Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO) and Daniel Robertson

All right, Mr. Daniel, it says we are live.

We're live.

I'm going to verify this real quick, like every now and then this has a hiccup, but let's see.

Are we live on multiple platforms?

Yes, we are on Facebook and YouTube. As soon as I verify that that's in fact happened— yes, we are live!

Woohoo!

Yay! Okay, hello everyone, welcome, welcome back to Live with Dad Starting Over. It's not a very radio-ish— for those who don't know, I'm Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. You're watching this on the Dad Starting Over channel, but I have a company, an organization if you will, called Help for Men. You can learn more at helpformen.com. Dad Starting Over is kind of a content creation platform that I've been doing for shit, like almost a decade now, of doing articles, videos, books, and all kinds of stuff. And here, as of about— how long has it been now? It's been It's been a little while now that we started Help for Men. You can learn more at helpformen.com. There we do have articles and videos, and we have courses, and we have a private men's group we call the Brotherhood, the HFM Brotherhood. There is a monthly fee for joining, but we have all kinds of cool stuff, including private discussion forums, live Zoom meetings. We get together in person. Our 5th annual conference is coming up in Charleston, South Carolina next May. We are all sold out. Sorry, guys. Maybe we'll do a second one that year. Don't know. And then we— what else do we do? We have coaching. Members of our group get the courses and coaching like half off. All kinds of cool stuff. So check it out. HelpForMen.com. And my guest today is— take it away, sir. Who the hell are you?

My name is Daniel Robertson. Thanks for having me here, Ralph Brewer. Welcome. I really appreciate all the content you put out. You've— I know you've impacted a ton of men. In a positive way. And thank you, men need it.

Thank you, appreciate it.

We need it.

Thank you.

So yes, my name is Daniel Robertson. I'm an attorney by trade, um, but a relationship coach. Yeah, but a relationship coach as well. And I'm transitioning into relationship coaching more and more. And yeah, I'm just here to chat, um, You know, I'm a divorced dad of 4 little kids, and so I'm out there, you know, living the divorced dad life. And, uh, us divorced dads need, need support. So that's right, I'm glad to be able to do this with you.

Well, thank you so much. Not to make it about me, but leading into the topic of divorced dads, I don't know if you saw, I just posted that I did an interview with Forbes for their, uh, news channel, and it was just posted. I just posted it like 30 minutes ago. So you can see on my Help for Men as well as Dad Starting Over, my interview with Forbes. Kind of big, and it turned out a lot better than I thought it would. So we did about a half-hour chat all about divorced dads, but it was a political thing. Why I see the trend of, why do I think there's a trend of divorced men overwhelmingly voting for Trump? I don't know if you're familiar with that. Something like 56% of divorced men say they're gonna vote for, exactly, that's what I said. Not surprising. The number 56%, I was like, that's actually a quote conservative, no pun intended, number. I thought it would be higher than that, to be quite honest with you. So we talked about all about that. It was a good chat. So check it out, guys, on Forbes. Go to Forbes YouTube channel and you'll see, I think you'll see Trump's little picture on there. It says Divorced Dads. Click on that and then you'll see my awesome baldness on there talking for a half hour to Miss Maggie. So give it a like. That'll help spread the word about help for men. So.

Well, congratulations for being on Forbes.

Thank you. That came about because I did a New York Magazine reached out to me. And this was because they saw all my videos about stuff and they, they, you know, tied me to divorced and da da da. So they did a, can we talk to you? And I talked to her for about a half hour, but it was for a print article of which they use about this much of me in the article. That was it. But that was enough apparently for Forbes to say, I want to talk to that guy. And then they reached out to me. And so we'll see if that results in anything else. They say they actually may use my video for MSNBC as well. So you never know. Just keep plugging at it.

Phenomenal.

We'll see. That's awesome. We'll see.

But you've been putting in a decade of work building up, building your platform, speaking your voice, putting yourself out there. So phenomenal. Really cool.

Never in a million years did I think, as of, let's say, when I first went all through this, the divorce thing, of what was horrible. And my flavor of divorce may not necessarily be your story, but people that know me know what happened with me, which was discovery of infidelity and yada yada. All kinds of awfulness. If you had asked me back then, or told me back then, like, don't worry, Ralph, you're going to start a men's group, write 4 books, blah blah— I'm not bragging, I'm just saying it was such a left turn in my life. It's just so— it just shows you, like, you guys can quite literally, that are going through all this nonsense, just go, you know what, no, I'm gonna do this, whatever this is. Maybe I'm gonna drop my corporate job and go work construction. Something you've always wanted to do. I had somebody recently said that. It's not a random thought. Yeah, yeah, dude, go for it. That's what makes you happy. Do it, dude. You got one life. What the hell, man? And mine was I always wanted to write and do this thing and make a difference and help other dudes, and this was my avenue. So that's what I did. And now freaking Forbes of all people have reached out to me. So you never know. You never know. And you, my friend, were an attorney. If I may ask, what was the type of law you practiced or practicing?

Mostly Yeah, mostly business litigation. Okay, mostly. I've got a variety of experience and I've done some family law work, mostly from a mediation, you know, side of, side of family law.

And did you think back when you were divorced that you would be, you know, on social media talking to, you know, thousands of people about your experiences in the relationship game and giving advice and have people join your group and stuff?

You know, um, let me put it this way. Here's what my experience was several years ago. I, I set a goal for myself, um, to impact thousands of lives positively, thousands of families positively. And that was one of my goals that I, when I started out, um, as my first kind of venture into entrepreneurship years ago. And, um, it was amazing to be able to say that I've done it, you know. I mean, I have— my Facebook group has 20,000 people, um, and that's, you know, not my only platform either. So to be able to say that I've impacted thousands of people is an answer to prayer, a blessing, a goal achieved, and it just goes upward from here.

That's awesome. And, uh, you're talking about a very typical, and that's not to belittle it, it's typical because it works. This concept of what we call like vision boarding and things like that, where you very early on say, I'm gonna do this, whether you literally put it on a board or you just mentally say that, that's what I'm going for, whether it's the gold medal or the championship or the CEO of or have my own business, whatever. It all starts with the, that's what I'm going for, I'm going to do that. And what's, what's kind of cool is it doesn't go like steady trajectory. No, it goes, and then next thing you know, you're, you know, 5 years doing something completely different, but you keep your eye on the prize and you're like, but I'm still going for that thing. And you end up some semblance of that somewhere, and you learn a hell of a lot along the way. It ain't so pretty. You may have a divorce or two along the way, whatever it is, but, but you get there. That's, that's, uh, you know, the crux of the old self-improvement fake it till you make it, vision boarding, all that good stuff. And I put the link to your YouTube video. Somebody was asking, um, uh, Jack, thank you for providing the, uh, the tagline for, uh, Coach Daniel's, uh, YouTube channel. And I put that in there. We have a lot of guys from YouTube. We have, uh, right now, yeah, it's all the comments are from YouTube here. So thank you, Jack, for that, for the heads up. I put that on there. And, uh, welcome. If you guys could on the chat to in the comments, wherever you're at, if you could let us know where you're watching us from. I always find that interesting. We usually have guys from around the world on these things. And if you have any questions for myself or Daniel, please do not be shy at any point in this conversation. I will go back and read them, so don't think it has to be in real time or whatever. But the main gist of our conversation today was a continuation from our previous chat, which ended on a bad note because we had technical difficulties, but we were talking all about dating after divorce. Our experiences and a lot of the fallacies we hear going on with men and a lot of the negative talk and victimhood and everything else. And so guys, if you have any questions along those lines of dating after divorce or anything else that you think two bald know-it-alls would be good at yapping about, hey, let us know. That's why we're here. We're here to help and chat. That's what we do. That's what we like to do. And, um, Dating after divorce, that's a big, all-encompassing topic. What was— let me ask you this, maybe this will kick things off. How soon after— you've been divorced a couple of times, is that right?

Yeah.

Okay. Nothing to be ashamed of. Dr. Robert Glover, he's, you know, he's one of the biggest dudes in this game. I think he's a three-timer, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, I don't know. I know of two for Dr. Glover. Okay. I don't know. I thought he was on his third marriage.

Third marriage, that's right. Two divorce, third marriage. So it's a— and he's very open and honest about it. Yeah, that's my experience. I've learned as I've made a lot of mistakes and I got my baggage and I'm a codependent dude. I wrote the book on it, for goodness sakes. So there's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. So maybe here's a good lead in your experience post-divorce number one, dating. I'm entering the relationship market. I'm going to try this again. How different was that from from the second time around?

Um, well, post-divorce number one, uh, by the way, hi Shannon from Australia, good to have you. Um, I see some comments coming in. Okay, post-divorce number one. So, you know, I grew up religious and got married super young. Uh, I was 22, if that qualifies as super young. It was, you know, it was a, a big religious driver to that. And, um, that marriage lasted 4 years, and she left. It's her choice. Um, and I got out and dated one— I think I only dated one person. Um, I dated a doctor for a few months, and then that ended. And then I got married really quickly again.

Oh wow.

Again, met somebody at church. I was specifically at church. One of the guys from church asked me to go. He says, "Come to the young adults group with me," because I was going to church every week, but never coming to the young adults group. And so he says, "Come." And I say, "I'm not here to meet women. I'm not here to meet women." And I was only talking to the guys and only hanging out with the guys. And then one of the women approached me. And then we ended up getting married.

Wow, how soon after that?

Uh, so, so I'm— what's up, Alex? Um, and so that was— we, we dated for 5 months, got engaged for 5 months, so it was about a year. It was about a year from when we met to when we got married, so we got married quickly. It was her second marriage as well. Interesting. And we both had like We were like, oh, we're both in our 30s. We've both been divorced. We wanted to have kids by now, but we don't. We have the same values. We both come from good families. You know, everything seemed like we both like— we both like getting outdoors and going on hikes and things. And so we're both athletic. So we both— all this stuff makes sense. Let's have kids. So we got married again from a religious perspective. Get married, have kids, get the show on the road. And that didn't end so well. Hmm.

May I ask what flavor of religion we're talking about?

Yeah, I grew up evangelical Christian. I'm no longer an evangelical Christian, but I'm, I'm spiritual, but I don't affiliate with a religion right now.

You know, you always run the risk of insulting people. I don't mean this insulting in any way. I just look at it very pragmatically as an outsider. How interesting it is that I talk to a lot of men from, for lack of a better term, kind of orthodox, strict kind of religions. Mormonism, for example, huge in my world. I've spoken to some Orthodox, Muslim, and Jewish, and it's very much the same theme of, why did you marry your gal that you're having so many problems with? You know, this chaotic— well, it's just what you do. You know, I was of a certain age, same religion, same temple, church, whatever. And our families kind of pushed us together and make babies, yada yada, it's just what you did. There was no real romance or connection there, it's just what it was. There was this driving force. Not the best recipe for relationships, arguably, in today's modern age especially. A lot of people will say, a lot of people will point to stats that show like arranged marriages and so forth tend to last longer. Okay, yeah, but there's a lot of constraints around it to make it last, to artificially keep it together. I'm not sure that's the greatest stat to quote. Considering. But interesting that you come from that world and, um, and that was your experience. And it sounds pretty quick. My first marriage was married also at 22, if I'm remembering right. Yeah. So, and then we did— we waited to have our first child until we were both roughly the same age, uh, 28 years of age. So there was kind of a prolonged— excuse me— uh, honeymoon period there. When I look back on marriage number one, that was probably the best times of our of our marriage, pre-kid. I was traveling quite a bit for work, so we only saw each other part of the time. So that kind of prolonged that honeymoon phase, the dating phase and so forth, and we were very close during that time. But yeah, the family machine kind of took over and it just spiraled from there. And that in turn uncovered a lot of family baggage from both of us. I could point the finger across the aisle and say she had a lot, she did, and it bubbled to the surface and blew up in her face and caused a lot of problems later on, but I had it too. And that was that. And then my dating experience between her and wife number 2 was relatively short as well. Not time-wise, because the bulk of that dating timeframe between marriage 1 and 2 was with the woman that would become wife number 2. So I was kind of a mimbo, if you will, there for a relatively short period of time. And then met her, dropped all the ladies that I was seeing, devoted myself to her for a period of about 3.5, almost 4 years until we got hitched. So I took my time with this one and really got to know her. And I learned my lesson from that first one, thankfully. And knock on wood, it's gone well. We've been together for 10 years so far and have a kiddo who's 3 years of age. So yeah, I have no reason to believe it will, you know, go down the toilet like the first one, but you never know. So, but everything's going well.

Life throws curveballs.

That's right.

Not about your marriage.

No, no, no. But man plans and God laughs, as they say.

That's right.

You never know.

I love that line.

But knock on wood, everything is going well. But for you, you're still in the race. I was going to say that's not the right term. Still looking for potentially Mrs. Wright and still dating. And you say you went into the dating world. We talked about this last time. Very much intentional. About your purpose in dating. You say to the dating world, prospective mates, I'm not Mr. Playboy, jump from woman to woman, get as many notches on my belt or whatever the term is. I'm not out here just screwing around, having fun willy-nilly. I'm actually intentional about my dating. A genuine long-term monogamous relationship is important to me and that's something I see for my future. Is that a good way of putting it?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's evolved for me. I've been separated and divorced a little over 3 years now. And so when I first started dating after my divorce, you know, I, I was not looking to jump, jump right into, you know, a monogamous, committed relationship really quickly. That time around. But, you know, I'm 3 years out now. I'm over 3 years out now. And so I'm, I'm more of the mindset that I would prefer a committed relationship with one woman.

So are you saying that immediately post-divorce, since you had your— what's the proper term here— sow my oats, you know, release some pent-up energy, let's, you know, prove my masculinity to the world, and now that since then that has kind of settled down, as they say?

You know, I, I've never— you use the word playboy, for example. I've never been that guy. But I wasn't, I wasn't looking to, like, jump into a committed relationship quickly right after my separation and divorce. And so, you know, I'm just saying that it's evolved, but that's where I am right now, is more interested in a committed relationship. And it is interesting to say that as a man, because there are many women out there saying, I can't find a man who wants to commit. And of course, as you and I know, we talk to men all the time who are looking for a woman who will commit to him. And it's not— it's funny why there's that disconnect that happens between men and women.

How old of a guy are you, if I may ask?

I'm 39.

Okay, so you're still in that age range of potential mates may be like, for whatever reason, it didn't work out with man number one before we could get to having kids, or I've never met the right guy. I, I just got out of a good long-term relationship before we could get married. In other words, you're gonna meet some ladies that are gonna be like, it's still baby-making time here. And you've already got 4 of the little Rugrats. So the question is, I've got 4. You meet Mrs. Right, you guys are together. It's just you and her, period of 1, 2, however many years, and the question starts coming up of, what are we going to do here? Are we going to make this official, you think? Are we going to get married? And Daniel, I'm 37. I'm still fertile. I still got it going on. I haven't had a kid yet. You want to go for number 5?

This is funny. This seems like, are we doing like a dating ad for me? Are there ladies watching, single ladies watching? Because you're getting all the deets on me. Yeah, um, I, I hopefully this is valuable for other men just to hear the thought process, um, for other men who are in this situation. I personally, my dating, like, I look for women who already have kids who are divorced because— would I expand beyond that? Sure, I would expand beyond that, but I think that I'm going to be most compatible with a woman who already has kids, likes kids, since I have 4, and who's gone through the divorce because we can relate on so many things. I'm personally not, not wanting to have any more kids. I, I'll bring in somebody else's kids and do a blended family thing. Yeah, but, you know, there's no, no need at this point in my life to bring more kids.

But you are, you are in that age range, as you know, and you still got those late— there is a growing population of women And this is kind of red meat for the red pill-ish world. They love to pick on this, but this is true. This is a growing population of women who went through the university system, extended education, graduate degree and beyond, get into the corporate world, if you will, and devote a great deal of their time to, like in my wife's world, for example, she's a medical doctor. So we have these ladies that go through medical school, residency, fellowship, become an attending, Next thing you know, they're in their— next thing you know, they're in their early 30s. You got somebody—

what's up, Amanda? Oh, my friend Amanda's watching.

Next thing you know, they're— next thing you know, they're in their early 30s, mid-30s, and, and they're dating. And Amanda says date older women. There you go. And, uh, um, yeah, so you're gonna have this, this growing group of women who are like I haven't gone through that process, which means I'm not divorced, which means I don't have kids, which means I'm looking for a good dude. And I'll be damned, Daniel, you're fitting the bill here. So it's—

I'm open-minded. I'm open-minded.

You're going to run into that.

If you're asking me.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I'm open-minded, but it's interesting. A lot of women are in that situation where professional. And it's, it's tricky. That's one of the hardest things about the dating world right now is that, is that things are not the way they used to be traditionally. More women are making more money. Traditionally, both the female and the male in that scenario felt more comfortable knowing, oh, what's my job in this relationship? The man says, oh, the man feels comfortable thinking my job is to provide. And a lot of that means provide financially. I bring in the most of the income. You know, the traditional idea is the woman is bringing more care and more care for the home and the family and the children. And that has just shifted and people don't know what to do about it. You know, men don't know what to do about it. Women don't know what to do about it. And it's a challenge to navigate.

Absolutely. This, uh, shifting paradigm, as it were, in the— yeah, in the mating game, if you want to call it that. It's huge. And, um, there's much to be made of. A lot of women— and again, this sounds like a typical nonsense in our world of relationship talk, but it's one that I hear a lot from my wife's female colleagues— which is one of, it's really tough to find a guy. And when you ask them, well, why is that? Because I know plenty of men that are looking for women. Well, but here's what I'm looking for. And those gals list some traits that you're like, oof, that's, that's gonna be tough to find. That's, you just, you just ticked off some things that if I had to, you know, whittle it down statistically, it's like you just, you're looking for the top 0.2% of individuals financially and career-wise. And that's gonna be tough simply because a lot of those women are like, I'm I'm thinking of my wife's friend who is a pharmacist and she recently got married and it was very difficult for her to find a mate. And she was very open about, I'm not gonna go with some guy that's making $35,000 a year, da da da, blue collar dude. That's not me, that's not my world. I've worked really hard to get to the point where I'm running this pharmacy and she's like in her late 20s or so forth. So she already just wiped off the table a huge portion of the dating market. Some potentially really good men too, but she's like, And you know what, I'm not going to belittle her for that. That's, that's her thing. That's— and it could be argued there's a, the hypergamous thing or whatever you want to call it, or just a cultural thing. Um, but whatever it is, that, that's her criteria. And eventually she did find a man. And not to— I'm trying to think, have I given away any information personal? No, no one will know who I'm talking about. But she has, I guess you could say, married down, if you want to put it that way, on the financial strata, and they're fine, they're fine, they're happy, and they just had their first child. But that was a difficult adjustment for her, and she was very open about that. This is new to me, to go into this world to find a mate, because no one in this side is even interested in me apparently. And she had a relationship with a guy and it fizzled out, it didn't work yet. That's in essence what I hear from a lot of women looking at their perspective on things. It's tough to find a man because I have certain criteria. I really don't want to come down from that. And, um, yeah, it is what it is, and it makes it a little bit tougher in the dating market. Then for us guys, this— you are a professional man as an attorney, so you're going to, I would assume, be attracted to similar type of professional people of certain, uh, intellectual levels. And, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, certain achievements and, and so on and so forth. Would Daniel enjoy a date with the Walmart cashier?

It's funny, I actually, I don't think I've ever dated an attorney.

Now that I think about it.

Oh, interesting. I have dated a doctor, but not an attorney.

That's about the same level. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting concept and shifts paradigms for me personally. I mean, we're just talking about me personally, but Yeah, I mean, to me, so what I would— the way I approach relationships, which is different than the way that the woman you were sharing the example about, the things I look for in a relationship are kindness, honesty. I want love. Like, I'm, I'm in this for love. I want to love somebody and be loved. Like, so does their, uh, career matter to me? No. It doesn't. It really doesn't. And, you know, people get to choose their values. Status is not a value of mine. You know, I've got this— I get to go say I'm a lawyer and some people go, wow. And I think, why? A status just isn't a value of mine. Love is a big value. Relationships are something I value. And so, you know, I just encourage people. I do have criteria. You could call it criteria for what I'm looking for. My criteria are things like kindness, honesty, playfulness, willingness to be vulnerable, willingness to go emotionally deep, because that's who I am. I do look for intellectual compatibility because I, I'm intellectual. I like to talk about ideas. I want somebody who's on the same level with me, but I look at what I value and status isn't my value. Tons of money isn't my value. You know, so that's— I just look for different things.

There has to be, though, you have to balance that out with a level of pragmatism, I guess you could say. And that's where a lot of guys find it difficult. I find that a lot of men probably steer more towards— the men that I talk to steer more towards your mindset of, I'm looking for the more altruistic, genuine, holistic personality traits or personal traits in the person, the kindness, the sweetness, and so forth. Maybe if she already has kids, she's a good mother. These are things you don't— what I don't often hear out of men is, um, she has to look a certain way. It's kind of interesting. Women would— you would think the opposite, but I don't hear that often. As far as when men rattle off the top of their head what they're looking for, that rarely, if ever, comes up. She's got to be, yeah, 5-foot whatever and brunette, certain figure. You don't hear that. Um, you hear some of the softer stuff, but then I also hear from men of But Ralph Brewer, I've been burned before in relationships. I've got a lot of my money taken from me and yada yada yada. And I'm looking for more of an equal in that footing. I'm looking for a career gal so I don't have to worry about, you know, whatever. We're not going to shame you either way. But I see kind of the scales tipping more of the pragmatic side, which is ironically something we heard a lot from the ladies early on in generations before where they were very much like, he must have career, must have so much money, he must have prospects. Yeah, kind of cold in that way. But yeah, so what are some things that you have seen in all your years of working with, let's say, men in particular, um, difficulties that they're having out there in the dating market? And freshly— stick with freshly divorced guys. He's gone through the process of working through it emotionally. Let's pretend— a lot of guys don't, but let's pretend he has, and he's, he's emotionally ready, mentally ready. He's putting himself out on the market. What are some things you're hearing from guys that say, oh, this isn't good? What's so not so good about it?

Well, there's, there's such a mixture of different experiences for different people. And, and as we talked about the last time we talked, I am not a doom and gloomer. So there are challenges about dating in 2024. The apps have made things really difficult and messed things up in a lot of ways. So there are challenges and there are also legitimate complaints and also I think some illegitimate complaints that really come down to taking responsibility for our lives. But yeah, I mean, there is such a mixture. There— where to even begin? A lot of, a lot of the women on the dating market, so, are not as self-aware as they think they are. They're not as emotionally intelligent as they think they are.

Oh, so just threw down the gauntlet. Oh boy, I threw—

I'm dropping bombs for the ladies who are watching. I'm dropping bombs. So, but I want to validate the men in that experience. Yeah, you know, it's, it's really true. Women get— let's get— now here's the thing too, is because I know some of these women who are lacking in self-awareness, lacking in personal responsibility, and I also know many wonderful women who are very mature and emotionally intelligent and available. And I know some of these women are really having a hard time finding a man who can meet them on their level. So this is not a blanket statement about all women, but if you're looking on the dating app and you're having trouble with these women, if you're a man, then there's, there's a variety, a lack of maturity in a lot of cases. You know, so I'm hoping I'm not saying this about all women, but yeah, if you're having a frustrating experience with the women, it makes sense. It really makes sense why.

Um, yeah, I tell you what I'm hearing a lot of guys say, taking it like a really 30,000-foot level of, of their frustration, is one of, um, they don't get— the men don't get much attention. So they'll put their product out in the market, so to speak. We talked about this last time, and it's, it, it is very commoditized in that way with the online dating world. You know, think of the, the widget on the store shelf. So the man puts himself, the widget, on the store shelf and says, huh? And people just pass him by and pass him by and pass him by. No one even picks him up to look at him. They just— it's nothing. And he gets nothing, and he's very frustrated. And I've heard from some men that this continues on literally for years with zero— with zero change on the man's part. Never once does he look at it from a very— I always use this term— pragmatic point of view. And it's very difficult to remove emotion from that, It's very easy to say, I'm a victim. All these women are horrible. They don't realize what a great thing they're passing up. As opposed to maybe the, the, the, the store window needs to be rearranged a little bit. Maybe, maybe some of this needs to be changed. Maybe some of that needs to be changed. Maybe you're approaching this in the wrong way. Maybe the, the, the qualities that you're putting forth aren't exactly what the market's looking for right now. So, but going back, what I see from men, number one is it's a woman's market. I don't get much attention at all out there. Period.

Yeah.

And to the point where they say don't even bother. It's like 90 to 10 men versus women on the dating apps, yada yada, versus some men such as I believe you yourself will say I had great luck in the online dating thing.

Not at first. Dating apps is a skill.

Yes, it is.

And, and when I first got on dating apps, super depressing because I couldn't get attention. I, you know, horrible experience, constant rejection, very depressing. But I said, okay, I've got, I've got to level up. I've got to learn how to do this if I want to do it this way, or meet women in person. Like, that's still an option.

It's still out there, folks.

Yeah, I mean, some of the best women, like, I like going to personal development events, meet the other women who are also into personal development. So, um, yeah, my friend Amanda is validating us, by the way. Amanda's saying— Amanda's our Neurotic Blueprints coach, y'all.

Oh, okay.

She knows what's up. Amanda, uh, is— she says, bring in the truth. And she says quality of attention on dating apps is generally very low. Yeah, you're dealing with a subset. The people who are on dating apps are a subset of the general population. So what is going— what is that telling you? This isn't random. And also, the dating apps are designed to keep you on the dating app. Yeah, like that's how they make money. So their incentive to help you find a partner— this is— the incentives are perverse. And so for a man to be having a hard time on dating apps is completely understandable. And if you want to learn the skill, learn the skill and then enjoy the benefits of learning the skills.

Is there something that you can point to? You say skills plural, but is there something you can point to that was the turning point for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think on dating apps, there's so much about appearances. So learn how to dress well, learn how to groom. I see guys who don't groom their beard, you know, guys who don't groom their beard. I'm like, why don't you groom your beard or go to a barber or learn? Take quality photos. I don't have very quality photos up, but you can get even professional photos taken for your dating app or get some quality photos. Definitely have relationships with other guys and hobbies with other guys that are— have your own life. Don't make your whole life about finding a woman. That's gonna mess you up in a lot of ways. So, and then conversational skills, really practice your conversational skills. Read, go back to 1933, read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Like, it's important to be interested in the other person. It's more important to do that than to be interesting yourself. So be interested, be curious, learn how to ask quality questions, ask follow-up questions. Be interested in her as a person, you know. So if you learn these skills, then yeah, you could have more success on dating apps. But it is a lot about appearances on dating apps.

I mean, it's no— it's literally visually the first thing you see, the little headshot as you're scrolling through. You know, I haven't been on them in years, but I assume it's much the same. Amanda says he had no more fish pictures, please. There is something— there is something about men. I don't know if I don't know if all the men got together sometime and said, you know what's going to be cool? We take pictures of us holding fish. I don't think I've ever had a picture of me holding a fish. Not a thing. Maybe as a little kid.

It's ingrained in the male psyche. I think this is ingrained from evolution, that the way we, the way we show women that we're valuable is look at what we can offer you. We can provide. Yes.

Like me have food. I can catch food. I'm a good food catcher. I can provide for you. Never thought about it that way. You're probably right. So do we see many guys like in front of deer that they, or behind a deer that they killed and all that other stuff? I don't know, Amanda, do you see people with other forms of game that they have killed? Guy with a bear, a deer, or whatever.

Um, Amanda says that she read that it's because it's rare that men have a pic of themselves smiling. And obviously if they just caught a big fish, they're smiling.

There you go. There you go. Yeah, men don't take much in the way of selfies, or you know, you don't, rarely will you have some guys getting together for a beer or whatever and chatting, and suddenly one of the guys goes, picture time, and they all get together and take a pic. That's very rare. Usually one of the wives in the group will come over and say, let me take a picture of you boys together. So you're right, it's probably because we're all assembled together and we're happy. John says, stop with the filters. So he's talking to the ladies. Ladies may be a little heavier on the filter thing, that's for sure. It's a visual thing. And the whole world of altering one's appearance to appear, let's be honest, usually more youthful and more attractive as society has deemed, that's very much the world of the ladies with the makeup and the this and then that. So when they introduced the filter thing, obviously ladies are gonna jump on it. Jeez, you know, why wouldn't they? Well, why they shouldn't necessarily is because eventually you gotta meet the guy in person. So the guy meets the lady and goes, well, hello, person who's 25 years older than what I thought.

How are you?

That's a little, little awkward. Um, yeah. Oh, she says— Amanda says, yeah, a lot of hunting pics in Wyoming. Interesting, interesting.

Yeah.

Um, Jack says, women that fish and hunt, not common, but they are out there. Yeah, not very. I was just— we had a— in our private meeting today of our HFM Brotherhood— check out help4men.com, HFM Brotherhood— we had a meeting before this today, and we were talking about one of our guys is an avid hunter, and he said he's been hunting with exactly one woman his whole life, and that was his 8-year-old daughter. He took her hunting. Other than that, no other woman has ever been interested in hunting before. Yeah. So that's a pretty strictly dude thing. So yeah, there is, um, there is very much a predominant theme out there amongst men that the dating market overall is so stacked against them. More specifically, that we have these predominant themes of You know, women only go for, you know what I'm about to say, a certain upper, upper echelon of men. The tippy top of the pyramid, the hierarchy of men, so to speak. If you don't have, drum roll, six-pack abs, certain size adult, you know, and a certain height.

Six-figure income.

The 666, as they call it, right?

Yeah.

Then don't even bother. 'Cause women have certain standards that represent this much of the population. So if you're not in that little snippet up there, eh, don't even bother, dude. Meanwhile, we have some poor guy over here who's, I say poor, some dude over here who's 5'5", weighs 280 pounds, is charming as hell, and is killing it with the ladies. And I always point to that guy and go, hello? And the men say, that's an anomaly. I mean, come on, there's always an exception to the rule. This doesn't represent the rule. The rule is gotta look a certain way, have, oh, money, you know, gotta have so much money. So different ways of looking at this. One is, yeah, you might as well just bow out, dude. It's, you know, you're— everyone's a loser. Oh well, you're not going to get much of anywhere that way. And the other is, um, you know, the 5'5", 280-pound guy who has a lot of women. Maybe there's something to be learned from this guy. God forbid we go down that road, maybe he has a little certain something. Maybe there's something to the personality, gift of gab, charm, lack of anxiety, low anxiety, extroversion, all these other things that go into making a pretty attractive human being, especially an attractive dude. Maybe there's something to be learned there. But even again, when you present that, you get pushback from men saying, why should I bother working on those skills? The, the, the, the pool of female candidates out there is so bad that it's not even worth fighting for. So on one hand, it's, uh, we have no choice, and on the other hand, even if we had a choice, why bother? So there's a lot of men out there just painting an extremely grim picture of this whole dating scene. I think it's less of a reflection of reality and more of a reflection of their insecurities and their lack of luck in the market. And you feel bad for those guys.

You got a negative mindset, you're going to get negative results. It's like, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, Robert Greene has that book Seduction, and he talks about Casanova, you know, not the most attractive guy in the world. But what did he learn? He learned— and there are multiple methods of seduction. Some ethical and some unethical. And you can learn how to ethically seduce and be seductive. What, what's, what's seductive? Radical honesty. Like, wow, women, when, when, like, one of the things I'm out there— you see what you focus on, Amanda says. Yeah, if you believe that that's what all women want, 666, 6-foot, you know, all this stuff, 6-figure income. If that's what you believe, confirmation bias will kick in and you'll find evidence to support your view. But if you go at it from, hey, I believe that there are wonderful women out there, like, that's my attitude. I literally say, I love women, I love the feminine spirit, all women are beautiful. I say this to myself, I always say, all women are beautiful. And what does that do? That because I believe that I always find beauty in every woman I meet. And that's like, it's just a much more fun way for me to live. So, um, yeah, you can learn. Yeah. See, anyway, there's, there's some Amanda's, Amanda's dropping some wisdom over here, guys. So like, you know, um, yeah, I mean, just, you get to decide if you're happy with your results. Then you don't have to change anything. Oh yeah, that's what I was going to say. Some of the things that, some of the things that come up when I'm dating is I will be radically honest. Like some guys are kind of timid and afraid to say what they want, you know, and afraid to tell a woman, hey, I think you're beautiful, or I think whatever, like I'd love to take you on a date. And when I talk to women that way, you know, it doesn't Sometimes they're not interested. That's fine. I might get rejected. But the fact that, number one, I'm confident enough to be honest with them and confident enough to have my desires and to express them, and that I can take rejection. And if they reject me, I say, oh, that's too bad. You look like a lovely woman. I would have loved to get to know you, you know, and to be able to just be confident in yourself with honesty. Is— that makes me stand out. Showing interest in the woman as a woman and not just trying to get physical, a physical relationship only. And there are tons of guys who present one thing, and maybe they're the more handsome guys or whatever, they're more attractive for some way. So they present one thing, they say, I'm looking for a relationship. They get the woman into bed, and then, and then later the woman finds out that's all he was after, right? And it's such a frustrating experience for women. And you can stand out by valuing women and really just taking an interest in them as a person. And then the last thing, I'll just, I'll just mention this, is we can as men really work on building our emotional intelligence. This is something. And if you want a woman who's more emotionally intelligent, you work on building your emotional intelligence and you get access to, um, just a great— I don't want to rank women, but it's a higher echelon. It's like, it's— you get access to women who are more emotionally intelligent and mature and aware, and you get a higher quality experience. So These are all things that are within our control.

And there was a lot layered in there, what you said. And one of the big things that I see with a lot of men— fear of rejection. Huge, huge, huge, huge. Oh man, if men can get over that, they'll probably solve a lot of problems in their life, period. Not just with women.

Super attractive, by the way. If you can get over your fear of rejection and you're not defensive, super attractive.

Yeah. So, you know, having lunch with a lady and she says to you, I don't— just so you know, I don't think this is going anywhere. You'd be like, Hey, cool, no biggie. I got lunch, don't worry about it. Anyway, so did you see the game last night, you know, and continue on with your lunch. She'd be like, this is interesting. As opposed to a guy throws down his fork and gets up and says, I didn't like you anyway, you're ugly, whatever.

Oh gosh, you're going to turn around and insult a woman after that? That's just pure ego.

Exactly, that's all it is. But a lot of men have a really difficult time being rejected, which is in essence also why a lot of men, any super, super attractive woman, I know that's a subjective thing, let's say like a model, somebody at that level, objectively like a whoa type of person, will tell you they have difficulty in the dating market. And why? 'Cause men are really, really scared to approach them. Why? 'Cause the man knows she's probably, in his mind, she's probably gonna reject me. I don't even look at her. I mean, come on. And that woman will say, I'll tell you who has a shot, somebody who comes up and talks to me at a party. 'Cause no one comes up to me and talks to me at a party, ever. And so when some normal dude just goes, "Hey, who are you? What are you doing? I'm Ralph, nice to meet you," they're just like, "Oh, hello." And that, low anxiety is another thing. It's kind of an all-encompassing term, but that's something I see that a lot of men need to work on is their anxiety overall, social anxiety. They don't walk into a room just up to a random person and go, "Hey, what are you doing here? My name's Ralph, nice to meet you." That's just really like, oof. Again, fear of rejection, because even though that's not a romantic relationship they're pursuing per se, it is— that person may go like, get away from me, you weirdo, or do I know you, or something. Is that going to happen? Probably not, but in their mind, that's what they conjure up, and that's why they stay at home as opposed to going out. Huge social anxiety, fear of rejection.

I used to have tons of social anxiety.

Yep. Same here. Same here.

And I literally practiced walking up to people saying, "Hi, my name is Daniel. What's your name? That's a nice pair of shoes. Where did you get them?" You know, it's like literally practice having conversations until I got better and better and better. And I, I'm glad I have the skill. Did I have to go through the pain of, Messing things up and making mistakes, yeah. And being embarrassed, yeah.

That is the, that's the crux of a lot of anxiety work period is what they call like exposure therapy. You expose yourself to the source of said anxiety over and over, a little bit at a time at first, and then more and more and more and more and more to eventually like, what was I doing being so nervous about this again? The typical one is a lot of people have a fear of public speaking. I didn't like doing these videos knowing that tens of thousands, if potentially millions of people could see my dumb face. And that just made me like, gah-huh. And my early videos were me very stone-faced and pissed off looking. People say, you look like you're about to punch somebody. It's just the nerves and stuff in me. It's just like, oh God, I don't like— Still to this day, I will be the first to admit I don't like seeing my face come up in the feed every now and then and stuff. It still makes me go, uh-uh. Gotten over it to the point where I can finally kind of be myself, so to speak, in these, in these videos. And allows me to reach thousands of more people. And it's a big part of my business, so to speak, because I got to put myself out there. And I find myself— there are guys on my team at Help for Men. I want them to do their own content creation, put their own little brand out there. My Dad Starting Over is my little content creation thing, which leads people to Help for Men in our group. I want them to have their own little thing, but they're kind of, yeah, I gotta put my face out there and my grandma will see me on Facebook and she's gonna ask questions, you know. I don't know. So it's tough. It's tough to put yourself out there. A lot of anxieties and reservations. We're missing some, um, comments here. Um, Jack's saying he had to get over his own brokenness to recover and heal. Um, he says being on the autism spectrum, wife has ADHD, we're basically Mr. and Mrs. Weirdo. You know, uh, Jack, I hear that all the time. There's the, a disproportionately large part of our group at Help for Men is neurodivergent men. The proper term to use there— ADHD, autism spectrum, OCD, etc. Um, because they have relationship problems, and that's who we attract. And you talked about it before that you identify yourself as being a little bit on that neurospicy.

Little bit.

Yeah, yeah, as most—

a little neurospicy. Some, some stuff's going on up there.

Yeah, exactly. I've not been formally diagnosed myself, but I recognize some of what I hear and learn from others. I go, yeah, that sounds familiar. That's, that's been me my whole life. I was— not to brag— I was in the gifted program as a kid in, in grade school. They took us, quote unquote, smart kids and put us in the gifted program. And I remember we did all kinds of cool stuff in that. And then I'm talking to like a Dr. Matt Zuchreski, who's an expert on, uh, the autism spectrum and everything. And he was, he was telling me like all the kids in the gifted program were autistic, by the way. And I'm like, well, hold on a second. He's like, no, it's true, there's on the spectrum. Yeah, it's very, very common in that world. Like, oh, all right, interesting. Um, Candace saying she hates seeing and hearing women do this to men. Playing hard to get is just playing games with people's emotions and perceptions of self-worth. It's also a big part of the mating game, the hard to get thing. You know, it's, it's a human nature thing. If you want something, you want it, you go, here's the thing, then you pull it back the last second, go, I don't know, maybe I'll give it to you, I don't know. People tend to want it more, whatever that is, and people take advantage of that human tendency and Play hard to get. Don't answer your text right away. Don't, um, maybe don't show super amount of interest right off the bat when you interact with somebody. That's a big— yes, somewhat manipulative ploy in the mating game, but that, that's been going on for years and years. I don't think we'll ever quite get over that as one of our tendencies of the human animal. Paul says, I didn't have social anxiety until I started to notice the relationship with my wife going downhill. Why is my relationship with my wife so influential to how I approach people? Interesting. And have an impact on my anxiety as a whole? Well, that's something to explore probably with a therapist to get to the bottom of that. It could point to some codependent kind of issues. Uh, one of the biggest things you will hear in a lot of codependent people is my mate's emotion dictates my emotion. If they're having a bad day, I'm ruined. I can't function. If they have a bad look on their face, I have to know why they have a bad look on their face and we have to fix it right now or else I feel an intense amount of anxiety and shame and guilt and everything. That's not a good place to be. You gotta figure out where that came from. And like most things, it starts when you were a kiddo, probably learned it from mom or dad in some way. And you've carried that over to your relationship with your wife. And men tend to sometimes pedestalize women and put them on a higher than us kind of level. And so if they feel bad, well, we really feel bad when the goddess up on the pedestal feels bad. We wanna fix whatever ails her. And so yeah, that's gonna affect how you treat everybody around you. You're gonna go into work with your head hanging down, your friends are gonna say, what's wrong with you? Well, my wife's pissed about something, man. We haven't had sex in 6 months and yeah. What do you think about that, Daniel?

Yeah, I would say the same thing. That is, yeah, my first question is, okay, what's going on inside of you? You've got this anxiety, what kind of stories are in your head? And why, you know, why is your wife having this influence on you? Codependency is a good thing to look at, like you just mentioned. So see why it's so important for her to feel a certain way in order for you to feel okay, and what you need internally, like, to, to take care of that anxiousness. So So there's more to explore there.

Yeah. And there's, um, this isn't a new topic. Who was his name who said that? Mr. Paul. Um, that's not an unusual strange topic to explore. Men have been dealing with this forever, especially in our space, the relationship talk space, so much that a man wrote a book about it. And the book was called No More Mr. Nice Guy, which a lot of women hear that topic and go, what's wrong with being nice? It's about basically codependence in men. And they try to do what you're talking about and just try to morph things to appease the woman and appease everybody else in his life so he doesn't feel anxiety. And he sometimes does manipulative kind of things to shape, you know, his relationships and not so good stuff. So you may want to check out that book, No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Dr. Robert Glover. I have suggested that book to I don't know how many men. I told Robert too when I met him, I go, you're welcome, because I've probably sold like 100,000 copies of that dumb book over the years. He's like, yeah, thanks a lot, pay my mortgage, appreciate it. I said, yeah, because It applies to so many men out there. So many.

Yep. Yep. That book was hugely influential to me too.

In my last chat with him, we're noticing it's not getting any better. It's not— there's not a societal lesson that's been learned that we're starting to see that go down. Oh no, it's quite the opposite. It's going up. We're getting more and more men that codependent. Mr. Nice Guys. Yeah, it's getting worse and worse. And, um, That also lends itself to going down the quote-unquote dark side of things, of a lot of over-the-top misogynistic kind of sexist language of all women are this and that, insert bad word here. I don't want to say because it'll get us taken off of Facebook, but you know what I'm saying. And it's very much an us against them mentality, victim mentality, and that affects a lot of our world. And men tend to be more aggressive than women in a lot of things, and we tend to be more aggressive when it comes to that kind of thing too. Although there's some militant feminists that are giving us a run for our money. Yeah, men can get pretty nasty. Just, just ask our pal Dr. Psych Mom. Um, you know, she talks about her comments and the messages she gets from the angry men out there, and you can get pretty nasty.

Um, and those men have emotional wounding. Anyone who's saying all women are something negative has emotional wounding, and they need healing.

And then the guys will come back though. Let's, you know, play devil's advocate here, and the guy will say, dude, I've been with 8 different women in my life, long-term relationships, and all 8 of them cheated on me. Therefore, I have a pretty good sample size, Ralph. For 8 out of 8, man, cheating is way more common what we think. Every woman cheats, yada yada. I go, okay, hold on a second. Yeah, I can go talk to my buddy Elliot— it's a real name of a buddy of mine who has A very healthy long-term relationship, has two little kiddos. If you look at his family, they all have healthy relationships. His sister, his older brother, and then you look at his mom and dad, what an awesome, healthy couple, very sweet to each other. Everybody loves them. Then you look at wife's family, same thing. Mom and dad, the dad's a teacher at my kids' school. Everybody loves that guy. They're such a happy couple. He also has another kiddo. There's a pattern here. And when you go to them and say, my buddy Bob over here had 8 women, all 8 cheated on him, they would say like, what's wrong with Bob? What's going on with Bob that he runs into women like that? Because in their world, a healthy, secure, you know, dynamic— they don't know that world at all. That's something a lot of people in our world don't, don't realize is that we don't represent the norm necessarily, um, with all these dysfunctional relationships. We just think we do because that's the circle we run in. And to that guy whose 8 women have all cheated on him, I'd say, time to look at yourself, buddy, and see what's going on, why you're attracting these people, why you're attracted to these people, why you run in these circles, what's going on. It's kind of like the most basic version of that is the guy, middle of nowhere Iowa, who tells me that all women are on meth. I was like, I've never known a person that's on methamphetamine. I don't know what you're talking about, dude. He's like, no, no, man, I'm telling you, everyone in my little town of 400 people are on meth. Okay, that's middle of nowhere Iowa, dude. They're bored out of their mind. Of course, they got nothing else better to do, you know. That's not a, that's not a good representation of the world as a whole, even, or our country, or even your state probably. But, but that's, that's how they look at it. It's very narrow field of view. That's what I see, that's what I've experienced, therefore that's, that's the way it is, right? Yeah, no, not necessarily.

Yep, yep, yep. It's, uh, our sample size isn't as big as as we think, and our sample is skewed. Our personal experience is skewed by where we live and who we are attracted to, the types of things that we're looking for. Obviously, somebody who's in that situation— and when I, when I smile and laugh, I've been cheated on. It hurts like hell. So I get it, you know? But yeah, I mean, if we're repeatedly experiencing something That's the universe is trying to teach you a lesson until you're going to take a look at it and it's going to repeat. It's going to repeat until you stop and take a look at why that's happening. For sure.

It's difficult, though, to look at things so pragmatically, scientifically, if you will, when it's, when it's wrapped around emotion with these relationships. There's an emotional component to it. I got my feelings hurt. I fell in love and I committed myself and I was vulnerable and I got hurt. That's way more difficult than, man, I just lost— I got fired for the third time. A lot of guys would be like, why'd I keep getting fired from my jobs? All right, maybe something about me is not very good at what I do. Maybe I need to go back to training. Maybe that's, that's easier to swallow than, you know, the relationship game. Relationship game's a little tougher.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, yes, it's, it's emotional. And the problem that I see as the biggest problem is resisting the emotions. So you have to go through a grieving process if you get hurt like that. And nobody wants to go through grief because it's a pain. It's, it's awful. Grief, grief is awful. It feels like dying. And so nobody wants to go through that. And the resistance to that grief is what's, is what's causing the resistance to looking at it. It's the resistance to feeling it. And yeah, maybe somebody's less hurt by getting fired. I've been fired and I thought it hurt. I thought I did not like getting fired from a job. And so, and I've also, you know, have been broken up with or whatever and it hurts or been, you know, like, so each of these experiences, the difficulty comes from resisting the fact that, yeah, now I have to go through some grief because it actually really hurts. And maybe, maybe for some people, like you said, the relationship is harder than losing a job, but it's the same, same principle.

You tapped into something pretty big there. I'm feeling an intense amount of pain, emotional pain, as a result of a breakup, being cheated on, whatever it may be. The number one and totally understandable reaction to said pain is, how do I stop this? And Not so much of, hmm, let me take a step back and examine this and figure out what caused this pain and how can I avoid this in the future. No, no, no. They're just like, this hurts bad. Me want stop. Tell me how to stop now. Yeah, that's, that's the reaction I get from a lot of men. How do I get past this? It's like, dude, you don't. You have to go through it. You got to feel it. But it sucks. I cried myself to sleep last two nights. Yeah, you're probably gonna do that another 20 nights in a row before it gets better. Sorry, dude, it hurts. The best thing I could tell you, reach out to others for talk and socialize, get help. But, but yes, you're going to experience pain and grief. Um, I'm sorry, interrupt you, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say, and when you are crying, are you telling yourself, I shouldn't be crying? Are you resisting it, saying I shouldn't be crying right now, or I shouldn't be feeling this way? All that's doing is invalidating your own feelings and it's keeping you stuck. It's like, can you give yourself some love and validation? Which may— which our, our society, men and women are awful at validating each other's emotions. Women, women think that they're good at it, but they're not in general. And men are not good at it in general. And can you validate, say, man, it really makes sense that I'm crying right now because I I loved this woman and she just broke my heart. Can you, can you wrap yourself in love and validate yourself? Because that's, that's the hard part of it. That's— and that— but that's how the healing happens.

Excellent point. And as opposed to how do I stop me from hurting so much, it's opposed to giving yourself grace and understanding and feeling where this comes from and feel the emotion and understand, like, you're a human being, you're normal for experiencing all this. People want to put like an almost Band-Aid surface level of healing, if you will, or fixing on top of things where it— you ain't gonna get anything done. I shared, um, example of this not too long ago where I talked about still to this day, 12 years after being cheated on and everything else— not to get too much into that, but what happened was I discovered infidelity on my ex-wife's part while I was on vacation on a beach in Florida. For years after that, if I would be on a beach again or smell this smell or hear the sound of a beach or a vacation, my little anxiety would spike a little bit. I would just feel a little icky, like, yep, yep.

I've had the same thing.

So I shared that in a video once. I'm like, yeah, it still affects me to this day. My comments filled up with people going, what you need to do, dude, is you need to take CBD, marijuana, you, uh, go to this, read this book. It helped me a lot with this PTSD. And yet I'm like, people, the point is not how to fix this lingering feeling I have. It's that the lingering feeling is perfectly normal. And you'd have to be some kind of weirdo not to have some kind of lingering feeling after enduring a trauma. It's just to take it, live in it, and go, what's going on here? Hey, it's okay, dude. You know, you endured a trauma. Your, your body's reminding you of this. You're experiencing it all over. It happens. And, uh, that's a message we've kind of lost is the whole You experience it, live in it. I think maybe men may have a better grasp of that, but the way men frame it is man up, which is, yeah, feel it, it sucks, doesn't it? Go work out, you know, burn that energy off, lift some weights, something like that. Nothing unhealthy necessarily about that. Maybe they're missing a layer or two under that, but a lot of people are just, yeah, just cover up the— mask the pain, or, you know some kind of medicated or in some way.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so going to the gym can be a healthy way if you're actually feeling the feelings and validating them. But if it— but some, some people use the gym, men and women use the gym to avoid the feelings, to distract themselves. If I can just be stronger. David Goggins is a great example of emotional suppression. Like David Goggins, I love the guy. Like, but the way he says, Can't Hurt Me is the name of his book. Are you familiar with David Goggins?

Oh yeah, I love the guy.

He's got great things to say. But you notice the emotional repression that he is using this to repress the pain. So, you know, just, just pay attention to if, if you want the actual healing so that you can actually open up your heart and experience authentic connections with other human beings, authentically. It's a felt experience. If you want that, you've got to be able to feel the pain, to slow down, which takes slowing down and not just pushing it away and avoiding it.

And that pain though, post-breakup for example, post being betrayed— betrayal is a huge thing, especially—

I've been there, I've been through it all.

I've been betrayed. It's, it's an awful thing. It's so acutely horrible, especially for some people. Maybe more so your neurodivergent types or whatever it may be. It's so acutely horrible that they will avoid any kind of interpersonal romantic relationships ever again for the rest of their life, just to avoid that acute pain ever happening again. Like, lesson learned, one and done, I'm out. Yeah, but there's this gal who wants to meet you. I'm out. But, and you know, they resign themselves to a world of pornography or whatever it may be. As sad as that is, that's the life for a lot of guys. Simply because opening themselves up and exposing themselves, so to speak, and being vulnerable— last time they did that, oof, it didn't end well. Yeah, it's an aversion to that pain again we're talking about, which is understandable.

Yeah, this is, this is a classic story that's in so many of our movies. So many movies are about somebody who gets hurt and then struggles to open themselves back up to love. Yeah, there's, there's a classic scene in, um, Home Alone 2 where Macaulay Culkin is He's in the— he's in the— in the attic of the church with the bird lady from New York Central Park.

I haven't seen it forever, but I've seen it, but I don't remember specific scenes.

And she— and she's telling the— Macaulay Culkin, she's telling him that, you know, she just can't open herself up to love anymore. And he tells her a story about, yeah, but then, yeah, if you— if you want to never get hurt, or this is Good Will Hunting. This is Good Will Hunting. The kid was abused and now he's afraid to open himself up. And the whole point of the movie was that finally he's willing to open himself up and take a chance. It's, it's your choice if you want to live with courage or not. And, and it's hard. I get it. It's hard.

I think where a lot of men frame it in a negative way is that they view it as with being vulnerable and open comes with it a series of other things which lead us to an unnecessary level of vulnerability and weakness that will invariably hurt us, such as— okay, I found this on the web. I got Siri trying to talk to me. Anyway, um, so they may say something effective. They assume getting vulnerable and open with woman equals handing over paycheck, intertwining yourself financially, having 12 kids, and all this other stuff. They take that next level. So I will therefore be financially and socially ruined and so forth. It's like, no, timeout, dude. You put the cart way before the horse here. No, just being open and vulnerable to somebody doesn't mean handing over your life keys to them. Maybe that's in part what got you into trouble, having that mindset in the first place. No, it's, um, like you say, it's being open and emotional, vulnerable, fearless of if, if I hand over this emotion and, and what was the, what was the term you, you use? Radical honesty. Yeah, if I'm radically honest with this person about who I really am, they may in turn hurt me. I guess invariably, or the end— the end answer to that is, well, so what? So they do. That's kind of on them. They're the dick that hurt you for being— that's so what? You move on to the next one. Oh well, what's the worst that can happen to you? You have that little ick feeling of, uh, that was not fun for a little bit. You can endure that. It's no big deal. You've endured worse. Which I think is a big, big reason why guys like you and me can preach this so well, is because we've been there, done that. We've been to the gutter. We've been face down in the gutter. Hell, we've been all— we've been through all that. So to have a woman throw a drink in my face or call me a bald creep or whatever it may be, it's a laughably like, I don't care. Yeah, I think it's almost funny. Well, to this guy who hasn't been through that, he's— that's a life-ender thing for him.

So Yeah, I, you know, this, this goes back to, okay, we talked about how the no more Mr. Nice Guy thing and how guys are nice guys and it's maybe even getting worse right now. I mean, if we look at our society and the complete lack of leadership, like look at our presidential election and the complete lack of leadership.

Yeah.

And, um, in our society, it's this, it's the, it's the cycle, right? You've heard, uh, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make bad times, bad times make strong men. We're in bad times. We are in bad times. There is a lack of leadership, high national debt. There's, there's, there's conflict in our country, conflict internationally. There's all kinds of problems, economic problems. There's so many problems right now. It's, we, we're in hard times. And. When I look at what is our job now as men, what we are being asked to do is we are being asked to step up emotionally, evolve emotionally, mature emotionally. Not easy, hard as hell. And then I think about, okay, this is what— this is the task that is being asked of us now at this time in history. And I think, okay, What were the tasks that my grandfather and his father and his grandfather were asked to do? These men put boots on the ground and held rifles in their hands and had to charge against an army of somebody trying to kill them with gas and chemicals. That's what they had to face. That's in my blood. That's in your blood. That courage is in our blood. They had to face utter horror, and they did it. And now our job is to face our emotions. And if we can do that as men, that's going to transform our country. It's going to— that's, that's what we're being asked to do right now.

How ironic that we probably have a good population of men that when given the choice between do you want to storm the beach at Normandy with a rifle in your hand knowing there's a 75% chance you're going to get blown apart versus do you want to be emotion and emotionally vulnerable and go out and put yourself on the market? And some men are going to pick the gun and the beach. A lot of them are. That's sad.

Well, this is the front lines. This is when you get to choose whether you set yourself apart.

Very well put. I love it. I love it. You put a very manly spin on something that is seen by a lot as not the manliest thing in the world— being open or vulnerable. Some men see it as the most— what's the term they use these days? Simpish thing, wimpy thing, wussy thing.

Not simpish at all.

That was my vernacular as a kid, a wuss, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

No, it's quite the opposite. Before we wrap her up, one more time, how can people find out more about you? And I will type it in here in the comments so people can see it. Daniel—

I may have ruffled feathers. If anybody still likes me—

You're still with us.

Yeah, if you're still with us and you happen to like me after me ruffling feathers the way I did, um, then you can find me at facebook.com/danielwilliamrobertson. My middle name is William. Facebook is the best way to get in touch with me. You can— my free— oh, danielrobertson.com is my website on there, so you can see all kinds of stuff there. Um, and there's a free Facebook group you can join Thriving Relationships is our free Facebook group. So, and, uh, and yeah, if we have more opportunities, I'd love to chat, and hopefully we bring value to your audience. Thanks.

Very good.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Thank you for coming on. Love it. We should do this more often. Always have good chats, good thought-provoking chats. And thank you everybody for joining us today. Some good comments here and there. I think we got to everybody. Um, People saying, uh, uh, Simran saying, I'm learning to sit shiva with my emotions. Well, mazel tov. Uh, you're on the front lines, Amanda. Some good stuff here. So yeah, welcome. All right, thank you so very much, Mr. Daniel. Appreciate you. Thank you for all you do, Ralph. All right, thank you, brother. And for the rest of you, thank you for joining us today. Check out helpformen.com. Hey, go to Forbes YouTube page if you could please. Go to Forbes, look for the Donald Trump divorce video. In fact, why don't I go ahead and copy that because I want to send as many people as we can to that so they'll see it was worth having Mr. Ralphie Boy on, on their, on their channel. I'll copy the link, I'm gonna paste it in here. Give that video a watch if you could please, guys on the chat and in the comments. I would appreciate it. And give it a like while you're on there. Appreciate that.

All right guys, I'm gonna check out that video.

There you go. All right, thank you so much, guys. Mr. Daniel, thank you. You have a good one.

Okay, thank you.