#23: What Is REAL Masculinity?

00:00 What really is masculinity and what chaps, Tyler's hide. What's up, you guys? Welcome to the Therapy Brothers Podcast. I'm Brennan. I'm Tyler. We're brothers. We're therapists. We're not afraid of your questions, so bring it. It. Those are both really great questions, Brandon, and we're going to get to those in just a minute. 00:32 But first, we're going to go to a review. This is from Rising Strong, and it just says thank you. It says I was fortunate enough to come across Brandon's other podcast at the very beginning of my healing process. It has been monumentally life changing for me. I've been a loyal follower ever since. So of course, I started following this new podcast as well. Brandon and Tyler, you are both in the right line of work. I see God and his purpose working through both of you. I can't speak for everyone, but listening to you both and working with you, Brandon, has forever changed my life. 01:05 You've helped me step into my truth, my power and my passion. Again, I am beginning to live my very best life, and I'm finding purpose and joy in both the good and the hard parts. You are changing lives. I am forever grateful. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You're welcome. I really appreciate that. I just want to say that if you're finding healing, it's not because of me, it's because of you. 01:35 And maybe I've given some guidance along the way and shared my wisdom, but you're the one that's applying it and doing the hard work. So keep it up, keep going. Those kinds of reviews are just the best. And it's like some days as a therapist, you wonder if you're doing any good in the world. You have a really hard day and you see people in a ton of pain. And when you hear some words like that, you realize that obviously they're doing all the work. 02:04 But to have been part of that journey and it's maybe the biggest payoff you ever get as a therapist. That's true. Yeah. All right, Tyler, I want to start backwards. So what chaps your hide? So first off, I was thinking chaps your hide. Where does that come from? I don't even know what that means. I don't know. 02:34 I always picture it being like a cowboy on a long trail. And at the end of the day, you feel like you can't feel your prostate anymore and your rear end is just rubbed raw and you're just like it's like watching those old Booty Tune commercials where some guy gets blown up by Dynamite run his rear end and he's all chapped at the bottom. So in other words, what pisses you off, right? Yeah. Oh, man, I use that phrase all the time. Like, oh, that just chops my hide for some reason. 03:01 I don't know why I picked it up at, but really, man, let me just paint the picture for you here. This is maybe the thing that just irks me the most about everything that I do in my job. And I don't know why. It probably has something to do with my own weaknesses or faults or something, but I TranscribeMe1could psychoanalyze you, but we won't do that. Maybe I'll be the caller today. This just happened yesterday, but it happened frequently. 03:31 It happens all the time. And I'm working with a couple, and they're trying to overcome their problems with their differences. And maybe let's just say the man in this situation, he's done some things, made some mistakes. He's caused a lot of problems, caused a lot of trauma in the relationship, some form of abuse or some form of deception or whatever it is. And then he decides that he doesn't really want to do the work to get better. 03:59 But instead of just taking accountability for that and owning it, he continues to shrink further and further into being just like the equivalent of a three year old child throwing a fit. Passive aggressive, passive aggressive, blaming, controlling, and disabled. When the wife finally gets healthy enough to say, I'm no longer going to put up with this stuff anymore. And she goes and files for divorce. He takes it to a whole new level, and he starts starving her out financially. 04:28 He starts withholding information. He goes and gets a lawyer that he can afford really well that she can. This goes both ways, whether it's the man or the woman. Right, right. I guess for me, probably being a man myself, that's what gets me going so much and what I believe so strongly about what masculinity should be. And so it just it makes my blood boil. Like I want to just look at the guy, shake him and say, what are you doing? 04:57 You can't like what you see in the mirror by acting this way for some reason. That's what chaps my hide brand. I want to kind of give you a contrast to this a little bit. I was working with a couple, and he had done a lot of things. His addiction had pushed him places that really weren't good and destroyed trust to a level that was really bad. 05:25 And his wife tried to hang in there, tried to rebuild the trust, tried to do it, and she got to a point where she just realized, like, I'm never going to be able to trust him again. So she actually in my office in front of him, asked him for a divorce, and he just broke down crying. And it was a really kind of emotional session, as you can imagine. But then she asked for what's called a collaborative divorce. 05:55 He said, Absolutely. And they went into this process called a collaborative divorce, where they worked better as a couple than most couples that I see that are married. They worked through this divorce. He was really humble. He was really loving. He was really honest with her. He was very patient. And she was the same way back to him. 06:20 And the results that I saw through that process was that they had two kids together. The two kids were affected so much less in a negative way by that divorce, because their mom and dad were wonderful human beings who could show up with compassion, love, positive regard, and honesty in a relationship. What chaps my Hide Tyler, is the same as you. 06:53 When one person decides, you know what? I'm selfishly going to drop bombs everywhere because I'm angry, because I'm resentful, because I can't work through my own stuff. And the ripple effect that it has is far more reaching than what you'd think. Yeah, it's your ex spouse, but it's your kids, it's your family, it's your extended family division, divisiveness, anger, drama starts to breed more of that. TranscribeMe207:29 Right. And it's hard to see because it really is something where one person's hurting other people. Right. Many other people. And maybe the primary person that they're hurting the most is themselves. I was listening to Jordan Peterson's book this week, and he talks about the pathway to nihilism and self hatred. And really, that's what this is. 07:58 That when I engage in actions in order to protect my own pride or my own supposed honor or whatever it is, I am only hurting myself in the long run, which will lead me to a place of complete darkness, complete loneliness, and ultimately complete frustration with life in general. 08:25 It just frustrates me so much that people can't see that that's the path that they're on when they're doing these things that reach like you said, it's not just to the spouse and not just to the children. It's far reaching. I mean, it even carries over into your own workplace. And the person who's doing the damage, they're so miserable to make everybody else around them miserable, too. Right. It's interesting because we did a recent episode on not being the victim, not staying stuck in a victim stance. 08:57 Yet today we're talking about people that suck and people that cause all kinds of problems. And, you know, here's the deal is you can't control other people. And if your spouse or soon to be ex spouse or ex spouse decides to be a total jerk, then what you can do. And this is a really hard thing to do. But you look at yourself and you say, okay, how can I not go down to their level yet? 09:30 Protect myself, stay boundary use. What's in my control, whether it's the legal system or whatever else, what's in my control to be able to assert my truths and keep my heart in a place where it's trying to have compassion for them because I don't want to be them. I don't want to fight fire with fire. They're acting like a three year old. I'm going to be an adult here. 09:59 They don't care about our kids and what's happening to them. Well, I do. And because I do, then I'm going to be an adult, I'm going to be the bigger person here. And that can be so hard to do. It's easy to go resonate down there with them when their attacks are directly at you. Right, Tyler? Absolutely. Yeah. What you're saying, Brandon, is spot on. 10:24 It's just takes an insane amount of emotional maturity to stay there and to operate from that place and to see the bigger picture. That really the old Buddhist kind of belief here that you can't harm yourself or someone else without harming the other. Like, we're all interconnected here. And when somebody is operating from a place of pain and shame and smallness, they are inviting the very same back into their life. 10:55 And so it's almost like an invitation when my clients when the husband here goes and starts shutting down all the bank account so his wife has no resources, and Meanwhile, she's the one taking care of all the kids. And he's over having a great time doing whatever he wants with all the finances. It's like he's inviting her. He's basically goading her into stepping into the same level that he's operating in. 11:25 Right. It's not doing himself any favors. Right. Right. And I believe that it's because at a deeper level, he's in a spot where his own self hatred is inviting punishment back. Somebody to hate him, his behaviors. Yeah. I've seen this so many times, Tyler, as you're talking about it, sometimes it's aggressive and just like really mean. TranscribeMe311:55 But I'd say the more tricky types are the narcissistic type, where they act really nice, yet they're so passive aggressive and they're playing cards a certain way to really make their partner look horrible, by being nice, by getting everybody on their side, by even using Church leaders and things like that, to be able to look good, which then leaves that partner decimated in terms of support, in terms of knowing what their truths are, trusting themselves. 12:38 And so it can be really tricky the way that somebody wages war. I got to say, Tyler, if you don't mind, I do want to dig into you a little bit. Can I? Because I do feel this energy from you of, like, pisses me off, especially it seems like when guys do this, it pisses you off for me far more when men do this to their wives than the other way around. Yes. 13:07 That's absolutely something that's one of my self of therapist things. I can say that's one of my biggest issues. Well, we call this counter transference. Right. In therapy, where you're having a certain reaction to a client because of some of your stuff or your beliefs because of you. And countertransference can be very useful in therapy, but you got to notice it. 13:32 If you don't notice it, then you would struggle to be effective as a therapist with a narcissistic douchebag who is trying to hurt his wife. Right, right. Why does it just get to you so much, Tyler. That's a really good question. I've done some thinking about this, and there's a couple of things that I've come to. The first one is that I think in some ways, I can relate to being that guy. 14:10 I'm in recovery myself from addiction. My wife and I have climbed out of the hole of betrayal, my betrayals. And so maybe it hits that piece of me that goes, I know what it's like in a certain level of be that guy. And I hated myself when I was that guy. I just couldn't stand to look myself in the eye when I was that kind of a guy. So that's one thing. 14:35 And then I think on a broader general scale, which is interesting, Tyler, because from an outsider's perspective, you're anything but that guy right inside yourself. You felt that way, Papa? I've felt that way before. I don't think I'm that guy anymore. I put a lot of work and effort into not being that guy. I'm trying to be a good guy, a good man. And I basically live everything I teach my clients. On a broader scale. 15:05 I think it boils down to my view on masculinity, on how strongly I feel about what makes a good man. And so when I see that not happening, I feel not only a sense of want to protect, say, the person who's being abused, the feminine. The feminine. I want to protect the feminine. 15:33 But I also it's sort of like a parent with a drug addicted child that comes in and out of the house over and over and again. Finally, the parent just gets burned out. And it's just like I see their pain. I want to shake them. I want them to change. I don't know how to get him to change. I love the guy, but you see that he's I love him so much. And almost every man I've ever worked with who does these things inside, I love them. They're good men. 16:02 It's weird for me to say that he's a good man when he's doing those things, but I honestly believe that most of the men I'm talking about here are good men. And it hurts. It hurts me so deeply to see that famous word potential in these men that I think could be so good. And they show up small. It's like. It's like a massive disappointment stuck behind their pride, their anger, TranscribeMe4and ultimately their shame. 16:29 I think it's their shame, but it shows up in these really nasty ways. Look at our world, Brandon. And this is one of my pet passions. You know this. But one of my pet passions is masculinity and manhood. Like, look around our world right now. We are starved of good men who know how to step into the actual masculine energy of things because most of our men are gutted. They've been wounded. They've been sent messages that they're not allowed to be smarter. 17:00 They're not allowed to show up in strength, or they believe that strength is violence and coercion instead of real strength. And there's just all these mixed messages. So you look around our world and we have men all over the world today who don't know what it actually means to be a good man. Right. Okay. Then you're kind of leading to another question, which is what does that mean to be a good man? 17:30 Like, what does it mean to really be healthy in your masculinity? Yes, I look at principles when I think of this, and maybe a lot of these principles would carry over into the feminine side of things. But when you think of a good man, there's the old traditional thing where any Western movie would show the old traditional idea of a good man, the strong don't take crap from anybody. 18:00 I can do whatever I want. I think a lot of the reasons why movies like Braveheart or Gladiator really resonates is that there's a little bit of that desire in each of us that wants to be like that, the ultimate warrior, that stands for principle, that fights for a cause and is willing to give himself for it. But I think a good man is somebody first who figures out how to live with integrity and then who shows up in his life from a place of strength, understanding, really. 18:37 And as a Christian man, who he is and who is in God's eyes and who God sees him as. Right. And what he needs to be and doesn't shy away from that calling. Right. John Eldridge says he says every man's question is, do I have what it takes? And a masculine man has an answer to that question. They know they have what it takes. They know who they are. 19:02 And when a man doesn't have an answer to that question, then they try to figure that out, and they try to feel that void, and they try to overprove themselves or they shrivel up and hide and don't step out there. One good indicator of healthy masculinity is that a very masculine man a lot of times we think about masculinity as like, yeah, you got the big truck and you love football, right? 19:40 Right. But a very masculine man is somebody who will honor and love and support the feminine. And so when you talk about this type of client where if it's a man just taking his wife through the Ringer or whatever, what he's not doing is really honoring and being steady for the feminine presence in his life. 20:13 Hang on, Tyler. I want to grab a worksheet. I have it right here in my backpack. It's on masculinity and femininity. So let me do this. I'll ask you a question and so you can talk. So what would you say are some attributes of masculinity? Yes. Okay. So I'm just going to kind of go off of maybe where you started with John Eldridge, a little bit. And I like what he says, where not only do we have this question that Burns inside of us that says, Am I TranscribeMe5enough? 20:42 Really? At the core, who we are is he kind of puts it into three different categories of the first category is that we as men are built for war. We were built to be warriors. And what he means by that is we need to test ourselves against something. We need to have purpose. We need to seek passion. We need to throw ourselves into the game. We can't sit on the sidelines. We need to do something that's purposeful. So that's the first part. And then the second part that he talks about is that we need an adventure. 21:11 And if you look around at our world today, there's a lot of men who don't even know what it means to go on an adventure because they're sitting in a cubicle punching keys all day, and then they go home and drink themselves silly. And then the third part is what you are saying, Brandon, which is this need to Revere and respect and protect the feminine. And not just feminine, but beauty, to be able to bring beauty into his life and to protect those things. 21:35 And a wholehearted man, he'll be working to have balance in all three of those areas in his life where he is strong and steady and he's putting himself up against things to test himself constantly. But he's also finding time to go and have an adventure. We talk about Joseph Campbell all the time with the Heroes Journey, but that's really what that's about. 21:59 And then, of course, I think this is why it sets me off so much, is that I don't think any man that I work with can actually be his best self if he doesn't figure out how to Revere the feminine. And that sounds backwards, but that's the part that I think is most missing in our world today. And so it becomes, like you said, this facade where either I have to show up really strong and tough, and it's like, there's a song by Quinn, whatever his name is right now. 22:33 It's called Tough. And it talks about, like, going to the gym. And the only thing he ever wipes his tears with his muscle tissue. And it's like, well, that's so far from the truth of what it means to actually be a real man. A real man is able to go into his own dark places, and he's able to own those things. He's able to turn those things into sources of strength. And then he's able to look around at the world around him and go, he's not overcompensating. No, not at all. 23:00 How am I going to use myself to the best of my ability, knowing that I'm still flawed, but knowing that I'm called into something I'm responsible to make things go better here, and I have to step into that. I have to own that. I can't shy away from that, and there's a risk in that. But that's part of what makes courage. That's part of what masculinity is about. Yeah. Amen. I think masculinity. 23:29 It's so interesting, Tyler. Remember when all the women were reading Twilight, and there's a couple of other shows on TV that all the women in my neighborhood love, and I watch it. They always have a British accent, for sure. 23:49 The guy always has a British accent, but then he's always really kind and loving and tender and really strong and steady and knows who he is and really protects their heart, like, really protects the heart of his lover. Right. This is like porn for women because they're like, oh, my gosh, I want that. I TranscribeMe6made this worksheet. 24:19 I've always thought it was funny that the Twilight, when I read the first book and I couldn't. I gathered on it. Did you just admit that you read the first book? Well, I figured I better. I'm going to tell rats. I'm telling everyone. We're going to make fun of you for that. I'll call it market research, but I found it fascinating that we had grown women going to the theaters after the movies came out, selling theaters out, and cat calling when the Wolf kid, whatever his name was, would come out with his shirt off, and then they'd sit there and they would just, like, read these books about this vampire. 24:56 His skin glittered, and he was pale and beautiful, and he could go for hours in the bedroom, and he had all the money in the world, but all he wanted to do was just dote over this woman. All he wanted to do is just protect her. And we had literally, like, flocks of grown middle aged women running theater totally Besides themselves going to the theater over this, which speaks to femininity, I think, totally, 100%. 25:25 And yet what Twilight did is it basically took all those things that the feminine is looking for, and it painted the picture in a single character of a vampire who is basically more than human. And that's where the problem comes in. So healthy polarity is ultimately the best. That's where creation happens. So we desire polarity. And when I say polarity, what I mean by that is the Yin to the Yang. 25:57 I want my wife to be my polar opposite. Kind of. She's the feminine. I'm the masculine. And when we come together as a whole, that's where the creation happens. That's where we're powerful. And I'm not talking about in a codependent way. I'm actually talking about complementary in a very interdependent way where she knows who she is. She steps into that. We create passion together. 26:27 We create trust. There's equality there. So I want to read off some of these things. So this is just a list. I'll see if you can. You see that kind of. Yeah, I can. It's masculine and femininity. Just some attributes of it. And when you look at this, you realize, like, they are complimentary. Masculinity is the rooted tree that's rooted and grounded. 26:58 Femininity is the wind that blows around and is creative and moves the tree around. But that tree stays steady, and the femininity creates and shifts and does all kinds of things. So one is not good and one is not bad. This isn't a competition. It's not. Well, one needs to be better than the other. Women who claim to be feminists, who then become masculine to become feminists are anything but feminists. 27:29 Do you understand? They're not resonating in the feminine. Yeah. They're turning into the masculine, saying, I want to be like men so that I am as powerful as men. And actually, they're just as powerful as men in their femininity, not in their masculinity. Exactly. And I think you see this in marriages, too. I know you get your delist in a second, but look at how many marriages you work with where over time, let's say the man starts to play small or under produce or whatever, his counterpart, the wife, starts to step in and fill a lot of those roles, which is bad. 28:04 It's okay. That's why in the end and the Yang, there's the eye of the other one, because we do have some overlap there. It does become problematic. TranscribeMe7But, yeah, she starts to become the masculine entity in that relationship. And then she's looking at him going like, come on, I need you to step up. I need to do this. I need that. But then there's no room, because that energy is already being filled, and he needs to learn how to step into that and allow her to not have to pick up the tab. 28:34 Exactly. And it destroys passion in the relationship. It destroys trust, actually. And then he wonders why he won't have sex with them and stuff. Yeah. He wants more sex, and he actually needs her to have sex with him so he feels man enough, which actually, really makes her not really desire to have sex with him. He has anything but Edward. Yes. I hate that Edward is the guy that works. 29:05 Can we talk about, like, Superman or somebody? Okay, so masculinity, direction, logic, focus, integrity, stability, discipline, confidence, strength, purpose, results, protective, consistent, steady, and grounded. So that's masculinity femininity the counterpart to masculinity. 29:30 Surrender, receptivity, empathy, radiance, flow, sensuality, nurturing, affection, sharing, tenderness, patience, loving, perseverance, intuition, and experiential. So you can see how those work so well together. Yeah. Healthy masculinity. As we talk about it, Tyler, it's like, okay, all the men who have listened to this go out and be masculine now, right? 30:00 Just do that. Why is it so difficult? Why is it so hard for some to actually be that steady, grounded, consistent presence in their home and with their wives? Yeah. Well, Brandon, I think it's about woundedness, and we're in it pretty deep now. Sociologically, systemically, we have massive problems. 30:32 I served my LDS Church mission in Baltimore, Maryland, and this is one of the reasons why I do what I do in my job. I ended up in the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland. And every day I was there for about six months. Every day we had about ten to twelve little boys that would come over to our house and we would like, read with them, and we'd go outside and throw football and stuff with them. 30:56 And in the course of that six months, getting to know all those little boys, not a single one of them knew who their father was. I'm talking 100% of the little boys in our apartment complex didn't know their father. And then their games that they played were like they were pretending to hold their gun sideways and shoot people. And that was the world that they were living in. And something inside of me said, wow, what has happened to the men? 31:27 Where are all the men? Where's a good man? And this is why I get frustrated myself for getting so angry at these men is that honestly, they're wounded. They incur these wounds, whether they don't have a really involved father or maybe they have an over involved father. We all get wounded somehow because we receive messages by living in this fallen world that we're not good enough, that we don't have what it takes. 31:54 And then when we don't feel like we have what it takes, we start to disconnect and disappear from the responsibility that is ours to show up for other people. Right. I think having a father who abandoned you that you never known, that's a very clear father wound. Very obvious father wound. And masculinity bestows masculinity. TranscribeMe832:19 That's why our men's groups are so powerful is because it's masculine men coming together, affirming each other, loving each other, and doing God's work, I believe, through each other. But some of those wounds are tricky and subtle. One of the ones that I see, Tyler, and we could go down this route, maybe we need to do a full episode on this is men's sexuality gets attacked at an early age. 32:50 And so what happens is when a young man starts to develop and be more sexual, they start to feel more shame that the message is sent to them is that they're wrong. They need to turn it off. They're not okay. And so they hide it. They find pornography, lust, things like that. They act out more. They feel worse about themselves. So they feel like, I'm not okay as a man. 33:20 There's something flawed here, there's something wrong. And from a young age, I believe that sex is used to send this message of you're broken, you're broken. But then on the flip side, where they go and find it when they're introduced to pornography, a few and other things, and everything in the world is that sex becomes the currency to prove my masculinity through control and coerciveness and violence. 33:49 Right? So they try to fill that void there. And the more they try to fill it, the less they feel like real men. And so to show up in all the ways that I just listed becomes impossible, because underneath all of it, the strength isn't there. Shame is there. And so we could talk about a lot of different angles in which masculinity gets attacked. I believe sexuality is one. 34:17 I think spirituality is another society in so many ways. There's so many confusing messages right now. Addiction just tears men down. And so the good news, Tyler, is I've seen men who really have been lost and not known who they are, figure it out, step into their manhood, understand their divine I call it nobility, their divine nobility as to who they are as a man and be able to own that nobility. 34:56 But it takes the threshold from really floundering and not knowing who you are to gaining that nobility. It takes courage. It takes courage to let go of all the messages and narratives and things that the shame has told you for so long and you don't believe it anymore. And you actually start acting against that shame. And all of a sudden you're having empathy for your wife, you're having boundaries in your relationship. 35:28 You're being able to speak up when you need to and hold yourself back when you need to. And you start to see results come from this inner strength that starts to happen through practicing that courage consistently. Amen, brother. And I think so what you were saying is that the way that I see men climb out of that hole and move into that space that you're talking about, where, I mean, it's one of the most beautiful things in the world to me. 35:57 When I see a man operating in his full masculinity, whether it's in his home or when he's fighting for a good cause, that's one of the favorite things in the whole world to me. But the way that you get there is you use the word courage. And the courage includes confronting the woundedness. 36:19 It includes having to go and make peace with that and to find all the false things that I've learned to believe and to let go of those things and to actually embrace the things we've been talking about and submit and submit myself to the practice of those things, whether they feel real or not, TranscribeMe9until eventually I'm wired in the habit of realizing, you've got to experience it. You've got to experience it, to feel it. And that's how your soul actually heals. Not just talk about it, not just listen to this podcast. 36:49 You got to experience it. And that's where that masculine energy will come in and you'll start to resonate there. And then the feminine will be attracted to you and want to connect to you. So not that that's the end all goal, but that's one thing that will happen so Tyler, this has been a great discussion. One of my favorite topics is masculinity femininity. I believe that when we get healthy, we become our best self. 37:23 That that really comes out. Our masculinity and our femininity comes out and so it's just a good barometer indicator of how healthy you really are in your spirit and in your mind. So when you talk about you talk about that jerk guy who's doing all those horrible things, that's the opposite of that, right? Exactly. 37:48 And that guy that I'm talking about really at the core he's got the potential to be a phenomenal. Alright, you guys, if you like this, please rate and review and please share it. It's really helpful if you share it and we'll see you next time. Thank you guys.