Dads Dating After Divorce: Interview with Dr. Shawn T. Smith

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting.

Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now, forget about whatever financial Natural disasters you've had, personal failures, relationship failures. What would the hero of your life's movie do right now?

Hello and welcome to Dads Dating After Divorce. My name is Jude Sandoval and I am one of your hosts and the founder and creator of the Divorced Advocates community. And my colleague here is—

my name is Ralph Brewer Brewer, but I go by the pen name DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over. I'm the founder of dadstartingover.com and the men's group called the DSO Fraternity. And I've also authored several books, including the popular one titled The Dead Bedroom Fix.

And today, our guest, I'm unbelievably excited about— I've followed him for many years and have had a great conversation with him on my podcast in the past. And his, his fascination with psychology began as a child growing up in the family owned bar of all places, where he watched his father diffuse all manner of problems. And he knew then that he had found his calling. He earned a BA degree in psychology and communication from the University of Colorado Denver, as well as a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Denver. His clinical training has included the treatment of trauma, substance abuse, and traumatic brain injury. And he took an early interest in treating anxiety disorders and working with couples. He's been in private practice since 2008, and he's the author of several books, including the one we're going to be primarily discussing today, which is The Tactical Guide to Women: How Men Can Manage Risk in Dating and Marriage. Welcome, Sean T. Smith.

Well, thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for, thanks for being here. And Sean, you're, you're wildly popular across the internet. I don't know. I mean, I'm Sure, you might know that a little bit. And I found you years and years back, and I follow your blog and, and follow your website. And I've read your book. This, this book is absolutely phenomenal. Like I was saying offline, that it should be basic reading for any teen male that is starting to date, or young man that's starting to date. But it is definitely one that I've recommended multiple times on my show and also to to men in, in, in, in my private practices as well. And so tell us a little bit about yourself and then kind of what led you to write this book. And I know you also have a companion book for women.

Yeah, what, what led me to write the book, and thanks for pointing out that, you know, I would also like to see young men read it because part of my motivation for writing the book was to cover the things that I wish someone had told me when I was younger. And the reason I wrote the book was, as you mentioned, I've been in clinical private practice for a long time now, and, uh, something compelled me when I was working with men early in my career and they would talk about relationship problems. I just started wondering, who taught you about relationships? Who taught you how to pick women in relationships? And the answer invariably was no one. You know, we, we're left to sort it out for ourselves, and that usually involves a whole lot of mistakes. And so the reason I wrote the book is to to just hopefully just cut out some of those mistakes for anybody who, you know, is looking for a little bit of strategy.

Right. That's, man, I, yeah, I saw Ralph shaking his head and I was definitely shaking my head and it's not something that's, it's not something that's taught in school. And if you don't have a strong male figure, which I would argue that these days we have less and less of, unfortunately, then you kind of learn on the go, and then you end up being me in my, in my 50s, still making mistakes and going back to your book and referencing like Chapter 6, personality disorders, and how to deal with, uh, how to deal with, uh, you know, somebody around that. So, so, or stability, right? That's Chapter 6. Um, so I, I'd like to, for us to just kind of chat with the dads and have an open conversation about the, the 3 parts of your book. The first being risk management, the second being the Bright Triad, and part 3, how to come— how to avoid completely effing up your life. And maybe, um, through each of those, I, I know that that first part really talks about, um, self-development, and, and take us through that so we can give some tips to, to the dads that are getting out there again after, uh, after their, their marriage ends and how we can help them to kind of mitigate some of the risks that you, that you mentioned quite often throughout the book.

Yeah, well, that first part of the book is about, it is about finding what the reason that you're on the planet before you start taking on passengers, so to speak. And I'm curious if you guys think that it's equally applicable to guys who are more established in their 40s and 50s, but I wrote that section for with younger men in mind, 20s and 30s, because I think what a lot of guys do is they will pick their relationships without thinking, how does this woman fit into where I'm going in, in life? And one of the challenges for young guys— it was pretty rough being a young guy because you have this sense that the world is expecting something of you. And it's, it's pretty clear that every society throughout time and across cultures expects young men to provide something. We don't get the free ride that women and children do. We don't, we don't need to, but there is that expectation. But if you're a young guy, a lot of times you have no idea what it is that you're here to do and what your purpose is going to be ultimately. And so if you're, if you're choosing relationships and women before you figure out what your values are, um, you know, you're kind of setting yourself up for, for a lot of conflict down the road. Because the values will start to collide and your sense of purpose will— since— will start to collide with what her sense of purpose is. Unless you happen to get lucky and you pick someone that, that it turns out aligns with you. But luck is kind of iffy strategy. But I'd be curious if you guys think that that's something that older guys, 40s and 50s, 60s, coming out of divorce— do you think it's an equally applicable question?

Yeah, I do. If I may, um, it's interesting that what we're describing, and if you agree, Sean, or not, is a very, um, a very pragmatic way of looking at relationships. Does this person fit? This is what I as a man prescribed for the ideal mate, and she needs to fit in these parameters. That is ironically something that I think women innately do when they're looking for their man. Is he going to be a good provider for me? Is he going to be able to protect me? Is he going to be fill in the blank. While for men, from my experience, uh, it is basically, is she pretty enough? Not too pretty because that, you know, scares a lot of men off. Ask any supermodel type person. And, uh, does she like me? And that's about it.

Yeah.

And a lot of men think, I found my soulmate in math class in 7th grade.

That's it.

Pretty.

Does she talk to me?

Pretty. Does she talk to me? That's— that about summarizes it. So we're telling these men post-divorce, you know, that old playbook that you had, that is a big reason why you got in this mess that you're in in the first place in your 40s and 50s. So it's a different world, dude. And frankly, it's—

it's—

some people think the rules are completely different now, and this is a completely different landscape that we're in with dating and everything else. I need to go into this with a new mindset. Well, technically, you needed to be in the same mindset some 30-odd years ago when you met your first wife. The rules, I guess the ground rules haven't necessarily changed. So if you want to have a good dating life going forward and possibly find Mrs. Right, uh, yeah, you're going to need to be a little bit more pragmatic about this thing and, uh, look at this, um, it— you dare— you don't want to say a cold point of view, but not an overly romanticized point of view, I guess, is a better way of saying it.

Yeah, I think you use the word pragmatic, and I think that's the right word. There's, there's a couple things in what you're just talking about. One is your old patterns, your own playbook, as you said, your way of doing relationships, the way you organize yourself around other people. Um, that's one, and it's, it's a big one for guys coming out of divorce because you hear that the, the second— the rate of second divorces is higher than the rate of first divorces, and the rate of third divorces is higher than second divorce. So the more times you marry, the more likely you are to get divorced. But there's a huge caveat to that. The guys who figure out what they brought, you know, just objectively what they brought and what the other person brought, because it's easy to err on the side of the other person's the bad guy or I'm the bad guy. Guys, you know, people will make those two kinds of errors. So if you can get a reasonable assessment of what you brought into the relationship without taking on too much or too little responsibility, then your chances of succeeding in the next marriage skyrocket. And I don't have data for that. That's just sort of my clinical observation. But then the other piece, aside from your relationship patterns and your playbook, is your vision of the world. And I don't know if you guys are familiar with Thomas Sowell. He's an economist, but he wrote— one of his many books is called "A Conflict of Visions." And in this book, he talks about two ways of viewing the world. And it's not the only two ways. It's just the only two ways that he talks about in this book. And there's the vision that aligns roughly with Democrats and the— the vision that aligns roughly with Republicans. But what he's saying is that beneath your political orientation is your philosophy and your ideology. And beneath your philosophy and ideology is your vision and the way you see— it's basically the way you see other human beings and the way you see the world should be. And your vision of the world, taking it away from the realm of politics, the way you see the world informs every decision that you're going to make, from the— from your view of money to your view of education to the view of how you're going to raise your children. And if your vision is not aligned with her vision and vice versa, then you're just setting up a field of conflict for everything that comes along, and not even really understanding where that conflict is coming from, because our vision of the world is, is so transparent to ourselves because, you know, we're, we're the fish in water, basically. We can't see our vision of the world unless we sort start thinking about it. So, so getting a clear sense of where your values lie and where her values lie. I, I think when I, when I've worked with older guys coming out of their first marriages, that continues to be an issue for them, that they haven't really thought about their values and their vision of the world and how that may or may not sync with somebody else's values and vision.

Yeah, and you, you covered a lot there, and I wanted to go back to your first point too, which was take the time to learn to understand what you brought to the relationship, what your, your, um, uh, what your part was in the relationship. And, and to do that, do you feel like you need to take time off from dating after your divorce to be able to clearly to work through that, to understand that, or do you feel that you can do that in getting in relationship again? Because the big question I get from guys a lot is, oh, I, I want to get in a relationship that's going to help me to understand myself better. But, you know, is that positive? Is that negative? Do you see something in, in your practice that's one way or the other is better?

Um, yeah, that's a wonderful question because I don't think there's a— there's not a uniform answer. I think it depends. The only time I would say it's probably not a good idea to do that work within a relationship is if you've been using relationships as an escape and as a comfort for yourself. But at the same time, how do you practice relationships without being in relationships? So maybe there's some guys for whom a little break is necessary because they're not able to really function fully on their own. And I do think that's a, that's an important piece to be able to function on your own so that you're not coming in with a sense of desperation. And this, this relationship is my savior and my rescue. You know, that, that's a pretty dangerous mindset.

Yeah, a lot of men that I talk to, uh, they may not be so heady about, you know, I'm desperate and I don't know how to function without another human being, but it's just that they are in relationship mode, that that's all they know. And they've known relationship mode for 20-some-odd years— husband, wife, staying at home watching TV every Friday— and they want that back more than anything. It's just something that they're familiar with. The single life of going to clubs and bars and meeting— uh, it's just, I don't like that. So when they find one that, again, she's somewhat nice and she's kind of easy on the eyes, I will make her wife number 2, like, 2 months after I've divorced wife number 1. And they don't look at it as treating the woman like a human Band-Aid. All they look at is, I just feel comfortable, this is what I know, and this is what I like, and she likes that too, and here we go. Yeah, from what I see—

Band-Aid, I like that.

About 9 times out of 10, it doesn't end very well. Because he hasn't worked through the issues of— you just need to work on yourself, take a timeout, think about all these things, stop using these people as human Band-Aids. Sure enough, there's a codependency thing going on here. You need to, um, what's wrong with being a single dude and date around for a while if you want to do that? But with a caveat of also there's these other guys that when I say just date around for a while, as soon as they find one, they wipe the slate clean of other dating candidates and say, I'm going to focus on this one, and it's only this one. And get their heart broken and they go, you know, go back into their cave and hide for a while because they're heartbroken again. So I guess a case could be made— jump in the deep end of the pool, learn how to swim, or just take your time, figure out, you know, what's going on between the ears and get that straight first.

Yeah, and I think the unifying concept there is figuring out what your motivations and your behaviors are. And if you can do that in a relationship, okay. If you need to do it outside of a relationship, okay. But That's the task.

Yeah. And what you described, Ralph, was exactly me. I just was in relationship mode, got back into another relationship, that one didn't work, got into another one, that didn't work, got into another one, that didn't work until I finally said, oh, okay, there's a common denominator that, that is, was working here. And that's me not knowing what it is that I'm bringing that's, that's causing all these relationships to fail. And so I need to stop, I need to really take some time and then really go through the, I call it the seasons, going through the seasons, going through a full year of seasons by myself with my, with my family. And, and I feel like that is a particularly good way to go about it. Like right after a divorce, when you might be— we're talking with dads, and I'm a dad— in being able to adjust to a new life with children as a single father, etc., without having a distraction of another romantic relationship in there that might be so heavy for you. So Comments on that, Sean?

Um, without the distraction of another relationship. Yeah, so it sounds like what you were doing is you were, you were doing that work of figuring out your relationship patterns, and it sounds like it's— if I'm hearing you right, that for you it needed to happen outside of a relationship.

Yes, for sure. Well, I needed to do what you, what you said, which is really take the time, understand what I value, what I want to create, my vision and direction for my life, and then be able to create that, start to create that life, and then bring somebody in that can complement that and be part of that without me having to do that in the context of the relationship of that being part of it. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Or the driving force behind it.

Yeah!

Yeah! A relationship can be very distracting from your overall "mission" as a guy. You know, when you're head over heels in love, especially when you're fresh out of a divorce and you're hurting so badly and you're traumatized and oh, now I feel great with this one! It's very easy to push some very important stuff to the side just to focus on Miss Perfect. And I've heard of guys saying, I went ahead and let my ex-wife take the kids, you know, an extra week or weekend because I'm going off to wherever with the new gal. I'm like, oof, be careful. I mean, work gets shoved aside and everything else. And then when that relationship— I was going to say inevitably, not necessarily— will probably fail, then you're left with, oh crap, now I got to clean up the pieces of the mess that I've made from ignoring all these things for so long. For some men, not for all.

Right, right! Let's talk about your second point too and that ties in what just— what Ralph just said about our mission and as men and that inherent masculine nature that we have to be on mission and creating that vision of the world and knowing— knowing or not creating that vision, knowing what our vision of the world is. There's some tips Sean, that you can give the men in doing that and in working through coming to that understanding and knowledge for finding your—

yeah, finding your purpose.

Yeah, finding your purpose. Yeah. Understanding what your vision of the world is, what that— where that aligns, where that falls on the spectrum.

Yeah. Curious what you guys think, but I think one of the keys for younger guys in particular, if you're not one of those guys who's lucky enough to know why you're here and what you're supposed to be doing, is to do a little bit of experimentation. And you try different paths. And when you try something, you find out if you like it or not.

And yeah, so what— in my very pragmatic look at the world of relationships, I think one of the worst things a man can do is marry his high school sweetheart because you have so much growing to do through your teens, through your 20s, hell, even into your 30s. Each decade I'm just a completely new, different person based upon all these experiences I've had. And to have one person that you meet in high school, for example, and drag them along through all of those changes, and everything will be fine through all of those changes, through her personality changes and yours and your different way of looking at the world— good luck. Um, I find that, um, the best partners are those that have been through all those things and have navigated all those turbulent waters of life and figured out exactly what it is they want and what their mission or purpose is. And there, I think they're far more likely to have successful relationships.

Yeah, I do think that the, the earlier you marry, the tougher it is generally. The exception to that is if each of you is very invested in, um, a cultural structure like a religion. Like if you're, if you're both Mormon and you're both committed to Mormonism, then yeah, that's, that's a really great framework to, to work from. You're probably going to grow in similar directions. But something like that aside, Um, yeah, it is tough to predict that the two of you are going to grow in similar directions unless you're really clear that you have similar values and you both want to go in the same direction. You both have a similar vision of the world and what you want to accomplish.

Yeah, I don't know what— I don't know what the statistics are about arranged marriages, for example, in some cultures. I think that they have a pretty good track record of sticking it out for decades throughout their whole life.

Yeah, and I have to imagine that there's some cultural framework there that supports—

yeah, I would think so. Some constraints and parameters around the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's so true. Didn't Jon Bon Jovi— isn't he married to his high school sweetheart? And I don't know anything about that marriage, but— and I don't know if I'm even talking about the right rock star, but I'd be really curious to know how that worked for them with a touring, uh, multi-platinum male musician.

Yeah, yeah, I was curious how that works.

Yeah, there's got to be some cultural framework that, that supports that.

Well, it's very interesting that you say that, Ralph, because I look back on my life, my dating life, my marriage, and then my post-dating life. And, and I think back and I feel like it would have benefited me to have married earlier in my life, to have taken that time knowing— with the caveat of knowing what I know now. Now, that's, that seems to be the challenge, though. And this is why I feel these, these conversations are so important. Your book is so important, Shawn, is that if I had somebody who had taught me more about relationships, like I try to do with my daughters, to talk them through. And I always tell them, like, I'm not an expert, I'm just sharing with you all of my mistakes, basically, so that you can, you can see and try to understand how to better navigate a relationship. But if I had somebody that was helping, and we taught— you talk about that, that cultural structure of families and being able to talk and share with them and and guide them through that, through that process. If I had somebody to do that, I think it would have been more beneficial for me to marry younger and be able to work through those challenges and grow together. Because at this point now, Ralph Brewer, you've been successful in a second marriage. I have not. And it's been over 9 years now and finding somebody. I find that navigating the waters now, it feels like— and obviously I can't go back and relive life, but it feels like it is much more challenging now than it would have been in my, in my younger years had I known a little bit more but also had a little more guidance.

What is it about youth that makes it less challenging in your mind?

What is it about, uh, what is it about youth? Um, what it, what it is about youth is those experiences can be problematic to pair bonding, that can be problematic to creating an environment and a life with somebody if there's— and I think maybe some of this has to do with trauma, childhood trauma, unresolved trauma, a lot of the stuff that, that you talk about in your book, Sean, with personality disorders, stuff like that, that mitigating some of that on the back end is because of the experiences that they've had in that timeframe. Any thoughts on that, Sean?

Sorry, say that again. Help me out with that one.

So, so it's more— it feels to me to be more challenging at this juncture in life, in, in late, you know, late midlife, late 40s, 30s, 40s, because of all the experiences that, that people have taken from their lifetime and going through maybe previous marriages, relationships, whatever it may be, then trying then to come together and mitigate all of that, particularly with with kids and family. And again, I'm talking specifically to dads, and try to work through all that baggage, if you will, but just challenges in order to find that, that spot where you can then go forward and have a healthy marriage and go forward.

Yeah, all that history is certainly— I mean, it's a blessing and a curse because you know where you stand, but in terms of your values and your vision, your purpose, but at the same time, that's it, it clearly contradicts with— you, you find out as you get older that what you're about contradicts, um, to some degree almost what everyone, what they're about, if that makes any sense. Like, when you're 18, all the girls are a good fit. When you're 60, almost none of them are a good fit.

Yeah, right.

Interesting way of looking at it. You know, dude, going back to your point, is it almost as if you are saying if I catch a potential partner early on, then there's a far less chance of life in the decades between now and 40-something to screw them up. I, I can be there early in, in the process of the courtship and everything else to mitigate some of the, the nastiness that can happen in the, in the preceding, proceeding, in the, uh, in the future decades, in the decades coming up. Is that what you're saying basically, is catch them early and I have a better chance of molding them to relationship that is best, or not?

Not, not, not, not necessarily molding them, but building together. So the mindset would be building together rather than a remodeling project. Like, like to use the Guy analogy, construction analogy, that you'd be building something together. And while that is challenging, right, because there's all— who knows where you're going to go, who knows what your, your passions are, and your personality changes, etc. You can do that and build together. And if you're proactive, I feel like it's easier to do than going back and doing a remodeling project. I have a background in construction. It's easier to do a new build than it is to go back and remodel or scrape and do everything.

I think this is an excellent point to build on to keep up with the construction analogy. Sean, would you say, let's say when you look at the spectrum of things that could happen to a youngster that will affect them in the future relationship-wise, trauma, abuse, whatever it may be, are the chances that— let's say, let's use the age of 18 years old. You meet a gal at 18 versus you meet her at 40. Jude, you would say, man, I wish I met this gal at 18. It probably would have been, quote, easier. Well, Sean, is it in your clinical, clinical experience that, uh, even 18, buddy, you're probably a little late? You need to catch them when they're more like 8 or 9 years old because we're setting, you know, a lot of imprinting a lot of things throughout adolescence and childhood and puberty and so forth. If you're thinking catching them at 18 is going to make things better, not necessarily. Where do you think?

It's such an interesting hypothetical. If you— the person that you meet at 40 was a different person when they were 18, and, and they grew to get where they are, and would they have been a good fit at 18? I don't know. That's an interesting hypothetical. But I do, um, I like the this concept of building together, that I guess the ideal couple is that they, they both come from someplace where they— good relationships were modeled for them, meaning they learned how to handle conflict and come out the other side, and they learned how to build things together and learn things about shared values and so forth. So if, if both parties have that, and if both parties are on board with the other party's values either because they were intentional about it and thoughtful about their choice or because they got lucky and they both want to build the same thing, then yeah, I think when you start, when you're in your 20s and you want to build a family, that's the ideal situation because you've got the energy and that's when we're supposed to be building families biologically is early 20s. And so if you have all those things by the way at foundation, then yeah, you're going to build something together. And frankly, I think this is how we don't really count successful marriages very well. My sense is that most marriages that start off that way with, with good shared values, either through intention or through luck, that most marriages work out pretty good. And, and part of it is they've built something together. And so it's not that they're each growing on their own, it's that they're influencing each other and they're becoming more and more like each other as they go along in terms of values and and purpose.

I also use—

long-winded answer, sorry.

No, I like it. I often use my— in my writing and stuff, um, I break it down and make it a little bit more technical in saying if when you're looking for a partner, you want to make sure that they have the, uh, the disposition, personality, and skills needed to make a long-term monogamous relationship work in today's framework, in today's society. It's a little bit different than it was 20 years ago for sure. And one of the things, very simple, is, uh, temptation to cross the line and go to inappropriate territory. By my estimation, oh my gosh, it's more than it's ever been. You know, I have a supercomputer phone here in my pocket that I can literally pick up and talk to any woman all over the planet if I wanted to. That's a lot of temptation for a guy that doesn't have much in the way of boundaries. Same for the opposite sex. So I say look for somebody that has those shared values, if you want to call it that, or as I say, the skills and the know-how to navigate. And from what I've seen after talking to 1,000+ dudes one-on-one is, uh, how do you determine if they have those skills and stuff? Well, look at mom and dad. What was their— what was their role model growing up? What was their foundation growing up? What did they see? You know, if you talk to a gal and she says, oh, my mom, she's a narcissist alcoholic, and my dad left and he abandoned the family and stuff, she's probably not going to have— as terrible as to say, the chances are she's not going to have the relationship skills that a woman who says, "My mom and dad are the most loving, sweet couple ever and they've been together for 50 years and they're amazing. I hope to be like that one day." You know, if you're a betting man, what you're going to go with is being the potential good lifelong partner.

Yeah, certainly easier for the second example there.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's been in the tactical guide. I talk a bit about emotional maturity and looking for exactly what you're talking about, the skills to navigate conflict and temptation and that sort of thing. And one of the biggest elements there is time, because people can make a good impression for a while, but it gets harder and harder to maintain an illusion. And so with time, you're able to look at all kinds of variables, like what is their family like? If their family had some troubles, did this person do the work to overcome them? What are their friends and what are their friends like? And how do their friends relate to them? And what's it like to travel with this person? What's it like when this person gets really pissed off at me? Do they handle it like an adult or they handle it like a little kid? And the, the more time you spend with somebody, um, the easier it is to get a baseline of their behavior, their maturity, their stability, their mental health. And so people always ask, well, how long should you date someone? And My answer to that is that, okay, we, we, we go through this honeymoon phase in a relationship or an infatuation phase where we are motivated to see the best in the other person and to downplay the worst in the other person because we are idealizing them, got them on a pedestal, and vice versa. And so it's all a big smoke show, right? Or a big smoke and mirror show. Um, we're not seeing the world correctly. And we know that this shows up in brain chemistry. Like, there's some really rough indirect measures for how the brain changes when when we're in that infatuation phase with somebody and we're literally under the influence of different brain chemistry, we've deviated from our baseline. So my answer for how long to date somebody before you start making big decisions is wait until you get to the end of that infatuation phase. And you, you have a good indication you're getting to the end when the other person starts to become three-dimensional to you. In other words, they're not always perfect, and all the little things that used to find charming, like how much time she spends getting ready to go out. Now it starts to get a little annoying because you're always late. And so you start to, you start to get the other side of them. That's a good indication that you're coming out of that infatuation phase. And then just as a nice round figure, I suggest a year after that, because now you see them a little more clearly. You haven't seen them clearly up to this point, so why not study them for a year and vice versa and make it very well known that we're studying each other here. And during this time, we are not going to get entangled with puppies and leases and shared cars and all the things that make it difficult to step away.

That's— now, now we're talking to the 40-somethings that I talk to who— I met a gal and 6 months later we are mixing our families, we're talking about buying a house together. I'm like, oh dude, yeah, add on another year and a half to that and maybe— and a lot of men, their eyes get big when you say that, like, what?

No way.

It's like, yeah. I gave it almost 4 years with my second wife before we tied the knot, from knowing each other and dating for almost 4 years. Yeah, we went through trauma together. We saw the good, we saw the bad. We had our holy shit moments, as I call them. I saw how she dealt with it. She saw how I did. We worked through things, and lo and behold, I'll be damned, we're a pretty good partnership.

There you go.

That's how you do it.

But you can't rush that process. You can speed it up a little bit, for example, by traveling with somebody. That will bring up a little bit of tension and stress test the relationship. But you really can't rush the process of seeing how they react to the natural world.

Yeah, Scott— Sean, I don't know if you're familiar with Scott Stanley's work at the University of, uh, of Denver, and he has a great book called The Power of Commitment where he talks about that, how we backslide into relationships. And, you know, we get the puppy, we get the lease, we get the bank accounts, and then we're like, oh, you know, maybe we should just get married.

Yes, his research was a, was a big influence on that point in my book. He talks specific—

he—

the word entanglement is his word. Entanglements are things that make it hard to back away from a relationship. And then the momentum carries you forward. And then the next thing you know, you're at the altar and thinking, holy shit, how did I get here?

Right. Intentionality is huge, particularly at this point in our life being dads and having children that will be impacted by the choices that you're going to make in this next romantic relationship. And that's something that I feel like we need to take great care around because they're getting to see now, this can be an opportunity. This can be an opportunity for modeling a a good way in which to get through this challenging time and do the work on yourself, and then potentially find another relationship that then you can model that's more positive than the one you may have had with, uh, with your ex. Um, or it can go the other, other direction, which is a train wreck, and you just continue creating trauma and difficulty and challenges and showing the wrong way in which, uh, you should do that for your children. So it creates such a generational thing. Not to put too much pressure on everybody out there listening, but it is an opportunity if you do it the right way.

Yeah, and it's a lot easier to handle a train wreck if you haven't shacked up.

Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. Well, let's talk a little more about that because that's, uh, you mentioned maturity, and that's one of the bright— one of the part two, the bright triad. Tell us about some of the other— some of the other— or the other two bright tri— other two parts of the bright triad.

Well, there's maturity, which is what we've been talking about, ability to handle conflict and so forth. The ability to act like an adult when things get difficult. Um, I talked about clarity, which is, uh, how clear is she about her intentions? Meaning, does she know what she wants out of life? And really importantly, can she state what she wants assertively with you? Because guys get in real trouble. There's— it's easy for women to become martyrs in a relationship, and it's easy for men to let them become martyrs in a relationship. And I've seen this pattern, God, I don't know how many times, where he'll play along as, as she is putting her, her, um, her interests on the back burner for him. But of course she's going to get resentful eventually. So clarity has a lot of layers to it, from can she tell you what she wants in the moment so that she's not— you're not trying to figure it out and you're you know, you're just muddling around trying to figure out what's going on. Can she assert what she needs in the relationship in a larger sense? Like, what does she want from you in terms of your time and attention and so forth? And also, where is she going in life? Because she's not clear about— does she want kids? Does she not want kids? Does she want to work? Does she want a career? You know, all these questions that women— you know, women are told that they can have it all. Men are not told that we can have it all. We know that we can't have it all. But women get this message, you can have it all, girl. Yes, Chris. You know, you, you can slay it all, and it's bullshit. You can't have it all. You have to make trades, trade-offs in life. So is she clear about the trade-offs that she's making, and does she understand that she's making trade-offs? So there's, there's that component of clarity. And then I talk about, um, mental health, and I outline some of the garden variety mental health problems that, that men and women deal with in the book. And I talk a little bit about personality disorders. I'm very careful to point out that we have to be really thoughtful, and it's a bad idea generally to, to, um, diagnose our other— our significant others having some kind of personality disorder. Because if you look around on Instagram and Twitter and social media, every woman's ex-husband was a narcissist and every man's ex-wife was a borderline. And that can't possibly be the case, you know, because we know what the— we know what the base rates are. So it's really easy to blame them. But at the same time, it is really important to notice, to, to be able to recognize the patterns that accompany these personality styles. And I prefer personality style to disorder, but for, for reasons that don't— we can talk about if you want. But I think one of the main points in that, that discussion of mental health is that her struggling with something like depression or anxiety or substance abuse or just the garden variety stuff That's not a rule out in my, in my mind. Maybe it's a rule out to you. I don't tell anybody how to run their relationships, but I think a useful way to think about those kinds of problems is, did she handle it? Because if a person handles that kind of problem, they actually come out the other side a better partner than they would have been if they had never faced a difficulty and learned how to overcome it. So this, um, it's, it's not necessarily the absence of mental health problems that you're looking for. It's how they handle them, because everybody's got something going on.

Yeah, and to your, your first point about the clarity, that is the— what you just described and what you just shared is kind of the opposite of the, the new age thought, David Deida, love through it, and, and love through her ups and downs and emotional waves and back and forth, and, you know, be the strong man and rock and foundation and It's just crap because they have needed to do the work to understand themselves and we can't be the ones that do that work for them or figure that out for them. We're doing that, that's a huge, huge problem!

Exactly! I was just talking to a gentleman today who, after doing this for so many years, probably has the worst example of a textbook narcissistic personality disorder wife. I'm not a psychologist, I can't, you know, diagnose her but boy, she was checking every box there was! Just a very, very broken person. And she was just really making this guy's life hell for like the last, I think, 10 years or so. And they have 3 kids and he's just telling me all these stories and I'm just sitting back like, oh my God. And he has gone to lots of guru types that he saw online and he books and spends a lot of money with these guys. And he's telling me the general consensus from all these guys is basically, you need to be a more masculine person and lead more. And create a framework where she can be more soft and feminine. And I say, that may be the case for some guys with 1/1000th of the trauma that you have experienced through this woman. This woman just needs some, some serious professional help, and she did so 10 years ago. And the woman, obviously she came from a mother who was narcissistic, the father left, just very textbook stuff, and she never ever got help with it. And here he is, and he's suffering as a result of and everyone is coming back to him telling him, you just need to work harder, dude. And I think that's bullshit. Uh, you, you need to work hard for yourself. But in this particular case, and a lot of cases like it, it's a 50/50 thing. And she has never ever raised her hand in all these years and said, I need help. And it's never going to work then unless she does just that. And by the way, if she does eventually raise her hand and say, I need help, you're in for years of pretty intense work on her part. And can she string those years together and make it work? Good luck. Good luck. But he's still sticking it out and hoping, fingers crossed, that things turn around.

So this guy has, has the belief that if he works hard enough, he can make this relationship work.

That's a very common refrain. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a very common refrain.

That was me in my marriage. I could love through it. Love conquers all and I'll just keep working hard until I just beat my head against the wall so many times. And you say it in your book, Shawn, you say definitively, if they're not willing to do the work, then that's a sign that you just— you can walk away. It's okay to walk away if they're not willing to do that. I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but speak to that.

No, I think you phrased it well, that if they're not willing to do the work, what are we talking about here?

Right?

You're going to be able to do the work of 2 people and one of them who's not working at all and actually may be motivated to stay the way they are.

Yeah.

And actually get—

and actually get in the way of you trying to improve yourself and so forth. With this guy, every time he tried to, you know, lift a finger to improve his self, the wife was just this fine-tuned machine of, I see what you're doing there and you're purposely trying to hurt me. No, I'm just going to the gym. I'm just going to therapy. Yes, you're doing so to hurt me. I know you are. And, you know, just awful stuff. And I feel for the guy, but yeah, I hear that far too often, which goes to a larger picture question, if I may, of, uh, there is also a giant online presence of men right now, not necessarily our age, 40s and beyond, younger guys too, who are listening to everything that we're saying about what it takes to make a relationship work, finding a woman and they're hearing a lot of work, work, work, work, work, work, and their eyes are just glazing over saying, dude, I don't know if it's worth it. And they're just literally backing out of the relationship game. And they call themselves MGTOW— I don't know if you're familiar with this, it's a very loosely organized group of men going their own way, and other variations of whatever want to call that a movement, if you will.

Yeah.

And boy, they can't shut up about it! They just— they don't see the reason for this. They don't like the idea of interpersonal relationships. They see no upside.

It.

It's, you know, just all risk and no reward. And they evangelize this to anyone who will listen over and over again.

That—

and they just— I don't know. Thoughts on that, Sean?

Yeah, there are a lot of wounded guys out there trying to spread their misery, and that's a cynical way of stating it. I don't know, they're actually trying to spread their misery.

They're—

I— if I give them the benefit of the doubt, they're trying to warn other guys that—

yeah, they're evangelizing. Yeah, yeah.

And, and trying to save other guys from pain. But there's also a very self-centered component to that where, you know, I don't have to be alone in my pain if I can convince you that the world sucks too. So yeah, there's a lot of wounded guys out there, and some of them are gurus and that charge a lot for their services and build these online communities of men. And, and, but to your— I'll set that aside— to your other point about men getting this message that it's all work, yeah, I see it in the David Deida stuff. And David Deida's got a lot of good positive message to offer that, um, around female nature and male nature, and, and that you can coexist peacefully with this, I think, is part of his message. But there is also this component you're talking about where you got— if you just work harder, you'll make it work, which is a very— that's a very masculine trap to fall into. If I just work harder, I can fix— I can rescue this girl, I can fix this relationship, I can change the world. And in terms of, you know, I can change her world, but also from my profession, you know, my I'm a professional clinical psychology, and there's two sides to my profession. There's a clinical side and there's the research side. And the research side gets all the press because they do the study and so forth. And they're, they're almost like two entirely different professions because we're mechanics in the trenches and they are thinkers in the ivory tower. And they, they, you know, if they're good communicators, they can get a lot of press. But the way the research side of my profession treats men is absolutely disgusting. It's shitty. It's, it's repulsive to me. For example, there was a recent blog post on Psychology Today. I forget the author's name, but he's a, he's a psychologist, and I don't know his resume very well. I don't know if he's more— he's more of a clinician, actually, I think. Then it doesn't matter. He's a psychologist, and his message to men was women are expecting men to come in with, with good relationship skills. Increasingly, they have ever-rising expectations. And so, men, you just need to step up and you need to do better. Now, he didn't have any specific recommendations on how men can improve their relationship skills, whatever that means. He didn't even really define what that means. So his message to men is, you're doing it wrong, shame on you, do better. No recipe. No specificity of exactly what men are doing wrong. It's just this message of shame, work harder, shame, work harder. And so guys are getting it from all sides. They're getting it from my profession, which treats men like a disease. They're getting it from the David Data side, even though there's good— there's a lot of good messaging there. And in the red pill community, there's a lot of good messaging there. But again, it's this— the other side of that is you just have to work harder. You just have to be better. You just have to try harder.

Harder, harder.

And it's, it's the male trap of trying to rescue writ large on a society's societal scale. So who can blame guys for joining MGTOW or for becoming incels and saying, like you said, it's, it's all risk and no reward?

Well, Sean, I would, I would even posit that we're doing that at a young age with our young, young boys in schools, teaching them, you know, saying, you know, be more like a girl be quiet and don't be— don't embrace your masculine nature of rowdiness and running around and jumping and being loud or taking risks or any of that stuff that is masculine nature and telling them, be more like, you know, sit quiet and be more like the girls or obey or be obedient. And then so now we have, I would say, more than one generation, generations now that have grown up like that because That was part of my issue is, oh yeah, it's not good to be a male. It's not good to be masculine, to achieve, to just, you know, have that aggressive nature of challenging life and going out and getting it. And then exactly what you talk about is how we get into relationship. We have a failed one, then we start another one. And so in the context of the dads listening that want to date again, Maybe if they see that, that is, they're in a relationship with a woman who just has that mentality, that is, she's just not going to make the efforts to do something, to make a change, to talk about things, to figure out the skills or better communication to do that. That's maybe one of the primary or first red flags to like, yeah, 'Oh, maybe I'm out of this.' Yeah.

And so an alternative to that maybe is to be skeptical about the messaging. So part of the messaging from the David Deida camp, and again, I like his work, but part of it is women bring chaos, they bring emotional chaos, and your job is to be the center of this, you know, the eye of the storm, or however he might phrase it. Well, there's some truth to that. Women have a little more emotional— I don't want to say this— a little more emotional chaos on the surface than we do. And part of that I think is predisposition, part of it is socialization, but whatever. Women do bring a little— are going to bring a little chaos in your life. Any human being will, but women will bring a little chaos in your life. So okay, that's, that's a useful message. Part of the message from the red pill community is women never take responsibility. Okay, well, maybe there's a little truth to that. Maybe societies don't hold women to the same, uh, like, same level of accountability to which they hold men. There's some truth to that. But the flip side of that, and what gets lost in all that, is that there are women out there who do take accountability, who are growth-oriented, who are attentive to their relationships, and they care about people, and they want to feed people, you know, spiritually, physically, however you want to put that. There are good women out there, and that gets lost if you get sucked into any version, extreme version, of these messages, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Which, which would, which would take us to how do we avoid completely effing up Our Life, which is the last part of your book. And I love that title. But a couple of, couple of tips for completely the next— so the next relationship I'm in, Shawn, how do I absolutely positively avoid completely effing up my life in that relationship?

I honestly am having trouble recalling what I wrote in there. But off the top of my head, the thing that, that comes to mind is just being aware of your own relationship patterns so that you don't just keep repeating them.

Yeah!

Yeah!

So avoid the most common blunders in safety and mastery, which is the one that I like the most.

I wonder what I said there? Safety and mastery? I was talking about relationship skills, right?

Yeah, exactly! Mastering yourself and mastering relationship skills and getting better, which kind of goes to what we're talking about in being in relation with others. These, like Ralph Brewer was talking about the MGTOW and the others that say avoid the relationships. We're meant as human beings to be in relation with each other. And so avoiding all that, it strips us of an opportunity to fully live our human experience and be able to, to, to grow mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. So being— doing that, being in relationship helps you to start, like anything, mastering yourself, mastering your relationships. And as men, And I feel like that's an important thing to continue to be involved with.

Yeah. Well, you know, as a father, if you want— if you want to know about yourself, have a kid, because you will find out about yourself things that you won't find if you're not in a relationship. And I know guys— I'm sure we all know guys who are what the MGTOW aspire to be. They just, you know, they're not interested in relationships. But the thing about them is they don't go around talking about how they're not interested in relationships. They just don't have a relationship. And they, they live their life in other ways. But, um, yeah, if you really want to find out what you're made of, then in that realm, then yeah, you get in a relationship, maybe you have kids.

But to pick on us a little bit, and I preach much the same thing, but I'll tell you, uh, I can see where that would put pressure on men to— we're basically saying if you want to see your full self-actualized version of yourself, it must be within the framework of a relationship.

Yeah, I don't know. I would back— yeah, if I said that, I'd back off that message.

Well, that's kind of the language that we all say in a way, is that you don't really feel— unless you have a kid, you don't really know yourself that well. Um, if you want to, you know, experience life to its fullest, you do so when you're in a relationship with another, etc. So I think that puts pressure on some men to say, shit, I better find a relationship fast. And they overlook a lot of the things that you point out in your book, a lot of things that I say about, hey, red flags to avoid, and they just, you know, put their fingers in their ears and say la la la. I need to be in a relationship, otherwise what's this life for? What's my value as a man? And that's when you get into some trouble.

Yeah, and, and I, I don't make value judgments, not because I'm trying to, to be the middle-of-the-road guy. I just don't make value judgments on how other people live their life. So if a guy wants to have family and kids, cool. If he doesn't, cool. Um, it just so happens that you will learn more things about yourself. You will learn things in a certain direction if you have family and kids that you won't learn if I mean, that should be obvious. And maybe if you're spending your time in a profession and that's where your energy goes instead of family, kids, well, you're going to learn things there that you wouldn't learn if you'd gone the other path. So it's not—

or the other side of the coin, which is you're not necessarily in a one-on-one relationship, but maybe you're for the next 30 years of your life, you're a bachelor. You have 4 or 5 gals that you're dating casually. Maybe that's, that's your model for life. And that can be fulfilling for some men. And some men may end up saying, I'm actually— after being married once, twice, 3 times, I realize I'm more wired for this. You know, unfortunately, I had to go through all of that to realize that, but this is who I am. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Unfortunately, there's parts of society that shame that out of men. And I was actually in a meeting— this is years ago— where they were talking about possibly promoting a young man who was young. He was in his 30s. To some bigger position. And the guy goes, yeah, but he's not married. And he winced. And the other guy goes, ooh, like ever? And he's like, no, no kids, no, no wife, nothing. He goes, yeah, I don't know. And I'm just back there like, what the hell, guys? What does it matter? And to their point, he's, he's not as dependable. He's, he's going to be a loose cannon. He's going to be a wild man dating and everything. We got to worry about him. Who knows what the process— yeah, yeah. But that's just kind of— you hear that a lot with a lot of people, like something's not quite right. I think maybe women even get that worse. You know, if you got a 40-something-year-old woman who's never been married, everybody goes, oh, what's going on there?

Yeah.

So it's crazy cat lady.

Yeah, crazy cat lady. That's right. The wild aunt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The only thing I would caution, guys, is if you're, if you're going to go that path of no family, no kids, just be attentive to the fact that someday, if you're lucky, you're going to be 70, 80, 90 years old. And that's not— you're not going to have that component of your life. And if you're cool with that, then cool. I have no value judgment about that. That, but don't ignore the question.

Yep, exactly right.

Sean, thank you so much. This was such a phenomenal, uh, conversation. Ralph, you have any, any other questions, any other comments?

No, sir. This has been a pleasure. I apologize, I have not read the book, but I plan on it. Absolutely.

But no, no need to apologize. There's a lot of good books out there.

There are, there are. That's one thing I've noticed in a psychological point of view or a left turn here is that, wow, men love to read these nonfiction books when it comes to how to better navigate the relationship world, how to be a better man. I know dudes that have read like 30, 40-some-odd books on this topic.

I have. I'll tell you a quick story about me. Well, it's describing a lot of you guys. I had a long time ago, before the gatekeepers in publishing, kind of the gatekeepers came down or that was an awkward sentence, you know what I mean? But back when there were—

yeah, yeah, thank you.

And I, I self-pub— or I traditionally published a couple of books through, through New Harbinger, a couple of decent publishers. And I went to my editor one time, I said, I want to write a relationship book for, for men. And the answer was, men don't read relationship books. Like, they wouldn't even consider it. And I have taken great satisfaction in how wrong they were about that. Because for one thing, it's just nice that they were wrong. The guys do read, the guys are interested in this. But also, it's, it's kind of nice. I had a little schadenfreude there of, I was right and you were wrong. Guys do read this stuff. And thank God that I self-published because you make a lot more money that way.

Yeah, there is a distinct male thing that I have noticed in myself as well as guys that I work with, which is once they get an interest in something— and I think a lot of men who have ADHD do this where they hyperfocus on something that really gets them going and they just dig and dig and they watch YouTube videos and they read books and they go to seminars and they hire a guru and listen to him and to the point until they're absolutely exhausted by the information. Then they lose interest and move on to the next thing, right?

Yeah.

Well, the book is The Tactical Guide to Women: How Men Can Manage Risk in Dating and Marriage. It is awesome. Highly recommend it to everybody listening. Sean, where can the, where can the audience connect with you if they want to check out your blog or your, your website?

Yeah, I don't have much out there. I have a website at ironshrink.com, and I love it.

That's cool, cool name.

Periodically. And then I'm on Twitter at Iron Shrink. That's about it. Got a small YouTube channel.

Well, good. And yeah, I'll give you a plug for your YouTube channel because your videos are absolutely phenomenal and spot on. A lot of humor, a lot of good information. So check that out as well, your blog as well, all of your information. Is great, Shawn.

So check it out.

Check it all out, guys. And if you found value in what we shared today, please give us, give us a star rating, give us a comment, share it far and wide, and we will see you next week. Shawn T. Smith, thank you again. I appreciate it.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Be the hero of your own movie. If your life were Life was a movie and it started now. Forget about whatever financial disasters you've had, personal failures, relationship failures. What would the hero of your life's movie do right now?