RELATIONSHIP EXPERT: The #1 THING You Can Do For Your Relationship - Dr. Robert Glover

A couple would walk in my office and I would tell both the man and the woman. I said, the best thing you guys can do for your relationship is each of you have good same sex friends. And I've been telling men the foundation of a healthy relationship with a woman is good guy friends. And I've been telling guys for years we go seeking love in all the wrong places. The feminine is the seeker of love. It's the consumer of love. And when we go looking to women to love us, we were actually looking for somebody who's wanting to be loved. Six, seven years ago, I'd gotten into marriage. I was living in Mexico. I was lonely, I was isolated. I could count one and a half men as good friends. And I went looking and I found a coach. You know him well, Connor. And I've been in his program for five years. I now know I can contact 25, 30, 40 guys. If I reached out to any one of these guys, I've gotten over the last five years and said, I need you help. They'd get on an airplane and fly down here. You know, they'd do it in a heartbeat. And my life in every way has changed since I built that foundation of good men. My marriages have improved dramatically. My finances, my work, my health. Wherever you're struggling in life, wherever you're stuck, wherever you're unhappy, can be attributed to one issue. A lack of good men in your life.

All right, Tony, Robert, welcome to the podcast. How you gents doing today?

Tired.

I heard. So you both, you just launched a membership. Yeah, tell me about that, Robert. How did that go? Because that sounds like that just went live yesterday.

It went live yesterday morning at 6am my time. So I got up this morning at 7am and oh, what was I thinking? That I scheduled an interview the day after launch. I could hear my voice. There's not much left. You know, it went absolutely great. It's a membership program for men. We're building a worldwide community. We've been. I've been envisioning and working on it for a year and a half. Working on it for a year. Tony's one of my founding coaches, been working with me for almost a year on it. And, you know, last few weeks, of course, have been, you know, just the big push, but it launched. The technology works. People are flowing in, they're happy.

It's, it's so, you know, thankfully, yesterday, launch day was a day of celebration, not a day of, oh, fuck, it's broken. What do we do? You know, So I think putting the work into it ahead of time definitely paid off. So I'm, I'm in a very good mood. I'm exhausted, but the world is good. I'm happy. It's good to be here.

Likewise, like, I mean, it's. I think it's one of those things, you know, launching a product or a.

Service.

Post that it's almost like a really good workout afterwards. It's like you get the good workout and you're like, man, I'm tired, I'm exhausted. But holy crap, this feels good. So I, I get it, I get it.

I know you do. Yeah. Yesterday afternoon, it was like I could feel my body for the first time in months and every part of it hurt. But none of it felt bad. It all felt like, oh, my body is so relaxed now. I can actually feel what it feels like to be in my body. So, yeah, it's good.

Good. Well, we're going to have a bit of a different conversation. So for the listener out there, I don't do a lot of three way conversations, but this one felt like something that was important.

So for those of you who have tuned into my show for a couple years, obviously Dr. Glover has been on a few times. Tony, you are new to the show. We'll get into a few different topics. We're going to talk about a collaboration that you two did. But where I wanted to begin was, was having a bit of dialogue just in sort of a macro perspective of looking at what is happening with men within culture and society. Because, Dr. Glover, you've been doing this work, working with men for decades now and I think you've seen the progression of what's been happening socially and culturally. It's very interesting because it looks like if you watch the news, you. I see a lot of commentary, a lot of headlines that are, men are struggling, men are in decline, less men are going to college, less men are dating, less men are entering into the workforce. There's 7 million men of working age that aren't working. There's sort of all of these stats that are being put forward showing that men are kind of checking out from culture and society. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of discourse around doing anything about it. And maybe that's just my perception, but I'm curious to get your take on what's happening with men within male culture, within masculinity, and, and how society might be contributing with that. So we'll start with you, Dr. Glover, and then we'll go to Tony.

Yeah, I was just talking about this on a Call last night with just a drop in call for people coming into my program, somebody asked me almost the same question in terms of dating especially.

So I'll try to keep it brief. I could go on for a while. Yeah, I've been working with men for 30 years, and since my first book, no More Mr. Nice Guy came out 20 years ago, that's been my focus. And what I see is, I see a pendulum swing, which that just seems culturally to be how things go. You have a status quo for so long, it's accepted, that's the way it is. And then something slowly starts chipping away at that, picks up speed, picks up speed, becomes a move, movement, and then all of a sudden swings the other way and then typically goes to some other, you know, equally dysfunctional extreme. There's a saying in 12 step programs that the opposite of crazy is still crazy. And a lot of people have a hard time understanding that. But if this was crazy, and now that's our starting point, and we just go 180 degrees the other direction, it's still crazy because you just kind of reversed a toxic situation. Actually, I was writing something a few months ago and I thought, well, I want to find out the source of that quote, because I like to attribute who says what. So I Googled who said the opposite of crazy is crazy. And the first thing came up On Google says, Dr. Robert Glover says the opposite of crazy. I thought, okay, if you say it enough times, you get credit. So, you know, so what you. We usually hear is the patriarch, you know, was. Was bad, it was evil. And we've just heard your toxic masculinity. And there were a lot of problems around a patriarchal model. I call it an ownership model where, you know, when we quit being tribal, men settled down and started owning stuff. They owned their land, they owned a tree, they owned a cow, they owned their wives, they owned their kids. You know, and so men have had this ownership mentality for so long. When you own something, you can do what you want with it. And that's been part of that patriarchal situation now. Also part of the patriarchal situation, you don't hear people talk about it was also men providing and protecting, taking care of what they had. And then so because of the abuses, rightfully so, especially it's been going on for many years. Civil rights movement, feminism, now the LGBTQ movement, a lot of it started moving stuff. But then all of a sudden, it's now and most recently swung the other way. Everything about men is evil. I grew up during the angry Feminism that every man's a rapist and erection's a sign of aggression, you know, now it's toxic masculinity is, you know, all these quick, easy terms for, you know, this was bad. Yeah, this had a lot of problems. Swing the other way, we're 180 degrees from crazy. And telling, you know, little boys in school a couple things, like, you know, talking about toxic masculinity in elementary school, telling little boys, you know, there is no. There is no such thing as gender. There's as many genders as there are people. And basically, you know, just telling little boys that who they are is bad. It's wrong. You're bad because you're a boy. And then especially, you know, if you're a white boy. In cultures where, you know, colonialism, of course, is part of patriarchy, you know, is. Has been an issue. And so little boys are growing up with, I must be bad. And, you know, why try anything? So usually if you get told you're bad long enough, if you're like a dog that gets kicked enough, usually one of two things happens. You become extremely passive. It's called learned helplessness. You don't do anything. Basically, you starve to death. In terms of a lot of young men, you just fucking waste your life, you know, playing video games, smoking dope, searching the Internet, looking at porn. The other thing that happens, if you kick a dog enough, it gets aggressive, it gets angry. So that's what I think I see has happened out there with men. They've either given up. I call it the hang out in the nursery. They don't really challenge themselves and. Or they get aggressive. And so, you know, that's not a good place for me. The good news that I see is that this is being talked about now. The media actually is talking about the plight of men. Now, it may just be a trendy story in the media, because that's what the media does. They follow trends. But.

We are waking up that there's problems. Hopefully the educational system will begin addressing it.

Modern educational system has never served boys well. You know, when my stepson was 12, he was 6 foot tall, and so my son was too. Both of my boys were. And I remember we went to the school because they were sticking him in, you know, those little chairs with the little desk attached to them. Tony, you probably can relate to this. You're tall. He couldn't sit in the fucking desk. And we went to the school, we said, can you give him a seat? He can actually sit in and be comfortable. No, we don't have that. We can't accommodate it. Just a chair. So if we can't even accommodate boys with a chair, you know, that's a problem. And boys don't learn well, typically by sitting down, listening to a woman teacher lecture them and write stuff on a blackboard, Boys learn experientially. They have to be up, they have to be moving, they have to be parts of teams. The educational system is geared towards helping girls learn. Now, again, all the while they're telling us, oh, there is no gender. You know, there is no boy, there is no girl. It's just fluid. It's a social construct. I heard that in grad school back in the 80s from my feminist teachers. But it's funny, they still call their movement feminism, even though there is no masculine feminine. There is. We're different. We learn differently. So I think we have to begin early with boys creating environments where it's positive to be male. And we create an environment where they feel like they can connect, belong, be challenged, use their unique way of integrating, you know, of engaging with the world to help them learn. And of course, we need more male presence. Now. The one other thing I'll say that I think means we're swinging in a better direction is we're having these conversations. And it's not just, oh, we're victims, we're being done to. They're conversations about what, what can we do? And I think with the power of the Internet and the power of good men around the world, which I see, good men are leading good efforts to help men of all ages. And men are responding to it. Like I said, I launched this membership program for men because I've seen you've had a membership program for men for years. I saw that men need tribe. We got to be a member of something. And then within that tribe, we need some structure, we need some culture, we need some help, we need mentoring, we need direction. We need that. As mentioned. And the good news is this kind of thing is blossoming again thanks to the Internet, thanks to the power of good men getting good mentoring and good coaching themselves. So I actually see us moving in a good direction where men are starting to show up in powerful, conscious, open hearted, loving ways and beginning to set a new tone, a new direction for men as we move forward. Not this extreme of the ownership, patriarchal. You know, I can. I. I can be controlling asshole, and that's okay. And not the wussy doormat over at this extreme that, oh, everything I do is wrong, you know, male guilt, white guilt, Whatever, I'm, I was born bad just because somebody's told me that. So I think we're finding a healthy place where men can show up, make a significant difference in the world relationship. And what I've been saying for a while, I have empathy for women. You know, the main two categories of men they've had to choose for if they do indeed want a man is, you know, the asshole jerk over here and the wussy doormat over here. You know, the asshole jerk may seem fierce and, you know, powerful, but he's not. He's actually a weak little boy as well, trying to control. But they've either had to, you know, okay, pick the controlling man or pick the wussy doormat. Now they gotta be mommy to their little boy of a man and take control and do everything and be in charge.

If I was a woman, I go, I don't want either of that. I think we're changing the world. I'll just tell one quick little story and then like I said, you can get me going on this subject. I said, years ago, after no more Mr. Nice Guy came out, I've got a 16 year old granddaughter and I got to go camping with her and my son just a couple weeks ago. And every year on her birthday, I go visit her and spend time with her. And since she was a little girl, she's been bright and just powerful. At 3, I said she understood metaphor, allegory, reverse psychology. And my dad's the primary custodial parent, so my son is. And so my granddaughter is growing up with a strong man. Former Marine, he was in Iraq, he's got a master's in wildlife ecology. He loves being outdoors. She does too. She loves snakes. She was fishing the whole time. And she's just a strong young woman. She'll be 17 this fall. She's smart, top of her class, and I've always said she's going to need a strong man to match her. And I've always thought if my work is helping enough young men grow up to be strong enough to be a potential partner to my granddaughter, I thought, I've done my job. And the quick part of the story is I went to visit her last October on her 16th birthday and we were having lunch and she said, oh, grandpa, the boy that's taken me to the homecoming dance, his parents are reading your book. And I just thought, ah, you know, I've done my work. If the mom and dad of the boys that are taking my granddaughter out are acquainted with no more Mr. Nice Guy, I Thought, okay, I can die complete, I've done my work, but I'm not ready to die yet. So there's more work that gets to be done.

Yeah.

So I'm optimistic. I see good things happening. There's lots of things that are problematic that need to be addressed. This doesn't work. This doesn't work. But I do think we're finding things that do work.

Yeah, I appreciate what you're articulating because it's, you know, one. I think there's a lot of complexity in, in what's happening in the conversation around men. And it's, you know, there's a, there's a bit of a landmine, landmine field that you can traverse. Right. You use words like patriarchy. And I think that that can evoke all kinds of stuff for folks. And, you know, the conversation around it can break down very, very quickly. And so it's interesting because I remember having this gentleman, Stephen Jenkinson, on the show. It's probably a year and a half, two years ago. Yeah, two years ago, at least. And we were talking about, we were talking about all sorts of things, but he brought up the patriarchy or patriarchy, not the patriarchy. And he sort of broke down the etymology of it, which was very interesting. And talking about how it basically meant. Archie meant to stand under or to uphold. Right. The arch. And then Patros was father. And so the, the original meaning is to uphold the father, just like matriarchy is to uphold the mother. In that culturally and socially, the, the elements that are disintegrating within our society are this notion of upholding both parents, that both parents have a role and a responsibility and a value and are somewhat essential ingredients for a child's development. Now, of course, there's exceptions to that. Right. There's single parent households because of all sorts of circumstances. And that doesn't mean that single parent households or, you know, non heterosexual households can't raise good kids. I'm not saying any of that. But what I am saying is that there's become this notion that we have sort of like thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Yeah.

In terms of men and masculinity and the use, the usefulness and the use case and the importance of men and masculinity. And so I really appreciate what, what you said, Tony. I would love to hear your thoughts in terms of what you see happening with men. And then we'll talk about dating and we'll see where that takes us.

Yeah.

I, I see, I see a few things. Just, you know, on an individual level as working with men in a one on one capacity. And then, and then I have a group program and I, I do see some patterns.

Some, some common grievances that, that, that I've had myself, you know, and just regarding the, the toxic masculinity narrative, I mean, I do see some of that, but I, I tend to think that that's coming from a very loud minority on the far end of the spectrum. Like a lot of things when I go out into the world, and I would imagine when you go out into the world, I mean, I don't, the women I interact with don't, don't think I'm bad for being a man. I never hear the word toxic masculinity thrown around when I'm sitting at the neighborhood bar. Most women, I don't think, feel that way.

So I really don't see a lot of that. Just when I'm out and about. No woman has ever made me feel, feel bad strictly for being a man. So again, well, I do think that narrative is out there. I just, I feel like it's a, like I said, I feel like it's coming from a very loud minority.

Which, you know, I guess that's a good thing, right? I mean, I don't think it's a universally.

Thought of or I don't think it's universally believed.

It's getting thrown around online quite a bit. Right. And any sort of behavior that is deemed unsavory is oftentimes that's where the, that's where the moniker, that's where the labels get in. Thrown. You, you said there's grievances amongst the men that you've worked with. What are some of the things that you're seeing guys struggling with?

Yeah, here's a couple of things I see frequently and again, I've struggled with these things myself. The first thing I see a lot of is, and I would attribute a lot of these problems to the Internet and to social media. And Dr. Glover made a good point, which is because of the Internet and social media, there's a lot of good things happening. Men now have places to go to, you know, find community and seek out other men. On the other hand, I see on social media a lot of influencer types perpetuating sort of this message that in order to be successful, in order to get the girl, in order to get the promotion, in order to live an awesome life, you have to be an alpha male. I, I hear that phrase thrown a lot, thrown around a lot. And I think most of Us have this sort of stereotypical image in our minds of what an alpha male is. And the reality is most of us are not going to be that guy.

My point is I don't think you need to become a quote unquote alpha male, which really isn't even a thing. I think it's just like a debunked theory from wildlife biology. I don't think you need to become this stereotypical image of an alpha male to again, be successful, get the girl, get the promotion, live an awesome life. My point is that a lot of guys think that if they aren't or cannot become an alpha male, that means they're just a sad sack, beta male loser piece of shit. And so they feel worse about themselves. And so I try to tell guys, no, there's another alternative, there's another way, there's a happier medium, there's another solution, and that's becoming an integrated man, which is what Dr. Glover talks about in no More Mr. Nice Guy. So that's one of the issues I see. Men just feel worse about themselves because the messages they're getting on social media. The other big problem I see put really simply is men are lonely.

And, and I don't just mean they can't get a girlfriend or they don't have active dating lives. I mean, they don't have any male friends and they don't know how to go out and meet male friends. Most of my clients, one on one, most of the guys who are in my group, that's one of their most common, common grievances is I don't have any good male friends and I don't know how to go meet them or where to meet them, which we kind of over complicate that like we do in the way we, we meet with the same, same way we do when we struggle to meet women. It's not as hard as I think we make it out to me, but, but nonetheless, men are lonely. And I've gone through periods of my life where I've been lonely and I see article after article after article, as I'm sure you do, about men are lonely. And loneliness is a silent epidemic. And this startling percentage of men out there don't even have one close friend that they could call in a time of need. And I have found that to be pretty true. I have found that most men are lonely. And again, I would attribute a lot of that to the Internet and social media and porn. I think a lot of guys, a lot of people in general, you know.

Turn on the TV or turn on the computer and get immersed into a screen rather than going out into the world and interacting with other humans in real life. So I see that a lot.

Yeah, I think. Can I jump in on that one? Because I think, I think it's. I spoke to a group of women last night and I said, I think one of the things that most women maybe struggle to understand about the male experience is how lonely and isolating it actually is. And for a number of reasons. And that's not making women wrong. I'm not saying that they're responsible for that and, you know, none of those things. I think it's just one of the discrepancies that, that exists when a woman, you know, looks at her husband or her boyfriend or her brother or the men that she works with.

Is that a lot of. A lot of men lack a very robust social network and social circle of other men. And that that can be brutal when he's going through things within the relationship, within his career, within his business. And it seems to be getting worse. I recently talked about how AI is going to change the porn industry. And I think that, I think that the.

Oh, goody target.

Yeah, I think the target of that is going to be men, right? Is like, if you're somebody who, you know, is afraid to go out and approach women, if you're somebody who has done that and been rejected a ton, if you're somebody who is just tired of the dating industry and tired of, you know, how things are going, you're going to be able to, instead of going on to Only fans and, you know, paying for, you know, content, photos, videos, you're going to be able to go on to a site like Only Fans or go on to Only Fans and not only get that type of content, but you're going to be able to get an interaction with a virtual girlfriend. And I think this is going to be. It's going to be a very interesting thing to watch because I think the men who don't engage with it are going to have a much greater social advantage when it comes to dating and women because there, there's seems to be this division that's happening amongst men where there's men who are still engaging in society social interactions, dating, these sort of like hard, complex things that aren't always rational and linear and safe. Right? There's a lot of risk involved in dating. And then on the other side there's this other pathway where it's like video games, porn, onlyfans, you know, those, those types of things. And so Robert what do you see happening within the dating space? What, what do you see transpiring? Because I, I just see a lot of content of people that are fed up with it, that are tired, that are. I'm checking out, I'm not dating.

Tony's the one writing all that content.

Actually, I am in the dating world. I think you two are married.

So, yeah, I, you know, and I, I got divorced in my late 40s after 25 years of marriage and entered the dating world and, and I think learned to navigate it pretty well. Well enough that people, my guys said, robert, tell us what you're doing. And I've written two books about it on dating. And I approach all things in life. Relationship dating, I'd say, I guess I'm kind of a relationship oriented person because my doctorate's in marriage and family therapy. Kind of the work I do is around relationships. And I agree with both of you that men are lonely, men are isolated. And I've been telling men in relationship counseling for years that a couple would walk in my office and I would tell both the man and the woman. You know, mainly, of course, I saw heterosexuals. I said, the best thing you guys can do for your relationship is each of you have good same sex friends. And I've been telling men the foundation of a healthy relationship with a woman is good guy friends. And I've been telling guys for years we go seeking love in all the wrong places. The feminine is the seeker of love. It's the consumer of love. And when we go looking to women to love us, we're actually looking for somebody who's wanting to be loved. And now we're wanting them to come play that masculine role of basically loving us. And I've been saying that I think the masculine is the source of love because masculine has intention and action. According to Scott Peck, that's the definition of love is the will and act and ability to act in one's own or another's best interest. So I know personally, six, seven years ago, I'd gotten into a new marriage. I was living in Mexico. I was lonely, I was isolated. I could count one and a half men as good friends. And I went looking and I found a coach. You know him well, Connor. And I've been in his program for five years. I now know I could contact 25, 30, 40 guys. If I reached out to any one of these guys, I've gotten over the last five years and said, I need you help. They'd get on an airplane and fly down here. You know, they'd do it in a heartbeat. And my life in every way has changed since I built that foundation of good men. My marriages have improved dramatically. My finances, my work, my health, everything in life. And that's one of the reasons I started a membership program for men. I knew men were lonely. On the landing page, part of the pitch is all those things that men seem to be doing now that don't make them happy. Surfing the Internet, watching tv, eating. Just everything we do, you know, and there's a big line that says, I would venture a guess that wherever you're struggling in life, wherever you're stuck, wherever you're unhappy, can be attributed to one issue, a lack of good men in your life. And so that's where I start with men, is helping them learn how to connect with men. Like when I was dating and I'd go to. I took salsa lessons, I'd go to salsa classes. Well, of course you're going to meet 25, 30 women in a salsa class. You keep rotating around a circle and. And you keep meeting different women. I always used to say, salsa is great. Where else can you go? You can introduce yourself to a woman, touch her immediately, and she likes it. So, you know, that's not a bad gift. But I would go early and stay late at classes and talk to the men, you know, while you're sitting putting on your shoes, I'd talk to the guys. Afterwards, I'd talk to the guys because you automatically meet the women. But I wanted to meet the guys. And through meeting a lot of men during my while I was dating, it opened the door and window for meeting, actually connecting with a lot of women. And the main piece of that was I wasn't insecure or lonely or chasing women so that they could validate me or make me feel okay. I'm not a loser because I'm sitting home alone by myself. So I like this part of the conversation. Whether we're talking about guys that are single guys in relationship, if we have a strong connection with men, I'm convinced everything else works better. Everything else just works better. It levels us up and it gives us that, you know, just that support system of being able to handle things that come, you know. I've talked to Tony. Tony's written a blog article about this about having a relationship posse. A dating posse is having a group of people who know you as you go out in the dating world. And I tell guys in relationship, you need this too. You know, don't go complaining to your wife or your girlfriend, or don't just Keep it all in and become an echo chamber of resentment and frustration. Go have good guy friends you talk this stuff out with and usually just you'll hear them say, well, you know, Xs kind of normal or maybe you just need to say something or maybe you just need to say no. Or you know, maybe, you know, maybe it's usually pretty simple. But we need the guys in our life to help us do whether it's the dating or do the relationship well. And as Tony says, he's in the dating world. So I'll hand. You know, when you were talking Conor about they're going to program the guys to have a conversation, you know, with women that are just, you know, a chat bot. Are they going to program them to ghost him too? You know, to like not call back, not respond to his text?

Right, right. Yeah, that might be part of it. I mean I just wanted to clarify one thing and then I'll hand it over to Tony to kind of get your, your take. But you said something along the lines of the masculine is the source of love. And I would love for you to expand on that because I could hear maybe my listeners being like wait a.

Minute, wait, wait, I know, I get it, believe me. I, I, I, I, I, I, I was, I, I'd be happy to dive into that further because it is something, you know, doing a lot of work around David Data's material and my coaches is, is kind of the heir apparent to David Data and you know, and talks a lot about masculine feminine energies. Not just male, female, but just energy states. We all have masculine feminine sides, yin and yang. Men do, women, we all do. And, and you know, we have a cultural meme and we have forever I guess that women are loved, mothers are love, everything feminine is love.

But if you follow kind of the David Data model, the yin yang model, the feminine is actually the seeker of love. It's the consumer of love. If it was the source of love, why would it go seeking love? Why would it want to open to love and you know, the ma and going back, Scott Peck's definition of love. Scott Peck wrote the book the Road Less Traveled, I guess the all time best selling self help self improvement book. And his definition, you can google that. Scott Peck's definition of love. It's intention and action that you know, either in your benefit or somebody else's benefit. It's not just a feeling, oh, I love you. I've been in relationships with people who said they loved me but did not act loving towards me. I did not feel loved, love Is an action. When my wife touches me, I feel loved. She takes action when I'm sitting here on a call and she kind of sneaks in my office door with a glass of green juice that she just made or a glass of coconut water and sets it down on the corner of my desk trying not to. I feel loved, right? I look at that green juice and every time I take a sip, I go, this is love. Because there was intention and action associated with it. And in that space, my wife, a female, was in a masculine, energetic state of thinking of me taking action to, to. To do something for my best interest. That, that's, that's a masculine energetic behavior. Me receiving it. I'm in my feminine. I'm. I'm receiving the flow of love coming from the masculine aspect of my wife. And I believe in healthy relationships. That's a very reciprocal place. Very reciprocal. Now what I teach men is I said, I found just personal, you know, just practical work. If the man leads and sets that tone of taking the loving action towards woman, the woman, her feminine receives that part of it. And I think if she's a good person, a good human, it becomes a reciprocal process. Then she also, from her masculine gives and from our feminine, we receive. And again, I'm not talking man, woman, I'm talking masculine, feminine energetic states. So if we, again, if, if we men, who, you know, primarily see ourselves in a masculine, energetic role, go seeking love, I think we're going to feel frustrated. One of my coaches, a guy named Christopher Wallace, who recently published a book that I love. It's one of my, you know, two of the best self help books I've read in the last year are Men's Work and the book by Christopher Wallace. There we go. Oh, Tony. I've read Tony's book a bunch, but his book's called Sipping Fear, Pissing Confidence, and it talks about an addictive. It's great. The COVID of it's great. But he makes a comment in there, and I was listening to it while driving a few weeks ago, and he says, a man doesn't mature until he quits seeking the love of a woman. I thought, you know, that's profound because if you think about it, that just makes us little boys. Mommy love me. Mommy love me. Mommy approved of me. Mommy like me. Mommy think I'm good. And women in general don't want that role with a man. So it's when we start connecting with our purpose and our passion and our tribe and other men that we have a fullness that we don't have to seek love really outside of ourselves, and we don't go seeking it from women. And now the woman can just be part of that reciprocal flow of energy, not her trying to fill some needy guy's empty space inside. All right, so here's a really short version of what I mean when I say the masculine, not men. The masculine part of people is the lover, the giver of love, the intention and the action. The feminine part of us is the biggest bucket. I say it's a big empty bucket with a hole in the bottom. We're the receiver of love. It flows out as quickly as it flows in. That's why love actually makes us feel insecure. You know, when somebody's loving you, it actually creates a state of insecurity because they can take that away. It can stop at any time. So anyway, we could dive really deep into all of this.

Yeah. And I think we probably will go a little deeper into some of that because I think it's very. It's very relevant and important. And, you know, the notion of receiving, I've seen a lot of guys struggle with that, right. They. They want certain things. Yeah. Like, yep, me. That's me too. Right. It's like, oh, I want that connection. I want that love. I want that, you know, whatever it is. And then when it arrives, it's like, oh, shit, I don't know how to receive this. I don't know how to be in this state of allowing that love, that connection, that personal praise, that intimacy to actually show up for me. And, yeah, I mean, I remember working with an individual years ago, and he had been in a relationship for a number of years.

I think it was like two, two and a half years. And he said, you know, I really love intimacy, sexual intimacy with my partner. But for some reason, even though I want, you know, a blowjob, and even though she wants to give me BJ's, I can't receive them. He said, I, you know, I lose my erection. I can't actually relax into it. I start to tense up. I get into my head. And it was this very interesting dynamic where he would move into this space of contracting and all of his worthiness and insecurities would all come up. And it was the thing that he really wanted. But at the same time, it. That was the inflection point where a lot of his stuff would show up. And I think that's very common with men. So I appreciate what you're talking about because I think this is something that, you know, doesn't get discussed enough, you know, and I think it's part of that isolation in some ways because I think that oftentimes men have heard messages of self sufficiency being the pinnacle of masculinity or maleness. And so the more self sufficient you are, the less that you need in your relationships. The more quote unquote masculine you are, the more male you are. And I think that that is complete bullshit. And I think that it's one of the most harmful things that all of us need to undo as men.

And.

I think that's part of the barrier that a lot of men are facing. And so I'm going to hand it over to you, Tony. What do you see happening? You're in the dating world. It sounds like you're, you're, you know, it's an interesting time and territory to traverse, but what do you see happening? What are men struggling with within, within dating and within relationships if they, if they're in a relationship.

What I work, I actually, I hate to call myself even some sort of dating guru or dating coach.

I help guys with. What I try to help guys with is overcoming their self limiting beliefs, looking at the world more abundantly.

Mastering the art of moving on, letting go of attachment to outcome. And, and I, and I say that.

And I say that I hate to call myself any sort of dating expert because it's a fucking shit show out there, man. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It is frustrating.

And that's just the reality of modern dating. And times have changed. And again, I attribute a lot of that to the Internet and dating apps.

So what I, what I see, you know, a lot of men struggle with. And again, I include myself in this when it comes to modern dating.

Is one just, there's just, just terrible fucking behavior on both sides from, from men and women. I mean, we've actually had to invent new words to describe this new type of abhorrent behavior. I mean, you've got ghosting, roaching, cloaking, catfishing.

What else?

I mean, and it's, and these things are universally common. These things are universally common. And these experiences accumulate. And it gets to a point where, you know, I think whether you're a man or a woman, how many times can you be ghosted or cloaked or catfished or you know, you know, how.

Much rude, know what some of those terms are?

Yeah. How much rude, flaky, terrible behavior can a man or a woman tolerate before they just want to say fuck it? I've had enough with this dating shit. You know, that's a reality. And those are, those experiences are really common and you know, again, they can accumulate to the point where it just causes a lot of negativity and resentment and frustration. And you don't want to be walking around the world or navigating the dating landscape with negativity and built up resentment.

So again, that's a lot of what I work with guys on is, look, if you're going to dive into the modern dating world, you're going to have to, you're going to have to accept that some of this stuff is going to happen to you. It's just a reality. I don't care who you are, I don't care how good looking you are, I don't care how rich you are. I don't care what your status is. You're going to experience this shit and you're going to have to learn to deal with it, it and learn to accept it and, you know, see the silver lining in it as much as you can. Because, you know, if you do experience that kind of behavior, you know, you have to be able to tell yourself, well, that's not the kind of person I would want as a partner anyway.

Yeah.

So again, I, you know, I hate to sound negative, but it is a reality of modern dating. There is just some really terrible behavior going on. And I don't think that's a gender thing. I think that's a human thing. The good news is.

You know, this is an almost universal struggle amongst men, which is I don't know how to approach women. Women think I'm creepy if I'm approached, if, if I approach them, what do I say? What do I do?

And so here's what I think and here's what I see, which is good news. Women want to be approached still in the real world. You don't have to be on an app to get dates. You don't have to be on the social media or the Internet to get dates and have a really active, fulfilling, romantic life.

Women do want to be approached in the real world. And I would argue that a man who approaches a woman in the real world in Walgreens or in Whole Foods or on the street or in a bar and does so, you know.

Confidently but cordially and politely and charmingly, women find that man intoxicating. And if you're a man who approaches a woman in the real world, you're immediately setting yourself apart from all the other men who only talk to women on, on the Internet or on dating apps.

So I would urge men, you know, if you're struggling with dating, if these negative experiences have started to accumulate.

Based on, you know, using dating apps, if you find that dating apps are frustrating and bad for your psyche, get off them, get out of the house.

Go talk to women in the real world because they are out there and they want to be approached.

Yeah.

So those are some of the things that I see.

Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting landscape because I think a lot of guys are hesitant or afraid to go and approach women. And what's interesting is that.

You can find yourself in a position. I've talked to a lot of guys about this, where it's like, it's just easier to try and pick somebody up online. And sometimes the harder path is the better path to walk, you know, because you learn the social skills, you. You learn what it's like to just interact with that person real time in real life. And maybe you don't have or feel like you have those skills, but that's the point, right? Like, that's the whole point. It's like, you know, it's like the people that are like, oh, I haven't been to the gym in a decade, and I'm afraid to go back to the gym because I haven't been there, and I don't know what to do. And it's like, well, yeah, that's. That's the whole point is that you're gonna. You're gonna face some discomfort. You're gonna face a good amount of, you know, insecurity, and you're not sure if you're doing the right thing or saying the right thing.

Yeah, but that.

That shouldn't be the deterrent.

Yeah, and it's funny. I think men are. I think your men are still, like, overwhelmed and confused and.

And.

And by. By all the, like, you know, pickup material bullshit that, you know. So I think men are still thinking.

I have to approach her at a certain angle and use a certain frame.

And is she twirling her hair or crossing her ankles or touch her in.

This specific area and do a push pull. And so they have all this shit spitting in their heads from pickup material that was popular, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. And it's like, dude, just say hi.

Just say hi and introduce yourself. Just strike up a conversation like you would any other human being. And also, I say the same kind of circling back to men being lonely. Do the same thing to men. Just say hi, Strike up a conversation, find some commonalities, get their phone Number and say you'd like to see them again. It's not as hard as we make it out to be in our hunt.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting because I think I had a client once asked me because he had read. Read my book. And you know, in the book I talk about my infidelities and, you know, my, my struggles with, with cheating for a long time. And he was somebody that had struggled with women and he was like, what? How were you so good with women?

Yeah, he's going, teach me, teach me.

Yeah, like one, making. Making the assumption that I was good with women. But, but, you know, he was like, you know, I've done all this pickup stuff and I learned all these things and I was like, let go of all of that. Like, all of that is just nonsense. All of that creates this mask and this Persona that then becomes a hurdle because you constantly have to live in this false mode of inauthenticity. And I said, if you can be authentic, if you can begin to connect deeply with who you are, what you love, what you like, what lights you up, those types of things are going to take you further than any of that other bullshit or nonsense. And I said, I never read a single pickup book. I've never dug into any of that stuff. I mean, it's only when I've started doing the work that I've done that I've gone and actually researched some of that stuff to understand how to help men undo that bullshit. And, and so, like, honestly, that's the only time that I studied it.

Yeah. The best thing I've ever done for myself, for my dating life, for my life in general and my emotional happiness and well being was I stopped, I just stopped giving a shit. I stopped putting women on pedestals and turning them into sexual celebrities and thinking that my validation and worth as a man comes from a woman's approval. You know, the, the best thing I ever did for myself was just let go of that. And it's interesting because, you know, we're talking about social media and the Internet and negative negativity and resentment and anger amongst men. And you know, a lot of that anger and resentment and negativity comes from, you know, we see women. You know, dating has now become globalized. So we see women, particularly really attractive women, you know, who are, have a big presence online. We see them acting entitled or, you know, or going after the top. You know, this hypergamy, you know, we see that kind of playing out online. But, but, and then we get angry and resentful towards the women. But the thing is, men created that monster. Right? We're the one turning these women into sexual celebrities and pedestalizing them. You know, we're the ones paying them for pictures of their feet on OnlyFans. We're the ones paying to fly them halfway around the world, you know, we're the ones buying them all this shit, you know, that's so. It's like men kind of created that monster in the first place.

Yeah, it's interesting. I saw a buddy of mine sent me just this like, interview clip, this 30 second interview clip where this guy was walking around, I think it was LA or something like that, and asking people questions of, like, what they did and how much they made. And he was specifically talking, I think, to women. I didn't see the broader context, but he stopped this one woman and he said, how much do you make every year, you know, in a year? And I think she said something like $450,000. And he was like, cool, what do you do? And she said, I sell photos of my feet. I was like, jesus. You know, and it's like, it's not women buying those photos. Right?

Right.

This isn't to like, yuck anybody's yum or, you know, put down a fetish or anything like that. It's it's just that to. What you're saying is that I, you know, we have to see our part in the contribution of some of the discrepancies that we're having. And I think one of the things I'm going to pivot because I want to get into the book, but I'm not going to pivot very far. So you guys collaborated and got into this book called the Big Stick. And it's sort of a collective teaching of a lot of your work. Maybe all. I don't know if it's all of your work, but a ton of your work, Dr. Glover. And. And it's interesting because as I went through the book.

There'S a ton of sections that I wanted to cover. Right. There's Nice Guy syndrome, which we've talked about on the podcast before. So I'm going to maybe skip over that one. And if people want to go deep into Nice Guy, they can listen to the other two conversations that we've had. Masculine femininity, attraction, conscious dating, sex and sexuality, relationships, heartbreak, success, happiness and well being. I was like, holy crap. There's some very deep wisdom that's in the book. But I wanted to come into conscious dating because I think One of the challenges that I've heard men talking about directly and indirectly is getting into the friend zone and experiencing shit tests within relationships. And when I say getting into the friend zone, what's interesting is that I see a lot of men getting into relationships, building a relationship, and as the relationship goes on, the relationship turns into more of a friendship than an actual dating oriented relationship. And the research and the data backs this up, right? It's like, I think it's 30% of couples will be in a sexless relationship after the second year. So that's a pretty high number, you know, and sexless used to be defined as 10 or 10 or fewer times per year. I think it's now four or less. There's some discrepancy around what the definition is. But that friend zone when we're in dating and when we're in relationship seems to be just around the corner. And so I'm curious, Dr. Glover, from your perspective, when we're dating and then when we're in a relationship, what can put us, what can put a man into that friend zone? What can push the relationship into, into that friend zone? What do we do? How do you start to deal with that? Because I think between dating and relationships, it might be a little bit different. But I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Yeah, dating and relationships, probably exactly the same thing. Probably not a difference. You know, I've been telling men, like I said when I wrote no more Mr. Nice Guy, I've always been kind of serial monogamous. I've always been in relationships. I didn't learn to date until realized in my late 40s and 50s.

And so I got, you know, acquainted with terms like test and friend zone. Again, all the terms we create to describe modern relationship dynamics. But one thing I've been telling men for quite some time is that women don't put us in the friend zone. We put ourselves there. We are the one that kill the, the emotional, sexual, physical tension, the polarity between us and another person. We either never create it or we try to put it out as quickly as we can when it starts happening. And a core principle I've been teaching men around a concept I call positive emotional tension, is that women have to experience emotional tension. The feminine part of themselves needs emotional tension to be attracted to a man, sexually aroused by him, and to stay connected with him over time. In general, we men hate emotional tension, especially in our relationships. We want to lock everything down, have it secure, know they're not going anywhere. No. They're never upset at Us know that, you know, and so we do everything that's part of the masculine. The masculine wants to solve the problem so it can rest in nothingness for eternity. You know, we want to get the woman to like us so we don't have to put up with anything anymore and chill out. And chill out. And you know, that, that doesn't exist in this life reality, right? That's somewhere else in some other cosmic reality. So because men go seeking women's approval, typically we want them to like us. We want them to think we're good people. We want them to think well enough of us to take their clothes off at some point. And what men often do is actually hide their sexual intention, you know. You know, in the work you do, you talk about getting down into our shadow, getting down into what's down there. And what's down there is all sexually driven, right? But we've been so domesticated, we got to hide that. And it begins with mommy, you know, as you know, from, you know, developmentally, every little boy wants to possess his mommy, wants mommy's approval, wants to grow up and marry Mommy, wants mommy to approve of his pee pee. And you know, at some point we start hiding that. And I think Freud was right, you know, we have this fear we're going to get castrated by daddy, you know, if we're too sexual with mommy. So we put the good women of the world, the mommies, into one category. You don't be sexual with them. The women you want to approve of, you hide your sexuality. And then we create another category of women. There's been a name for this forever. It's called Madonna whore. Right? The Madonna is the good woman. The, the Virgin Mother Mary, that's the good woman. And, and, and the, is any woman we direct our sexual energy towards. And you know, I don't want to use, you know, words have so much energy to them, but it's just an archetype, as you know, and for many men nowadays, that's the women in porn. It's the women, you know, that we follow on the Internet. It's the women we have fantasies about. It's the massage parlors, the escorts, is the prostitutes. We, we can direct our energy that direction. And so it tends to all go there. But the woman whom we want to approve of the Madonna, the good woman, the woman who we, yeah, we want that woman to be our girlfriend. We want that we hide every bit of our sexual interest or energy or perversion or whatever from that person. Cause we don't want them to disapprove of us, just like we didn't want mommy to disapprove of us. And so now we're going out there in the world, we go, you know, how come I can't get the women I like to like me back? Well, part of it is, is we're hiding so much of ourselves. Not just our sexual energy, but our needs, our wants, you know, our neuroses, our. We hide everything because we don't want to be found out. Because we don't want to be rejected by the very people we want to approve of us. I love what Tony said, you know, and he put it just pretty bluntly. It isn't till you quit giving a fuck if people like you that they actually have a chance to start liking you. Right? You know, I'll tell guys, you know, the most powerful thing you can do to be attractive to a woman is be yourself. And you go, I've been told that all my life. But me being myself doesn't seem to attract women to me. And I go, when is the last time you let anybody, anybody, especially an attractive woman, see the real you? You know, what you do behind closed doors? You know, how you think, what goes on? How many people do you really. Let's see that. But it is that shadow of ourselves, the dark parts of ourselves, our flaws, our imperfections, our insecurities. That's what actually makes us interesting people. That's what actually gives people something to connect with. So this friend zone thing is we put ourselves there by hiding so much of ourselves from the woman, by trying to, you know, I call it putting the wet stuff on the red stuff. It's a firefighter thing. Ah, there's a fire. Spray water on it. She's upset. Let's get it back to good. Or, you know, she hasn't texted me back right away. I gotta, I gotta figure out what, you know, I don't like this anxiety. We're always trying to kill any tension between us. And it's a woman we're attracted to, a woman we're dating, a woman we're in relationship with. And so we kill it. Now, you mentioned before we started recording Esther Perel, and you know, when I read Mating in Captivity, I thought, fuck, I wish I'd written that book. That is such an amazing book book. And, and I, I, I may misrepresent it a little bit because I'm, I'm going to really break that. She basically says, the more intimacy you have, speaking in terms of just knowing and being known by another person, in some ways, the less sexual passion you'll have. And she says that the sexual passion kind of has to do with a little bit of insecurities of. Of, you know, the. The energy, the edge, and. And, you know, and she says, you know, as we're being taught, oh, go be best friends, you know, with your partner. This. Go be best friends and tell them everything and let them know everything about you and let them see everything about you and be available to them. 247 actually turns off that I want to fuck him, I want to fuck her. And I think she's right on with that. So I go back to guys, whether they're dating, whether in a relationship, have good guy friends where you're not depending on a woman to be your everything. You're both buddy, your best friend, you know, your buddy with breasts, your emotional tampon, your therapist. Don't expect your woman to be all that. Have your therapist, have your coach, have your men's group, have your guys. Don't be so frigging available. That is one of the things I see with so many men, whether it's dating or in relationship is there. They're there. They're at the beck and call of the woman all the time. Whether it's, you know, I'm messaging them all the time, always around. And, you know, yeah, I love being with my wife, but I love being with her more when I haven't been with her for a while. And, you know, and I know as a woman, she wants more of that fused emotional state with me, but if I give her as much as she, you know, just instinctually wants, it kills the emotional tension. We're too available. It's kind of. Kind of like the Pink song. Go away and let me miss you when you come back I'll want to kiss you. That's actually a great song. You wanted to learn how to create emotional tension. That song by Pink is really great. So, you know, there's so many dynamics in this thing about why we end up in the friend zone. But I'll just say that again. Women don't put us there. We put ourselves there by trying to be their friends and get their approval and get us to like us and be there at their beck and call every time they might need us or want us or. For example, you know, so many men I work with, well, you know, I hold space for her while she's doing her work, and I go, stop it. You're not her therapist. I'm a therapist, but I don't hold space while she My wife does her deep work and I'm not a trauma therapist, so I'm surely not going to do her trauma work while she's projecting all of her daddy issues and abuse issues and abandonment issues onto me like I'm the asshole that caused them all. That is not at all project productive to, to, to sit there and, and do that. Now, I do want to know what's going on in my, in my wife's life. I want to know the depths of what she's experiencing. But there, there, there's a difference to being there all the time. In fact, I, I tell men there's a direct inverse relationship between how much time a man spends listening to a woman talk about her problems and the likelihood that she's going to him anytime soon. What happens is when we become a girl friend with a penis, we sit and listen like, you know, we're, we're, we're so deeply interested in, you know, all of her stories about all of her drama and internal emotional tension. And you know, we're sitting, listening, going, uh huh. We're thinking, how can I fix this? How can I get her to quit talking? How can I get her to quit being upset so we can have sex? All we're actually doing is killing any ability she has to be sexually attracted to us. So I'm throwing a whole bunch of different stuff out there, but. Because it isn't just one thing. But yeah, it's usually. Bottom line is I want her to approve of me and like me so I'll do everything I think she really wants so she'll approve of me and like me and hide the rest.

You know, I think just to comment on that last piece, just so that people, you know, there's clarity there. You're not saying don't ever listen, don't ever.

I know we're talking to men. We have to clarify everything. I'm a good. Well, Tony knows me pretty well, actually. I'm kind of a crappy listener. You know, I'm a professional listener, but I'm not really that good at it once I understand what the person is saying. Okay, I get it. Let's move on. No, I want to tell you more about it. I don't really need to hear more about it. So. No, I'm not talking about don't listen. And for example, you know, I, I was the guy in therapy early on, 30 years ago. I told a therapist, a woman therapist, my wife just talks all the time. And it's the same thing all the time. It's the Same story. And I said, I'm just bored. And she goes, well, you don't have to listen. I go, yes, you do. It's carved in stone. If a woman wants to talk, you have to listen till they're done talking. I know. My mother taught me that. I was her little helper. I was the listener. And this woman therapist said, no, you don't. If you're not interested. If you're not available, you can tell her I'm not interested. I'm not available. I go, that's going to go over well. And I go, you don't know my wife. This is my second wife. She goes, but it's more authentic if you're not interested. It's more authentic to not pretend to listen. Oh, my. So I. First time I tried it, this is really early in my, quote, nice guy recovery. I thought, okay, I'm gonna try it. I kind of weaseled out a little bit of it, but my wife started talking about the same old thing again. And I just said, hey, I gotta tell you, I'm tired. I don't have a lot of bandwidth. You know, I didn't come out and just say, this shit is boring to me. And I've already heard it 10,000 times.

I just said, I don't have enough bandwidth. And she goes, okay. I thought, okay, what's gonna happen now? And, you know, about 45 minutes later, she came back and said, thank you for telling me you weren't available to listen. I went and called a girlfriend, and it all worked out. And I'm sitting there thinking, why the fuck didn't somebody tell me this years ago? You know that? So I. Yes, I want to know what is in the depths of my woman's heart and soul and what's going on with her. But I'm not her therapist, and I'm not her girlfriend. I'm her man. So a woman taught me years ago. Say to the woman, I'm a guy, right? You want me to be your guy, right? You want me to be your man? Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, I'm a man. Give me the guy version. I want to know what's going on, but give me the guy version. And I've never had any woman in my life ask me for a definition. They know what that means, actually. They go, oh, Jessica was being a real bitch at work today, and it pissed me off. That's the guy version. I go, oh, good, I'm glad you told me that. But the girl version is all the details of what they projected onto that story. And how it reflects their own story and their view of women and on and on. And so, yeah, you want me to be your guy? Give me the guy version. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, it's. I think I. I appreciate what you're saying and green juice.

But, yeah, I mean, I appreciate what you're saying because I think I see a lot of men trying to find the balance. Right. They. I think one of the challenges that has emerged, you know, social media has provided a platform for psychological concepts, conversations, therapeutic conversations to enter into the fold.

Which I think is brilliant and has been very supportive. But I also think that it has caused new problems and complications within relationships because you have all of these unreal expectations that have entered in where some people want you to be as a partner, their everything, their cheerleader, their therapist, their psychologist, their counselor, their best friend, their, you know, deep lover, the whole thing. And so, you know, I think for a lot of guys, when we. When we play the game of I need to make you happy at all costs, we lose.

Yeah.

And when we play the game of how do I figure out what you need in any given moment, ignoring my own personal state and needs, we lose.

Yeah.

And so when we can come back to. And I mean, my wife is one of the best couples therapists in the world. She really is phenomenal. And I've seen what you're saying to be true time and time again where if I don't have space and I try and listen to her, I don't have capacity or bandwidth. And I. And I try and, like, be the present for her with a challenge, something with family or business, it never goes well because I inevitably shift into trying to fix it, trying to solve it, trying to tell her what to do, and I missed the mark.

She loves that. Right.

Oh, God. And so, you know, moving out of that and saying, listen, babe, like, I don't have bandwidth right now. I'd love to, you know, hear about this at some point, but I, you know, we just have to pause this conversation or, you know, I have to go and do X, Y and Z. She always is appreciative of that, you know, and she's always values my honesty and my integrity and my, you know, sticking to where I'm at because I. I'm not useful to her in those moments if I'm just trying to do what she. What I think she needs, ignoring my own internal state.

Yeah.

And so what you said, it's a hard balance, man. It's. It's hard. I struggle with that still sometimes. Yeah. I Just, I struggle with that sometimes, you know, wanting to provide for her, provide safety, provide security. And I think what I've. What I've learned over the years is providing that safety and that security is. Is honoring as much as I can where I'm truthfully at what I am truthfully experiencing and needing, you know, what's really authentic and true for me. And the more that I can do that, the more it seems to provide the structure, the safety and the security that she needs in order to be in relationship with me. And I think that the thing that my younger self didn't know, that my older self has started to figure out, is that I thought in my younger years that if I was just 100% available and 100% there all the time, and I sacrificed my own stuff, my own wants, my own needs, desires, etc. That that would make me a successful boyfriend or partner. Partner. And it didn't, you know, it didn't at all, which was very contrary to what I thought would help me, quote, unquote, win with women. Right. So we. We need to pause today's conversation. I would love to have you back, Dr. Glover, to talk about two things. One, the Madonna whore complex and what to do.

Oh, that'd be fun.

Two.

Positive emotional tension. And so maybe we can do like a, you know, a quick 25 minute or 30 minute thing and dive deep into those two things, because I can hear my audience being like, well, hold on, you're ending the conversation, but I need to know about those things.

That won't be a quick 20, 30 minute conversation, I promise you. And those, both of those subjects are in the Big Stick.

Yes.

So they are in the book.

So where can people go? Tony, you. You put a bunch of this together. I think you had the primary task of pulling all of Dr. Glover's work together. Where can people go and find the book and what can they expect?

Yeah, it's called the Big Stick.

It is the Encyclopedia of Dr. Glover. It encapsulates.

About 40 years of his teachings and wisdom. And yeah, I mean, it's. It's all of his work. I mean, Dr. Glover gave me basically a Dropbox folder with everything he's ever done. Thousands of hours of content I had to sit through. It's. I. It is written.

I had to sit.

Yeah, it is. It is written in my voice, though. So, you know, there's biological elements about Dr. Glover, but I weave in my own anecdotes and experiences.

And it's like I said, I think.

Tony meant to say biographical Parts, not biological parts about.

Did I say biological or biographical? Yes, yeah, it's biographical, it's autobiographical. But mostly it's a collection of all of Dr. Glover's wisdom. To answer your question though, it's called the Big Stick. It's available on Amazon.

I do want to say though, there is a website I built specifically for the book, big stick book.com and if you go there, you can buy the book, but you can also get a whole bunch of supplemental downloads. There's a whole like supplemental workbook you can get.

There's discount codes to join, you know, courses and programs. My courses, Dr. Glover's book. So there's just a lot of stuff on bigstickbook.com that's supplemental to the book. So. Awesome. That might be a good place to just go start and, but, but yeah.

Yeah, we'll have, we'll have the links.

Tonyndelman.com all my stuff's on my personal website.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll have the links to all of that in the show. Notes that people can go and check it all out and check out the book. It's really robust. There are a lot of principles in there. There's a lot of golden nuggets. It is condensed, but it is really.

Yeah, it's a hefty book. And it was all said and done. A three year process took me about two years to write and then another year of Dr. Glover and I collaborating and massaging it and adding in, you know, biographical and biological information.

And biological information.

Yeah, I'm really proud of it. And, and so far the feedback's been amazing. So.

And I appreciate, so far it's got endorsed solid five stars on Amazon. So.

Yeah, awesome. We'll check it out and I'll make sure to share it and we'll have it in the show notes. And I look forward to having you, you guys back for future conversations. This is wonderful. Thank you for all your work. Thank you for, thanks Tony, for putting Dr. Glover's Encyclopedia of wisdom together. Because you know, having spoken to him over the years and having worked with so many men, I know the impact that his work has had and so it's really cool to have a like one stop shop for, for all of his, his wisdom in the last 30, 40 years.

Well, I, I am one of those men, you know, he, he, There you go. My life or, or gave me the tools to change my own life or whatever you want to say. But I, I have, you know, eternally grateful to Dr. Glover. So I was ecstatic that, you know, he he asked me to write, write this book. And like I said, I'm really proud of it. And I think every man should would benefit from Nightstand.

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me. For everybody that's out there, do not forget, man it forward. If there's somebody that you know that would enjoy this conversation that should listen to it, man it forward, share it with them. That is how this show has grown, grown over the last seven years. It is because of you. It's because of the word of mouth. It's because of your sharing. So thank you so much for tuning in. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.