Mansplaining and Overperception Bias... Yes Men Can Be Annoying Too

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. Hello everyone, DSO here from dadstartingover.com, and I wanted to, uh, take things in a little bit of a different direction today. You know, we don't— as guys, I should say guys in this realm, this world of mine, the Dad Starting Over world, you know, where men sit around and talk about relationships And most of the time it's men talking about, you know, let me tell you how women have really fucked me over in life. Let me tell you about the shit show that is my life. It's very, very easy for us men to fall into what I and others call a very much a victim mentality, which is, um, it's almost as if you're talking about yourself in the third person. Look how the world is affecting this human being. 'Look how unfair it is,' and you totally absolve yourself of any control in the matter. And that's not a good headspace to get into. But what I found with a lot of guys is this, um, and it's understandable when you're going through all this shit, you tend to lose your sense of humor and you tend to lose, lose perspective on things, and everything is just painted with with black, it's just everything's awful. And with some men that lends itself towards painting everything, and I mean everything, with the brush of I'm a victim, life is awful. I'm a victim, life is terrible. The most mundane things, you know, I could post some inspirational meme about hey, hang in there, buddy, blah, blah, blah, I don't know what up, you know, the, the kitten dangling from a tree. Have you all seen that? It was like a big poster, I think, in the '80s. A little kitten hanging from the tree and it says, "Hang in there," at the bottom. I could post that and some man will go, "It's really tough to do when you only able to see your kids every other weekend and half your paycheck goes to child support." It's like, all right, dude, I get it, but there's a time and place for it. It's just a stupid cat meme. One spot that I see a lot of men completely go off the mark and where I roll my eyes is, we see this a lot with your super feminist types too, where not only will those super feminist types say, all men bad, all men bad, anything with a penis is awful, they will flip it and say, and conversely, all women are fantastic, and how dare you say anything to belittle us or to put us in any kind of negative light. We are flawless creatures. Well, guys, a lot of you are guilty of much the same thing. We need to kind of, uh, take a look at ourselves and be honest. And it is okay to laugh at ourselves as men because we as men, we have some quirks and some of the things aren't so attractive, and that's okay. And it's okay to laugh at them. And it's okay to admit them, and it's okay to say maybe we got a little problem. Maybe it's kind of funny. Yeah, we need to work on it, move on. But I see a lot of guys are even hesitant to do that. They don't want to paint themselves as any kind of, any kind of negative light. Everything has to be, no, man is the victim. The, the man is the, the hero archetype of the world. We're here to set everything straight. Women are just these emotional stupid creatures, and if it wasn't for us, the whole world would erupt into chaos. It's like, okay, dude, I get it, but cool it, you know? So let's talk about maybe some ways in which we can laugh at ourselves as men. You know, I heard years ago, and it always hits me upside the head, you know, stereotypes don't just fall from the sky. They're there for a reason. They're born out of some kind of truth. Now, it may not be 100% true, and sometimes these stereotypes get exaggerated, and they go way overboard, and it becomes some really mean stuff, but there's always a little kernel of truth there. So I thought I'd tackle a couple of these little man-centric stereotypes, and we can talk about ourselves, and how maybe we can work on it, and poke fun at ourselves a little bit, God forbid. The first one, Mansplaining. I'm sorry, guys, this is a very real thing. I know, I know, it's kind of a feminist trope where women will, you know, a man can't burp without them saying, are you trying to mansplain right now? Well, why, where did that come from, right? The whole mansplaining term. Because there's something to it, guys. I have, I've seen this my whole professional life. Any kind of endeavor I'm in, any kind of hobby that I get into or whatever, there's always some dude who is just waiting to say, you know, actually what you want to do is— 9 times out of 10, I just want to look at the guy and say, I didn't fucking ask, dude. But there's— every man thinks he's an expert in something, it seems. When I started this business, the Dad Starting Over World, I get regular guys on a regular basis telling me how I need to, how I can do everything better. And some guys get downright nosy about it, asking about finances and how much money I'm making and how much I'm spending on this and I need to do better and have I tried this, have I tried that. And I understand the intent is one of, they're just trying to help, right? But they go overboard real quick. And basically you just look at them and say, I appreciate it, but I didn't fucking ask. You're kind of overstepping your bounds. I think that's what a lot of guys do is we just overstep our bounds and we kind of nerd out on people. And when we hear, here's an example of me, here's a good opportunity for me to flex my mental muscle and show this person here that I know a lot about this subject or that they're going about something wrong. You know, there's a— there's kind of a state of zen that you get to when you get older. I heard somebody once, I can't remember who it was, some famous celebrity said you get to this ultimate level of peace where eventually somebody can just come up to you and say, "You know, 2 2 5." And instead of getting out the piece of paper and showing them, no, that in fact it equals 4, and explaining to them math, etc., You just smile, nod, and say, "Yeah, good for you, you're right. Have a good day." Because in the end, what does it matter if this idiot thinks 2 2 5? Who cares? It's not an opportunity for you to flex your mental muscle. It's not the end of the world. I don't give a shit. Let him live his life and do whatever he wants. This is something that we're kind of losing, especially with the internet. Everybody's just jumping on everybody's case. "You said something wrong!" Who gives a shit? I don't get into these petty arguments. I just say, "Huh, interesting," and move on. That's probably, if you wanna know if I think something's horseshit, I'll probably just nod and grin and say, "Huh, interesting." We men need to work on that more. Just let it go. You don't have to mansplain everything away. You don't have to, especially with the ladies. You know, a lady is doing something wrong, you don't have to jump to it and say, "Actually." I keep saying actually because there's a, hilarious meme on the internet of like a large buck-toothed nerdy looking guy, and it says underneath him, "Actually." It's like a very known nerdy, over-the-top, dorky dude thing, just to be able to stand in a crowd and correct somebody in the middle of something, and everyone just rolls their eyes going, "Jesus, dude, nobody asked." That's basically, that's mansplaining. And it's fucking annoying and we need to cut it out. Thing 2 is something that's called an overperception bias or a sexual overperception bias. This predominantly happens in men and any woman can tell you that yes, this happens. I'm sorry guys, a lot of us do this. I'm sure I've done it before too. I'm sure you have too. We need to work on it and it is this. Anytime we see a little bit of something out of a woman, particularly an attractive woman, she's at the gym, she brushes her hair back and gives you a little smile. Guys, this does not mean that she wants to jump your bones. This does not mean that she's willing to, you know, go into your car and jump in the back seat with you. She's just being friendly. At the most, she just says he looks like a nice guy, smiled at you, and that's it. We as men tend to over-perceive sexual interest in women. We just do. Now, with that being said, if you do in fact think this woman's giving you signals, certainly, you know, talk to her and, hey, how are you doing? My name is so-and-so, very nice to meet you. But don't immediately jump into, you know, R-rated or even worse, X-rated porno talk. Because a lot of women will just get really large-eyed and back away and saying, "Uh, where the hell did that come from?" And you'll come across as kind of creepy. This is kind of the origin of a lot of creepy stuff in men. Is that you over-perceive and take something from a very innocuous moment that means absolutely nothing, a friendly smile, a hello, or a woman just handing you something that you dropped in the hallway in the office. It doesn't mean she likes you. What I've seen with a lot of men is the less experience men have with women, the more they have this bias. And this over-perception bias— excuse me— men that have very, very little experience with women, maybe they used to be really overweight, not good-looking, very low confidence, and they've kind of woken up and they've taken care of themselves physically, dressing better, acting better, and they're feeling like a million bucks. Those men tend to really over-perceive sexuality at every corner. And we see some of them in our, um, in our Dad Starting Over groups, in the DSO fraternity, which is our members-only group. Go to dadstartingover.com/join to learn more. But we have online discussion groups, private groups where men talk about stuff. And I tell you, you can just see it every time. If a guy's really starting to feel good about himself, before you know it, guys, I was at the grocery store and a woman said hi to me. I was at the gym, this chick smiled at me. That's never happened to me before. Oh my God. Yeah, cool. I'm glad it gave you a little bit of validation, a little bit of, you know, a little pep in your step. But again, don't take it too far. Don't become a creepo. Just give the chick a smile back and go about your business. So those are just a couple of small nitpicky things. And this could be a series of things in the future, you know, podcast episodes about what's annoying about us guys. Because guys, if you can't, you know, poke fun at yourself with limits, you know, you don't want to go too far down the self-deprecating, I'm just looking for attention route. That really annoys the shit out of me. But you know, if you can't just acknowledge that we have our faults and poke fun at ourselves and in turn try to limit some of these little annoying things that we as men tend to do, then you're not really operating at your full, I guess, your full confidence capacity. Because people that are confident in themselves, they recognize this stuff and just smile and laugh and go, "Yeah, that sounds about right. I guess I need to watch my mansplaining. I guess I need to cool it with the thinking every woman wants me." That's just called being a complete dude.