've been under loving or under accepting of and offer it to someone else and go, here's this thing, what do you think? Yeah, it's going to be super hard and it's one of the only ways it'll ever be deeply healed. That being said with this isn't like to counteract it but to add on top of it. You asked about the balance between how deep can I go? How much should I be sharing? You know, I'm definitely of the mindset that you should be able to share every single possible thing, especially your deeper, softer, more vulnerable points with your intimate partner. And I think the balance is in not making that person the only emotional support system in your life. You know, I don't think there's any like, oh, like here's the topic that's off limits to your girlfriend or wife.

You should be able to share everything. But if you don't have some especially close same gendered friends, if you don't have some, like really, I'm assuming that a lot of the audience of this podcast is male. If you don't have one or two close male friends, you can also go to to be emotional supports, then yeah, it can be a little taxing if you make one person your full time therapist and only them. So do allow yourself to cut up the charge a little bit. But yeah, there's no laundry list of topics that are like unapproachable or that you can't breach with your partner.

So in your past relationships, like when the shame started to come up or you Started to have these realizations. How did that look for you? How did that actually show up in the relationship from a communication standpoint? How did you broach that subject with your partner? Because I found that I read in an article the other day that said that after sex is one of the best times to have open communication because both people are just so open.

So how did you go about that and what did that look like? I think that's important for people to experience.

Yeah. It's funny you said that. I haven't read that article, but as soon as you were halfway through asking the question, I could tell where you were about to go. The first thought that I had was probably 98% of all of those conversations happened while we were naked in bed. And whether we had just had sex or we're gonna have sex at all that night. Yeah, just like that. Is where some of the deepest work of your entire life can be done is in the loving embrace of someone that you have voted as safe and trustworthy and. Yeah. And worthy of hearing your shame story. And this is one of my favorite things that Brene Brown has talked about is that not everyone is worthy of hearing your shame story. And that's absolutely true. And I might be a bit of an anomaly sharing basically all of my deepest shame stories with a million plus people around the world every month, but, yeah, the people that really know you and are offered the opportunity to hold those softest parts of you, they really have to earn it. They have to. You have to really feel deeply safe to even potentially broach those conversations with. And yeah, when I think back on my journey of, like, basically combing out the seeds of lies in my mind, which all shame is, it's all just a lie about your core nature. Because if the fear is I'm unlovable, of course that's wrong. Of course that's a lie. You're like a piece of nature and there's nothing wrong with you or especially unlovable about you. That's just what the ego loves to latch onto. And, you know, because that then sabotages connection, relationship. But yeah, really, you know, I can think of five or six people in my entire 30 years of living that have done the absolute bulk of the weight of helping me hate, of helping me heal my deepest shame stories and, you know, not to, like, completely veer off credit and say, like, it was just them that did it. I was also there. I was also the ones. I was also the one that, like, was willing to even go there in the first place. But yeah, it's definitely a quality over quantity game. Which isn't to say that you can't also share a deeply sensitive thing with, you know, a 20 person men's group and have them give you the same group healing. They absolutely can. But yeah, other people need to be involved.

And did you, like, you know, I hear a lot of guys talking about needing to heal their relationship with other men because we have these very competitive based relationships where we're competing against other guys on, on a daily basis and instead of, instead of challenging one another.

Right.

And what can happen is we build these very like, surface level relationships with other men in our lives because we're constantly at odds with them and we never sort of break through that. So was healing your relationship with men sort of part of this journey of working through the same.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, whether people know it or not or consciously aware of it or not, I think that every human that exists, you know, that like, hasn't necessarily done an extraordinary amount of like deep dive, you know, self awareness healing.

99% of people have some issues with the masculine and with the feminine, you know, whether, regardless of what the, the stem of those things are. Yeah, absolutely. For me, healing my relationship with men was instrumental in being able to trust myself deeply enough to go there with my female intimate partners. And yeah, I, you know, me personally and a lot of my closest guy friends that I've been in men's groups with over the last couple years, we have this very consistent story of, you know, especially being born into, you know, we're very similar ages. Being born into a world where third wave feminism, which has brought a ton of amazing guests, I'm not describing it in the slightest, has raised a lot of modern, younger, especially millennial men with this mindset that the patriarchy is bad, which means men are bad, which means you have to be unlike men and just part and parcel making the masculine toxic, toxic masculinity, which can exist in a polarized sense. But yeah, if we demonize competitiveness or directionality or, you know, any kind of subset, character trait of any masculine energy, yeah, people can just be completely disconnected from themselves. And I was definitely one of those, which, you know, the first two or three years of being, I was less relationship coach, more of a dating coach, helping people get into relationships instead of cultivated interviews instead of cultivate intimacy. But yeah, I definitely had to reclaim many parts of myself. And that came through being in men's groups, being around, you know, allowing myself to go deep and go be a lot closer with male Friends, which then healed my relationship to my father in a kind of like, you know, triangulation surrogate way. And. Yeah, it just.

Activated piece of myself that I had suppressed unknowingly.

Yeah, I think it's interesting because you're talking about again, there's like, there's so much in there, which is great. And I'm just like, trying to decide, like, which part of I wanted to go into. But I think from, from my perspective, there, There is a huge.

Sort of lash against masculinity and men. And, you know, we even see it online with the sort of shit around, like, beta cuck and stuff like that. Like, there's like all of this, like. Have you heard that terminology?

No, I've heard of the word beta. I don't know what beta cuck is.

So it's like. It's like this.

So I find it interesting because on one side you have. There's sort of like the more feminine side that. That, you know, the third wave feminists and stuff like that, that view and sort of talk about masculinity as this bad thing. And then what it seems to have done on the other side is that we have these guys that are like, they. It activates their shame bodies, and then they are fighting to basically say, like, hey, masculinity isn't bad, but it goes to this sort of extreme. So then they need to live in this space of being like an extreme alpha and that like anything, any. Any sort of, like, feminine man at all is weak, is, you know, beta.

And that's where, like, it's the definition of reaction formation. It's like, I need to be very, like, antithetical to the thing. Like, I hate this thing, so I'm super not that. Yeah, so that it owns you. So how.

How have you sort of coped with that? Because you're a very public figure who, you know, talks about relationship. I mean, you. You dive into, you know, a lot of incredible topics around sex and intimacy. Like, you've talked about bdsm, you've talked about masculine feminine dynamics and power dynamics in the bedroom. So how do you deal with that? Because I can imagine that a lot of the times, like, there must be some pretty incredible reactions from both men and women when you're talking about this level of intimacy. Has that come up for you around masculinity and what it means to be a man?

In terms of the lash back that I've gotten or. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. Bring this up. I've never said this publicly in writing or on a podcast. But there's. There's a decent. So every. Every time I've found, like, a forum thread that is basically dedicated to, like, me sucking shit in the world and them hating me, it's. It's exclusively been. Or like, over 95% of the time, it's been a.

Men'S rights activist type site of, like, guys that are very. You know, and like, yes, men have rights, just like humans have rights. But, you know, I see the MRA seen as kind of like the male equivalent of radical feminism, that there's absolutely a healthy way to be, like, pro men's rights. You know, case in point of eating Antox. And yeah, there's. There's been a decent number of, like, dedicated forum threads talking about how I'm, like, feminizing men and ruining relationships and, like, yeah, just some, like, laughably horrendous shit about how I'm, like, I'm what's wrong with modern masculinity.

Right.

And I get it. Like, I'm threatening the thing that they hold so closely. And I also, like, represent the embodiment of the thing that they're repressing in themselves because, you know, they don't allow themselves to cry at all. And I publicly post photos of myself crying. That's going to threaten the shit out of their core wounds of, like. No, men aren't allowed to feel a full spectrum of emotions, so you especially aren't.

Yeah. So, yeah, there's definitely been lash back.

Yeah. I was. I was just curious because, like, you know, I did the TED talk last year, and just seeing it's. It's been embraced so well by so many people. But to your point, it's this sort of. It's the always the MRAs, always the men's right activists that. That are, like, so threatened by it. And it's so interesting because what they're talking about is just their internalized shame, you know, that's not processed. And it's just like, I would love to sit down with. With some of those people sometimes in a therapeutic environment and be like, so, like, tell me about your childhood. You know, like, tell me about what happened with you as a kid. Because it's just. I just can't imagine what they've been through in some capacity.

Yeah. And, you know, one of so thing that's like, that's very me, is I see nothing in black and white. And not that you were framing that in that way, but, like, there is absolute value in many of the messages that I've heard. From MRA type communities in terms of like, hey, did you know that like, male sexual assault survivors basically have no resources and people don't either believe them or give a shit? And, you know, things around custody with children for men is very skewed. And like, I get it. There is absolutely work to be done for men and women on every level. But yeah, it's the repressed emotions, repressed sense of self run amok and the unowned pieces of themselves of that community that. That's when I take issue with it. I'm like, I totally understand that there's pain behind this. Like, you wouldn't. People don't post about, you know, they don't post blanket statements about resenting or hating a gender just for fun because they're a balanced, happy person.

There's still work to be done. And that's okay. We all do.

Yes. Okay. So we kind of like went off on a little side tangent there, but I feel like that was really relevant. Like, you know what, we've, like, we've never talked about that topic online before, but I feel like that's.

It's huge.

I think it's really good for people to know because guys like.

And who better than us two softies to talk about it?

It's so funny. But, you know, I, I kind of want to bring us back to, to the, to the sex and intimacy because I feel like it's so deeply linked to the shame and to the, you know, the depression, stuff like that that we deal with. Not that sex and intimacy is linked to depression, but. But being able to, to work through some of the shame that we have can lead to so much deeper levels of intimacy within our relationships. So just going back into that, into that area, what have been some of the, like, the benefits of you doing all this work to understand your shame, what's come out of that? Because I know for myself it's unlocked some incredible, like, the relationship that I'm in now is just something that I never thought that I would experience ever in a million years. And it took me doing so much work and understanding that, like my abuse, the abuse that I went through verbally and physically as a kid, you know, that that was actually holding me back from connecting with my partners and that, you know, there was so much shame that I had to work through. But the relationship that I have now is on a totally different level. So can you share some of your insight on what that journey has looked like and what the, what the outcome has been? I guess you could say so.

Outcome benefits. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, the kind of end result of all the work for me personally and like, I think to some extent to all people ever, is that I feel deeply seen, known, understood and accepted because I've earned my way to seeing, knowing, understanding and accepting myself. Like, that's the punchline is end in a more, you know, practical hundred pound term kind of way. That looks like the most deeply fulfilling friendships and community, sense of community that I've ever engaged in in my entire life. That looks like attracting romantic partners that have the same kind of emotional depth and capacity to love me, call me out of my bullshit. The full spectrum of all the different growth elements that I've ever been able to meet and attract in the past. This is something that I know you're interviewing Mark Groves this week that he and many relationship coaches talk about incessantly is this idea that whatever you, you know, want to become, whatever you want to attract in the world, you just become that and that's it. You know, you don't attract what you want, you attract what you are. So if you're loving, accepting yourself, you're going to attract partners, love and accept you. That's. That's a punchline.

I like it. I like the punchline. And in terms of like a defining moment in the last couple years because you've gone through some pretty serious shifts, your business has grown, you've like really stepped out in a, in a huge way and you know, I've been fortunate enough to kind of see your relationships that you've gone through and, and some of the transformation that you've gone through. Share a story with us about a defining moment in like the last two years that's really helped to shift who you are today. Because who you are today, from my perspective, is someone who's so much more solid and present and grounded and than the man that I met years ago.

Right.

So, yeah. So I'm going to leave you that with you. Defining moment and story.

Yeah. So it isn't like a particular day or moment, but like a patch, like a short term patch I can definitely speak to. So for the first couple of.

So, yeah, I've been doing sex relationship coaching full time for about seven and a half years. First four years were all offline and then three and a half years, the last four years have all been online and there was definitely a turning point when my intention behind what I was doing in my business, which was really just, you know, this is all a microcosm of what my life was at the moment. Was I initially started the business because, yes, I wanted to have a societal impact. Yes, I wanted to have my work reach a larger number of people versus just doing face to face work, which I'd been doing for three and a half years. But there was a shift when I went, okay, I'm doing this for like, you know, 90% egoic reasons of like, having a personal brand and like having the fact that I was like, oh, I've been a bestselling author now on Amazon, not New York Times, but like, just like having these things that I could then bring to my, my ego, to my shame store and go, hey, I'm not totally worthless because I achieved X. And there was a certain point where that energy carried me for the first couple years and I kind of hit a wall with it where I was like, I could tell that I was doing work that felt aligned with my core values and old core wounds. I knew that I was helping the world in a way that I believed in, but I could tell that there was some value shift that had to happen because it didn't feel sustainable anymore. And in, you know, in a very congruent way with that shame story, there was this sense of I had to do everything on my own. And I basically built up this kind of ivory tower of isolation in my achievement based mindset of I have to build my business to this level, you know, and it's just my doing and I can't accept help from anyone. And to some extent that reflected in the depth of my writing that I wasn't really putting myself or my stories in what I was releasing to the world. It was more just kind of a content shield of like, hey, here's some stuff that's probably valuable that you might like as general advice or tips. But yeah, that was about two, two and a half years ago almost where I had this shift of like, okay, there's actually a quote that I learned through you, which is an African proverb of, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. That was very much my journey of, like, at first it was just me and I was going really fast, but it was at a burnout pace and it was just me and it sucked, you know, in a lot of ways. And at a certain point I went, okay, I have to deconstruct this ivory tower of isolation that I've built and kind of encapsulated myself in which looked like, you know, telling more honest and full and revealing stories, putting photos of myself crying in my articles and not just like, pretty shiny stock photos of.

Other people, the Facebook thumbs up. I'm curious, can I interject here? Because.

You'Ve put some incredible things online that I know have helped hundreds of thousands of people. And from my perspective, I'm curious as to what's been the most confronting vulnerability that you've had to put out online. Because you've put some real shit out there. And I'm curious which one has been the most confronting for you.

Yeah, there's definitely two or three that come to mind immediately. I would say the most challenging one in terms of my finger most literally shaking over the publish button of like, what the fuck am I doing? This is such a mistake. It's interesting. So the first handful of articles that come to mind, and I will name it in a second, that I was the most terrified putting out the world because the exact, you know, the exact thought process was, this is gonna destroy my business if I put out this truth. I am so fucked. What am I thinking? Like, just. It made no sense. Every single time, without fail, that I put an article like that. It's been one of the biggest growth curves, not just, you know, personally in terms of my development, but of my business of people reaching out, going, wow, this is deeply honest. You know, there's, like, tears streaming down my neck right now. I am this. I'm so thankful you put this out there. Without fail, every time I put out my truth, you know, there's like, there's goosebumps and tears across a certain percentage of the readers that need to hear that, and that becomes intrinsically rewarding. That becomes its own. And to speak to, you know, now looping back to, like, 25 minutes ago in, you know, what do we do when we, like, want to share a vulnerable thing with our partner? And it's terrifying. It is terrifying. And it becomes less scary because when you have someone or multiple safe partners or friends accept those scary parts of you, you know, the tenth time is a little bit easier than the third time. It just. It is just how life works. Every time you deploy courage, you get confidence back. That's what life. That's how life works in business, relationships, sexuality, all of it. So the most confronting, scary piece that I put out is called How I Overcame Sexual Addiction. And I had referenced my years of sexual compulsivity in a couple articles beforehand, but this was, like, my deep dive post where I was like, here's all of it. Here's really all of it. And, you know, I'd shared these stories with group members in Sex Addicts Anonymous, you know, for like almost a year and a half by this point. So any people knew about it? My partner obviously knew about it. You know, some of my closest friends were somewhat aware of it. But yeah, for me, that was by far the most very revealing piece of, like, here's one of my biggest shame stories. And again, like, that piece wasn't necessarily that much, you know, more lofty or didn't need to be more terrifying than when I shared about my suicide attempt or depression.

Or my repeated breakups with the same partner who I care deeply about. Each of those things could have the same capacity to make me nervous. It just felt the most scary because, like always with shame and vulnerability. It was the story of mine that I hadn't 100%, across the board accepted yet. I'd done most of my work around it, which is why I could share about it as honestly as I did, but there was still some healing to do around it.

So let's dive into that a little bit because I think, you know, the sex addiction is definitely something that has come up before on this and, you know, it's something that I've talked about in the past as well. It's been part of my journey and I think it's.

It's.

I think it's interesting to define. So how would you define sex addiction? Because there's a great book called the Truth by Neil Strauss and he. He dives into it, I mean, heavily, you know, But I'm curious as what your definition of sex addiction is and how it shows up for guys.

Definitely. And I love that you brought up the Truth by Neil Strauss, because I just read it whenever it came out a year and a half ago, maybe now. And literally I have not read a book that was more identical to my trajectory in my 20s than anything else. And not just in like, oh, because there was some years of sexual compulsivity. But I was a professional dating coach. Then I went on the sexual tear. Then I explored BDSM and polyamory, like verbatim. That was my life. And it was more interesting because I somewhat got into full time dating coaching because I read his original book the Game, and that inspired me. So to kind of be going on an almost identically timed path as him was a total mind block for me that I was like, whoa. We both went into this from a place of shame and unworthiness. Of course.

Remind me of the actual question.

I was asking you to define sex addiction just so that people can have a context. Because I think for A lot of guys, you know, they, they look at porn quite a bit and it's, I mean, it's, it's, it can be excessive. So it's like, where do we draw the line?

Totally. Yeah. And really with any addiction, I think that it has, like, where the line is drawn is always an individual basis. Because one person, you know, depending on childhood and environment and religious beliefs or the absence thereof, someone can masturbate daily and think nothing of it and be totally fine. And it really doesn't own their life. That's just their default normal. Whereas someone else could masturbate twice a week to porn or not to porn, and they could have deep shame thoughts around that. So it's always individual, but as a kind of blanket pat answer. Sex addiction, like any addiction is, there's a thing that, you know you don't want to do and yet you still find yourself doing it. Because what you're really doing is using a maladaptive, you know, stress. You have a stress response and you numb it with a thing. And, you know, whether that is sex or work or gambling or alcohol or drugs or, you know, early stage relationships, just like chasing that dopamine high, people can numb out with anything. You know, Brene Rand jokes about, like banana nut muffin and a Starbucks venti latte. Like, people can latch onto anything as an addiction. And that's one area where I really enjoy the fact that there's been a sense of concept creep that, you know, 40 years ago, addiction basically only meant, oh, they're on, like hard drugs. That's the only real addiction. But there's chemical addictions, there's process addictions. And one thing around both sex addictions and disordered eating is they can be the most challenging ones on a certain level to kick. Because if you're doing meth, if you're doing heroin, yes, it's advantageous to stop your thing entirely. You don't need meth to continue on and be a functioning human. But food, for sure sex, you know, almost as for sure, they're a piece of your life that you want to healthily integrate. So it can be a lot challenging to earn that healthy relationship to sexuality when you've used it as a numbing process, numbing behavior in the past. Yeah.

And it can almost be, it can almost be seen as I hear a lot of people be like, ah, that's not a real thing, you know.

Right.

And it's like, you can't be addicted to sex. And it's like, well, you can misuse sex and you can misuse pornography just like you would a substance. And so of course it can. And I'm curious as to your take on porn in this entire thing, because I think not. I think I know that a lot of guys struggle with pornography and a lot of guys misuse it and then it has really negative impacts on their, on their intimate sex lives. Not only from the perspective like this is tying back into the performance aspect that we were talking about before, but it, it ties into like their perception of what sex should look like and sound like and all of that, all that kind of stuff. So tell me about your, your perspective on porn.

Totally. So again, in my non black and white thinking, I'm definitely not a porn is bad, we need to outlaw it at all. I know a lot of people that have come to the pun unintended, come to the awareness of their sexual orientation or sexual preferences by exploring through porn whether they realized, oh, I'm gay because I really only like watching gay porn or oh, I like BDSM and kink because I like this kind of porn. Like it can absolutely be a tool for self discovery and also for partner exploration. I know married couples that intermittently use porn as a thing, you know, as like part of their collective sexual practice. So there's, you know, there's a place for everything. But yes, contextually, overall I definitely see porn as, I see it as similar to fast food that, you know, if I'm in an Airport at 3am and there's nothing else, yeah, I'll eat at Subway, I'll eat at McDonald's maybe, like if it's the only thing, I can definitely do it. But is it the first line of defense? No, I think it's usually healthier for most people in most circumstances to use it quite sparingly or not at all. Because yes, it absolutely has. You know, the majority of male focused porn has a lot of very.

You know, female diminishing a lot of like terrible messages that that stuff can bleed into people's mindset and affect their perception of what sex should be. Whether they're an 8 year old who's like forming the relationship about the world and about sexuality, or they're a 58 year old who is binging on porn and having that be having those thousands of women be his lover and ignoring his partner of 30 years. So yeah, can absolutely show up for different people in different ways.

Do you think that like taking a break from porn or at least trying it once, once in your life is probably a good idea?

Yeah, absolutely. Just like I'd recommend people, you know, take a month long break from sugar or take a year long break from fast food, like, yeah, try it out, see what happens. And you know, if you're surprised to realize to, to discover that your erectile strength improves and you find your partner that much more attractive or women in general that much more attractive and you just feel like you kind of unhooked yourself from the matrix and you feel more like reality based in your perceptions of humans, then maybe keep it going because yeah, people more often than not see benefits. Especially again, people born after 1980 that were born into a world with high speed Internet access and have a lot more deeply worn grooves in their mind of those massive hits of dopamine that are the equivalent to cocaine use. When people are hooked up to FMRI scanners, you get a huge dump of dopamine. When your ideal partner who seems very happy and sexually available and never says no is doing whatever you want to at the click for most, yeah, it's going to fuck with your brain.

How do you think, and this is like totally, I didn't expect the conversation to go here, but how do you think virtual reality is going to impact the way that we have sex and build intimacy?

I mean it's definitely going to have an impact, just like the.

Easier proliferation of widespread pornography has definitely impacted intimacy. I think there's going to be a pretty polarizing effect where for the people that are.

Less self aware or I hate this word, but something that means less conscious about like, or less intentional about how they live their lives. Yeah, some people are absolutely gonna just like sit up in their, they're gonna hole up in their living room in the La Z Boy recliner and they're gonna like plug in and just happily be in there for 12 hours a day. And it'll override a lot of healthy programming in their brain and probably ruin the fact that they can even get erections for the rest of their lives because they'll just be such a compelling addictive place to live that that'll own them. And on the other side of the spectrum, not to only be doom and gloom, I think that it might be for some people, it might be the next stage in.

Acknowledging the value of true intimate connection. And when VR comes out, whether that's like a headset or contact lenses or something even more brilliant and advanced than contact lenses that I can't even imagine right now, I think that there will be a more widespread.

Pushback or unplugging from the digital matrix where people might become Something like Luddites where it's like, okay, I'll now be very intentional with my screen time and I'll use my phone or computer or whatever devices. So minimalistically I see it as identical to when we were able to have food, like any food year round from anywhere, just because how transportation has improved and we can get anything everywhere all the time. And there was a pushback of the 100 mile diet and people growing their own food that was somewhat a reaction to the fact that they were like, oh yeah, I want raspberries, but do I ethically feel great about the fact that they were flown from halfway across the world and, and the fuel impact of like me consuming and voting with my dollars for this? Do I really feel right with that? And then people started to, you know, go somewhat, not more conservative, but old school in some of their choices. I think that it can be a deeper wake up call for the percentage of people that are already prone to being like, maybe I should live in a forest and not in New York.

Yeah, that's a good, I mean it's a really good way of putting it. And it's a good analogy as well because I think a lot of people will want to test out the waters and, and there will inevitably be, you know, it's cause and effect. There'll be a reaction against it for some people to almost like a call to action for them to really connect in real life versus online. And I think we've already started to see that just last because we're going to start wrapping up here in terms of developing deeper senses of intimacy in the relationship. You know, we've kind of touched on a lot of topics from man shame to.

Sexual performance.

Sexual performance.

I mean, we've kind of like run the gamut. So I'm curious, just from like a tools perspective.

What would you say in terms of giving people something that they can go and try with their partner? Like how if somebody comes to you and they say, hey, I'm struggling to connect or struggling to actually have a deep level of intimacy with my partner, what do you recommend with them to sort of deepen that intimacy and start to move through the barriers and into a deeper level of intimacy in the relationship?

Sure. So if one person was coming to you with that question, I would start off with the overarching mindset of first of all, entertain the idea or begin to believe that you're worthy of being seen and then progressively allow yourself to be seen. And so if they wanted a more practical, in the trenches, tip of here's how to do that. I would say take out a piece of paper, Write down numbers 1 through 10. And this being kind of an intimacy anxiety scale of if one is the easiest possible thing you could say to them, of like, I like your pretty eyes and, or I like that I'm good at basketball, whatever the thing is, and 10 is like, you're like most confronting. I don't know if I'll be able to share this with them even like within the next year. Write down that whole scale and then.

Bring them a three or a four or a five. Like bring them something. And this is really, in psychology terms, there's flooding and there's progressive desensitization. Flooding is like taking your biggest scary sting and just putting it out there. Which with intimacy and cultivating vulnerability, it's generally not the best practice to take your biggest shame story and just lead with that because you're not ready for it. And if they don't receive it well, then you might retract even harder. But in terms of progressive desensitization, bringing them, I think that's a little bit nerve wracking. And then having the dopamine hit and the reward, the feedback mechanism of them saying, okay, cool, well that's okay and I still love you and that's not a big deal. And you go, oh, that's not a big deal. Okay, cool. And it becomes its own, you know, rewarding, self filling prophecy. Yeah, start that.

Awesome. So you can do that from, from an intimacy spectrum, but do you also recommend that from like a sexual spectrum of like what people are looking for in the bedroom, like, is that something that, that they could do or should that all be sort of intermixed together under that same list.

Again, to me it's all the same. So if it feels like you want to cut that out or divide those things and say, okay, now I'm going to write down my 1 to 10 in terms of sexuality list again, whether that's sharing stories about your past sexuality or that 1 to 10 list for you, is here the most nerve wracking things that I want to ask for to happen between us and our sex life? Yeah, it's the same process. You go to something that feels a little bit uncomfortable, you deploy the courage to do it, you get positive feedback which builds confidence and shame melts away. Awesome. You allow yourself to be seen, you're seen, your heart opens more, everyone wins.

I love it. I love it, my friend. Well, I really, really appreciate having you on the podcast. And there's so much value in this podcast. I feel like it's one of the rare podcasts that I'll go back and listen to again. So I'm going to have to tell people to sit down with a pen and paper with this bad boy.

What?

You know, you've kind of come out of a hiatus from a year and a half of podcasts and, you know, your personal brand is blowing up and the blog's doing really well. What is on the horizon for Jordan Gray? What's coming up in the future for you? What are you really excited about?

I'm really excited about the fact that I have hired the most significant team out of like any other point in my entrepreneurial journey is, you know, I was still wearing almost all the hats in my business for so many years. And so I'm excited about the fact that I've never felt more supported. I'm now outsourcing and delegating more than I ever have, which frees up my attention to just really live in my core gifts exclusively. That's fun, exciting in terms of the more external facing, what people will like, how people will benefit from that. I'm planning my first in person extended workshops for the last quarter of this year and I'm also switching to a more quality over quantity approach with my content. For a lot of last couple years I was averaging like 10 to 15 new articles, like deep dive long articles per month. And now I'm trying to take all the energy that I was putting into those things and making like one or two per month that I'm deeply proud of. That will be the kinds of things that I know people will be bookmarking and coming back to for years, like just deep resource posts, which for me, creatively, that feels really fun and yeah, really just managing the growth. Like you said, my writing, my readership is expanding at a pretty ridiculous point. Malcolm Gladwell's whole tipping point analogy. It's like it's been not doubling month over month, but it's been a big growth curve that I'm like, oh, there's a lot of people that know about me now and are reading these words. That's very different than my first six months with only my friends and immediate family reading my articles. So yeah, a lot can happen in four years. Amazing, my friend.

Amazing. Well, for people that maybe aren't as familiar, where can they go to find you and your work? Check you out.

So the main hub is jordan gray consulting.com my name consulting.com. there's books on Amazon, a bunch of articles in the Goodman Project. But yeah, Jordan Gray Consulting is the major hub where you can find close to all my online stuff. Incredible.

Well, there'll be a link in the bio so you guys can check that out. Thank you so much, Jordan, for being on this. This is incredible and I appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule to join us on the Man Talks podcast. For everybody out there listening to this episode, thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to leave us a review and rate it and join the thousands of other change makers in our community group on Facebook. Or go to www.mantalks.com for the other podcasts, blog posts and some of our live videos. We actually just released one of the talks from the Last Relationship event here in Vancouver with Mark Grove. So if you want to see some videos from our live events, check that out on mantalks.com until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.