No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Conversation With Dr. Robert Glover - Genius Network Episode #75

Familiar with Nice Guy Syndrome? Can anything be done about it? Curious what it takes to become an integrated man. Joe Polish and Dr. Robert Glover chat about these topics and more in this episode of Genius Network. Dr. Glover is an internationally recognized authority on the Nice Guy Syndrome. He is a frequent guest on radio talk shows and author of no more Mr. Nice Guy, a proven plan for getting what you want in love, sex and life. If you would like access to the show notes, the links, and the special resources for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 75 that's geniusnetwork.com 75 hello, this is.

Joe Polish and I am really excited for this conversation that I'm about to have with a guy who wrote an amazing book called no more Mr. Nice Guy. His name is Dr. Robert Glover. I'm going to tell you some info about him, then we're going to go on to some questions. Robert Glover holds a PhD in marriage and family therapy and he's the author of the best selling book no more Mr. Nice Guy. He's a frequent guest on television radio talk shows and online podcasts. He's been featured in numerous international publications. Dr. Glover lives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He currently writes and leads workshops and seminars all over the world. His website, DrDr Glover G-L-O-V-E-R.com features numerous online courses focusing on personal growth, relationships, sexuality and career. And with that being said, I am in a resort in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Robert, you are in Mexico right now.

I'm at home in Puerto Vallarta. Good to talk to you, Joe.

Yeah, you too. First off, I really appreciate you scheduling some time for us to do this interview and just have a great conversation. I will say to all of my listeners that the book no more Mr. Knox, I guess if you hear that it could maybe evoke like what does this mean? Be a jerk or whatever. But I can assure you I've been recommending this book to all my female friends. It is fantastic and I really resonated so much with so many of the topics and the insight. The book. You first wrote this book, Robert, in 2000, correct?

The hardcover came out in 2003. It had been out as an ebook for a couple of years. So yeah, right around turn of the century. Yeah.

And I mean it's got super high reviews on Amazon, on Audible, and it seems to be constantly getting a lot of airplay. So I guess I'll start with asking you how did you get started as a marriage and family therapist and why did you write this book no more Mr. Nice Guy.

Well, that might be two different questions. Best answer I've got is why I became a marriage and family therapist is probably to save my family, fix mom and dad. I didn't know it at the time, but I originally went to college to study for the ministry and actually was a minister for about eight years in a very conservative denomination. And my very first class in college was psychology. And I just fell in love with it. Just absolutely loved it. So I pretty much oriented my program to move it towards marriage and family therapy. So I have two degrees in religion that focus around counseling and marriage and family therapy and. And went on and got my PhD in marriage and family therapy in terms of writing the book. And by the way, if that gives you a clue of why I became that to save my family. I am a recovering codependent. I'm a recovering nice guy. My deepest conditioning and wiring is to help other people. And sometimes that's actually very helpful, and sometimes it's pretty dysfunctional. And the challenge is learning the difference between the two. How to give of yourself and give to others without it coming out of an empty place or a codependent or needy place inside of yourself. And I imagine we talk about that a little bit.

Don't mean to interrupt. I was going to say one of the things that. Because I really pride myself on wanting to be a genuinely nice person, and I think I'm viewed that way very much by my friends. And there's the interesting thing, though, about how much of it is coming from just wanting to be validated.

Yeah. And I get that. And in fact, just to kind of give people a little bit of a preview of what we'll get to as we talk more about nice guy syndrome is that I tell guys that after they read my book or find my online materials, and they say, okay, I realize that being a nice guy, having this paradigm, this roadmap, these covert contracts of giving to get, to get validation, to get my needs met, to get love, I get that that doesn't work, and it's not functional. But they say, but I don't want to go to the other extreme and just become an asshole or become a jerk. And in the book I talk about that actually finding a tipping point between those two extremes, that doesn't work either. And in the book, I talk about what it takes to become more of an integrated male, and it applies to women as well. But the book is primarily direct to men. But one of the things I tell guys is most recovery programs, however you want to put that, whether you found religion, whether you started going to 12 steps, whether you got a guru or had a near death experience, whenever you start changing your internal emotional paradigm, the roadmap you've been following since early childhood, it takes a while to really get up to speed, to integrate a new roadmap. And for example, I'll tell nice guys, as you've started working on yourself and you're trying not to use what I call covert contracts of giving to get, to get other people's approval or validation, and you're working on yourself, and one afternoon you're walking up to a public building and it's got those big double glass doors, and you reach to open the door to walk in and you notice, let's say, a younger attractive woman walking up behind you, and you open the door and hold it open for her to walk through the doors, and then you kind of hit yourself upside the head and say, oh, was that a covert contract? Did I hold the door because I wanted her to smile at me or to think I'm a great guy? Or was that just me being a decent human being? And you can struggle a lot with those questions. And again, it doesn't matter if you become a Christian, if you've gone to 12 steps, if you're breaking free from codependency, if you. It takes a long time to integrate that new roadmap of where you're acting out of integrity, out of authenticity, out of a place of abundance and overflow, not from a place of emptiness and vacuum and just old habitual patterns that you've been operating from to manage your shame or anxiety since childhood. So you're right, it can be really, and I tell people, give yourself a couple of years to integrate a new way of thinking and acting and feeling and interpreting the world and be gentle on yourself. Basically.

You know, that's great advice. And the whole thing about being, you said so many things I can speak to, especially when you first started San Diego. I got the marriage and family therapist to fix mom and Dad. I think a lot of therapists obviously go into the field because they're trying to figure out how to fix their own past lives and their current lives and all that. The thing with authenticity and the thing with being gentle on yourself. Most nice guys, I would imagine, and you tell me if this is wrong thinking, probably beat the shit out of themselves internally. I mean, the self talk, the beating themselves up, the never measuring up, the internal repressed emotions and anger, I imagine that exists tremendously in most of the people that you would call nice guys. Would that be accurate?

Let me answer both questions of how I wrote the book and answer that question because they actually fit together really well. And surprisingly that's not necessarily true that most nice guys beat themselves up. And I'll tell you why. Let me give you a little background on the book. I was in my second marriage, I was working as a marriage and family therapist and my then wife was also on her second marriage and had three kids and I was step parenting, doing my best to make her happy and please her and I was trying to make the marriage work but she was unhappy a lot of the time. She was moody, she didn't want to have sex very often. She was actually often angry and critical towards me. And I just kept trying harder to be this good guy and be a good man and be better than her ex husband and treat her well. But she kept saying to me, she kept saying, I can't take your passive aggressive behavior and I can't take your victim pukes. And she said, I'd rather be with a jerk because at least a jerk treats you bad all the time. You treat me well and then when I least expect it, you all of a sudden stab me in the back, you put me down, you criticize me, you embarrass me in front of others or you give me a backhanded compliment. And I didn't really know what she was talking about. I thought, well, you're the one that's angry all the time and you're the one that's never happy and I'm the one that's putting up with all the bullshit in the marriage. And she finally said, listen, you go get some help because I can't take it anymore and I'm going to leave if this doesn't change. And I'm thinking you're going to leave. So I actually joined a 12 step group and then started going to therapy, basically trying to figure out why being a nice guy didn't make her a better person, why it didn't make her appreciate me or love me or want to have sex with me and why she was still unhappy and critical and it was never good enough. And I realized quickly she was right, I was resentful, I wasn't particularly honest and I would say what I thought she wanted to hear. And I did come to understand passive aggressiveness as indirect anger and resentment. And luckily right off in 12 step group and with a therapist, I started getting better information and started focusing on me, started learning about boundaries, making my needs a priority. Asking for what I want, being honest, connecting with men, having good support systems. But what I noticed as a therapist is a lot of men coming to see me, often in the context of their own relationships, were saying the same stuff I was. I could finish their sentences for them. They were saying the same thing. She's never happy, she never wants to have sex anymore. She's angry all the time. Whatever I do is never good enough. I try to be a nice guy, I try to please her. When's it going to be my turn? And I mean, it was just, I thought, I can finish these guys sentences. So I started a no more Mr. Nice Guy group with about six or seven guys we met every other week. And I said, I'll write you guys some lessons, some chapters, just about what I'm learning about me, how I became a nice guy, what my world paradigm is, why it doesn't work, what a more effective paradigm might be. And I did. I just started writing lessons and giving them to these guys every other week. And they, and often their wives and girlfriends kept saying, hey, you need to write a book. You need to go on Oprah. Never made it on Oprah, but I did keep writing. And as I said, the book came out around 2002 and has kept selling. It, keeps selling more copies every year. Which is a little bit ironical because a number of major publishing companies turned the book down. The editors said they liked it, but their marketing departments all said that men don't buy self help books and especially won't buy book that tells them that they're a loser. And I kept telling them, you don't understand the men I'm writing about. And actually, it feels kind of good. Fifteen years later, I look around and there's all kinds of men's coaches out there. Podcasts for men's, men's weekends, men's movements. And a lot of them recommend my book. And I thought, I never saw that coming because when I started doing my own work, maybe there was Iron John and kind of men going out in the woods and pounding drums and stuff like that. So I'm thrilled that there is so much available that wasn't 15 years ago. But to answer then your second question, I thought all nice guys were probably a lot like me. When I started looking at them, I found out that there's all kinds of different manifestations of nice guy syndrome, of this giving to get and seeking external validation. And at first I thought, well, they're all like me. I think I'm the greatest guy walking around. I'm a nice guy, you know? And what I'd done actually was compartmentalized any sense of negative feelings towards myself. And I could compartmentalize things I did that weren't so nice. I could lock them away in nice little tight compartments and walk around still thinking I'm this great guy, even if I was fundamentally dishonest or not always that nice of a guy. Now, what I did find out pretty early on is that not all nice guys were like me, even though the first several I seemed to encounter were. And I came to realize that actually a number of nice guys are striving to be nice guys with capital N, capital G, because they do feel so defective and so unlovable inside. And they do have a tendency to beat the hell out of themselves. And they'll dwell on every past mistake or missed opportunity or decision they've made that didn't seem to turn out well. And they'll obsess about the future, and they'll measure themselves and compare themselves and judge themselves. So there does tend to be two types of nice guys. The I'm so good nice guy that compartmentalizes all of his internal negativity, and what I call the I'm so bad nice guy who just perpetually dwells on their own inner negativity. Now, what I found is that all nice guys are primarily driven by two powerful dynamics. One is anxiety, and the other is toxic shame. And both are trying to manage just that heightened anxiety they have of living in the world and their inner sense, whether they're aware of it or not, of unlovableness and defectiveness and not good enoughness.

Interesting. You know, that's great. I appreciate that explanation. And the reason I even asked about beating themselves up is because the thing you said of being gentle on yourself, how does one take on the approach of being gentle with yourself if you feel defective, if you are littered with anxiety, if you feel shameful and feel that I am fundamentally maybe not even a decent human being, and I'm totally unlovable. How does someone with that paradigm, with that script start being gentle on themselves?

Well, I'm going to suggest, and I say this in the book, don't try to do this alone. And you know, I know that's true for recovery from addiction. And you're a professional coach in many different fields in many different ways. And you know the truth. Most of us, if we really want to live up to our greatest potential and be who we are without all the baggage that we've been packing around, we can't do it alone. We need help. And I tell guys that don't try to do it alone. Go find resources, go find a men's group, go get therapy, go to 12 step. Go do something to where you're not trying to do it alone. And I know even if I just. If my book existed when I started becoming aware of my nice guy patterns, I tell people if I'd seen it in a bookstore, I might have even just passed over it thinking, oh, I don't dare even pick that book up. If I had read it and if I did have the nerves to buy it, I probably would have bought it and hidden it from my wife. And even if I read it, just trying to apply what I talk about in the book all by yourself, I don't think is sufficient. I really think we need help. We didn't become nice guys, we didn't become addicted. We didn't pack on all this protection around our heart and our sense of self. We didn't learn to guard ourselves from being vulnerable. We didn't learn to do that in isolation. We learn to do that in the context of other people, usually at a very early age with family, church, culture, society, neighbors, whatever, and to go get help with that. Whether it's in a 12 step group, whether it's in therapy, whether it's a men's group, whether it's coaching to say, okay, give me a more accurate perception of who I really am. It may sound a little contradictory that as we're learning to accept who we are, you know, without trying to get approval or validation, it may sound a little contradictory that it's probably best that we actually go get some external feedback to help us get a better picture. But the people we're getting feedback from are more objective. They're professional, they have no agenda. They're not trying to manipulate us, use us, or keep us in a certain place. They're really giving us feedback. And I can still remember at various times when, when I got feedback from objective people that said I was a very caring person, or I was a very generous person, or I was a very insightful person, or even I was a very intelligent person, all of that information almost felt shocking to me. And it took a while to actually start integrating that because it was contrary. Even though I was trying to be a nice guy, it was contrary to what I really believed down at my core is that I wasn't good enough and I had to become something different to be loved and have other people's approval. And so I highly recommend go invest in getting Quality people to help you, become you, to embrace you, to love you, to really like the you that you are, that you were born. And that does take work and it does take help. And I've been working for 20 plus years at learning to accept me, be gentle with me, love me, support me, validate me. And I still go get outside help in that process. So my main answer to your question is don't try to do it alone. Go get good help.

I love it. I love it. And one of the things I tell so many people in recovery, even with the materials and the videos and books and everything that we put out, is that you're not going to. You know, when it comes to addiction, I've never seen someone get sober from reading a book, let alone maintaining it or changing the underlying things. Because my take on even addiction is addiction is actually a solution. It's not a great solution and it's a solution that actually can kill people and destroy their lives. However, if you're in pain and angst, you know, numbing out and doing all the things that comes from addictive chemicals or behaviors, it works in the moment, but then it has these things called consequences. And one of the things that I constantly say is that hope heals. And when you go and join a 12 step group, when you go find a community, when you're not doing it in isolation, you get out of your own situation and you're getting the perspective. Great point about getting feedback from objective people. And a line that has been running through my head a lot the last couple of months is don't fight silent battles. And I look at all those celebrities because of the work we're doing in Genius Recovery and Artists for Addicts and you see these famous people that kill themselves or that OD and they have millions of dollars in many cases millions of fans that love and adore them. And they are living these silent battles. And the shame or whatever it is, is so deep that they just cannot seem to think that reaching out as an option and they either kill themselves or they die. And I think of how many people are living these silent battles because they're trying to do it alone. And I love hearing you say that because I do totally agree. It's so damn important.

And it doesn't matter really what the subject matter is. The human mind is basically an echo chamber. If you're just sitting there thinking and pondering or ruminating, only so much information is going to be bouncing off the walls inside your head. And it's the information you've grabbed hold of because it makes the most sense to you. But as you say, it makes sense to an addict to shoot up, to drink, to go to Vegas and gamble. It makes sense to a codependent to sacrifice themselves, to try to make an unhappy person happy. Because that's all the information we have bouncing around in our head. And even if we read something that helps us, man, just trying to apply that on our own, it can be done. But it is so much easier to go get some assistance. I remember one of my favorite, I guess you could call it a self help book. I think it goes beyond self help, but it is the best selling self help book of all time. It's called the Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. And I remember he talks in there about discipline. And he says, one of the things that causes the most suffering for people is the shortcuts that we take. And he said, there is a legitimate shortcut in life. And he said, it's called therapy. And he said, we don't have to go reinvent the wheel. You and I were talking a little bit about marketing earlier on, and when I started moving my private practice of doing more things online and hired my son to come help me work with that, I told him, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can go find out what other marketers have already found out and just go to school on what they're doing. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. So, yeah, whatever it is you're struggling with in life or you seem to be caught in a repetitive behavior, don't try to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to. There's already people that have already gone there, done it. Go learn from them and get their help. Yeah.

And don't struggle alone. I mean, it's pointless because you're totally right. Great. You mentioned a couple things, so I'm going to ask you about them. You talked about boundaries and so I wanted to ask you, how can a person develop healthy boundaries in life? I mean, how would you even define boundaries?

That's a great question. And again, that's probably something you can't just figure out on your own. It does take help. I remember the very first therapy session I ever went to was with a woman therapist. And I don't really even know how I happened to find her, but I think I was referred to her. This is after my then now ex wife said, you got to go get therapy. And the very first session I went to, she says, all right, come here. And it was in her office she put a string on the floor, and there's a big open space. And she said, this is a boundary. And she said, I want. That's your side. This is my side. And said, I want you to stand on your side, and I'm going to walk across your boundary, put my hands on your shoulders, and start pushing you backwards. And she said, when you start to feel uncomfortable, I want you to stop me. I said, okay. And I stood about two or three steps back from the line inside my space, which is a typical nice guy thing. We don't really even have any clue about boundaries. And even if we do kind of know what we're comfortable with and not comfortable with, we're not actually up at our line being clear about that and letting people know. So I was two or three steps back, she walked into my space, and she was older than me and not a very big woman, but put her hands on my shoulders and started pushing me backwards. And I stepped back two or three steps, and I said, okay, stop. And she kept pushing. And two or three more steps, I said, stop. And she kept pushing. And finally I was about to the wall of office, and I put my hands up on her shoulders and kind of, you know, planted both feet and just physically stopped. And she says, good. And then she instructed me about boundaries. And you got to understand, I was in my mid-30s, on my second marriage with a PhD in marriage and family therapy. And I had never heard of boundaries before, and now I think they're one of the most important things for living a successful adult life. And I tell people, boundaries aren't about getting anybody else to be different. They're about getting us to be different. And they're actually what allow people to get close to us. It's what allows us to have intimacy. And the example I'll give is that when you're driving down the highway or on the freeway, every road sign you see the speed limits, stoplights, yield signs, stop signs, those are all boundary markers. And those all allow a lot of cars to coexist in very close proximity, a high rate of speed, and hopefully not run into each other very often. Those are boundaries. And that's what boundaries do for us in life, in business, in personal relationship. They let us coexist with other people and be who we are and other people be who they are without us destroying each other. So boundaries are actually a way of inviting people to get close to us, but we are the decider of who gets to get close to us, how close they get to come, how far in what they get to do, how long they get to stay and when it's time for them to leave. We're the decider of that now. The reason why I think boundaries are so significant and I do a whole workshop on it, just very briefly. When we were little kids, we had no concept of boundaries. We were little, big people could do whatever they want to us. I often ask in my workshops. I'll ask people, I'll tell them it's a trick question. I'll say, why do children get spanked in Western culture? And I'll tell them up front, I'm going to go around the room, every answer you're going to give me is wrong. And they say, oh, because the parent's frustrated. Wrong. Because they're trying to discipline the child. Wrong. Because the child's out of control. Wrong. I'll say, no. The only reason children get spanked in Western culture is they're not big enough to stop it. Because we get frustrated with our neighbors, with our co workers, and we don't spank them. Why? Well, because they're big enough to stop it. But children aren't big enough to stop anything. And that means the big people can do whatever they want to us. And you know that personally. We all know it personally, all the way from spanking us to shaming us, to isolating us, to abusing us, to abandon us. That they can do whatever they want. Doesn't matter if it's mom, dad, older siblings, older neighborhood kids, teachers in school, priests, cops, it doesn't matter. The big people can do whatever they want. So we grow up to be big people and we have no clue that we are now big enough and have the right to say, no, stop, I want, I'm going to, I'm not going to. And that is something that, believe it or not, we as adults have to be taught. Unfortunately, it doesn't get taught to children in public schools. But that would help even when they're too small to actually enforce their boundaries. Because I tell people the ultimate power to set a boundary involves the willingness and ability to remove yourself. And of course, children can't remove themselves from most situations and a lot of adults can. They put up with bad situations, whether it's in work or relationship or doesn't matter. We put up with bad situations because we're not willing to remove ourselves or we don't know that we can. So boundaries are about growing up. They're about being full fledged adults. They're about you deciding and you setting the terms of what your life's going to look like. And they allow other people to come in and get close to us. And they also protect us from other people's either conscious or unconscious neglect or abuse or hurtful behavior.

That was a phenomenal explanation of boundaries, probably the best I've ever heard. And I really liked your description of children because not being big enough. It reminds me of my first dinner I ever had with my friend Dr. Gabor Mate, and he made this comment that he said, I'll tell you the story real quick. So we're in a restaurant, and he's basically explaining to me about diseases, what causes what he considers a lot of diseases like cancer and various other things, the emotional aspect to it. And he said, what causes a lot of diseases and addictions are repressed emotions. And I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, if I was to pour a glass of water on your head and start yelling at you right now, what would happen? And I'm like, what do you mean, what would happen? He goes, well, your heart rate would increase, your face would get flushed, your adrenaline would surge. He goes, I can change the physiology of your body by pouring water on your head and yelling at you right now, like, instantaneously, and just create that level of stress. He goes, and if I did pour water on your head and start yelling at you? And of course, you know, Gabor's in his 70s. He's like a small Hungarian doctor guy. We're in this busy restaurant, and he's saying this to me in this restaurant. And he goes, what would happen if I poured water on your head and started yelling at you? And I go, I mean, you know, what would I do? He's like, yeah. I said, well, I guess I could walk out of here. He goes, yeah, you could run away. He's like, what else could you do? I go, I could tell you to fuck off. He's like, yeah, you could fight back. He's like, what else could you do? And I said, well, sit here while you pour water on my head and yell at me. And he goes, well, no, you could ask for help. At that point, it just dawned on me, like, oh, my God. I mean, it was like a thinking of my whole childhood. And you're familiar because I told you earlier about things that have happened to me as a kid. And he says, if you're in a situation as a child where you can't fight back or as an adult where you can't fight back, you can't run away, you can't ask for help, you repress and when you repress long enough, two things happen. He goes, you either develop some sort of sickness or disease or an addiction as a coping mechanism. He goes, that's how humans respond to suppression and to repression. And that just hit me like a ton of bricks. But the biggest thing that hit me is that how my brain didn't see in a crowded restaurant that I could literally say to someone, hey, this guy's pouring. He's messing with me. And it's like, oh, I would just have to sit through it. And that so much revealed about my operating system and about my subconscious. And that was incredibly insightful. So the way that you described it is. Yeah, being big enough to stop it. So how much of this behavior? I don't know your take on all of this, Robert, is so many people that I have met recently that go into the subconscious, the unconscious, whatever you want to call it, believe that the vast majority of a human's behavior is literally patterning and learned is being driven from the unconscious of what happened to them before the age of 7 years old. I mean, what's your take on what is the driver and when does it start?

Well, I'd say, yeah, it starts early. It starts in the womb. If you've got an anxious mother, it starts early. And one of the things that I teach people is that in pack animals, anxiety is contagious. Anxiety is an alarm system of danger. And animals that live in packs, whether they be a flock, a herd, a school, a tribe, anxiety is contagious. So if you have an anxious mother, the child is actually not only going to absorb the chemicals that are created inside the anxious mom, but also experience the anxiety. As a marriage therapist, I've had a number of therapy sessions with couples, and maybe, you know, occasionally the babysitter couldn't make it, so they bring a small child with them into the therapy session. And sometimes there's a little baby and a little, you know, carry thing, and the baby's sleeping while they're talking. Or maybe it's a three or four year old and the baby's. The kid's down on the floor coloring in a coloring book while mom and dad talk about their issues. And often the kids are just either sleeping or coloring while mom and dad talk until their anxiety goes up. And as a professional, I'm trained to watch for those signs of their anxiety going up, but the children respond to it without having to be trained. All of a sudden, the baby wakes up and starts crying, or the child crawls up in mom's lap and Starts showing her the picture and being clingy, the children just respond to that anxiety and you can see it in babies. So I think those survival mechanisms of trying to cope and as I mentioned, Nice Guy syndrome is built around trying to manage anxiety and manage toxic shame. And I think those coping mechanisms kick in at a very early age. In fact they kick in in ways that are so problematic into adulthood. My theory at least is I believe that, you know, there's that age old question of nature and nurture. You know, we're definitely not a blank slate when we're born. If you've parented more than one child, you know, children pop out with their own personalities and I don't have the answer, you know, it's a combination of nature and nurture. But at least like I described the Nice Guy syndrome, and I think this fits with what your doctor friend said, is that when a child experiences something uncomfortable, whether it's their parents anxiety, whether it's being yelled at, whether it's being neglected, whether it's being abandoned, whether it's not being fed, when they're hungry or not changed, when they're dirty, and like I said, we're talking just weeks, days, weeks, months old. When they experience that, they have to interpret that and deal with it with a very underdeveloped human brain. And when they're born, the only part of their brain, and I'm sure you know, people that can give you actually a better, a more accurate description of this than I, it's not my expertise, but the main part of their brain that's online and working is their amygdala, it's their brain stem. And it's that part that controls survival, whether it's breathing blood flow. But it also includes that fight, flight or freeze survival mechanism that is online when a child is born. It's very primitive in our evolution and it's very primitive in newborn children. Children don't develop, their brain doesn't develop enough to even put some words together until around two and they start differentiating at that time. They say in males that our reasoning part of our brain doesn't fully develop to about 25. That's why our car insurance goes down, probably why it's not a good idea to send 18 year olds to war with weapons. Their reasoning part of their brain isn't developed and that's where PTSD tends to kick in. So what happens basically for children to deal with their own PTSD is that using a very immature brain that can't actually think or reason using words they develop a couple of defense mechanisms. One defense mechanism is to try to soothe themselves, to deal with the uncomfortable feeling that they're feeling. Maybe it's sticking their thumb in their mouth, maybe it's learning to smile more, maybe it's crying more, maybe it's being silent. Who knows? It could be any number of things. Defense mechanism that kicks in in a very primitive brain is to try to soothe our uncomfortable feelings. The second defense mechanism that kicks in with this primitive brain is trying to anticipate and prevent these same uncomfortable events from happening again. And I tell people if the same defense mechanism can do both, both soothe you at the same time and try to prevent uncomfortable events from happening again. It's a very elegant survival or defense mechanism. And when I talk with nice guys, I tell them that's what your nice guy syndrome is. You're trying to manage your uncomfortable feelings and trying to prevent future events from happening to you that are going to cause future uncomfortable feelings. And addiction works the same way. Now as you get to be an adult. Those defense mechanisms are not particularly useful or helpful or productive. In fact, they're often anti productive. But they're all that we've got. They're written into our dos. They're our operating system, they're our machine language. And everything we do as adults reflexively is managed through that primitive part of our brain. And those primitive survival mechanisms we developed at a very early age.

No, that's really profound. And just looking at all the ways that people try to soothe themselves. What I'm thinking of right now, and I'd like to get your take on this, and a lot of it has to do with safety as a child and feeling safe in the world. And I know a lot of my addiction and a lot of my addictive behavior came from this sense that the world is not a safe place. And I have a guy named Wharton, who I never met him in person, but I spoke with him over the phone. And at the time he was in his 70s and he literally sponsored sex addicts. That's pretty much what the guy did. And he was never a sponsor. He was just someone I had met through a friend who said, you really got to talk to this guy. He's really wise. And he gave me a definition of intimacy, which I've shared with. I try to share with a lot of people because it seems to open up a lot of conversations. But for one, I'd like to get your take on it, and then you'll see why in a minute. What he had told me that the definition of intimacy, the way he described it was, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. And it had to do. You know, I thought of like, wow, all the times that you feel unsafe and all of the different ways that humans try to soothe that pain, that anxiety.

And what is.

I'd like to. For one, I don't know if you'd agree with that definition or if you'd have a different take on it, but I'd love to hear the Robert Glover version of what is intimacy? And how does this relate to feeling just safe with partners, with other men? Because I know you encourage other men to develop relationships with men. You talk about it thoroughly in the book. I just want to get your perspective on this.

Well, I'm rarely speechless, but I'm moved by that definition of intimacy, and I'm not going to even try improve on it. And you got to realize I am basically an intimacy teacher. And even though, like I also say, I've bumbled my way through every relationship I've ever been in, we're not good at them as adults. But I love, because my definition of intimacy basically is contained one part of what you shared and that my definition of intimacy has always been is knowing self and being known by another. And I think that fits in well with that definition. But I love the part about the safe space, and I know that that's true. I'm working on another book as we speak, just actually wrapping up the proposal for it that will talk about many things, but part of it is going to be about how the ability for people to go deep in relationship involves tremendous amounts of trust. Sometimes that trust has to be demonstrated. Trustworthy behavior has to be demonstrated by other people. But sometimes we also have to be willing to trust, even when we feel uncomfortable, because most of us have guarded ourselves, guarded our hearts, and guarded our vulnerability since childhood. And learning to trust is essential for intimacy. And again, it goes back to why I tell people, go find safe people to help you do this. And that's my exact word is safe people. Again, whether it be in 12 steps, coaches, therapy, a minister, priest, whatever. And in order to learn how to do intimacy, there has to be a sense of safety, at least, even if we don't feel safe, if at least our rational brain says, my rational brain says this looks like a trustworthy situation and trustworthy person, I'm going to take a Risk and put my walls down and let myself be known in this context. And that's really what 12 steps in therapy is all about, is people slowly, step by step, putting their walls down and letting somebody know them, taking a risk and trusting that that will be a safe environment to do it. And if we can apply that to our close friendships, family, relationships, husband and wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend, whatever, and learn how to pick safe people and then risk letting them in and know us as we get to know them, that can transform the world. It's powerful.

Yeah, totally. No, I love it. I love it. So a couple of things I want to ask you. What can men do to more easily embrace their masculinity and become more integrated? Because you really do a great job of explaining that in the book.

Again, go find safe men to connect with. And even in the book, I tell guys, just go do guy things with guys. I don't care if that's a Saturday night poker game, a bible study with your guy friends from church. When I started applying this, I started going to the gym more, just introducing myself to other guys I met. Joined a men's ranch league, met some guys. We actually started taking road trips to watch baseball games around the country, started a softball team. And while I was doing that, I was also going to a men's therapy group and at various times gone to men's 12 step groups that were predominantly male. So you got to reach out. Now, most, a lot of men out there are actually pretty good at connecting with men. But a lot of the guys I work with don't tend to be the guys that identify as nice guys. We often tend to seek validation from women. I call it hanging out in the nursery. And most of us have not had safe males to basically lead us into the dangerous, scary world of the masculine. And so, as I said, I still work on this to this day. I've been doing my own nice guy recovery for 25 years and I just hired a personal coach. We've already talked a couple times, sent him an email yesterday saying, yeah, I'm committing to us spending the next several months working together. I still need that connection with men. I still need men to help guide me and teach me. And as I said a little bit earlier, luckily nowadays, as you and I are talking in 2017, there are so many options for men to go find men's life coaches to join men's groups to go on men's weekends. Oh, by the way, I also just signed up to go do the new warrior weekend in December at the encouragement of another guy friend of mine who's a therapist. And we're going to go do it together. So, yeah, just get on the Internet. And there's so many ways we can go connect with men. And if that makes you uncomfortable, if you're hesitant to do it, that's probably all the more reason why you do need to go do it and go get connected with men. So there's one aspect of masculinity, it's just being around men. A second part. And again, I could do a whole workshop about this second part, but I'll keep it brief. And this is also going into the book I'm working on, is that from an energetic level. I define masculinity as doing and femininity as being done too. Now, that's purely energetic. And we can get caught up in doing as men and not be particularly conscious or mindful. But I've found that if I'm in a funk, if I'm frustrated, if I'm being pissy towards my wife or feeling resentful or feeling done to, and a lot of those I define as what I call lower feminine traits. We're really unconscious, but we're feeling done to and victimized. And I think depression tends to be a lower feminine trait. And, you know, I can't go into a lot of detail in just a brief time here, but I tell guys, if you just can be conscious of, oh, I'm not feeling real good, I'm feeling done, too. I'm rehearsing scenarios and conversations in my mind. I'm pleading to the referee or judge in the sky because I've been treated unfairly and it's all going on in your head, or you're not wanting to get up, you're not wanting to go do your work, and you've been putting off getting to the gym. Go do something. Now, the best things to go do when you're in this funk is go do something you've either been putting off or procrastinating on, or go do something with men or go do something that challenges you or gets you out of your comfort zone and. Or go do something physical. And I find that I'm fortunate. I've been able to put a gymnasium in my home and my wife's a gym rat, so I have plenty of support for doing this. I've got squat rack, I've got weights, I got benches, I got dumbbells, I got kettlebells. And I tell you what, all I got to do is walk a few feet and if I'm pushing some iron up over my head, my brain can't be dwelling on negative stuff or in a pissy mood. And I get done, even in 20, 25 minutes of doing something physical and challenging myself, and I automatically feel better just because I've done. So connect with men and go do, especially do things you've been putting off or that challenge you or that you've been avoiding and go do what feels hard and you'll walk away from it smiling from ear to ear.

Yeah, that's great. That is great. Well, let me ask you this because I got to ask you a question about addiction. So in your book, you mention how addiction to drugs or alcohol and sexual addiction to pornography as an example is one way nice guys unconsciously bond to their mothers. And so generally speaking, what's your perspective on addiction and specifically sex addiction? I'd love to hear your take on.

This to just get real specific. Unconsciously bonding with mothers, that's something else that would also take quite a bit of time to talk about. So there's a context to that that I won't go into, but sex addiction. I would say that 75 to 80% of the men that I work with, and I mainly work with men now and most of working with me because they've identified with the whole nice guy paradigm. I'd say probably 75 to 80% have some issues around pornography and masturbation through hidden sexual behavior. And mostly because as nice guys, one of our early paradigms was I'm not okay as I am, I have to hide anything about me that might get a negative reaction from other people. And sexuality in our culture is probably the queen mother of all the things that might get a negative reaction from other people. So nice guys hide their sexuality from a very early age, but it's got to go somewhere. It's the life force of the universe, creation, procreation, every living creature does it. Atoms co create themselves and so we can't repress it. It's powerful. So when we put a lid on it, it's got to go somewhere. So it tends to go and hid secretive type behaviors. And for a lot of men, that might be prostitution, it might be massage parlors, it might be strip clubs. But nowadays, because porn on the Internet is just so readily available, I mean, it's just the handiest drug there is. And it's probably only second to fantasy, which you back around in your own brain. I mentioned my son and stepson to you earlier, and they're both in their early 30s. And they came into adolescence about the same time the Internet was really getting to go strong. And as you probably know, the Internet, whether we know it or not, is driven by porn. The majority of bandwidth, the greatest single use of bandwidth is pornography. And I remember we waited till our neighborhood finally got broadband Internet. Now we just take that for granted. But finally we could go from dial up to broadband Internet. And we found that no matter what we did, my two adolescents, sons, my son and son and stepson were spending so much time, you know, stealing music off the Internet and downloading porn that we actually got rid of broadband and went back to dial up. Because porn is no fun with dial up, and it's just rampant. And I might. You asked about my take, especially with the men I work with. I've come to the conclusion that a lot of them aren't what might be classically called sex addicts. Even though they're acting out looks sexual in nature. I think a lot of them are shame addicts. That it feels normal to feel bad about themselves and engaging in hidden, secretive behavior around the biggest societal. No, no sex, especially bad sex. You know, you know, looking at naked women and porn, objectifying women, going to hookers, going to, you know, all the negativity in our culture about that, that, I mean, getting caught up in that, keeping a secret, just a great way to feel bad about yourself. And one of the ways, and this kind of goes back to not doing it alone. One of the ways I've helped men really break free from porn habits when nothing else seems to work. I mean, putting the nannies on their computer, getting rid of their stash, which is just part of the addictive cycle. As they say in addictions, that most addictions are not a quitting problem, they're not a stopping problem problem, They're a starting problem. Every addict has quit their drug countless times, but they all tend to start again. So what I found that if I can actually have a guy back when I had an office sit down with me at my computer, in my office with me watching, I say, okay, show me what you look at. Show me your porn. Show me your stash. Show me what turns you on. And I was just talking. Okay, you go to this page. What would you click on here? All right, why do you like that video? What about this woman turns you on? What kind of fantasy would you have about that? Would you masturbate to this? Would you download it for later? I would just have them tell me everything as if we were talking about cars or sports or having a Fantasy football draft, we'd just talk about it. And what I found was these guys would come back for weeks later and say, I haven't even had the impulse to look at porn. Of all the things I've tried in the past, I had to white knuckle my way not looking at it. I haven't even had the impulse to look at it. Now I don't think that that's necessarily magical what happens there. But what's happened is they brought what's been secretive and shame based out into the open and let a trustworthy person, somebody they trust, look at it with them. I don't shame them, I talk about it matter of factly. And it's like that just releases so much of that pent up energy that it takes the impulse away. So in terms of pornography addiction, I found that to be really powerful. And I think my generalization probably could apply to a lot of addictive behavior. That it isn't so much the substance that they're addicted to, it's the feeling bad about themselves and the substance helps perpetuate that cycle, that that's what feels normal to them and what it's hard to let go of. So that's just kind of my take, especially around sexual addiction.

You know, that was really, really beneficial, really helpful. And one of the lines that I've always felt was really important to all levels of addiction is just, you're as sick as your secrets. And if you have these secrets inside you, you're going to, they're going to fester and they're going to come out in really destructive ways in taking someone through that exercise and disclosing it and being able to share that. And again, that is the purpose of community. That is the purpose of sitting down with other people that have had that mutual suffering, that get it and that understand it. And there is a big difference between privacy and secrecy. And I think where you share that in a safe, comfortable place, the right type of therapist or the right type of group or the right type of individual is critical because a lot of times people are doing these disclosures on like Facebook as an example, but they're not really sitting down with someone and talking with them. And maybe that's helpful to some degree. But I think just developing those bonds that you're talking with others is so crucial to getting to a healthy life. There's so much more that I could talk to you about and this has been really, really great. Your book no more Mr. Nice Guy is something I want to highly recommend to everyone listening the book is phenomenal. I've read a lot of books and there's so much insight and there's so much wisdom. So if you've resonated with anything that Robert has said here that we've discussed, then order the book right away. Give it to a friend. I've recommended it to so many people. If you prefer listening, you can get the audio version online. And what other things do you recommend, be it your own materials, Robert, or anything else? And where do people go to find out more about you and anything else you'd like to share?

Probably the simplest thing to tell people is as you mentioned at the beginning of the interview, just go to drglover.com that's D R G L-O-V E R dot com. I have an online university with self help courses that you can take online. I've recorded over probably 200 self help podcasts about all kinds of things. A lot of them around dating and relationship, but around all kinds of areas just in life in general. Recovered from the nice Guy syndrome. I have Certified no More Mr. Nice Guy coaches and therapists around the world that are listed on my website. I have an online support group that's free that you can join in the conversation with other guys that are working on their nice guy issues. So just go to drglover.com if you want to google no more Mr. Nice Guy. I used to say that Alice Cooper and I come up one and two but actually I looked the other day and I've got a he's got one spot on the page, I've got all the rest. So just Google no more Mr. Nice Guy. Go to Amazon wherever to get the book. And yeah, just check me out@drglover.com and again, thanks for the chance to talk to your people who listen.

Yeah, you know, and I'll probably want to do a continued interview in the future because there's so much more if you'd be up for it. If our listeners love this, then just let me know and share this interview with anyone that you think would find it valuable. And I have to mention this because you just mentioned Alice Cooper. Alice is actually a friend mine of, of mine and we have the same exact birthday except that he's 20 years older than me and next year he's actually going to do a private concert for me that we're going to do for the artist for addicts things which is because he's been sober for 20 something years. I didn't even put two and two together until just now.

Inadvertent plug. You're welcome for it. And Joe, I'd do another interview in a heartbeat, so I've enjoyed. Awesome.

Thank you sir. Have a wonderful day. And to all of our listeners, we'll talk to you next time and thank you.

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