Welcome back to the Heroic Man podcast I have with me today,
Adam Allred, who I have been following off of Instagram for a
little while now. Adam talks a lot of fucking
sense when it comes to masculinity, what it means to be
a man, and a lot of sense on relationships too.
So Adam, welcome in mate. Peter, I'm glad to be here, man.
Thanks for having me on the show.
My pleasure, my mate. Right, let's let's dig straight
in and talk about in your definition, what does it mean to
be a man in today's world? So I think I'll start by
answering it this way. I think there's a kind of a
spectrum right now we're seeing in society.
You have on one end of that spectrum, you have what is being
labeled as toxic masculinity. On the other end of that end of
that spectrum, you have what I think is very healthy
masculinity called the comprehensive man.
And this this guy that's working on these different aspects of
his life and he knows who he is and he's self aware.
And in between that you have a whole host of lost boys.
This is my terminology. Guys are just are in neither
camp, but it's a spectrum and they just, they don't know what
they don't know and they're kind of lost in the programming of
this world. And so my definition of what a
man is, is somebody who can go into the world, a man who can go
into the world and impose his will on it.
That's what masculinity looks like to me.
And toxic masculinity is doing that for selfish reasons.
It's what you can get is what you can take.
And there's a lot of toxic masculine men out there that are
able to go out and do exactly what they want to do in the
world. Healthy masculinity is being
able to impose your will on the world around you, this world of
entropy, but you're doing it to make the world a better place,
particularly as men, to take care of the people that are on
your watch. I mean, essentially a man goes
out his front door every day into this world of chaos and he
carves out a living out of that. He creates a home for his
family, you know, and he puts bread on the on the table and
clothes on the backs of his kids.
And, and that's him imposing his will in the world, but he's
doing it to make sure he's got a place that's safe and secure for
his family. It's a sacred duty.
And, and, and that goes beyond just the family.
But to me, that's the, the quintessential definition of
what a man is, is somebody who can actually impose as well in
the world. And these lost boys can't.
They don't understand that they're kind of just going
through these checklist of responsibilities that the world
is giving them. They're kind of lost in the
sauce. They're, they're, they're,
they're never taking the initiative in their life.
They're constantly just kind of like behind the power curve and
they don't know why nothing's working and why their wheels are
constantly spinning or they're stuck in neutral.
And so being able to like be that type of man.
And it starts fundamentally with knowing who you are, like
recognizing that you, what your purpose is in this life and then
working towards that is kind of the fundamental start for that
whole process. What's your definition of
masculinity or being a man? My definition of masculinity or
being a man is a man that's on a mission, right?
So he, he has a mission in life, he has a drive in life, he has a
purpose in life. And that purpose of mission is
for the greater good of him, his family and his community, right?
So he's making a positive contribution.
He's also a man that has and knows his values, right?
Knows them deep into his soul. And because he knows his values,
he's got a set of standards and a set of boundaries that he
upholds and he doesn't. He's not walked over and he's
not toxic and and he's not passive.
He's a powerful man to himself and the people around him.
That's pretty comprehensive. I like that.
I, I, I talk a lot about that with the men that I coach and
just in on social media in general.
I think it it in my experience there, there is a lot of talk
about toxic masculinity, but I actually think the the Lost
Boys, the the lost guys, the nice guys, that is more
prevalent than the toxic side of it.
The in my experience, I was anyway.
What do you think? Why do you think that is?
Why do you think there's so many lost guys?
And what I agree with you, First off, I think, yeah, the majority
of men out there that I come in contact with and I literally
work with thousands of young men and I'm on social media
interacting with thousands more. So I see this a lot.
A lot of guys are stuck in the nice guy syndrome and they have
been conditioned. And the reason why I think that
is or lost boys, you could say nice guys or lost boys.
I think what we have seen over the last century really is just
this attack on masculinity. And ultimately, that's resulted
in the erosion of the traditional family and the
removal of masculinity in many of the homes.
And so you have either single mothers raising children or you
have mothers that have stepped into that role.
And the husband, if he's around, is a bystander.
He's not doing much coaching because he doesn't, he doesn't
know what what it means to be a man himself.
And these these boys are raised by females and then they go into
a school system that's predominated, dominated by
females. And when they come into
adulthood, they don't know what a man is at all.
They have no concept of it. They know there's stuff missing,
but they don't know what what they don't know.
And I think this is the the biggest problem is because then
they roll into these relationships.
We were just talking about this a second ago.
They roll into these relationships and they're
looking for a woman to give them purpose because that's how
they've been raised their whole life.
So they're waiting to find that woman that can give their life
some purpose. And when they find that they're
essentially looking for a mother role, like right, as a woman
that can tell them what to do and and then they'll be fine.
And this is a huge loss for everybody.
This isn't a win for women. It's deeply unattractive to a
woman up to to have to mother a man or to have a man at least.
That's just absent. It's not showing up in a
meaningful way to lead and to provide and to do the things
that men have traditionally done.
So I think this is fundamentally what we're we're seeing the
fruits of this entire process over the last, you know, over
decades. We're seeing the fruits of that
right now. We're we're boys have no idea
what it means to be a man. And there's not there's not
those things in society that used to be there that would that
would kind of fill in the gaps. Those things have been eroded
away as well. It's it's AII think it's the
biggest problem we are facing in society right now, hands down is
weak men. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely got and I think and like guys looking to
relationships to meet their needs or looking looking to
their woman to to meet their needs and that and the woman the
fucking not liking that because it is essentially their mother's
role. It's that, you know, growing up,
if you're a young boy and your mother's looking after you,
it's, it's her responsibility to help.
If you grow up, meet your needs until you're a man, then take
that into a relationship. It's not sexy.
Yeah, not on any level. And you know, this type of work
that you're doing, that I'm doing, this is really about
helping men remember who they are and then give them a
framework that they can use that's going to be healthy in
every aspect of their life. And I think it starts, like you
said earlier, in your definition of masculinity.
It starts with a man recognizing what his primary purpose is.
And the way you articulate it is essentially the way that I
articulate it. So it's interesting because we
haven't had any communications this way, but we're on the kind
of already on the same wavelength.
And so it tells me that we're doing something right.
That's kind of a universal issue and a universal answer to that,
which is that men have to have a purpose, a primary purpose, or
as you said, a mission. They've got to have a mission
that they're after that isn't a woman.
The mission is, in my opinion, the primary purpose of every
single man that exists is to become the most powerful version
of himself. That's the primary mission.
You got this one chance to live this life, this avatar, this
character that you're controlling in this video game.
You have the simulation, whatever it is that we're going
through in this conscious state to make it the best version that
it can be. And if if you're a good man,
then you're doing that to make the world a better place.
And it's because until you're you know who you are as a man,
until you are good at being a man, you can never be good at
anything else you do in life. You can't be a good husband, as
we're already talking about. You can't be a good father, you
can't be a good partner, you can't be a good friend.
Everything else kind of falls apart.
So it's fundamentally being a good man.
That's the primary purpose of every man.
And then that doesn't mean nice. That means powerful, that means
strong. That means, you know, a man
who's not walked all over, a man who has self respect, a man
who's going into this this crazy world and he's making it a
little bit better because because he's here or a lot
better, you know, you get as far as you can down that road.
And that's the primary purpose of every man.
Yeah, I think what you just said, there's a fucking great
distinction. It's about being a good man, not
a nice man. Because it's the, it's, I think
that's where so many guys fuck up.
It's if I am nice, then I will get rewarded.
Like if, like if, if I do all these nice things, then she will
like me and she will reward me or worse or even worse, like if
I do all these nice things, then she has to reward me back,
right? She has to because, because I
bought her flowers and all because I did the washing or
because because I'd gone out and I did my work today.
She has to then reward me for that.
And then when she doesn't, then resent builds up right from the
from the guy, but also resents building up from the woman,
right? And it's justice.
And then it does become quite dysfunctional and toxic in a
relationship because the guy's being nice, not a good man, not
doing things out at the goodness of his heart because he just
fucking wants to do that for his woman.
Now most men are doing something because they want something in
return. The you hit the nail on the
head. And again, I think this starts
foundationally in the home where these boys are raised by women.
And both men and women somewhat on both sides of this coin, lack
self-awareness, but particularly women in this regard.
They, they teach their boys to be nice.
You know, that's what a woman wants her, her boy to be is
nice, but it's it's not attractive to women because a
nice guy isn't respected. And you can't you can't be nice
enough to get a girl to like you.
But the problem is the men are raised with that framework.
And then like to your point, they go into the world, they
think, well, this is what I've been told women want by my mom,
by my school teachers, by whoever else.
And then they wonder why it doesn't work when they're trying
to find a relationship. Why this whole, you know,
they're bitter and you get these nice guys that are just almost
militant about their niceness. It's like, no, being nice is the
way to treat a woman. And it's like, well, bro, when's
the last time you had a woman? Oh, it's been decade, but that's
how you do it because they're running on this outdated
programming. It's not outdated as prevalent,
but this toxic programming that's been handed to him by
women that then makes them unattractive to women.
Like a woman is attracted to a man who is a man who's a man
first. Like they, they, it drives them
crazy when they have a man then then and there's some aspects or
elements to that. They have to be understood. 1 is
that she has to feel that she can't control you.
Like that has to be like just foundationally part of the
thing. It doesn't mean you don't
compromise with her. It doesn't mean you don't show
her deference and respect. You do all of those things, but
she doesn't have control over you.
You're not asking her for permission.
You're not going to her to wipe your nose.
She's not directing you and telling you what to do for your
responsibilities. She doesn't have control over
you because you're a man 1st and you are sovereign and you are
acting in accord with your, you know, with, with, with what it
means to be a man. So I think fundamentally it's
like not being a yes man to women.
Again, that doesn't mean you're, you're, you're trying to be, you
know, contradictory to them or you're trying to create
contention. But it's just like I'm, I'm not
ever going to be controlled by a woman.
And that's very, very attractive to a woman.
That gives her a sense of security and it gives her a
sense of respect for that man. Yeah, I'll tell you what I've
seen recently and this is this is this is a new insight for me,
is the, because then there is this cycle of guys being nice
guys or guys be and and not because they're kind of not
leading their lives right and not going out providing and
protecting the family. So the woman stepping up in the
family role. So the woman's like, OK, well,
fuck this. Well, if you're not going to do
it, then I'll go, I'll go and step up.
So it's essentially taking more of a masculine role then what's
happening. What I've just started to this
is a recent insight is the, the, the men are then feeling
emasculated by their partners. And then it's, and then it's a
even bigger cycle because now, now the man's feeling
emasculated and he's being pushed down even further.
And woman's like, well, I, this is I, I, I need to step up even
more now, right? Because you're even weaker than
what you were a year ago. And it's seen, I've noticed in
some relations to this even bigger toxic cycle going on.
What would you say to the women in this scenario?
Well, you can't, you can't shame your man into being a bitter
man. First off, I would say that.
So it's a tough position that a lot of women are put in.
And it's a, it's a, I'm not going to say it's women's fault
that we're here because ultimately I think we as men
have allowed ourselves to be neutered by these things.
And so it's ultimately a masculine issue.
But if you're trying to get your husband to step into a
leadership role, you can't do that through shaming, criticism.
It doesn't work. So many of us, we sadly, we gain
our identity from the identities of other people have of us, what
they say about us, what they speak about.
Think about a child, you know, like you raise children and
you're like, if you start talking to people about your
child in front of them, like this is my child that's shy,
this is my child that's good at sports, this is my child that's
outgoing and smart, blah, blah, blah, they start to take on
those identities. That's because that's how
they're described by other people.
So when you emasculate your man, he's going to resist that and
eventually he's going to shut down, but it's also going to
start to seep into his psyche of who he is.
And so it just, it just makes the problem so much.
And so, you know, you start by marry this guy for a reason.
Why did you marry him? Remember who that guy is and
then treat him like that, even when he's not necessarily
deserving it. And this is a really hard thing
to do because it's really easy, especially when the woman is
drowning in all the responsibilities.
And she stepped in her mask and rolled it.
Just be like, dude, I'm going to handle this.
But if you don't treat your man like he is a man, he's, he's not
going to ever act like a man. And that's no guarantee that he
will. You can treat people a certain
way and they still don't change. But that's where I would start
is just you got to treat your man like he's valuable.
You got to you got to give your man the ability to lead.
And if he's not doing that, this is this is where I think you
start is by, you know, remembering the guy that you
married and why you married him and then helping him to remember
that by how you speak to him and how you speak about him
especially. Yeah, yeah, I I agree.
I completely agree with that. Because it doesn't if you don't
do that, it doesn't get any better.
It only it only leads down one Rd.
You can't shame somebody into being a better person.
It just never works. And yet we often think that,
well, like if I, if I make them feel shitty enough or her shitty
enough, they'll change their behaviour, they'll step up.
And it just it, it doesn't work in any direction.
No, I, I think like, I mean, shaming doesn't work full stop.
But what I've seen in my like men's communities, if I like, I
won't call out a guy, I'll call, I'll call a guy up and I call
him out on his bullshit and hold him to a higher standard.
And men receive that really well from other guys.
I think receiving that from your intimate partner is is quite
hard to take for a guy. Receiving it for a bunch of guys
that they respect is a lot easier and they're like to go
fuck me. Actually, I do need to step up.
I am, I am withholding in my relationship.
PII am actually showing as more of a, of a softer man of a
passive man rather than a powerful man.
I appreciate you. You calling me up on that,
right? And so it's so fucking important
for guys to have solid men around them and to hold them to
a higher standards. This is incredibly important.
Well, and I was, I was going to say you hit the nail on the head
again, but I was going to say the second thing as a woman, if
you're in a relationship with a man who's not leading is to get
him around other good men. Like first treat him like he's a
good man, even if he doesn't necessarily in your mind deserve
it. But then get him around other
good men because it is good men that make it's good tribes that
make good men. And to your point, weak shame is
not necessarily a bad thing in the right conditions, as you
already alluded to. Like me and my group of friends,
we, we talk on each other all the time.
And like you said, we'll call each other out and, and we can
hear it from another guy. Like you'd be like, Oh yeah,
you're right, dude, man, I'm being a little bitch.
I got to do better. We can hear that.
Like we can recognize that, especially if it's done with the
intention of, you know, like just calling them up instead of
like making them feel stupid. But you can, there's a place for
that in the, in the, in the to try to do that.
A lot of women hit me up and they say, you know, I'm, I've
been talking to my man about trying to be better.
And I've been trying to do everything on my end to help him
level up and see where he's not leading.
And I'm, you know, I'm trying my best to encourage him to step in
that role. And it's just not working.
And the problem is, even if it, even if from her perspective, it
comes across as encouragement, from his perspective, it's going
to come across as criticism. And worst of all, it's going to
come across like he's failing the most important relationship
in his life outside of himself, no matter how well intended that
message is. And so I tell these women all
the time, it's not the message, it's the messenger.
He has to feel like for him to be a healthy man, that you
always have his back. And if you treat him like a
king, often he'll start to act like a king.
But that's your role as a woman in the relationship is to treat
your man well and, and to make him feel like he's valuable and
that he's important to the family is important to you.
This man, men rise up to this. If you start making a man feel
like he's important, he comes home with the end of the day and
you tell him how much you love him and how cool, even if he's
fucked up a bunch of other things.
You're like, baby, I know you struggle with this, but I love
you. You're the most important person
in the world to me. And I just want you to know I
got your back. I know you're going through some
stuff. That man will resonate with that
type of message from his woman. He needs to go to his tribe to
hear kind of that hard truth about where he needs to level up
because we can hear that stuff from other men and it doesn't
get us. It doesn't, it doesn't destroy
our identity or or attack fundamentally who we are.
Yeah, that the two words that come to me that because I know,
like in my relationship where my woman does two things, she does
appreciate, she appreciates me and acknowledges me.
I'm like, fucking right, I'm going out, going to take on the
world. And it is it's the appreciation
of what I do and how I show up and the acknowledgement.
I noticed that you did that thing today.
I really fucking appreciate that.
That's like, I know I'm like, oh, good.
She noticed that that's like, and I'm out and I'm off and I'm
in my power. If those two things are missing,
it's yeah, it's difficult. Absolutely, when a man has a
woman that is like that, a woman that is, is showing him some
form of unconditional love, you know, like no matter how you
fucked up, I got your back, I'm here for you.
I'm going to go through this with you.
And if he has a good tribe of brothers around him, that dude
is he can run through walls. That guy is a guy that's going
to be leveling up and his life is going to get put together and
he's going to be stepping into these roles naturally.
That's that's what you want to foster in a relationship with a
man. In my opinion, from a woman's
point of view is to get him with other good men and treat him
like he's important. Yeah, yeah, one of the couple of
years ago I started this and it was a really fucking great move
for me. One of the best places that I
actually started to find solid men was jiu jitsu, was starting
MMA and I tinkered with it for a while.
I'd done a little bit of boxing, but it felt a little bit
singular. And I I tinkered with some other
like martial arts and I fell into jiu jitsu.
One of the guys used to work for me was the black belt and he's
like, Pete, give it a go, mate. I think you really like it.
And the community there was solid.
And it is, it's a bunch of guys that are working on themselves
and are putting themselves through some fucking hard times.
When you're rolling on a map with another guy, it's hard.
But I, I noticed that the type of guys that go there, they all
want more out of life. They're all, they're all,
they're all after growth and they're actively going into
proper real discomfort. Not for me like going to the gym
now is not discomfort. I enjoy going to the gym.
It's quite fucking easy. Going to the gym and pumpers and
weights quite easy. But going and doing something
like that is uncomfortable and requires a bit of courage every
day to go and do that. So I think like that's a quite
important lesson for guys is go and find other guys that are
doing things that are uncomfortable and push them out
the comfort zone. Yeah, I say the exact same thing
to guys all the time because I get a lot of guys reaching out
to me. I don't have a tribe, but where
do I start? And we have coaching programs
you can get on. There's a lot of people, guys
out there, they're doing this, they're mentoring other men.
So that's a good place to start. But I tell guys always to start
in the gym. Jiu jitsu is even better because
it's more uncomfortable, but I go to the gym and I do a lot of,
a lot of training there. And I, I, I feel like I work out
harder than anybody else there. A lot of times people ask me
like, what are you training for? And I'm like, for life, Life
comes at you hard, man. I, I'm trying to be in shape for
that. Or my other response is it's
cheaper and better than therapy to get in the gym.
And there's a lot of reasons why that's the case, but one of them
is because of the relationships you develop.
Like I go to the gym, of course, to work out and to keep myself
healthy mentally, spiritually and physically.
But it also becomes where you develop so much of your tribe,
so many. Many of my best friends nowadays
have come from just showing up at the gym.
And now we hang out outside the gym.
But I have a whole tribe of guys that I just see at the gym and I
love seeing them because these guys are leveling up.
They're pushing themselves. And you're talking about stuff
in between your sets and you're, you know, you're, you're
building up this camaraderie And it, it's I, I walk away every
morning from my gym experience just feeling like I'm in back in
fighting shape, Like I can take on whatever the rest of the day
has for me. Because that whole, that whole
dynamic of being around other guys are working hard and doing
stuff. It's synergistic.
And peer pressure is real. Peer pressure works both ways.
So if you're surrounding yourself with guys that are
leveling up, guys are taking their, their masculinity
seriously, you will naturally start to do the same thing.
It just just wears off on you. And so starting there for a
tribe is it is probably one of the best places.
Maybe the most important place to start is by getting your ass
in the gym, working out, taking control of things that you have
control over, and then meeting other guys that are doing the
same thing. Yeah, yeah.
Back onto the relationship side, I had a question for one of the
guys this week. He's like my missus keeps asking
me to be more open with her and, and, and share more with her and
essentially be more. She's like, you're not
emotionally available. You're like a brick wall.
She's like, you're like a brick wall.
He's like Pete, what the fuck? He's like, what do I do?
She's asking me to do that. And he goes, I feel like she's
asking me how I feel. And she goes, he goes, I'm not,
I'm generally not feeling anything.
But she keeps asking me like, what am I feeling?
And I'm like, well, I think there's a couple of things
there. Number one, I'm like, dude, if
your emotional capacity is that, that's cool, right?
And just like don't feel the need to be this super open and
vulnerable guy if that's not who you are like that.
The emotional capacity is that, and maybe we could do some work
with each other and we can open up a little bit more, but don't,
it doesn't need to be on like her timeline for you to be this
super open, vulnerable guy tomorrow.
And I think just let her know that nicely.
Just let her know that, right. And I'm like, the second thing
is if it's really, really important to her because she
was, because he was like she's, she thinks I'll never think
about her. But you guys, when I'm in work,
I really don't, I don't think about anything.
I just work all day and like do it.
If it's really, really important to her, just set up a little bit
of a protocol. Because you're a discipline guy,
you're a logical guy. A little bit of a protocol that
every few hours you have a little reminder on your phone.
Just check in with the missus because it's, it's important to
her, because you're a logical guy, protocol guy.
Just set up a little protocol, but what would you say to to to
that for the guy that's coming in saying his missus wants him
to be more much? Yeah, and I hear this all the
time and and I experience this sometimes in my own
relationship. So first, I'd echo everything
that you just said. I think that's that's spot on
when a woman says she wants her man to be vulnerable or open or
whatever form that comes in, because it can come in a lot of
different, different ways that that's being said.
I don't actually think it's about the man.
I think it's about her. It's really what she needs and
she's not feeling connected. It's not really about her
wanting you to unload all of your drama and your emotions and
feelings on her, because the second you do that, she's gonna
lose respect for you for a lot of two reasons.
Either because now she feels like she needs to be your mother
and she's gonna try and help you and wipe your nose and tell you
it's gonna be OK and and that's not attractive to a woman to be
a man's mother. Or it's gonna create a lot of
anxiety in her. She's gonna see the real that
you're going through in the real world, this stuff that she has
no control over, but she's gonna, she's going to experience
the consequences of and it's going to put her in a state of
high anxiety. So really, when a woman says she
needs to you to be open, what she's really saying is you need
to spend some time connecting with her.
She needs to get her emotions out.
And so pause what you're doing and, and take some time to be
present with her and to understand where she's coming
from That that that's going to solve like 90% of the issue
there with her feeling like you're not being vulnerable with
her because she's not really looking for that.
She's looking for connection. And what you said is spot on.
You know, make it a priority to communicate with her, not about
all your feelings and your emotions, but checking in with
her and making sure you're seeing how she's doing.
And if you're doing that, if you're constantly checking in
with her and seeing how she's doing and taking a barometer of
that and spending time with her, she's never going to ask you to
be vulnerable or open up. In my opinion, my experience,
what I've seen the man shouldn't on a very basic level because my
job as a man is to protect the home that I'm trying to create.
Like that's my job to provide and protect it.
That's primary purpose #1 to be the rock.
You know, like to go out and make a place that's at peace,
this home that I have, and to give that peace to my woman.
That's the way I show her love and I show her differences.
I want her to be in a place of peace where she's not stressed
because for a lot of reasons, one, because I love her and
that's where I want her to be. And I feel like that's a duty.
But because when I come home from whatever it is that's going
on outside, when I come home, if she's at peace, it puts me at
peace. It makes me feel like I can go
do this again. When I come home and she's, you
know, giving me a hug and she's asking me how my day went and
I'm talking to her about her day and everything feels tranquil.
My house, man, all the crap from that day.
It it just, it kind of just dissipates and you can get
yourself put back together and in fighting shape.
But if you go home and destroy that piece, you won't have that.
You know, you're not going to come home to a home that is
going to put you back together. You're going to come home to a
place that's disrupted. So as a man, we're supposed to
be stoic. We're supposed to be that rock.
Our women should feel like we we are a rock that we're not a
sandy foundation, something that she can build on.
And so again, I tell guys, if you're going through shit, you
don't take it home and unload it on your woman.
You take that to the tribe. You're at the gym, you're in jiu
Jitsu, you're wherever that looks like and you're telling
your buddies about it. If you're really struggling with
stuff in the world, that's where you go because one, those guys
can help you, you know, they're going through the same thing and
they can actually like, like empathize with you.
And most importantly, you're not disrupting the peace that you're
fighting to protect. You know, you, you're keeping
that safe and secure, which is where it should be, and giving
your woman that sense of security that her man knows what
he's doing. He's taking care of shit.
Yeah, yeah, you're right with the word, the word safety there.
Yes, as soon as you start bringing all your shit home, it
rocks the boat, it rocks, it rocks the safety, it loses it
like I describe to my guys as you're the lighthouse and the
light. The lighthouse is fucking solid.
It's all it's always there, right.
And then and then the ocean is the chaos and the, the ocean is
the is the chaos all around you, whether that's like your
relationship, it's the world, it's the fucking whatever you
got. But you still, whatever fucking
going on, we've got to stay solid.
And there's going to be storms still.
We still got to be the solid lighthouse.
And the day that you fucking start bringing all your shit and
you start, the lighthouse are going to crumble and then no
one's going to trust you. I can't tell you how many guys
have told me this when when you talk about this on social media,
guys that have reached out to me and said that's exactly why my
relationship fell apart. As soon as I started bringing
home my shit, as soon as I started unloading my emotions at
home, the attraction for my wife went away from my wife to me
went away. My home wasn't a piece anymore.
And eventually that led us down a rabbit hole that we never got
back out of. And it takes a lot of discipline
and it takes a lot of self-awareness from men to
restrain themselves because we do have that innately inside of
us, that little boy that's looking for a mother, like we
have that as part of our psyche. It's how we were raised.
There's a reason why there's such a bond between boys and
their mothers because a mother is is the only place that
they're ever going to experience unconditional love.
And I think there's a part of us psychologically that want to get
back to that where we have just unconditional love.
But that is an unrealistic and an unfair expectation to put on
a woman that you're in a relationship with because one,
it it's not rational. Love is conditional.
Now I get pushed back on this, but love is always conditional
outside of a parent loving their child.
Yeah. That you can say all day long
that you love your spouse unconditionally, but the truth
is, if your spouse starts cheating on you, if your spouse
starts abusing you, your partner, that love is
conditional. It's conditional on certain
levels of behavior. And that's a healthy thing.
Accountability is what saves relationships more than anything
else. It's a sense of like, if I don't
step up, if I don't turn up like this relationship, I could lose
this relationship. That's going to change behavior
more than anything else. And so it's not that you go in a
relationship hanging that over the other person's head while if
you mess up, I'm going to leave you.
But it is having real communication with each other
about what is expected, what the boundaries are, what your
guys''s mission is together, what you're trying to accomplish
and holding each other accountable to that.
And I've seen a lot of relationships, even within my
own family, where when one of the people in that relationship,
the husband or the wife was willing to leave, the behavior
of the other person changed because there was a degree of
accountability. And kind of going off on a
tangent here, but the point is, is that as men, we cannot put
ever our significant other in the position of being our
mother. And on any level, even though
there's a strong desire to have that kind of unconditional love
from our youth to feel like we're, we're, we're safe too
because we're getting our asses kicked every day.
That's not the role of being a man.
That's not what it means to be a man.
That's what a boy does. Yeah, absolutely.
It fucking is. And what you just said there
about, you know, there's someone going to leave and the other
person then stepped is because of the consequence.
It's like there's a boundary because if there's no if there's
no consequences to boundaries, it's just like, well, they could
just consider be stepped over in a relationship over stepped
over, stepped over and then there's no respect there.
Whereas if there is a consequence to a boundary being
crossed and the consequences held, then there's going to be
respect. And that's and it.
And it goes back to kind of what you said at the very start about
what it means, partly what it means to be a man is.
And that's not you can't be controlled.
Yeah, and and that you were willing to leave.
I mean, ultimately that's what accountability looks like in a
relationship is that you, you can have all kinds of other
forms of accountability, but the ultimate accountability is that
if this relationship is not healthy, then I'm and it and it
can't get healthy. Somebody's not working on
they're willing to take accountability, then it's over,
you know, and you want to get to that punch line sooner rather
than later. So rather than floundering in a
relationship that you're essentially just alone in and
you're in a relationship and title only it it it's about I
just lost my train of thought. Shoot, I had some I had some
fire for you, Peter. I was about to drop it on you
where it'll come back to be. It'll come back, it'll come
back. What would you over the last, So
over the last couple of years you've you've gone deeper into
this, this world of men, right? And I suppose you personally
would have gone for a lot of fucking lessons yourself, a lot
of growth there. I know, I know I have like loads
and loads of personal lessons. Like I'm like all the guys that
come in. I'm like, dude, I'm not even
that far ahead of your mate. I'm like, I learned that lesson
fucking three months ago, right. What's been the biggest lesson
for you over the last couple of years in your personal work as a
man? Well, so actually you reminded
me what I was just about to say about this idea of
accountability. And this is probably one of the
most important lessons for probably the most important
lesson that I learned for my first marriage and how to make a
second relationship, marriage that I'm in now work much better
than the first one is, is this idea of accountability.
So I was my first marriage, I had been conditioned by family
and by culture and by church and by everybody else that when you
got married, you just stayed in it forever.
And I really believed that that's what you did.
And as a man, you're, you know, you took whatever amounts of
abuse you had to take just to keep the relationship alive,
particularly when you had kids, because now you really have a
sacred responsibility to turn up for them.
And but I because of that, because I've been conditioned to
think that way, I didn't hold accountability in that
relationship. And about halfway we were, we
were married in my first marriage for 8 1/2 years ish.
And halfway through that we ended up going to a marriage
counselor. It was just, it was almost bad
from day one and it never got good.
And we started going to this marriage counselor who was a
female and ironically had been divorced.
And I thought going there, man, that's going to be two on one,
you know, two, I'm going to get eviscerated.
And I'm like, you know, whatever it takes to try and make this
something better out of what we got.
I'm willing to take my hits on the chin, but I thought I was
going to get it, go in there and get get blasted.
After the first session she separated us.
She, we couldn't even get through a first session without
just quarreling and fighting the whole time.
So she separates us and she's like next week we're going to do
2 different sessions, 11 for her and one for me.
And I sat down in the first session with her that next week
and I thought, man, I'm going to get it.
And the first thing she said to me, she said, this isn't your
fault. She says not your fault.
And I wasn't really prepared to hear that.
I was so, like, taken back because nobody ever told me that
I'd always been conditioned that everything was my fault from
pretty much every facet, you know, is my responsibility.
And but it was she. She was saying that, but it was
only partly true because the next thing she said was that the
only chance she had of helping us come together, as if there
was some real accountability. And she essentially not
essentially, she literally said, if you're not willing to divorce
her, there's no chance I can bring her to the table.
Yeah. And so she in one hand, she was
saying it's not your fault, but on the other hand, she was
making clear it actually was. I wasn't holding accountability.
I wasn't willing to say, look, this isn't working for me and
you are. It's become so chronic in our
relationship. This relationship isn't working
anymore. And I wasn't willing to do that
again because of all the programming conditioning that I
had. I was like, hey, I can't leave.
I got kids now. There's no chance.
I'll just stay in this. I'll be the captain that goes
down with the ship, whatever, you know, it takes to just make
sure that I'm not like it abandoning my responsibilities
as a father or hurting my kids in any way.
But she proved to be prophetic. And you know, four years later,
we were going through a divorce, nothing changed.
There was no accountability. So when you're asking me, what
lesson did I learn? That was the most important one
that I, I learned from that relationship.
And I went into this, this my marriage now.
And when we started getting serious and we were talking
about tying the knot, we had some really clear communication
with each other. And I said that was one of the
things I communicated to her as I said that you look, I, I love
you enough that I'm ready to get remarried.
I never thought I was going to get remarried.
And again, I, I love you enough that I'm let's consider this and
talk about it. I need you to know that if if
you ever feel like it's OK to disrespect me or to be dishonest
with me or to not hold accountability for yourself in
this relationship, then I'm not going to be in this
relationship. I'll leave.
I'm not ever going to stay in a relationship where the other
person isn't coming to the table trying to work on it with you.
And particularly if they feel comfortable being disrespectful
to you, I'll just leave. And she was.
It wasn't an ultimatum. It wasn't me saying you have to
do XY and Z. It went, it's a two way St.
It goes both ways. But I needed her to understand
that was my boundary, that I respect myself enough now, my
relationship with myself was healthy enough now that I was
never going to allow somebody else to give me disrespect.
I would just leave if that happened.
And it set a completely different tone for our
relationship. Like it is night and day
difference. And that's not the only reason.
I mean, I picked differently and there's a whole bunch of other
factors, but I've had to hold that line with her a couple of
times. You know, as women are going to
give you shit, tests are going to see how much they can trust
you. They're going to see how how
solid you are. And women are programmed to kind
of probe and see where the weaknesses are of their men.
They do it subconsciously, but every, almost every woman that I
know on the planet does this and and you just have to be prepared
for that as a man that that's going to come and you and how
you handle those shit tests is going to determine so much how
that relationship goes. I want to share one other story
real quick, if that's OK, because this one was just like
drives this point home. I was listening to a podcast
like 3 or 4 years ago and the guy was talking about how they
had these this couples group of friends and one of the couples
was going through a divorce. And everybody in the group knew
that the woman was just absolutely toxic to this guy.
Just emasculated him, talk badly about him, treated him really
poorly. And they knew the reason why the
marriage was dissolving was because she treated him really
really poorly. She stayed in the friend group
and I guess the guy kind of left and eventually she was getting
remarried. And so all this group of friends
like, great, is she going to do the same thing to this guy that
she did to her first husband? And after their honeymoon, he's
telling this story after their honeymoon, she starts treating
him like she treated her first husband.
She starts being dismisses about dismiss above him and
interrogating him, nagging at him, criticizing him.
And he immediately in this this interaction when she's doing
this, he immediately goes upstairs.
He just separates himself from it, doesn't engage in it,
doesn't rationalize with it, doesn't try to understand where
she's coming from. She's intentionally being
disrespectful. And so he just goes upstairs.
Well, she kind of huffs and puffs and paces downstairs for a
while and then she comes upstairs and they've been
married for like less than two weeks and he's packing his
stuff. She's like, what are you doing?
And he's like, I'm leaving, I'm sorry.
I made AI made a huge mistake. This isn't going to work.
I, you know, I, I thought we had a kind of a different dynamic
here. I, I'm not going to be in a
relationship where I'm disrespected, so I'm leaving.
I'm sorry. We, we made a big mistake.
And she's begging like, no, no, no, no, no, let's, let's, let's
give me another chance. Let's work on this.
And he finally acquiesces and he's like, OK, well, we'll,
we'll give this one more chance. Well, the guy telling the story
on the podcast is like 20-3 years later.
They have this really healthy relationship that's totally good
together. They got this vibrant, happy,
healthy relationship. And there's a lot of lessons to
learn from that. But the one, the first lesson to
learn is that you as a man, contrary to what my marriage
counselor told me, you as a man are responsible for what's going
on in your relationship. You have to take extreme
ownership of that. You have to own the fact that
the energy in that relationship comes from you, and you have to
lead that. So either you have to hold
accountability with a woman so that she understands that her
behavior, if it's toxic, isn't going to be tolerated by you.
You have to hold that boundary where you're willing to leave if
if she's not willing to change that, and that's the best chance
you have. Ultimately, having a healthy
relationship is to have that type of accountability baked
into the fabric of it. Yeah, fucking powerful stories,
man. I made the same fucking mistakes
and, and, and what you said there actually everything came
back to what the man says no to, not what he says yes to.
And I think that's where that's where I fucked it up.
It's like I had, I had, I had high standards.
I've always had high standards. My high standards were the
things that I wanted, the things I was saying yes to.
What I didn't have was no, these are the things I just won't
fucking tolerate the things I say no to.
And I learned that very recently actually, is that my standards
are what I say no to, not all these great things that I
fucking want in life. No, that's what I fucking say no
to. Because when you don't have
that, you just betray self betrayal.
You betray yourself. Yeah, that's a huge insight you
just gave me, the way you articulated that.
I love that your standards are what you say no to, not what you
say yes to, and that applies so much.
The conversation we're having right now in a relationship is
what you are willing to tolerate ultimately is what your
relationship is going to look like.
If you're willing to tolerate it, your relationship is going
to become that. You can't love a woman into
loving you back. You can't be nice enough to a
woman in into loving her back, let having her love you back.
You can't provide well enough for her into her loving you
back. She's only going to love a man
that loves himself. And that means a man that has
boundaries for himself and a man that ultimately is willing to
walk away from a relationship if it's if there's these chronic
aspects to it of, of disrespect or dishonesty or deflection.
Those are the three poison pills in any relationship and you'll
never build a relationship if one or more of those are
prevalent in it. You never will.
It will never get off the ground.
And so, you know, what's really hard is so many men have already
gone down this path for so long, it's almost impossible to
resuscitate it once it's gotten really, you know, like I said
earlier, really like built into the fabric of that relationship.
So hard to change that dynamic as possible.
It's just really hard. So it's important that you learn
to do this right from the beginning.
You know, like at the inception of a relationship, like hold
these standards. Like that guy in the podcast
story where he's just like, oh man, I'm sorry, I'm at home.
Like I didn't realize I made this mistake.
I got a I've got to separate from this because I won't I
won't stay in this type of relationship.
Yeah, and that the, the other lesson there is that these
standards are fucking hard. Like that's not easy to hold
that like that guy, he's just got married, right?
For him to get married, like there's there's something going
to be deep and meaningful. That's him.
But for him to go, no, I'm out. That's not yet.
That may have been a quick decision, but that's not an
easy, that's a hard fucking decision to make.
These things are hard to carry out.
It's the easier thing is to go. I'll just let that slip.
Yeah, she I know she disrespected me, but I'll just
let it slide. This is the easier thing to do.
Just to brush it. But long term, this well self,
you betray yourself because you're allowing yourself to be
disrespected. It's so easy to fall in love and
it's it's easy, like you said, to let things sweep them under
the rug to keep the peace or let it roll off your back.
But nothing ever rolls off your back.
Everything gets stored. Those are those are the easy
things to do, the hard part of a relationship and where
relationships are really lasted. Just holding boundaries.
And an example of that is like I had with my wife now and she's
amazing. She's the best person I know on
the planet. Like I, I cannot sing her praise
enough. She is just absolutely amazing.
She's not here. So I'm not saying this so she
can hear me. I'm just saying this because
it's, it's just true. Like she is the best human being
that I know on this planet. But early on in our relationship
there, and I won't discuss specifically what it was, but
there was something that was happening that she was crossing
my boundary, one of the boundaries I had that we had
communicated and it was prior to us getting married.
So I'd had a communication with her about it, said hey, this is
just something doesn't work for me.
She understood where it's coming from.
OK, I get it. The I, I understand why that
doesn't work. Whatever.
We have these communications. Well, after we got married, it
happened again. There was a 1/3 time that this
came up and we hadn't been married very long either.
I think we've been married for like two or three months and I'm
on a work trip and I'm with my business partner.
I wasn't standing next to him, but I'm, I'm calling her.
I'm like, look, this, I'm sorry, this marriage isn't going to
work. Like I, it was similar kind of
this podcast story. I said this, this isn't going to
work. It was the hardest thing to say
because I love this woman like and she's amazing.
But there was a boundary that hadn't been crossed once or
twice. It was now three times.
That's where it starts to become chronic.
And so I was like, because of my first marriage, I was like, OK,
you know, this is only going to get worse.
So I need to, I need to separate from this.
And when I came home, it was kind of a similar experience.
I got home from this work trip the next day.
It was a completely different energy there when we talked
about it the third time. And it was kind of like that
podcast where I now felt the real sincerity from her that
this was never going to happen again.
And it never has happened again. And it changed the entire
direction of that relationship. Because if I just thought, oh,
we've just been married, this is really embarrassing.
If I'm going through a second divorce after three months, it's
mud on my face. I look like an idiot, like I
can't make wise decisions. And I mean, now I'm divorced
twice. That's a stigma I'm going to
carry for the rest of my life. This is not an easy thing to get
your mind around to your point. But because I was willing to
hold that boundary, we have this amazing marriage.
Like, it's just phenomenal. And I know that if I hadn't held
that boundary, it wouldn't have been just that thing that
started getting crossed. That would have led to other
things getting crossed. And I would have done the same
thing just like, sweeping under the rug and tend like,
everything's OK. And then you wake up one day and
you're like, dude, this marriage isn't working.
I'm miserable. She's miserable.
Nobody's happy. This is really unhealthy.
Now, what do you do? You know, it's a terrible place
to be. So it starts just early on.
It's what you say no to. And this was something I had to
draw a line. I was literally coming home from
my work trip, like, I'm going to leave.
And I love this girl. This is the coolest girl I've
ever met my entire life. But I know where this goes now.
After 8 1/2 years of a failed marriage, I know exactly the
direction this goes up. I don't hold this line right
now. Yeah, yeah, I went through this
very similar pattern with my ex-wife.
Very, very similar pattern. And I think unfortunately for so
many guys is that we don't because there's there's no one
there to teach the lessons to say, hey, man, fucking don't
tolerate that, right? Or, or, or you're told, hey,
dude, don't tolerate it. But then they tolerate it anyway
until you go through something like a divorce.
You go through the pain, you go through adversity.
And then you, unfortunately, it takes that to fucking begin to
learn these lessons. Yeah, and it's it's, it's
important to recognize that like for a lot of guys, the the the
fear for them is that if they hold a boundary, the
relationships going to come to an end.
Like I was saying, right? That's that's the fear.
And so it's like do anything to keep the relationship alive
because they don't understand where we started at the
beginning of this podcast. They don't understand their
primary purpose is to be the best version of themselves.
That's the primary purpose is not to be in a relationship.
And that's great if you can get in a healthy relationship makes
everything better. It makes your life better and
you're feeling other purposes of raising a family.
But your primary purpose starts with you being a man and knowing
what it means to be a man. And that means boundaries and
that means self respect. And if you don't have that,
you're going to be living in hell.
And so a lot of guys will for the sake of keeping the peace
and not losing the relationship and going through what that
crisis will look like, we'll stay in a really toxic marriage.
But it is, there is so much happiness on the other side of
something that like, like that, you have to go through a really
hard process to separate whatever your relationship looks
like. Separations are never easy, but
if you're willing to go through that, you can get to a much
better place really quickly. Like life can get a lot better.
And so it's not the end if your marriage falls apart.
Now, I'm a big proponent of monogamy.
I'm a huge proponent of staying, taking care of your
responsibilities, taking especially your children,
showing up for them. I'm not saying this is a get out
of jail free card for guys to just act irresponsible.
But if you're in a situation where the behavior of your
spouse is not changing and, and she or he is unwilling to make
those changes, then you're just going to live in hell for the
rest of your life. And that's that's the outcome.
You got to be prepared to own up to that and say, hey, I'm worth
more than this and there is hope on the other side of this
relationship and I don't need to stay in this place where I'm
just being disrespected or abused or whatever that looks
like. Yeah, yeah, it's an unfortunate
position for a lot of guys. So it is.
It starts with building your own self respect, your own self
worth. Adam, appreciate you, man.
Let's we're at time and they got me into Dash 2, so let's call
it. But fucking quality
conversation, man. I appreciate you.
Where can the guys listening to this?
Where can I find you? Check us out on social media and
I'm already official on all the platforms.
Love to have you come be part of the party and love to hear from
you in the comments sections or any DMS.
I'm slow on my DMS because I get a lot of them these days, but I
always reply to them. So if you reach out to me with
something that you're going through, I'll get back to you.
I think this is, you know, I, this is my, my labour of love.
It's not my business, it's not what I'm doing for a career.
It's just something that I really feel passionate about and
I think is is ultimately important for the greater good
of all of society is for us as men to do exactly what you did
right here. Peters invite us to come
together to have these types of discussions.
And so it's guys like you, they give me a lot of encouragement
for the future and I appreciate you having me on the show,
brother. Thank you, man.
Appreciate you team. We'll be back next week, another
episode. Cheers man.