Men and INSECURITY: What You Need to Know | Justin Baldoni

Because I think a lot of it is programmed into us and a lot of, I think dating, I know what you're working on is deprogramming. It's unlearning all the things we thought we knew so that we can finally be open and ready to find our partner.

What's up, everyone? A very interesting clip today with actor and filmmaker Justin Baldoni. Many of you know him as Raphael in Jane the Virgin. He also directed Five Feet Apart part in the movie Clouds. He joined me on the love life club to talk all about masculinity, the problems of it, what men can do to build healthier relationships with themselves and other people, and how if you're in a relationship with a man, you can help him to overcome some of those blockages to him communicating. I think you're really going to enjoy this clip. If you want to experience the full interview and the exclusive members Q and A I did, you can go over to joinlovelife.com to start a free 14 day trial. And don't forget to grab a copy of Justin's book, Boys Will Be Human. We'll link it up under the video. Enjoy this clip and I will see you at the end.

But you know what I think is interesting is recently you, you shared a video of a man in your audience who was brave enough to ask a very vulnerable question. And I loved your advice. And I was just, I was thinking about like that man sitting in a sea of these women who was willing to be like, I'm really hurt. I'm like devastatedly hurt. How do I get past that? She moved on and you gave him beautiful advice. And so I wanted to say in person, kudos to you because sometimes the comment on Instagram, it's not the same. But like, I really appreciated the way you spoke directly to him. And I think that's probably rare for you to get to speak to men in that capacity.

I'm curious, is there something, what do you think would be most surprising to women about what you've learned from men? Because I always think there's a lot of assumptions made by women about what men are like in working with a lot of men. Is there something you think women would find disturbing, surprising to discover about why men are the way they are or why they do certain things or just that they are a certain way that women don't realize they are?

Oh yeah, we are very sensitive. Men are very sensitive. And I don't think that. Well, I think that any woman who's been in a relationship with a man Like a close one knows that I don't know to the extent many women know how sensitive we are. There's a study I cite in my last book, Man Enough, where they actually took men and women and they showed them images and they timed. They had them hooked up to sensors, and they timed their reaction to the images and how their body processed what they saw. And they were pretty graphic images. And what they discovered was that men the first time reacted quicker emotionally than women did. And then the second time, the reaction time slowed, and the third time, and the fourth time. And so the men were literally training themselves to be desensitized to whatever they were about to see, whereas the women stayed sensitive. So I think biologically, just naturally, as human beings, we're on the same page. We are every bit as sensitive as women. The difference is because of socialization, because of the way that men have been trained and programmed. We've been told that sensitivity and vulnerability is weakness, that these are feminine traits. We have an antagonistic relationship to the feminine, both in women and in ourselves, and so we numb those things. Bell hooks, the late, great bell hooks, called it soul murder, where she said, the first act of violence that men commit in a patriarchal society is not violence against women, it's violence against themselves. When we numb ourselves by cutting ourselves off from our emotions. So that is the desensitization. And in reality, we are very sensitive. We just don't, one, know it, and two, know how to handle those feelings because we're not allowed to have them. And we certainly can't show them to women. And we 100% can't show them to other men. So where do they go? They get buried. So I. There's a. There's a. I mean, there's a. I wrote a book about it. There's a bunch of things that I think women would be surprised about. In fact, one of the things I was surprised about was how many women read my book to understand men and how many women reached out to me personally who had been very hurt by men. We could cast a blanket statement and say that I'd argue the majority of women have been in relationships with men that have been hard or harmful. Or we know 1 in 4, 1 in 5 women around the world are victims of sexual assault. And it gets worse from there. So I think that there is a lot of trauma done to women at the hands of men. And what I found interesting was how many women wrote me and said, for the first time in my life, I actually feel compassion for men because I didn't realize what you go through and how this system that I thought was only hurting me is actually hurting you. And in fact, it's the reason why you're hurting me. So there's. I mean, we go on and on. There's so many traits I think women would be surprised to discover about men. We just don't know how to show it.

That's a great answer. And whenever I think about how women have to put up with men, I always think men also have to put up with men. And it's different.

Very different.

But if you look at what makes life hard for guys growing up, like, men are a nightmare.

Yeah. It's boys.

Yeah. You know, when you look at the insecurities that men have about the. Their strength or not being able to handle themselves or the kinds of things that men do. You know, I. I often see it when I just look at male groups.

Oh, yeah.

And I look at how I. I make a mental note when I see guys doing something that I go. A group of female friends together would never do that. They might have their own version of it, but they would never do that. The idea of, like, you know, I've.

Told this story before where I walked.

Into a. I walked into a classroom at school. I was about. What was I, like, 16, 17. And I remember I like, did my hair. I, like, slicked my hair back this day. I had been growing it long. Cue the picture somewhere. There must be a picture of this, but I slicked it back. I look like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.

All right.

I thought it looked good, but I walked into the common room at school and a friend of mine pointed at me and he said, what the have you done with your hair?

Oh, man.

He, like, blew, like, loud enough so that everyone in the room heard. And I remember feeling such.

Oh, God, I felt that for you.

Embarrassment that. What was funny is I went straight to the toilets as the first chance I could get and, like, tried to fix it and put it back. And this guy wasn't some random bully. This guy was like, you know, one of my buddies.

Yeah.

But when you're that age, you don't necessarily see that behavior is not normal. You just see it as like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. That was really dumb. That was like, what was I trying to do there Starts younger, though.

I see it. My son is 5.

Tell us about that.

It's starting. It's starting in his. In his ages. I. He got made fun of. He has long hair like me. And one of the boys Called him a girl for wearing his hair like me. It was interesting because at first it was like, you want to wear man bun like daddy? And it was super cute. And he did. And then one day he didn't want to do it anymore. At four years old, I was like, well, what happened? And come to find out it was because another boy said something to him or it was because the other boys were wearing their hair short or. And it starts very, very early. And it's hard because that stays with us our entire lives. Really though, what it comes down to is I think it's us boys policing other boys for taking care of their appearance, for having appearances that like, could look feminine. Right? Long hair. Girls have long hair for four or five year old boys, unless you're in a class where everybody's got long hair, so that's weak. And so we start to like, just go into these different directions of boys do this, girls do this. Anything that isn't what boys do is what girls do. And we're antagonistic to each other. Starting so young. Like, do you remember I had a sign that said no girls allowed. No girls allowed. Right? It's like the, the basis of every. Sounds really young, 80s, 90s, you know, like young movie. It's like, no girls allowed. Stranger Things recently did it. Like there was a girl in the, like in the club. Like, this isn't okay. Why? I mean, where do we learn this stuff? It's not all biological. We also learn it from our parents, we learn it from culture. And so what I tell my son in that situation, and what you probably wish somebody would have told you is you can wear your hair however you want. Boys have long hair too. Look at your daddy, right? Your daddy has long hair. You can do whatever makes you feel good. Don't let the boy that made fun of you take away what brings you joy. Because then what starts to happen is we start to perform. We start to. It's the beginning of us putting on our mask. The beginning of us putting on this, like, image where we have to impress other boys. Which is why it's so funny when you go to the gym. Have you ever asked yourself, like, who are you working out for? Who do you think men are really working out for? Do we think men are working out for all the women that are watching this? Do we really think that women need us to look like Adonis' or are we working out for men? Are we working out for respect? Of course, yes. Women are attracted to certain bodies. But like, if you look at all the Beautiful women in the world and the supermodels and all of this. At the end of the day, as you know, having an amazing body is very low on the list of traits you want in a husband or a partner. Those things fade over time. I don't know any 80 or 90 year olds that are ripped like in the few. Jack lalanne, he was amazing, but he was also a health nut and exciting and funny and he had a personality. Like those things are way above bodies, but yet we obsess over bodies. So we're not doing it for women, we're doing it for men.

And I suppose there's an element of trying to control the things that you can control. Where can I exert control to try to bring up my status in a group and power. One of the areas that men struggle with, and this is one that's perpetuated by women, is with their height. Oh, that's tough because you, if you, you know, like there's, when you like, if, if you have a video on YouTube that's like got a microphone in women's faces and it's like, you know, honestly, would you prefer a guy to be 6 foot 2 or 5 foot 5 or would you date a guy? Would you reject a guy because of his height? And you've got woman after woman after woman saying, yeah, I don't date short guys, then that also is feeding into this idea that I'm not man enough. Of course, if I'm not a certain height and therefore I need to go to the gym and work out like an insane person to compensate for that, or I have to be aggressive or I have to. So this is coming from all sides.

Height, money, penis size, muscles. All men are doing all day long are comparing themselves to other men, especially in the single world, because they think they have to turn themselves into something in order to be attractive to a woman. No, there's room for everybody and everybody has different tastes. We just have to sometimes get out of our own way because we have images and the entertainment business and media and social media and all of these things being programmed into our brain all the time, telling us what the ideal man or woman or person looks like, telling us what's sexy and what's attractive. But if we stop and we look at it, the people that are feeding us all of that information, they're businesses that are profiting off of us, they're profiting off of our insecurity, they're profiting off of us feeling like we're less than or like we're not enough. We're users in a video game, we're being played, and then we're taking that into our dating lives and our marriage.

Decisions in the world to spend our life with.

Yeah, what happens in virtual reality, I don't believe can be applied in reality. And yet that's oftentimes what's happening.

Do you therefore think that people should date outside of what they find conventionally attractive, even if at first it feels unnatural to do so?

No, I don't think that I can give a blanket statement. I think that this conversation is super nuanced too, because not everything applies to every woman and not everything applies to every man. Just like not every man is hyper masculine, not every woman is super feminine. Like, there's this spectrum. What I do think is the most important thing is questioning what you're attracted to and why versus just saying, this is what I want. I like blondes who are five, nine. Okay, so that means your wife walks in and she's five, six, and a redhead. You're just going to ignore her? I'd say to another man or like a brother. I think we have to challenge these conceptions of what we find attractive for a lot of men. Well, what do you find attractive? I would argue what you find attractive is one of the first porn images you saw when you were 10 years old, and you've been chasing that for your entire life. It could be anything. We don't know what it is. But we have to question where those things come from. Because I think a lot of it has been programmed into us. And a lot of. I think dating, I know what you're working on is deprogramming. It's unlearning all the things we thought we knew so that we can finally be open to and ready to find our partner, versus having our partner fit this, like, perfect, like, description of what we thought we had. And then you're just gonna keep missing it and keep missing it. Oh, it's close. It's close. It's like that Seinfeld episode where, you know, it's like the toe. There's something about her toe that bothered him. Right. The whole episode's about the toe. It's like. But what about everything else?

Yeah, that's hard for people to get out of their own way in that way. Right. Because they have been so conditioned to treat dating like it is this optimization game where you find someone and they're kind of close, and then you go, ah, no, I can still optimize more here. And then you switch them out.

And can't tell you how many men I've had this conversation with in my own friends, my own circles, can you?

I think it would be fascinating for women to kind of hear how that conversation goes behind closed doors.

Thank you so much for watching. Please, before you go, go over to Amazon right now. Grab a copy of Justin's book Boys Will Be Human. And don't forget, you can watch this entire interview along with an exclusive members Q and A with Justin over at the Love Life Club. If you're not a member right now, you can get a free 14 day trial membership by going to joinlovelife.com you can set up your profile in 60 seconds and not only access the interview I've done with Justin and the special Q and A, but lots of interview I've done in the Love Life Club over time. From Guy Winch to Esther Perel, Dr. Ramany, Emily Morse, all sorts of wonderful people and master classes. You can ask your question of me in a live session that's coming up this month. It's an amazing place to be right now. You can set up your profile@joinlovelife.com and I will see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching.

Sam.