Interview With Lauren - "The Dadvocate"

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. Well, thank you for doing this. It is Lauren, right?

Yes.

And Lauren is— I'm gonna go ahead and get started if that's cool with you. Might as well, right? All right, let's do it. And Lauren is— you have that level of fame where it is, if I said Dadvocate, people probably say, that sounds familiar. Dad forget Dad? How do I know that? And then if I show the picture, they say, oh yeah, her. Yeah, I've seen her around. Oh yeah, I like her stuff. So you're that level of probably, I'd say more visually people know who you are because your face is everywhere, at least in my world, right?

That's wild to think about.

Yeah.

Because like 2 years ago, that was not the case.

If I was listening to your interview with Rudy A before this, And you were a stand-up before this, is that right?

Yeah, I did stand-up comedy for like 10 years.

Oh wow.

So you obviously didn't like break off big there or anything, otherwise people would have known my face for something else. But it was really fun, and it definitely helped when, you know, TikTok became this big format, because you really have to get everything you want to say in under like 1 to 3 minutes to get people's attention. And that's exactly how stand-up works.

Yeah, so you get— you had like a— you, you know, in the comedy circle, it's, uh, you have a tight 10-20 minute set or whatever, and it's the same kind of thing. You need to get your boom boom boom and hit your, hit your punchlines, hit your tags, and, and you're—

you're exactly— and you, you have to be articulate.

Yeah. And you can see how you are comfortable on the, on the microphone, and you're comfortable on camera. Hey, don't laugh, that's huge. I mean, how many people do we know, myself included, I'm just kind of especially at first. I'm getting more and more comfortable with it. That is something, I don't know if you can relate to this, I do not like seeing myself, like the videos and stuff. You know, I've done, I don't know if it's hundreds of these by now, but I've done a lot. And every time one of them comes up on my feed, you know, like here, here's, you know, my personal feed. I'll see me come up. I'm like, yeah, I don't like it. It just makes me feel very uncomfortable.

Where it gets weird for me is I'm pretty used to seeing my face. But it has to be recent. This is where I get weird, is if I watch video of myself from like 3 to 6 months ago, I already feel that it's so different. It's almost in like the uncanny valley for me. Just like subtle changes, and even it's not even that different.

Yeah, my, uh, my change was that I had a whole different setup. Now I have a computer with a webcam so I can look right here. I used to have a camera off— I used to have a camera off to the side, and then I have to look at myself and do— and I had little notes and things. It was just a mess. So when I see those old videos of me kind of looking off to the side here. I'm like, uh, yeah, a little cringy. Now it's much more casual. I'm much more comfortable in front of the camera now. So yeah, I get that completely. So how in the— how in the world did you go from— you're a standup traveling all over the places doing the, doing the Comedy Condo thing, right? I would assume.

Oh yeah. Just living out of my suitcase.

So yeah. So from that to— would you call yourself an internet, at least a TikTok superstar. I mean, on TikTok, you've got mil— are you officially millions of followers now?

1.3.

Wow. So, and how, how quickly did you get there?

So I got to 1 million within my first year. I think it was like, like earlier than the first year. I think it was in like the 9th month that the 1 million mark was actually hit. Um, and then once I made it to 1 million on TikTok, everyone started encouraging me to start branching off elsewhere, which is a lot harder than you'd think. Yeah, like you might think, oh, you have a million followers on TikTok, you can easily just make an Instagram and people will jump to you there, or make a YouTube and people will just find you there. It's not that simple. You really have to start over every time. So now a lot of this last year— instead of my first year was like TikTok only The second year that I'm developing myself, I'm really spreading out.

Well, we see TikTok may be coming to an end. Maybe. I don't know. Depends on who you ask. So it is important that we get out there and spread the word out on all these different channels.

I'm, I'm ready for it. If TikTok ends, that's okay.

Not a big deal. Well, that's, that's, that's a lot coming from you. Person who has 1 point whatever million people. That's huge. I mean, that's, that's nothing to sneeze at. I mean, that's, uh, have you thought about maybe doing like a course or something for people on here's how to break that? Million-dollar— or million-dollar— million follower mark?

I think I'm going to make a little course for my patrons on Patreon with just like all of the knowledge that I've kind of developed when it comes to being a content creator. But the reason I'm not afraid of TikTok being destroyed anymore, even though that's definitely the platform I'm the biggest on and it, it's pretty much what did bring me any notoriety that I have, is because all I needed to see was that there are tons of people who connect with the messages that we talk about. That's all I needed to see. And once that kind of illusion was broken for me— because before all of this, I just spent years and years thinking no one wants to hear this stuff, like, this is such a burdensome conversation for anybody to have, this is not fun small talk— but to see not only do people want to be having these conversations, but they are like passionately about these discourses. So I know if it's not TikTok, people will need these voices no matter where.

Yeah. Yeah. And so you're tapping into something there is that it is a— people are so, so passionate about it. And there are a lot of people talking about the stuff that we're talking about. A lot is a relative term. There's more people talking about probably recipes and things, you know, that appeal to the general public. But in the relationship space, there are more than a handful of people talking about men's issues, if you will. Mine is probably relationship issues in general from a man's point of view, from a guy who's been post-divorce and everything else. Yours is— I'm not putting words in your mouth— is a, um, a female's perspective of men's issues after you've seen it secondhand from what your now husband and father to your— you have a child together, is that right? And you also have a stepchild.

Yeah, so the one boy that he came with, and then we made a little girl together.

Very nice. And so, and so your perspective is you sat back and watched your husband and what he's dealt with as a, uh, in the world of co-parenting and all that fun stuff. And, uh, you said, uh, that this isn't— I don't like a lot of what I see here. Let me talk about a little bit.

And yeah, I mean, talk about the illusion breaking. I feel like People go their whole lives assuming that like, oh, if people break up after they've had a kid, then everybody just does what's fair and equal and everybody cares about what the other person wants. And as long as both people want to be involved, then they'll be involved and everybody will get custody. And that makes sense, right? And then you date one dad one time.

Yeah.

Quickly find out that's not the case.

In general, what have you seen in all these years?

Well, I think the thing that surprised me the most was, you know, at first when my friends were trying to, you know, get me to talk to this guy, I was like, well, he's a dad, like I can't date a dad. But everyone was like repping him and wingmanning him so hard. They were like, well, look at him, he's spending, he spends like every day with his kid. And the more I talked to him, it was absolutely true. He was spending every single day involved in every aspect of his life. He gave up everything the second he found out he was going to be a dad. He wasn't even with this woman, picked up his life, left his friends, family, job, everything he knew to move 250 miles to be as close as possible, seeing him every day. And then I find out he doesn't have custody.

Wow.

I'm thinking, wait, what? How do you not have custody? And he kind of explains it to me. He's like, well, in our state, if you're not married, then the mother gets just what's called natural guardianship, just sole physical and legal custody off the jump. And I was like, well, can't you like petition for 50/50? He tried, but basically what he was told was the burden of responsibility is on him at this point if he wants any custody at all because she did not agree to 50/50. Now, if she said, yeah, let's do 50/50, they would have it. She did not do that. So instead, if he wants any custody at all. He has to prove that she is unfit. Well, neither of the parents are unfit. Well, that doesn't mean that the kid gets to enjoy two fit parents. It's a— we're a sole custody state. It means that he gets to enjoy the majority of one of the fit parents, and the other perfectly fit parent is now a visitor.

And so that opened your eyes to, wow, this is kind of the tip of the iceberg for a lot of, uh, I don't know, how would you put it, unfair sexist, uh, at least in, in the world of, of child custody, legal practices and so forth. Now that kind of opened your eyes to all kinds of issues cuz you don't just talk about custody issues in your videos. You, you really go and, and, uh, and look at, uh, things that people say, things that women say online about men and you're just like, well, hold on a second. That's, that's not necessarily fair here.

Yeah. At, at the end of the day, I mean, what would be really great to avoid all these custody battles and stuff is if we could, you know, keep people together from the start, you know, if we could work on those little things that—

that'd be ideal.

Probably driving apart people who would otherwise be compatible if they could just find the right ways to communicate. But of course not everybody is compatible. And so the next stage then is what's the best way that we can co-parent? What's the best way that we can still give these kids the best life and the best access to each other.

Mhm. And so how was— how are things with husband and, uh, co-parent now? Have things improved over the years? Has he seen— is there any kind of legal changes as far as he's concerned?

Yeah, you know what's amazing is, I'm not going to lie, since I started this channel, I think a lot of people have asked me, you know, oh, now that you're the dadvocate, does it start all this drama? Or, you know, what does she think about this? And to be completely honest with you, like, We actually have never talked about it, and yet the relationship between our houses has like exponentially gotten better. I mean like 10, 20-fold. There, there is no argument. Like, and I think a lot of what kind of made that a lot better too is the fact that right before I really started taking off with this advocate stuff, and part of the reason that I felt so confident in talking about these things was that we had finally just spent like a full year and a half in court just hashing out a schedule. Just like, this is what the next 4 years is gonna look like, because he's 14, that's all we have left. Like, let's just agree to this, let's all make compromises here and now so that we just don't have to fight anymore. And it was kind of like, you know, we just put ourselves in the ring and just swung at each other for a year and a half, and that just beat the life out of all of us. And so at this point, we have nothing left to fight about. It's nice. We just follow the schedule. And I think we're just all at a point where, like, we have our lives. We don't want to fight anymore. But it takes— obviously it takes a long time to get there. This was 14 years of, you know, not absolute chaos. There's definitely worse situations for sure. But it's definitely opened my eyes to the fact that whether you are the mom, whether you're the dad, or whether you're one of the stepparents, you're gonna be stuck in these trenches for a very long time.

Might as well be an adult and make the best of it and, you know, it be mature and, and have the compromise and so forth. But people's egos get in the way. And there's also, you know, I've heard all the stories, of course, and a lot of attorneys aren't so nice and they was, you know, you have a, More often than not, I've heard these situations where the guys say, you know, my soon-to-be ex-wife and I have agreed verbally that we're going to keep this calm. We're going to try to keep lawyers out of it as much as humanly possible. And I said, well, have you talked to an attorney at all? No, I don't want to go down that road if I don't have to, and we'll just get a mediator or something. I'm like, okay, but it can't hurt to talk to somebody just to make sure that, you know, you're not missing something, that everything's kosher, finances and all that other stuff. And No, no, no. And sure enough, more often than not, it's, well, the ex-wife spoke to an attorney, or a friend suggested the ex-wife speak to an attorney, and we're off to the races. Now it's getting nasty. And simply because somebody puts a bug in the ear of, you know, you're kind of owed a lot more than just this even split here. You're a, whatever it may be, stay-at-home mother, or whatever it may be, and you are owed X number of dollars, and so much, you know, sole custody or majority custody and so forth. And yeah, you're right, it can get nasty. Like nasty, nasty, really gross stuff. But, uh, I personally didn't experience that. Um, I had the issue of the early stages of mom not spending much time with the kiddos, but that resolved itself after years. And, uh, we're co-parenting very, very well. I have no complaints. We finally hit that maturity point of like, let's just stop all the silliness and just focus on the kiddos. And that's what we do. So it's great. And, um, But I want to get back to one of your points you made, which is, uh, you initially with your husband said, you know, single dad, I don't want to get into that mess, and who knows what kind of drama is there. And everyone's saying, no, he's actually a great guy and he really spends a great deal of time with the kiddos. And you're like, wow, every single day this guy sees his kids. He moved hundreds of miles to be with them, changed his career and everything else. I've heard more often than not that is the case, that men do not give up on their kiddos no matter what. On the rare occasion, maybe like once a year, I'll hear from some guy just saying, I think I'm just going to give up and just move cross-country. This has become too litigious. This is too contentious. I'm just, I'm just waving the white flag and saying, message received, I'm out of here. But that is so rare. And, but there is this concept of the deadbeat dad, and it exists, sure, but it's such a rarity, at least from what I've seen in my little circle of guys. And I'm sure that I have a bias example. But it's sad that that is the default view for many people. Single dad, oh, wonder what he did. Uh, he, somebody must have done something.

Exactly. Yeah, I, I think you're right about that. And I think it's fair to address that it's an epidemic anytime any parent chooses to step away from the home. It's already a problem. Even if it's only like a couple parents a year, it's a problem, right? But people are forgetting that we have the statistics to show that the vast majority of fathers are there, are involved, okay? Just because they're not all spending $100,000 a year in court fees is not a sign that they are a bad father. It comes back to that classic, you know, father's movement phrase of stop asking fathers why they're not fighting and start asking mothers why they're being forced to, right? It should— there should just be kind of these presumptions of shared parenting. But going back to your point about how often lawyers, um, and even other, um, paid positions such as marriage counselors often tend to put those bugs in the ear at You know, as a woman who's in many women's circles, I cannot tell you how many women I've spoken to who they were just trying to have a nice, clean, friendly, amicable divorce, and it turned into, wait, wait, wait, hold up. You know that you could get way more out of this, right? If you just change some things around. And are you sure there was no abuse? You know, there's a lot of things that fall under abuse. Like even if he just says things like, "You didn't do this good enough." Like, that's verbal abuse. Has he ever said anything like that? Let's pick your brain a little bit. And I mean, even in my personal experience, you know, my husband and I, we did run into a rough patch a good 2, 3 years in, and we sought the help of a marriage counselor. We went to maybe 4 sessions, and in every single one of those sessions, she just defaulted to, "Well, you should just divorce." Oh, wow. I, I'm like, well, the whole point of me paying you all this money— it's like $200 an hour— so I don't have to spend the money on divorce. Rather not do that. Would rather not have my heart broken and all these things that I committed to for the rest of my life fall apart in my face. And they're just so quick to go like, well, you'd be in a fine position for divorce, don't you see? Like, you're under the 5-year mark, so neither of you would even have to split your possessions. Like, you're practically in annulment city. Let's just make this nice and easy. And I'm like, it just seems like that is almost everyone's first choice before working on it.

Yeah. You know, um, a good marriage counselor is worth their weight in gold. And there are some really, really good ones out there that you leave saying, thank God we did that. That gave us that, that third perspective. And it really, you know, this person's seen hundreds of these. But there are so many bad ones out there. And, you know, sticking with the theme of men being kind of second-class citizens in this whole relationship thing, I can't tell you how many times guys have gone to the marriage counselor and they'll be like, okay, we got an hour session. And the guy's looking at his watch and it's like, it's 55 minutes into this and I haven't said a word. And he's like, can I say— and they're like, well, just wait till the next session. He's like, okay, cool. Well, you know, fair is fair. Get to the next session, the guy's got his little speech prepared and 55 minutes into it, he's like, goddamn, I haven't said a word. And I'm like, for a lot of these guys, I tell them, um, a lot of the guys I speak to are kind of, uh, well, more neurotic, um, not, um, not very confident, not very outgoing, very introverted type of guys. And I said, you need to be a little bit more forceful and just say, before we get started, Mr. Counselor, I have something I need to say, and I would like to get across my point of view, and I have these discussion points. And that's very difficult for them. And what these guys see is the default is, husband, obviously you did something wrong here. Let's get to the bottom of it. Wife, let's allow you to emote for the next, you know, 3 weeks straight. And let's see, uh, let's see what the problem is here and what we can do to straighten this man up. That seems to be the default for a lot of these counselor types. And that's sad.

Yeah. And we only did the one, we only did the one counselor. What I found worked way better for us actually was when we separated. Instead of doing couples therapy, we just went and got our own therapy. Uh, and so I'm wondering how many couples have considered trying that. Now I will say this, I'm a firm believer that therapy only will work for you if you are the one who wants to go.

Yes.

I think there's too many people identifying the truth in certain things like that their person needs additional help with something, that their person is missing something that they cannot provide and they may need some additional help to pay for it. But I think just the default of like, you need therapy, is not necessarily helpful.

No. And, and there is a dynamic that we see quite a bit amongst the guys that we help out at Dad Starting Over, and that is, um, the anxious guy. There's this whole thing about attachment theory and how people attach in romantic relationships. And we have your anxious attachment guy with your very avoidant woman. And sure enough, this guy is dragging this woman kicking and screaming, no, we need to go to therapy, we need to go to therapy, we need to go to counseling. And the woman, you know, sits there with her arms crossed going, ah, jeez, what are we doing here? That's not the way to start this. You both need to be mutually saying, yeah, let's work on this. This is, this is worth fighting for. Let's see what we can do to make this work. That's where you have the chance of making it work. Where one of, one of the persons saying, huh, listen to this therapist, huh, don't you want to work on this? And the other person is just, you know, doing their nails. No, it ain't going to get it done.

That's also kind of the first red flag of when you know that the relationship is not going to last, is I think that a relationship can pretty much last as long as both people are still trying. They don't both have to be doing the absolute best every single day. They don't have to both be perfect, but as long as both people are actively committed to trying, I think it'll keep going. But as soon as one person decides, I'm done, I'm just done trying, that is the death of it. No matter how much the other person keeps working at that point, it— they won't be able to carry the ship. They just won't.

Do you, um, in your opinion, do you see if we were to put, you know, let's say 100 men and 100 women and say, uh, all right, men, your wife has some issues with the relationship and, uh, there's some real problems here. And in order to fix this, in order for her to stay around, in order for you to save your family, um, you're going to need to make these changes. Uh, then you say the same thing to the women, 100 women, uh, your husband's not real happy with the way things are going here. You need to make some real changes to keep him and your family around. Do you think that there's going to be a very, a very big disparity between the percentage of men that say whatever it takes versus the women to say whatever it takes?

Oh, I, I am familiar with, um, the little experiment that you have done regarding this as far as asking men and asking women how they respond to criticisms within a marriage. And I have to say, I mean, I, I can't speak for all women, but I got to take a deep breath before I say this. It's still hard. I was the one who had more of an accountability issue for longer in our marriage than my husband did. And that's not to say that, you know, we, there weren't problems that we both had. But in regards to which of us was going to be the faster to admit to those issues, it was him, and probably still is him. I'm better at it, but it was definitely way more him for years. And thinking back to how I watched my parents, um, it, it was almost kind of similar things, not just my parents, but, you know, all like female to male role models. I feel like I kind of grew up watching women more able to duck accountability simply because of the fact that men will take the easier route of claiming the accountability in whatever the situation is. They'll fall on the sword because it's easier than dealing with the attitude of not being the one who's actually sorry.

Are you pointing to an inherent fear of women in the relationship? I don't want to tiptoe towards drama. I don't want to get her mad. I don't want to get her upset. I don't want to just rock the boat. Let's just keep things nice and smooth.

Yeah, I think we kind of subconsciously have allowed this societal nature to where Guys let girls get away with so much shit because they don't want to have to deal with it. And it's good. It's, you know how women are, we're the first ones to, every time men piss us off, we're like, oh my god, he's such a child, he's being so childish. Well, isn't it a little bit childish at the end of the day, the way that You know, we put men in these positions. It really is just like when we raise our kids, how they make a mess of the room, it would be a lot easier for us to clean the room. Like, we've done it a million times, we can just throw it away instead of sitting down with them and being like, "Look, I know that you're going to be mad, but you're going to clean your room." This is all a long-form way of me basically saying, like, I don't think that guys should be ducking out of it. As much as they are.

No, I think that— yeah, it's psychological.

I'm sorry, I was gonna say, this isn't another way of me being like, and that's why the onus is once again on men. But I am saying, I think long term it probably will start to show more positive effects as far as the communication goes. Um, I, I just think that a lot of us, we both just kind of shut down because it's easier.

Yeah, talk about the men that I work with. A lot of them don't have what they call boundaries. You know, in psychological circles, it's what I will and will not put up with. And, you know, and, uh, when the wife says something a little snotty and mean and really hurts his feelings, a lot of men are like, well, I could say something to the effect of, why would you say that to me? I would never say something like that to you. It's not very nice. What's going on? You know, why would you, why would you do that? To me, that sounds like a very masculine, normal healthy thing to say. Like, what's going on with you? Why would you say something like that? But men are like, you don't know my wife. If I were to go down that road, I wouldn't— she would give me the cold shoulder for 4 days straight. She— we would never hear the end of it, blah, blah, blah. In other words, I'm scared to death. And if you dig further, basically it means that introduces a great deal of anxiety in me, and I don't really know how to cope with that too well. So it's just easier for me just to say happy wife, happy life and brush it under the rug and worry about it at another time. And that builds and builds and builds. And eventually the wife just flat out loses respect for the man.

And, uh, yeah.

And how us in our man mind interpret this is, boy, she just throws all kinds of tests at me constantly. And it's always like, oh yeah, how are you going to respond to this? Let me throw this at you. Let me throw that at you. How are you going to respond to this and this and this? And if the guy's just like shrugs your shoulders and says, whatever, whatever, whatever, over and over again, it shows he's, quote, weak. But it also shows he doesn't really care. And that's sad. When you get to the apathetic point of, I don't really care, whatever, wife, just say whatever you want to say, do whatever you want to do, fine, just shut up and leave me alone. Now you're getting into that avoidant, very, very unhealthy realm. And that's the beginning of the end right there.

And I think you're absolutely right. And I think that that's such a key part of it is the thing that sets nice guys apart from the type of confident, strong men that women can truly build relationships with is— but I was making such a great point.

You're good, keep going.

Is boundaries, right? Essentially, I think that women really underestimate the importance of a man being able to set boundaries because what looks like on the outside. A man who can set boundaries is saying things like, hey, I really do not appreciate you talking to me, or listen, I respect that you want me to do that chore. I have other priorities that need to come before that, and you need to let me make my decisions. That's what it looks like, and that can be intimidating or annoying, or a woman may not like especially if she's in her masculine, as they say, having to compete with that kind of energy. However, they're forgetting the fact that it's only these types of men who are able to set those boundaries who remain the most loyal. If— I mean, think about it. If he can say no to you, the woman that he desires above everything, the woman he's made his own publicly, who who is his status symbol, right? Which is a lot to a lot of people to say, this is my woman. This is what sets you apart from other women is you're mine. But if they can say no to you, they can say no to any other woman who's trying to hit them up, right?

Yeah. Very good point. Excellent. I love it. Um, yeah, the boundaryless guys tend to keep their mouth shut, but, uh, they're also the guys that are sneaky. They're also the guys who don't want to piss everybody off, and they have a secret little life of who knows what. And it always kind of surprises the, the women, like, wow, my meek little husband has a little secret life of some online thing, whatever it may be. You know, pornography, that's one step, but it could be also like a little online affair or a little something at the office or whatever. And it, uh, yeah, you're exactly right, that his boundarylessness, uh, seeps into and permeates other parts of his, of his life that are not so good. The guy who says, no, that's not good. You're right. That's your loyal man. Exactly right. But you know, a lot of men hearing what you're saying and what I'm saying in terms of boundaries and stuff, and women do this too. And this is a very unhealthy line, which is, you know, I really shouldn't have to say all that stuff. I really shouldn't have to do that. He or she should just know not to push my buttons and go up to the line and push my boundaries and so forth. And if I ever see them pushing those buttons and trying to cross the line, that's a sign that they're no bueno and they're out of here. And I said, that's no, that's not the way human behavior works. If you are always veering towards the easiest path, which is as soon as somebody starts pushing my boundaries, they're out of here, you're going to run out of people in your life real quick because even your best friends in the whole world push your boundaries. They try to do something that you have to say no to every now and then. There's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, there's, there's so much that is easy to miss about the value of being a person who sets boundaries because there's so many pathways. Like I said, you know, the man who can't set boundaries may be more likely to cheat. The man who can't set boundaries is more likely to lose your respect over time, right? And the man who can't set boundaries, he's not going to challenge you because he's just going to blindly agree with everything that you you say. And if you start going down a dark pathway in your life, if you start developing narcissistic tendencies or becoming self-absorbed or becoming even hateful of a group, and he's just agreeing with you because he wants to keep getting lucky every night, that's not a good man. Might look like one on the outside because he's agreeing with everything that you're saying, but a good man is going to challenge you and present alternative opinions. And kind of stop you when, you know, one of those, are you sure you want to do that?

Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Moments.

So, so back to your, uh, TikTok and other social media presence, what are some of the big, I guess, issues or topics that you're currently seeing that are really, really popular and getting lots of clicks and comments?

Well, obviously one of the things that is kind of my claim to fame is narking on partner shamers. I've become a big partner shamer narc. And what partner shaming is, essentially, for those who don't know, is this weird phenomenon of people— it's mostly women, but I've definitely caught a number of male partner shamers by now— who secretly record something that their partner either has done or is actively doing live, they post it to the internet, typically without their partner's knowledge, and then they just unload into like a roast fest onto this partner for whatever it is that they did wrong or suspicious. And it generally tends to result in thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of people saying that usually she should divorce usually him, and that usually he is this monstrous villain. Then the most common follow-up is that she makes the follow-up video of, oh, we're fine guys, it was just a joke, like, he's really a nice guy, and she goes into damage control mode. And there is like unlimited content like this. On the internet now.

Is this just symptomatic of a larger problem of people trying to out-victim each other? That's something I see a lot of is look how, look how horrible I have it. Look at my terrible spouse. Aren't I just a victim of his stupidity, his ignorance, his awfulness, his terribleness. And then we'll tell you—

that's funny that you say that. Yeah. I do think that that is an element. I think the most simple explanation is that everyone has always enjoyed throwing husbands under the bus, like since the earliest of bar crawls. That has been how the jokes were led. Uh, however, I think that you are definitely onto something because— excuse me— because as the series has developed, we have encountered so many partner shamers who we have found completely staged the scene.

Oh wow.

Like their partner didn't even do anything and they still set up a scene to make their partner look like they're weaponizing incompetence or look like they're a bad partner. And when you look at it, you're like, wait a minute, like nothing even happened. Like your husband is making six figures and providing for you so that you can go to Pilates class every single morning and stay home with your kids and get your hair— I see your hair and nails are done and he didn't even do the thing. That you're making all these people hate him for. I think you're right. I think some of these people, they live these amazing privileged lives. They've probably even been called out like, oh, you're privileged, you're privileged. And so they're like, I'm not, I'm not that privileged. And so now they're looking for a reason. Now they're looking like, what, what is going on in my life? You know what? My husband leaves the sink messy sometimes. I'm gonna make it even messier and I'm gonna upload it and be like, look at this, my husband thinks just because he works 40, 50 hours a week that I'm his slave. And what happens? She's a martyr and he is Satan.

Yep, that martyrdom is a big powerful drug, isn't it? And once you're part of the club, the in club of, uh, victims, I guess, It's, uh, that's, um, yeah, a lot of pats on the back, a lot of atta girls or atta boys, and, um, it's, uh, tough to break free of. But it's very interesting that you, you take it upon yourself to do some investigative work and try to, uh, figure out what's really going on behind the scenes and call them out, and you don't let up. And, um, I love it. I think it's great. It's awesome. I love the investigative journalism, if you will.

Yeah, I, I just always have questions when I see these things, and I feel like not enough people are asking questions. Like, we see these videos of like, "My husband is such a lazy piece of crap and he makes my life worse." And it's easy to see that at face value and be like, "Yeah, you hear stories all the time about being husband pieces of crap and making wives' lives worse. I can definitely buy this and I hate him too now." But then you like really look around the video, there's a lot of like hidden clues, right, in plain sight, right? Like the one that I just covered was a woman who was complaining about how she had to take care of the kids alone, like 2 kids, young kids on a flight, the whole flight by herself while the husband slept. However, the angle she takes of the husband sleeping, she's clearly right next to him. And there— who took the video of her with the kids on her lap? You're telling me she brought a tripod and and set it up just to get that angle.

Wow.

No, man, she had her own husband film that crap.

This is—

and then she twisted it.

Dude, this is like a level of— it's mental illness. It goes beyond just attention seeking. There's some type of— I don't know, there's Munchausen syndrome, which is, you know, people hurting themselves in order to get attention. There's—

no, no, Munchausen is, um Munchausen by proxy.

That's Munchausen by proxy.

You're right, you're right.

It's when they hurt the kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I've heard it all. I've heard it all. This is— it's not common, but I've heard a lot from men where they've, you know, the women hurting themselves and going to the hospital and getting a lot of attention, then hurting the kids is the worst part, the by-proxy one. But, uh, this is like some version of that almost. It's just, look at me, world, look at me, world, look at me, world. And when you're creating scenarios and hiring people to take pictures of you and so forth, that's just weird. It's just, it's not a sociopathic, I don't know if that's the right word. It's just, it points to something like, uh-oh. If I was the partner and I saw that happening, I, my eyes would get real big, real fast and start, yeah, I don't know, protect yourself cuz things are about to get weird.

And I think that that's kind of like the justice and the karma of why I keep doing this series is I'm not necessarily always of the belief of like, oh, if you need someone to understand what they're doing, just do it right back to them. I don't— obviously that's not always the answer. However, I truly believe that people are not going to understand the effects of what they're doing without something like this series, because for so long all these videos that I've covered received nothing but positive affirmation. It was all stuff like, you go girl, you don't deserve this, he ain't shit. No one questioning anything. No one even thinking how they would feel if their man were to go around the house filming every dirty, nasty, lazy, or thoughtless thing that they were doing, because none of us are perfect. And then have to read comment after comment after comment of people making fun of your character, making fun of your physical appearance, because that's one that you see a lot. I mean, I'll see these partner shaming videos and they fully post these guys' faces most of the time, and people will be in there like, he looks exactly like I thought he would. What does that even mean? And how do you feel that that's your man that they're saying that about? Like, I don't know about— I don't know about you, but personally, I don't want people going around speaking poorly of the man that I chose.

Bingo.

That's absolutely a reflection on me. And no man would tolerate— no good man would tolerate a bunch of dudes walking around being like, oh yeah, his wife is so ugly and trash. Like, she, she's so lazy around the house, she doesn't even cook him dinner. Like, that, that's— you heard a man just willfully letting people talk about his woman like that. No, he would be such a sick bastard.

That's unheard of.

Yeah, women do it all the time. And it's like, yeah, that's just girly things. Girls just talk poorly of their husbands. It's just what we do.

Here's a, here's a grand, a big picture, 30,000-foot question, which is probably an hour in itself, which is where does all this come from? Is it as simple as this is a societal reaction to being, um, Women have, you know, there's a, you know, women's rights and women's suffrage and everything else. It's— these are in the history books for a reason. Women have been treated like shit for years. Is this a reaction to being, you know, society basically, and men specifically, patting women on the head saying, there, there, silly, for so many years? Are we seeing a retaliation? Are we seeing a pushback, a fight back? And of course, it's obviously gone too far, but is that in general what we're seeing here? Is that just in Do we as men just kind of have to smirk and just let it roll off our shoulders because, hey, this is, uh, they're fighting back a little bit. Let's just let it get it. Let them get it out of their system. Uh, I don't think so personally, because we can see this can get pretty nasty pretty fast.

Yeah. I, I think there is a totally different side of the coin because where we are at, and I'll, I gotta be honest, I think that we are in the minority of the population where we see videos like this and we look at it. And we think, "Man, that's really crappy to shame your partner online like this." Like, public humiliation is a form of abuse. And I think part of the reason that I feel so strongly about it is because my first relationship ever was ripe with abusive tendencies. I am happy to have even survived that relationship. That's a story for another time. But the part that really bothered me the most was he— even before the days of like MySpace or anything anything like that. He loved roasting me to his friends, like in front of my face, behind my back. And the pain that that makes you feel is so deep. But as you mentioned, on the exact other side of that coin, you look at history and you look back all the way to the Salem Witch Trials. And again, before the days of MySpace and TikTok and all that, obviously you would have these groups of women who, you know, women getting annoyed with their husbands and vice versa has, is time immemorial been going on. And they would get together and they would do the same thing that we all do now and just crap talk their husbands over some drinks. But the men were getting real sick of it and they were very power hungry at this time. So what did they do? They were like, oh, they're witches, we gotta kill them. And that's what they did. And So now there are a lot of women who are like, you know what, we are very reactionary to these kinds of things, and we are going to look at our ability to talk crap about our husbands on a wide-scale platform as something that we can celebrate. We have the freedom to absolutely obliterate these men, and they can't burn us at the stake like they used to. And so this is just us being empowered and celebrating our freedoms. And in a degree, I like— again, I kind of can get that. Sure, right? I think that especially after enduring what you did, to, you know, everyone deserves some spaces to vent. However, we, we can't just justify this very short-sighted decision that undeniably will cause problems for any significant long-term relationship you're trying to maintain, uh, just because a long-ass time ago people did crazy shit.

Exactly, exactly. Well, here, I'll end it on this question, another big picture question. Um, if I were to look at— and it's not necessarily fair, I call the people that make comments in my videos and stuff, the vocal minority. They don't represent the majority at all. And you have to, you have to look at, for example, you post a video and you look on there and it has 1,500 likes and you're like, great, but it has 300 comments and 300 and 290 of those 300 comments are really, really negative towards you. That really weighs heavily on you. But you have to look at the grand picture. Yeah, but 1,500 people liked it. And just because the vocal minority gets on there and says, you know, damn you, you misogynist, you terrible person, you know, you don't necessarily need to take that to heart. So, but it's easy to get caught up in those comments and everything else. And if you look at all those and the people stitching your videos and everything else on TikTok, if you take all that together, the vocal minority, and you put it into a pile, you say, I don't really feel very good about the future of relationships right now in general, um, especially monogamous relationships, long-term monogamous relationships or marriage Right now, if you were to look at all that, you would say, man, we got a very real problem here. Or do we have a problem? Or is this just a natural manifestation of what happens when you get a bunch of people together talking and comparing notes and they all get together and say, you know, this long-term relationship thing ain't really all it's, you know, come out to be. This isn't the most positive thing in the world for most of us. I don't know, where do you, where do you fall on all this? Do you come away feeling pretty negative about the whole thing when you, uh, post your videos.

I, I think you're absolutely right about the vocal minority having such an influence on how we think the majority of people are also thinking about things, and it's simply not the case. I mean, all of these partner shamers that I cover, the only reason that the footage that I'm showing is so shocking is because we're not seeing it all the time. But we don't think about that when we're watching it. We're not thinking actively like, wow, this is crazy. It's so crazy because it doesn't happen all the time. What's instead, we're thinking, this is crazy, this is happening all the time because I'm watching it right now in this one isolated incident. But, you know, doing this for a long time and, you know, constantly reminding myself that these— the people who are the most wrong are often the loudest somehow. And having to constantly remind myself of that when I do look at the majority, the majority of comments, it's people who watch these videos and they come away with it thinking things like, this makes me so grateful for my partner, or this content makes me want to be better. For my partner. And those are the comments that we need to keep focusing on. And again, those, those are the majority of comments. I have to keep reminding people, like, it's so easy to look at some videos and be like, man, all men must think this way, that, you know, women are worthless and we should all MAGA. All men must think this way. Most don't. Or man, all women must be superficial and only want to date these alpha gigachads with money. But most of us really don't feel that way. It's just the ones who do are so loud. And they comment on everything.

And if you're, and if you're a susceptible, malleable young man or woman looking at all these comments, it's very easy to slip down that rabbit hole and just say, you know, you mentioned the MGTOW and the guys that just, you know, set relationships and women aside. And I posted here recently, I tweeted, there's some very uncomfortable stats as far as young men in relationships and sex are concerned that makes people go, ooh, we got a real issue here. Um, the majority of them aren't having any kind of relationship and the majority of them say, I'm not even pursuing it. I don't care anymore. That's sad. And probably if we were to dig into and say, what's going on here? You'd probably say because they, the vocal minority got together and compared notes and said, uh, I'm upset with this. Yeah, me too. And it's really that simple. Um, there's part of me that says when I see some of your stuff and even my own stuff where I say, am I really harping on or making a big deal out of a minority of people that should— would be better off being ignored? But then I realize, no, we do need the dadvocates out there and the Laurens and so forth poking and saying, this is not good. No, I'm not going to just sit back and let you say this bullshit. No, no, no, you're wrong, and here's why. Um, if you don't, that stuff spreads like wildfire, as we've seen, and it gets out of control real fast. So that's my way of saying thank you so much for what you do. It's awesome. I love your stuff. You do really, really great work. I hope you keep it up. I hope you get 10 million more on TikTok or wherever you end up if TikTok goes away.

Um, and the feeling is mutual.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.

You are such a great voice for men. And I think that you're, you're one of those male coaches who doesn't necessarily, you know, drive into that testosterone masculine, you know, that you have to follow. Basically, you're like, um, how exactly do I want to say this? Who are those really awful guys on YouTube? Was it like Fit?

I know who you're talking about. Fresh and Fit. Fresh and Fit.

Yeah, the Fresh and Fit guys who are essentially like Men are the best, women suck. You are a men's coach who focuses on the positives of masculinity, but you're also like, don't be like those guys.

Yeah. I don't, I don't appreciate that.

Yeah.

I don't need to put my, my foot on the neck of women just to make a point or to belittle all women or whatever. I love, I'm married again. I love my wife. I got 4 kiddos, love my mom and everything else. Why would I go down that road of, you know, all women are terrible and awful. But there's just men that have been hurt so badly, as you know, by women. And when you have very, very little relationship experience, when you get hurt once or twice, you're just like, this must be the way they all are. And that shit spreads like wildfire. Red pill, MGTOW, whatever you want to call it. And yeah, I was exposed to that very early on post-divorce. And I always kind of looked at it as these are just a bunch of guys that are really, really hurting. And I completely empathize with a lot of it, to be quite honest with you. But it goes just a little too far and then it goes into women with nose rings are whores. And you're like, wait, what?

And the 304 thing still blows my mind. I'm like, you are not grown men using upside down calculator terms.

Okay. I was gonna say, I, I saw that before and I looked it up once. I forgot what that meant. So is, what is 304? Oh, oh, oh, okay. Yeah. I just got, okay. Gotcha.

I know.

And it's, that's pretty good.

It's nice to have voices that are speaking about really critical issues without necessarily pilling. Like, we don't necessarily always have to be following a pill or a specific movement. Some of us can—

it's a very normal human tendency throughout time is to be tribal and get in your own little group. And, and that stuff sells, so to speak. If I were to get on here and do a little video about— probably just put the title "Women Suck" They probably get thousands and thousands and thousands of views, way more so. And shadow ban, yeah. But, uh, yeah, that's not me. But some guys do that. Hey, more power to them, whatever. Um, how can people find out more about you and what you do? Obviously through the social media channels. Just do a search for Dadvocate and they'll find you.

Yeah, if you just search The Dadvocate, you will find me at this point.

And you have a website?

Yeah, dadvocate.net.

Davikat.net, and you are selling merchandise. And you have a— tell us more about your, um, your member— you— what'd you say? The, um, the— is escaping me right now. You have a special member pay site. What is it called?

Oh, Patreon.

Patreon. Thank you.

Yes, yes. So you can find me on Patreon as well if you want some extra exclusive stuff. My website has every podcast appearance I've been on, so this will be added to that pretty soon as Well, YouTube is my main hub right now. I'm also on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. But if you search The Dadvocate, you'll find me, including all my Dr. Phil episodes and all that.

Excellent. I don't know if you heard that as soon as you came on. I got a little thing popped up, somebody trying to do a FaceTime with me. So sorry about that if that came across on the audio, people. But Lauren, that's okay.

At least my, uh, the principal's not calling to talk about my kid again.

You know, I've not had one of those calls yet. You know, cross my fingers.

Oh no, I've had like 7 this year.

Have you really? Yeah. That's awesome. All right. Well, good stuff.

All right, Lauren.

7 years advocating. That's right. Lauren with Advokit. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right. We'll see you around.