Let's Talk About NICE GUYS - with @AshleyCoxCoaching

I was in a relationship with a quote unquote nice guy, someone who I had friend-zoned for, gosh, 15 years. And since we were 12 in middle school, he was kind of insecure. He was chubby when we were kids. He was my friend and I guess he had the biggest crush on me and I had no idea that he was too afraid to put himself out there and tell me you know, and, um, and then we grew up. We maintained contact that whole time. I mean, we would stay on the phone for hours, and, and he'd send me flowers sometimes, um, like if I had a surgery or, you know, whatever. Um, and then when we got older, uh, we both moved to Texas at different times and, uh, and started dating. And I, um, really craved for him to set boundaries. And so I remember feeling like, man, I just really, really wish— like, he's an amazing guy. Like, he'll do anything for me. I just really, really wish he would set boundaries. And now, having studied everything that I've studied, I understand that it's not just the boundaries. It was also wanting to feel his power, wanting to feel his edge, wanting to feel his no, and to feel essentially penetrated emotionally and energetically like for him to take up space around me and not be afraid to take up space. Having waited so long to date me, he would shrink. He would sort of like give me whatever I wanted. He didn't want me to leave, you know, like he didn't want me to abandon him or reject him. He still had some inner child stuff. And so, like, he was, he was kind of— it was a little bit, it was a little bit boring, I have to say, because there was no there was no like oomph, there was no edge, like, where's the boundary here? And it also on an unconscious level feels a little unsafe as a woman to be with a man who, you know, won't tell you no. And it's like the unconscious thing there is, well, if he can't tell me no, can he tell the world no? And if he can't tell the world no, how can he keep me safe? And so him not having boundaries and not being able to say no was really not only boring, but also scary for me. And it put me into a masculine state where my head was on a swivel and I didn't feel like I could really relax into him. And we both did a lot of work. We broke up, did a lot of work, and actually we're back together. Things are great. We're on track to get married and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, fast forward.

Interesting.

But yeah, yeah, we've had to put a lot of work in and we had to learn the hard way everything that I teach. So anyways, right around our first breakup, that's when I went into a deep meditation for about 3 weeks and just prayed and was like, God, how can I help people? I had a coaching company before and I knew how to do it. And I was just like, what's next for me? What do you want me to do? And what I felt like I was told was that the patriarchy has hurt men just as much as it's hurt women. And that's not a political statement. It's really just a statement to say that men haven't had safe spaces to be vulnerable, to share their emotions, to talk about what's going on for them in the way that women have. It's much more socially acceptable for women to go process what's going on for them. And so essentially what you have is this pressure cooker effect where men are shoving everything down and the women feel like, oh, he's emotionally unavailable. Right. But in his mind, he's like, if I go there, I don't know if I'm going to come back from it. There's so much stuff buried. I feel like I'm going to blow up. I don't know if I'm like, what's going to happen if I really let myself go there? And there's a lot of reasons for that. And so, yeah. And so I wanted to create a safe space and it's been that ever since. It's an international company. I've had many, many clients I've talked to. I've spoken to over 2,500 men. And if you include DMs, it's probably double that. But I've consulted and actually coached probably 300 or 400 at this point internationally. And these are men who go from being friend-zoned or being in a terrible marriage, being abused, etc., to completely taking their power back, to cultivating their discipline and really just getting a handle on life in a way where they feel like they're in control.

This is this codependency, Mr. Nice Guy thing. Last time I spoke to Dr. Glover about this, I said, you know, from when he wrote that book 20-some-odd years ago to now, you would expect with, you know, this kind of, kind of information out in the zeitgeist, if you will, especially with the information that we would see a lot of men doing better. But oh no, no, it's getting worse and worse and worse as far as, you know, if we had a graph for nice guys, it's going like this. And you got to ask what the heck's going on here. Um, and you alluded to it at the beginning in the intro. Bingo. The whole family issues, childhood issues. From my perspective, talking to so many men, that's it. That's everything. It's all about what happened when they were a little boy. Mom and dad, the dynamic that they witnessed with mom and dad, um, their past relationship experiences has completely molded them into what they see now, which is Mr. Nice Guy, and it's getting them absolutely nowhere. A lot of men are very resistant to the whole notion of Really, it's a psychology thing we're talking about. You know, lay down on the couch, let's work this out and talk about where this came from. A lot of men are like, oh God, here we go with the wounded child nonsense, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's much easier, Ashley, to say from the hurt male perspective, and that's who we're talking about. A lot of guys have been badly hurt because usually what goes along with this is a string of being cheated on, broke up, you know, got their heart broken, whatever it may be, belittled at the workspace. Whatever it may be, it's much easier to lash out at the other. And often the other in our world is women. It's women only like creeps— women are not creeps, excuse me, uh, bad boys. That's the term. Women only like bad boys, which is another word for extroverted, low-anxiety men who aren't afraid to say what it is they're feeling. There's some truth to that. Women only like certain types of guys with— who have certain looks, certain money, etc. There's no hope for nice guys or good guys like me, they just step all over me and use me and so forth. That's the easy way out, just to wash your hands of the whole thing and just say, I'm out. Way more difficult to say, maybe there's something about little ol' me that's causing some of this, at least some of this, if not all of this problem. So do you find that men are more apt to wake up, pay attention, and take that in from a lady as opposed to a guy like myself? Do you think you have an edge in that world?

I'm laughing. I was muted so you couldn't hear it, but yeah, yeah. So what I've found is that often my clients don't have close male friends and they're much more comfortable with women. I find that very interesting. It's not something I expected going into it. But it also makes sense and is kind of related to the root problem of what is causing the nice guy syndrome, honestly. So it's a blessing and a curse in that, you know, it brings them in. But, you know, you know, so it's like, it's the thing that brings them in is probably not great. Like whatever causes it in childhood, like his own discomfort with his discomfort with his own masculinity and the fact that he may have never shifted his emotional anchor from his mom to his dad. And then eventually to his friends. And so he's still mentally and emotionally on some level sort of stuck in a certain place where he's only comfortable with women. And so while that may not be awesome for him, what is awesome is that it brings him to me so we can work on it. And yeah, and I think that there's something to be said for finally feeling heard and seen by a woman, having a safe space It is specifically that's held by a woman. It's very, very, very rare in our society for men to have a safe space at all, much less with a woman. And so on some level, just experiencing that can be healing.

Here's a phrase, Ashley, tell me if guys have told you this. You're such a nice guy. You're such a good guy is what a lot of people will hear. And they will, what a lot of men will hear rather. And they will, hear that from who? From the woman they're trying to woo and trying to get into a romantic/sexual relationship with. And so he'll try to cross the line into the romantic/erotic side of things as opposed to the platonic friendly side of things, and he just can't get over that hump. And he pushes and pushes in his own little nice guy way. And the common phrase to put the wall up from the woman to say, that ain't you, buddy, is, you're such a good guy, you're such a nice guy. And every man knows, oh, there's the death blow, because we know what's coming next. I'm sorry, I just don't have those kind of feelings for you. It's, it's not going to go there. I'm sorry, you know, I like you a lot, and you're, you're a great guy. You're really, really awesome, dude. You're a super nice guy, but it can't go there. And then men do the whole, and then, you know, 2 weeks later, I saw her out with A guy who in their mind is just the wrong man for her. And then again, the jump in the logic is, well, women just tend to like what's bad for them. They don't know what's good for them because if they knew what's good for them, Ashley, they would go with a man like me, Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Good Guy. It's easy for us in today's day and age, us men, to, um, oh, take a good thing and just snowball it into something huge that quickly becomes a very negative thing. We want to be Mr. Provider. I want to, you know, go out and work my butt off and prove to my family that I can do that and put a roof over everybody's head. In today's day and age, usually it's like a 50-50 thing between he and the wife, but still we get a lot of our purpose from that. I'm a good father, gosh darn it. I coach every team and I help with the homework and I do all this and that, and I'm a good co-parent/husband in terms of domestic duties and everything else. And it's very, very easy, Ashley, when you're caught in what I call the family machine, which it's so easy to get lost in that. And then you lose who? Your sense of self. And I think nice guys are especially susceptible to that condition of losing themselves because all these little actions are all pointing outward. I'm trying to prove to wife that I'm a good, good hubby, good father. I'm trying to prove these kids this. I'm trying to prove to the work, to my employer that I'm a good worker. I'm trying to prove, trying to prove, and there's nothing left of themselves. And it's 10:30 at night every night, and they're just like, I haven't done a damn thing for myself. I don't even know who I am anymore. That's a big component of it. The people-pleasing codependent thing. It's very natural for us to lose ourselves in parenthood. Any woman will tell you this, like they've lost their sense of self. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm just this breastfeeding, baby-carrying machine. Who am I? And then that lasts for, in some semblance, for the next 18 years until the kid goes outta the house. It's very easy to lose yourself. And us, the nice guys, tend to have a, really difficult time with that. Rita, you tell me, Ashley, will an outgoing, confident, not afraid to stick up for himself and say what it is he feels, will that trump the truly good guy every time if the truly good guy has no boundaries?

Yeah, yeah, because at, at a woman's core, what she's looking for from a man is for him to protect, right? Like, if you look at how we're built biologically, you know, the woman, when, when we have a baby on our hip, we can't fight the bear. Right. And so on a, on a deep level, we're looking for someone who has an edge, who can say no, who has his head on a swivel, who has discernment, who has boundaries, who has discipline, all the things that you need to have in order to protect. Not the guy who isn't paying attention, is just letting anyone and anything in. Right, who doesn't have boundaries, who doesn't know what he wants, doesn't have a sense of direction and yes or no, what's right for him, what his principles, what his values are. And you have to have a sense of identity for that. You know, if you have spent your whole life people pleasing, then you lose your identity because you've become whoever everybody else wants you to be. Right. And so if you don't have a sense of identity, how can you make decisions? And if you can't make decisions, How can you keep the family safe and protected?

Let me play devil's advocate here for a moment. By the way, I agree with 1,000% of what you just said. Devil's advocate. Yes, but Miss Ashley, you're speaking from a very antiquated, old-timey mindset. What you're getting at is that we all have some kind of embedded programming within us that basically what you're saying is nature says, here's your cards, you're a woman, these are your feelings, and this is your predisposition towards what you're looking for for a mate. Here you go, man, here are your cards. Haven't we overcome some of this as a people over the past so many generations of societal change? Doesn't that trump some of this?

I'd say if we had overcome it by now, we wouldn't have as many men as we have, like, you know, hooked on porn, right? We have— it's very difficult to fight biology, right? And to override it. Now, if you tell the women, they might tell you, oh yeah, I can do anything a man can do. And it's like, well, ma'am, go, go lift— not lift, but build the power line, then please, you know, go to the oil rig, right? Go unload that 18-wheeler. Like, if— oh, and by the way, don't mess up your manicure while you're doing it. You know, your $40 manicure or whatever, right? So if anyone wants to sort of make the argument that we're the same, you know, you can easily dismantle that. Look at the way our brain is wired. You know, there's a lot of it that's the same, but some of it's different. Some of it's different. Men, their brain is more like the hemispheres don't talk to each other as much. Right. And then they are also wired to like when there's a threat to execute the threat or to handle the threat. You know, that's why emotions can be really hard, because if I feel these emotions, I don't know how I'm going to react to it. Right. My brain wants to do something about it. And the answer that my brain comes up with is not always the best answer for how to handle these emotions. Right. That's, in my opinion, why we see a suicide rate that's 4 times that of women, because it just seems like an answer to the emotions. Right. It's a, it's a way to solve that problem. And that's not the only reason, but one, one big reason. Men, you know, their brain works better when, like, when something is moving. The quicker it's moving, the better they are at identifying it. And like, you know, for example, like if you're hunting and you have to shoot an arrow, right? And women, not so much. And so, you know, biologically our brain is different. We have different hormones. Women obviously have a 28-day or thereabout hormone cycle. Men have a 24-hour hormone cycle. And so men are much more equipped for the traditional 9 to 5, wake up, go to work, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, go to sleep, that sort of thing, having 2 days off. Whereas women, we can crank out a bunch of work a couple of weeks out of the month and then need to rest, you know, and we'll wear our bodies down if we don't honor that. And what we're seeing is, you know, very high rates of infertility, very high rates of women having— being on depression medicine, you know, like just people really going against biology instead of working with it. Hyper-independence is a modern-day luxury. We are designed to be interdependent. And so when we work against that, something's got to give.

It's interesting you talk about your past being very independent, I can take care of myself type. And I don't think it's a coincidence, Miss Ashley, that you connected with a Mr. Nice Guy type, do you?

No, no, not at all. No, I think, I think that I was a nice guy magnet. You know, being really in my masculine and really independent. Um, there was— and, you know, if you want more to talk about, I have plenty about this— but there was this, uh, piece of wanting my validation and approval. And let me tell you, like, I— like I said, growing up really quickly and seeing some stuff that I really shouldn't have seen growing up, and being in like life-threatening situations and lots of abuse and stuff. I really had a mind of my own. I really did, because you have to, you have to. And so there was something interesting psychologically about wanting the approval and validation of like a strong-willed woman, right? Um, someone who ultimately— I would say that I was very insecure, and these guys are insecure as well. It's just, and it looks very different. I was insecure on the spectrum of having narcissistic traits, right? And then also depending on the person, codependent traits, like I would switch off. So like if there was someone to save, I was all about it and I'd want to save that person, right? So I dated one guy who was a former Marine, heavy, heavy, heavy drinker, probably should have been in some sort of rehab facility. I invested— invested— I spent $150,000 trying to help him. Yes.

Wow.

And I was on a teacher salary at the time. So I was working 4 jobs. And then when I started dating a nice guy, I went way over to the, like, crazy toxic controlling side, you know, unempathetic, like, so interesting the difference there and how I sort of responded differently. But in both cases, I was deeply, deeply insecure. And gosh, that could probably be a psychological study in and of itself and how I sabotaged someone who was actually trying to love me and chased someone who didn't. But yeah, and I think that the nice guys do the same, right? There's something when you have deep childhood trauma or deep insecurities or whatever, where you're trying to get someone to love you who simply just isn't invested or they're repelled even by it. Because ultimately what it is, it's your inner child who is running the show, not the man. So what I tell my clients all the time is we have to put your inner child in the passenger seat. He's not allowed to make decisions anymore. Until you do that, he's the one who needs the approval and the validation and things like that. And like I said earlier, we're seeing societally speaking, and again, this goes back to the politics thing, from a societal level, when we start to level out the playing field and, you know, the divorce rate is as high as it is, women can get their own job, women can do whatever they like, there's nothing wrong with that, but we haven't addressed the other side of the coin, which is, okay, now how about the men, right? And what we're seeing is the men like don't know where they fit in. They don't know what their role is. They don't know how to provide and what their purpose is right now. Women are relatively self-sufficient. Now, that being said, men are responsible for building the infrastructure, right? So they're sort of working along in the background while everybody else benefits and thinks that they're independent. But we all still need men. And what we're seeing is boys who, because the family dynamic has really been just destroyed, a lot of boys are growing up without a strong father figure. So he may be around, but he's passive. He may be around, but he's abusive, the father, or he may just not be around at all. And so what happens is around the age of 6 or 7, You know, if the father is not ready to initiate the boy into his manhood and like teach the boy principles and values and confidence, and there's so much that goes into that, but little boys are looking for answers to these questions. They want to know how they can be good enough. And they're wondering where they fit into the pecking order, right? It's very, again, kind of tribal. And so If the dad's not around to do that and fill that role, then the young boy doesn't ever graduate. So his emotional anchor stays with the mom. So around 6 or 7, it shifts from the mom to the dad. And it has to shift for him to start to build that confidence internally. Mom can't coddle him forever, right? Because he won't, he won't develop and cultivate the masculinity and the confidence that he needs. So basically, if he never shifts, what does he do with the rest of his life? He seeks validation and approval from women because he's never cultivated— he's never differentiated and like separated from the mom psychologically and cultivated his own confidence. So for example, dad would take the boy out, for example, and teach him how to fish or teach him how to hunt. And maybe the boy has a hard time at first, but the dad is like, I've got your back. I love you no matter what. You've got this. It's okay if you fail. We'll try again. I'm going to teach you. That process is so super, super important, not just to learn how to fish and hunt, but for the little boy's sense of self-esteem and for it to be intrinsically sourced instead of coming from the mom. And then once the self-esteem is intact, then he'll be more comfortable being in a group of other men, right? So then around 15, 14, 15, he graduates to like his friends, his peer group, his community, which is why when we talked about, you know, men being more comfortable working with me as a woman, these are men who never went through that process. And so they're uncomfortable being around men because they're lacking the confidence, that lacking that intrinsic confidence. And that's the same reason that they're attracting the women they're attracting as well, and why they're running into relationship issues.

Very well put. We see this all the time where, um, I'll talk to a guy, and this is no slight against stay-at-home fathers, for example, or anyone that's like in a non-traditional kind of role, but we will see often those men that kind of take a, a subordinate role, for lack of a better term, in, in their marriage. And you will listen to a description of their wife, and she's usually very Type A, professional, CEO level, or some kind of high executive, you know, or a doctor or something like that. My wife is a surgeon, by the way, so I can speak to this world well. And, um, what we often see romantically with these guys is, well, there is no romance, basically. The woman is what they call in psych circles very avoidant in nature. She's been very hyper-independent her entire life, was never able to trust anyone except herself. So she's not about to be open sexually, emotionally with somebody and vulnerable in that way. She doesn't want to hear it. Just leave her alone, let her do her thing. And she's paired up with, ironically, the most needy, anxious dude on the planet Earth, who's like, I need constant reassurance that you love me. I need constant reassurance that we're okay. When I, when I sit across the table from you and I see you have a not so happy look on your face, I have to fix it like now, immediately. And, um, it doesn't bode well for the, the clash of the two worlds. It doesn't bode well for the, for the romance between the two. But we see that— shoot, I don't know, that's like three-fourths of the guys in our group basically have that dynamic in some way. So super, super common and very interesting to hear it from the other side of the table, the other person's your perspective, the person who said, yeah, that was me. And the fact that you're doing probably continuous active work to battle against that— the, the analogy I often use is one of— it's like this concept of baggage that we all bring to the table. It's like literally luggage that's in the back of your car, and it's— there's so much of it that it throws off the weight distribution of the car. And so you're driving down the road And if you take your hand off the wheel, you go off the road and you crash into the trees and you die. So you have to make constant course corrections and keep your hand on the wheel, know when to put on the brake, know when to accelerate. And that doesn't stop. You always have to do that from now until the day you die. That's called having baggage and dealing with it. And that's what I found, that most people just don't do that. It's very easy just to take your hand off and go, eh, well, whatever happens, happens. And that's what we see with a lot of guys all through their life. When I say You know, I hear these guys that describe really toxic, for lack of a better term, dysfunctional, chaotic marriages to a woman who's objectively like bad news. And you're like, what in the world were you doing with that gal? And I said, what is it that, you know, Bob, what is it that caused you to choose Mary as your wife all those many years ago? She was like one of the guys. She was very low in chaos. She was very low drama. She was, I could talk to her about anything. She was just cool, calm, and collected. And then we had our honeymoon phase, which wasn't the best in the world. This is what usually these guys say, but it was something. And then, man, as soon as we had kids and got married, that just went, and just, you know, plummeted, flatlined, nothing. We have nothing anymore. That's what I hear often from the guys, is she was just one of the guys. And then combined with the reason I married is just because that's just what you do, you know. I'm 26 years of age, everybody says, why aren't you married yet? Oh, I don't know, I guess Mary, do you want to marry me? Okay. That's about all the thought they put into it. And why did you have 8 kids? Well, because Mary wanted to have 8 kids. And did you? Not really, no. I was happy with no kids. And he just, he's just like, eh, whatever. That's in essence the nice guy's mantra is, eh, whatever. That's fine. No biggie. Meanwhile, in his head, he's like yelling, no, I don't want to do this. But he's Whatever, whatever. Gets you in a lot of trouble. We've been talking about the romantic and the relationship side of things. How does the nice guy syndrome affect these guys professionally? What have you seen?

Yeah, so it depends on what profession they're in, obviously. So if they are entrepreneurs or if they are working a 9 to 5 or something in between, my clients who are in charge of their own money and either they're a CEO or they get commissions, they always make more money and they don't even change anything on the outside because let me tell you, they already have their T's crossed and their I's dotted. That's just kind of how they roll, right? But when they open their heart and when they have intrinsic confidence and they're less attached to the outcome, Things just start to flow and I don't know what it is. It's just, it almost, it's just really cool to see, honestly. I had a client just yesterday, we were talking, he was on Voxer and he had a good cry and then he was like, okay, I have to get myself together, go have this big meeting. And then later he texts me back and he goes, I just made millions of dollars. I was like, maybe you should cry more often because what he told me, it was like, oh, I never cried. And I'm like, this is probably a good, you know, maybe to a sign, uh, that you're headed in the right direction. But people feel it, you know, and they, they feel, um, you know, they feel like it's an authentic relationship and not a transactional relationship. Um, they feel like they can be themselves because they don't have to walk on eggshells to make you comfortable since you're insecure or super attached or what have you. There's a lot to be said for it. Clients who are in, uh, like a 9-to-5 situation, they'll often change jobs. So, um, you know, they'll go, they'll wake up kind of and go, oh, these people have been taking advantage of me for years and I've been led by them, right? Or treating me poorly or whatever. And so they start applying and then they'll like land this awesome job and like, oh my gosh, this is so much better. But it's interesting how it doesn't occur until they shift their identity. Mm-hmm. So like when their identity shifts, and they feel more confident, their self-worth comes online, their self-respect comes online, then all of a sudden that's when they feel the sort of record scratch, if you will. And it makes them kind of wake up and go, oh, you're actually— it's not just me who is not good enough and so I need to work harder. It's you who's taken advantage of that, right? And as soon as I start to set boundaries and tell you, no, I'm not going to work 50 hours, you know, a day or whatever for you. Like then, you know, if you get upset, it's like my, my sign to go. Right. Because you've just gotten so used to milking me, so to speak. I have a friend who was on the board of a hospital. She's been on multiple boards and I'll tell you something that she probably won't ever, ever, ever say publicly. And I can never tell you her name and I can never tell you what hospital she works for. We were sitting there, I was helping her set up her new office. She just bought a house and we were talking about nice guys and she goes, the men who, and women who are deeply insecure and never feel good enough will work the hardest for you. And all you have to do is be just a tiny bit disproving of whatever they've done and they'll work harder.

Interesting. Wow. Somewhat manipulative, but, uh, that's interesting. Yeah, um, it's, uh, it's something I've been talking about here recently is the sales game, for example. That is such a microcosm of watching how a certain personality type succeeds over another in sales. And the nice guy persona doesn't lend itself well to sales. And what I've seen is that they get in their own way. You know, a typical nice guy will over-ruminate and think of reasons why he can't make a sale. For example, all these things that get in the way of success, you know, the stereotypical— I used to work for a big company. I used to go all over the place to dealerships for this big company and watch salespeople at work, and you could always pick the top dude. He was always the same archetype: laid-back, confident. He's obviously the head dude. When he walks into the room, everybody looks up to him. Simple, not to the point of being like, you know, simple-minded, but to his co-workers, they would probably tell you like he's not the brightest dude in the world. He's just pretty simple, straightforward dude. While over-anxious, overthinking it guy over here, probably Mr. Nice Guy, is like, I need a better laptop, I need better print materials, I need all this, I need better training on how to use said laptop, I need it, I need, I need, I need all these things before he can literally walk out the door and start selling stuff. Well, top performer dude, just like, yeah, see, I'm just going to go out and get a sale and comes back and hands you a napkin that he was at a bar and he wrote out a deal on a napkin and says, here, you know, put that in the system. I just sold a $500,000 piece of equipment. There's the guy's email and his number. What is this? Yeah, I sold a big giant piece of equipment with a napkin. Yeah, that's all it takes. I've been working this guy for 3 months and he finally pulled the trigger. While this guy over here is just saying, one of these days I'm going to have everything I need to succeed. That's how analogous, or how, how much that compares to the romance game as well, is I, I can't go out and date, you know, post-divorce because the only, the only men that women want are guys that are so tall, make so much money, yeah, I have no chance. I need to do this, this, and this first, and maybe after I lose 10 pounds I can go out versus the guy who's very low anxiety, very not Mr. Nice Guy, just goes out and does it. There's something to be learned from those guys. Just go out and do it. Get out of your head. And, um, yeah, this, this nice guy thing bleeds over into a lot of different facets of our life. Maybe good lead into this question. We see this often. I don't know how often you are telling men that you talk to, you may want to go talk to somebody, you know, outside of my little world, you know, therapy, something like that. You're showing signs of pretty severe anxiety, depression, and so forth. This is kind of outside of my purview, mister. Come back to me when you work through those issues. How often do you see that? And I think something like dissociative identity disorder would fall under that.

Yeah, for sure. Um, so something I recommend for a lot of my clients who have, who have severe childhood trauma, even, or especially childhood trauma they can't remember, but they're showing all the symptoms of severe childhood trauma This happens a lot with sexual trauma, like men who are showing symptoms of potential sexual trauma. I don't necessarily suggest that to them, and like, but in my mind, that's what I'm thinking, right? When they start telling me, "I'm a sex addict," or, "I'm addicted to porn," you know, or when someone, you know, tries to love me, I just completely sabotage it and kind of And yeah, it's just my mind just starts to go, "There's something going on here, something a lot deeper." And when they've— when those things start to stack up, when it's not just one or two issues, it's, you know, multiple. And I recommend EMDR to them because the last thing I think that men want to do is sit in therapy for years and years and years. And men process— again, going back to our biological differences, we process emotions differently. So women, we process through talking, and men somewhat. I mean, that certainly can help for some men, but not for all. And so that model is pretty feminized in terms of how it, you know, the approaches. And what I like about EMDR is that it's to the point. What they do is they keep your conscious mind engaged while they access your unconscious mind so they can actually have a conversation with your unconscious mind, which, by the way, is responsible for 99% for 95% of your behavior. So it's very important to figure out what's going on in your unconscious mind, but our conscious mind won't often let us. Like, we— it's hard to access. And so having someone who knows how to access your, let's just say, computer program that was developed mostly between 0 and 8 years old, stuff that you don't even remember, right? Beliefs that you developed as a child that you don't even remember. So someone who can directly access that and start to help you rewire it, you know, that saves you so much time than having to sit and look for it and sort through it when you may have cognitive dissonance and your brain just does not want you to go there. It feels too unsafe. And you'll spin your wheels in therapy for years until you know how to directly access the unconscious mind, which EMDR is fantastic at doing. It's also helpful for retrieving memories. So again, If you, you know, sometimes things are so traumatic, we don't remember them. And so if you're seeing all the symptoms, but you don't have the memory, it helps. It helps you retrieve the memory and know exactly maybe what happened or what's causing these behaviors. I've seen it with a lot of my clients, a lot of my clients who they're just chronically, no matter what we do from a coaching perspective, still anxious, still depressed, still have addictions. You know, they're doing everything. They're, you know, going to the gym or they are cleaning up their diet or they're setting boundaries and they're doing these things. But it's almost like no matter what they do, they just keep, you know, finding themselves going back to essentially old coping mechanisms. Their unconscious mind is trying to keep them safe and it's terrified of change. It's terrified of being vulnerable, um, and leadership is vulnerable, you know, masculinity is vulnerable in and of itself because you're putting yourself out there. You have to approach, right? And you have to make the decision and hope that it's the right one, right? And so the brain is so terrified of that level of taking up space and being vulnerable, making decisions, setting boundaries, that it will default and continue to default until you actually fix the root cause. Of what the, the brain is so terrified of, because it has one job, and that's to keep you alive.

Another layer of complexity to this, something that we've noticed in our world— I don't know if you see it in yours as well— is, uh, we have a disproportionately large number of guys that, that have been formally diagnosed as being neurodivergent. So you'll have ADHD, on the autism spectrum, and so forth. We see a lot of that, and I'm sure you do too. So that's a whole other level of of complexity there. And, um, it is a spectrum. So some are quote-unquote worse than others. There are guys on the autism spectrum that have lived their whole lives, I had no idea, while there are others that are like, something is most definitely quote-unquote wrong here. I have a difficult time in relationships with empathy and so forth. And that's a whole other series of challenges there. But we see, yeah, quite often, and it's very often that I'll hear men tell me I haven't diagnosed men, but I've helped point them in the direction of, have you ever considered ADHD or something? Because this is— you're ringing a lot of bells here, mister. And they'll go and get formalized testing, come back and say, I'll be darned, that was it. And now I'm on a pill or a stimulant or something that's helping me keep focused and do everything, and this has just been a godsend to me. So for a lot of those guys, I say, timeout, let's go talk to somebody else about this. I'm not a licensed medical anything, so, uh But we see that quite a bit, and some of the things that trigger me to go, oh, is— and this sounds terrible— but if you have a child who is on the autism spectrum, for example, the chances of them coming from a mother, father, or extended family, somebody also has— is also on the autism spectrum is very high. So that's usually an indicator of, oh, is it you or the wife that is on the spectrum, or both? And then, um, you know, the things of, I have nothing but a lot of relationship problems, these men will tell me I get very, very hyper-focused on certain, uh, hobbies and interests to the detriment of everything else. You know, I'll just dive into topic XYZ and not come up for breath. I'll forget to eat and drink and sleep and everything else. And it's like, yeah, that's a pretty big indicator that's, that's not your neurotypical trait. Um, so a lot of guys probably listening to that going, yeah, it sounds like me. If that does sound like you guys, there's a lot of help and a lot of things out there For guys like you, it is not— doesn't mean you're broken, crazy, or whatever. Just means you're wired a little differently. And if you can get help with that, and it may come in the form of therapy, it may come in the form of some kind of pharmaceutical help, that may be the big thing to help get you up over the wall. And then you can work with people like us to help you along further. But have you seen that a lot with the neurodivergent community in your world?

Absolutely. More ADHD than autism. But I would say, gosh, over 90% of my clients have ADHD.

Oh wow, interesting.

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, there needs to be a study on this. It's like, what is going on with nice guy syndrome and ADHD? Um, and they've been, I mean, diagnosed, right? So they're coming in saying, I'm taking medicine, or I've been diagnosed, or— yeah. And I'll say two sort of symptoms or signs of ADHD that are— that you don't often hear a lot about are them staying up late a lot, and apparently it's because there's less stimulus so they can think better, right? Like it's their only quiet time. And then two, to your point, not just hyperfocused on hobbies but also women. So the men who are dating, they'll go fast and heavy, and it feels like love bombing to the woman, but really what it is is hyperfocus, and then eventually they lose interest. And the woman goes, "What happened? It was awesome. You said all these things. I thought we were gonna be together forever. You were so into me. You were calling me all the time and you were paying attention to every little thing that I said," and that sort of thing, and really gets her hopes up. And then eventually he just gets bored with it and wants to move on to the next thing. And some people will start to beat themselves up for that. "Oh, I'm such a jerk. Why does this always happen?" Or the women, obviously. I will say something like that too, but really it could just be a symptom of, of ADHD and something that you have to be really mindful of. I will have to slow my clients down, um, sometimes if they're— if they have ADHD and they're dating, and help them be very mindful and help them pace the relationship appropriately, um, and really kind of like give it some time to see how they really feel about the person. Is it just a dopamine rush or are you really, really invested in this person and in alignment with them?

They fall fast, they fall hard, and they don't take rejection well at all. They're very rejection sensitive. So that's a very lethal combination for getting into a relationship and jumping into the dating world immediately after a divorce. That's why I tell guys, maybe take a year off from relationships completely. Just work on yourself. You know, don't go jumping into things because you're just going to jump right into chaos all over again. You're going to fall in love with the first woman that makes gugu eyes at you. And we're talking about— there is also another aspect to the ADHD world which isn't so nice, and it's certainly not the most politically correct thing to talk about, which is your psychologist would call it hypersexuality. Um, they, they want it, and they want it a lot and often, and it's never quite enough. I wrote a book about sexless marriages years ago called The Dead Bedroom Fix. So I get a lot of men to me in from that world about I want to talk about my sexless marriage. And we have guys that do better as a result of working with me, and they'll go from, I was a once-a-month kind of guy to 3-times-a-week kind of guy. I'm like, that's a huge percentage jump. Hallelujah, high five, I guess we're done here. Well, not so fast, because now I want— insert some kind of pornographic activity here, like threesomes and all this other kind of stuff. Okay, dude, what's going on here? And sure enough, it's the the ADHD thing, the neurodivergent thing, it lends itself to that. So that sounds familiar to any of you guys. Yet another thing to think about there. So