Front Row Dads with Jon Vroman

Mark Groves is 46 years old, and the conversation he keeps coming back to happened in a car when he was in his twenties with his father.

He had gone to his father complaining about a girlfriend, and he had said something to her he is not proud of. His dad told him that a relationship is a separate entity. There is you, there is her, and there is the thing between you, and that third thing has to be cared for. Mark still remembers exactly where he was sitting.

That is the point of this one. A father's influence does not switch off when his kids leave the house.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The car conversation: a relationship is a separate entity
• Why a father's influence does not stop at eighteen
• "Nothing will ever divide this family," and what it did to hear it
• Learning to drive, the standard lines, and the egg under the gas pedal
• The construction site rule, and what happened when mom found out
• His father's first marriage, and "that's what I learned from it"
• Getting caught, and the grace his dad offered on the drive home

Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is all about? The Brotherhood Experience is a free, one-hour online session where you meet other like-minded men who are committed to being family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. You will hear the core ethos and values behind the community, and why this brotherhood is a strategy for connecting with your kids, building a thriving marriage, and winning in business. It runs every month.

Pick a time that works for you: https://frontrowdads.com/experience

Jon asked a pediatrician of thirty-five years for the formula for influencing your kids. She gave him three words.

Dr. Meg Meeker, author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, says her job is to speak to dads on behalf of their children. So Jon asked the question every man here eventually asks, which is some version of just tell me what to do. She gave him a list. Attention, affection, acceptance. Whether your child is two or twenty-two or fifty, they want the same three things from you, and the third one is where most of us quietly fail.

The part that will sting is the grocery store. You are listing what your daughter has done to someone you ran into, straight A's, varsity as a sophomore, and she is standing right behind you. "She doesn't feel accepted. She feels like a performer."

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why a pediatrician speaks to fathers on behalf of their kids
• The formula for influence, and why men want it as a checklist
• Attention: whether your child is 2 or 22 or 50, they want to be seen
• Affection, and how it changes shape without going away as a daughter grows
• Acceptance, and the grocery store conversation that turns a kid into a performer
• The elite swimmer whose whole relationship with her dad was built on the sport
• What acceptance means when your kid genuinely disappoints you
• "If our acceptance of them is predicated on them turning out the way we envision, we're cooked"

FULL EPISODE: https://frontrowdads.com/459

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Every couple has a dance, and most men have never seen the steps written down.

One of you closes the distance and gets louder. The other creates distance and shuts down. What makes it a loop rather than an argument is that each one's way of coping is precisely the thing the other cannot tolerate. Mark Groves names it, then takes it apart: Gottman's four horsemen, why men stonewall more than women do, and the single sentence that breaks a defensive pattern even though saying it feels awful.

Then the harder half. Groves admits he spent years in a relationship with someone who needed exactly the skills he teaches, and asks the question underneath it: what if you need the problem to be there? What if the fixing is the point?

IN THIS EPISODE

• The dance: the distancer, the escalator, and why the loop holds
• Gottman's four horsemen, and why men stonewall
• "I can see some truth in what you're saying," and why it tastes terrible
• Behind every criticism is a desired behavior
• "Our defense strategies live beside our greatest wounds"
• The kitchen, the deal breaker that kept moving, and what he said instead
• What happens to the fixer when the addict gets sober
• Why nobody should be 100 percent in with someone who is 99
• Unconscious commitments, and needing a battle to fight
• Jon on creating problems at home to have something to bring to the room

FULL EPISODE

How to Co-Regulate: The Science Behind Relationship Harmony: https://frontrowdads.com/474

Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is all about? The Brotherhood Experience is a free, one-hour online session where you meet other like-minded men who are committed to being family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. You will hear the core ethos and values behind the community, and why this brotherhood is a strategy for connecting with your kids, building a thriving marriage, and winning in business. It runs every month. Pick a time that works for you at https://frontrowdads.com/experience

Jon walked into a band meeting with seven things to do and walked out with one.

Episode 4 of Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Jon Vroman walking the lake in downtown Austin on a Wednesday afternoon, thinking out loud. The audio is rough on purpose: traffic, wind, and footsteps are part of the deal.

He recorded this straight out of his monthly band meeting, where he put business on the table. Two things he admits he hasn't always done well: saying his truth out loud instead of withholding it to spare feelings, and being humble enough to ask for counsel. He did both. Then his buddy Tim kept saying the same thing until it stuck: "there's only one thing you need to do after this meeting," and until it's done with excellence, don't do two.

IN THIS WALK:

• What a band is, if you're new here: four to six men, monthly, real conversations
• Withholding isn't lying, but it isn't the truth either
• Lead domino, five whys, communal drive: the FRD core values, and the one he wasn't living
• Ideation is his top strength, and why that means he needs editors around him
• The method in one breath: reveal, get curious, lean on your trusted advisors, pick one thing, execute, follow through

Front Row Dads is a brotherhood of family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. To learn more, go to frontrowdads.com.

She calls it puberty in reverse. It can last a decade. And most husbands have no idea it's happening.

LIVE WITH DR. HIRSCH, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8TH.

She is joining the Front Row Dads community for a live session with Q&A on how men can support the women in their lives through menopause. Free for members, and a limited number of guest passes for everyone else. Details at frontrowdads.com/menopause

Dr. Heather Hirsch is board-certified in internal medicine, founded the Menopause and Midlife Clinic at Brigham and Women's Hospital, taught at Harvard Medical School, and has treated thousands of women through perimenopause and menopause. She flew to Austin for this one because, in her words, most of the conversation about menopause happens with women, and it's the men who share a bed, a marriage, and a family with them who never get the briefing. This is that briefing.

She defines the terms every husband should know, explains what actually happens as the hormones flicker out like a failing light bulb, and walks through what it does to sleep, mood, memory, weight, skin, and sex. Then the practical half: how to bring it up without saying "this explains everything," why tracking symptoms beats blood work, the bedroom at 65 degrees, why so many women see five to seven doctors before the right diagnosis, and what real treatment looks like.

Her story is the first 20 minutes. The practical breakdown starts at 19:56.

• Find a trained clinician: menopause.org or heatherhirschdirectory.com
• Her books: Unlock Your Menopause Type and The Perimenopause Survival Guide
• Follow her: @heatherhirschmd

Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? We run a live Brotherhood Experience most months. Jon and a few other dads, 60 minutes on Zoom, and a real conversation about how fatherhood is actually going. It's not a webinar, and you won't leave drained. On any given week, most dads give support and never get any. That's what this hour is for. It's free, and the next date and your seat are both at frontrowdads.com/experience

Most of us don't have a plan for our marriage. We have a repair schedule.

Something breaks, we patch it, things are fine for a while, and then we sit there quietly waiting for it to break again. Lance Salazar lived in that loop.

He describes a defeatist stretch where even when things were okay, he was just wondering when it was going to go bad.

So he and his wife stopped fixing and started designing, borrowing the thing they already knew how to do in business: decide what you want, build a plan, commit to it, track it.

What came out of that is a framework they call the four legendary relationship elements. You. The partnership. The friendship. The lovers. And Lance is insistent about the order, because a great partnership needs a great partner first, and it is very hard to feel like friends with someone you are arguing with about the garbage.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The cycle of patch, coast, break, repeat, and why it ends in mediocrity
• Designing a marriage instead of repairing it
• Applying goals, milestones, and actions to a marriage the way you would to a company
• Why you can't run a marathon you never trained for
• The four legendary relationship elements, and why the order is the point
• The partnership loop: finances, kids, the trash, and why couples get trapped there after kids
• Tracking it: ten minutes of talking a day, a planner, an actual checkbox
• "If you haven't been kissing your wife every day, then you need a reminder"
• Why it sounds unromantic and why he does it anyway
• How friendship becomes the foundation for intimacy

FULL EPISODE

Legendary Couples with Kids: https://frontrowdads.com/39

Jon's eleven-year-old had been more anxious than usual, and his wife told him why.

You have been more stressed at work. He is a reflector. He picks up on your energy.

Bryan Post takes that and does something more useful than reassurance. Your son has his own part, formed long before this week. You have yours. And the moment you take his behavior personally, you lose the ability to be present for him, because you have made his stuff your stuff. He gives the actual words to use, and the reason they work: all behavior arises from stress; a stressed child regresses to a younger age, and between the stress and the behavior there is only ever love or fear.

Then the part most parents get backward. When your kid's fear frightens you, what you do next is control, suppress, and correct, and you tell yourself that is good parenting. It isn't.

He finishes with the child who goes quiet instead of acting out, what happens when you try to pry that child open, and the one thing that works instead.

IN THIS EPISODE

• What Jon's wife told him about his own energy
• Your part and their part, and why the difference matters
• "Every communication is energy"
• Why personalizing your kid's behavior costs you the ability to be present
• The script: "Dad's been really stressed lately, and I've noticed you have been too"
• All behavior arises from stress, and why a stressed eleven-year-old acts like a five-year-old
• Love or fear: what actually sits between the stress and the behavior
• "You're doing that because you're scared"
• Turtle children, and why you cannot dig them out with a stick
• The linchpin, the neuroscience behind it, and the Bruce Lee line that sums it up

FULL EPISODE

This is a short cut from one of the best conversations on this feed. The whole thing is worth your time: Love-Based Parenting Is Firm, Honest, and Harder Than Yelling Ever Was — https://frontrowdads.com/531

Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is all about? The Brotherhood Experience is a free, one-hour online session where you meet other like-minded men who are committed to being family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. You will hear the core ethos and values behind the community, and why this brotherhood is a strategy for connecting with your kids, building a thriving marriage, and winning in business. It runs every month. Pick a time that works for you at https://frontrowdads.com/experience

Nobody got married hoping to work on it.

That is where Ted Lowe starts. After a long day of working hard, the last thing anybody wants is to work some more, so telling a man his marriage needs more work tends to land like a chore. His alternative is a habit he calls serious fun, built on simple accounting: you cannot make withdrawals from a relational account you never deposited into. And the hard times come, and they require withdrawals.

Then he asks the question that gives this episode its name.

Jon takes the second half and gets honest about a six-month stretch where his own marriage went into a storm, and the realization that came out of it: he had become boring. Too routine, too practical. So he ran a thought experiment about what he would do if they split up, realized he would immediately become fun and kind and generous for someone else, and asked himself why he wasn't doing that for the person he loves most.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why "work on your marriage" is the wrong pitch to a tired man
• The relational bank account: deposits before withdrawals
• "Would you want to be married to you? Are you funny? Are you fun?"
• "We don't date each other. We date each other's PR department"
• Your best self, and why chasing the perfect couple is a trap
• Scheduling it, and why the anticipation is half of it
• Jon on becoming the boring one, and what he did about it
• Planning to win: your calendar fills with whatever has a who, what, when, where, and how, including root canals
• Looking at the days around the day, and marriage in seasons
• "Do you want me to fix it or feel it," and the minivan on the side of the road
• The scuba diving skins

FULL EPISODE

How to Not Make Marriage Complicated with Ted Lowe: https://frontrowdads.com/17

Geoff Woods set a goal of thirty-six date nights with his wife, tracked it all year, and then had to admit it wasn't working.

What he found instead was the idea he spent years teaching at The ONE Thing: find the one domino that makes everything else easier or unnecessary, and knock that one over first. In his marriage it wasn't the date nights. It was a cup of coffee at 5:30 in the morning, before the kids were awake, on the couch, looking each other in the eye and asking How are you doing.

This is from a training Geoff ran for the Front Row Dads brotherhood. He walks through how he goal-sets backward from twenty years out, why being the accountability guy with his wife on money backfired, and what he says to a spouse who has no interest in planning anything.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why the purpose of a goal is not the result
• Writing down what an extraordinary marriage looks like twenty years out, then reverse engineering to this week
• The 411: year, month, week on one page
• "Me being the accountability man with my wife on money, surprisingly, did not make her love me more"
• The aha: getting a babysitter and going to a restaurant does not equal connection
• Why the coffee date turned out to be the lead domino
• What to say to a partner who resists planning, and why Geoff decided it was his own fault
• The Sunday rhythm: kids in the kids club, both 411s open, dating your goals
• Daphne, the private school, and why vacuuming the carpet does not matter

WANT MORE FROM GEOFF WOODS

Goal Setting for Couples: https://frontrowdads.com/107

How Leaders Can Leverage AI for Strategic Thinking: https://frontrowdads.com/458

Nobody claws their way out of rock bottom alone.

Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up at frontrowdads.com/experience

Matt Aitchison was expelled from high school, arrested in college, and facing real jail time. He is quick to say that might not be your story, but that every man has his own version of the bottom: the moment you realize the way you are living is not who you are, and you are not going to let it become who you are.

What rebuilt it was not dramatic. One small decision at a time, over and over, for a long stretch, which only looks like a fork in the road looking backward.

He also makes the case for why the men around you matter this much: the board of directors, the people who would not let him stay down. Short, practical, and worth a listen on a hard day.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Expelled, arrested, and facing jail time
• Why your rock bottom doesn't have to look like his to count
• The one-small-decision-at-a-time mechanism, and why it only makes sense later
• Broke, living at home, borrowing money, unable to make rent
• The board of directors: why you need real men around you
• Being rich in more than money