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Valentine’s Day is easy to dismiss. People often call it shallow, overpriced, and performative. In this solo episode, Tim Wienecke starts there. He critiques it at first. Then he digs deeper. He uncovers what his resistance to holidays, anniversaries, and romantic rituals was really hiding. He also shares what that resistance ultimately cost him.

Tim draws from his personal history. He adds clinical insight and includes hard-earned regret. He explores how men often hide behind logic, stoicism, and cultural critiques. These cover deeper discomforts. Men struggle with being seen. They resist being celebrated. They avoid emotional exposure.

The episode begins as a critique of Valentine’s Day marketing. It turns into an honest reckoning. Routine, avoidance, and unexamined masculinity can erode intimacy over time. This is not a lecture on buying better gifts. It is not a defense of consumer romance culture. It is a reflection. Intentional disruption matters in long-term relationships. Moments of deliberate attention can restore what familiarity grays out.

In this episode, we explore these topics:

• Why holidays feel fake (and why that belief is convenient). Dismissing Valentine’s Day as “just marketing” helps avoid vulnerability. It also dodges responsibility in relationships.
• The neuroscience of familiarity. Even deeply loving relationships fade into the background. This happens without intentional disruption. Routine dulls connection.
• Masculinity and discomfort with celebration. Many men struggle to receive affection, praise, or emotional labor. This is true even from the people who love them most.
• Family history and holiday avoidance. Chaotic or painful childhood experiences can wire holidays to feel unsafe. They stop feeling connective.
• Reframing romantic rituals. Holidays can help when done intentionally. They let you see and be seen again. This is not about performing.
• Money, meaning, and misalignment. Think about gifts and gestures based on your real financial situation. Base them on your partner’s actual values. Ignore external pressure.
• Letters, anticipation, and shared experiences. Time, attention, and thoughtful planning matter more than price tags. Anticipation itself deepens connection.
• Letting yourself be celebrated. This is an overlooked skill. It means allowing your partner to show up for you. Even when it feels deeply uncomfortable.

This episode is a cautionary tale. It is also an invitation. Love doesn’t disappear all at once. It fades when we stop marking it. We stop naming it. We stop tending to it. You don’t need grand gestures. You do need intention.

Tim doesn’t offer a perfect formula. He offers honesty, reflection, and a challenge. Don’t lose something meaningful. Don’t let it happen because you refused to make it visible.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

Being a man online has never been louder, sharper, or more polarized. Every day, millions of men are fed short, confident answers to complex human problems. Confidence is praised. Control is celebrated. Certainty is rewarded. But much of today’s viral masculinity advice is built on partial truths that, when taken at face value, quietly lead men into isolation, rigidity, and relational failure.

In this episode, Timothy breaks down ten of the most widely shared masculinity clips circulating right now. Rather than attacking the creators, he adds the missing context, psychological nuance, and clinical reality that short-form content cannot hold. The goal is not to tear down masculine values, but to refine them.

This conversation moves through attraction and power, discipline and self-worth, vulnerability and leadership, sex and commitment, and the subtle ways biological explanations can become excuses for emotional avoidance. Timothy unpacks why some advice feels strong but produces fragile men, and how competence, connection, and accountability must develop together.

You’ll hear us explore:

• Why “dark triad” attraction is often misunderstood, and how confidence without character becomes manipulation.
• Self-control vs. self-mastery: When discipline builds dignity, and when it turns into shame.
• Male depression beyond pathology: How belonging, purpose, and systems matter as much as mindset.
• Vulnerability and relationships: Why men often speak only when they break, and how to communicate before collapse.
• Sex as a marketplace vs. sex as attachment: Why uncommitted success often produces deeper loneliness.
• Marriage and commitment: What actually predicts long-term well-being for men.
• Shoulder-to-shoulder connection: How men bond through action, and why range in connection keeps men alive.
• Solitude as training, not escape: When stepping back heals, and when it becomes avoidance.
• Masculine communication: Why ball-busting works, where it fails, and what healthy emotional range looks like.

This episode is not about rejecting masculinity. It’s about rescuing it from oversimplification. It’s an invitation to build strength that can think, discipline that can feel, and confidence that does not require disconnection to survive.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

Being a man today often means being asked to lead without ever being taught how. Strength is still expected. Responsibility is still assumed. But the models for authority, leadership, and masculinity are increasingly thin, either rigid and domineering or so hands-off they leave men unformed. Many men are left wondering how to hold power without becoming the thing they once feared.

In this episode, host Timothy sits down with licensed marriage and family therapist and leadership consultant Logan Cohen. Logan’s work involves working with traumatized youth in wilderness therapy. His current role is developing leaders in high-pressure industries. Together, they explore what healthy masculine leadership actually looks like when safety, trust, and accountability all matter.

This conversation moves through violence and restraint, power and humility, and the difference between domination and authority. Logan shares formative stories, from growing up around abuse and survival, to a pivotal moment in the wilderness where choosing restraint over force reshaped an entire group dynamic. Together, they unpack how men learn to take hits, build resilience, and lead without needing to control.

You’ll hear us break down:

• Leadership without domination: Why fear-based authority only works once, and how trust creates lasting influence.
• Fairness and vulnerability as strength: How consistency, boundaries, and emotional regulation build real loyalty in groups.
• Taking the hit on purpose: Why the ability to absorb pain, without collapsing or retaliating, is central to masculine maturity.
• Wilderness lessons for modern men: What working with violent, traumatized youth reveals about power, safety, and group dynamics.
• False independence vs. earned resilience: How extreme self-reliance isolates men and undermines leadership.
• The window of tolerance: How men expand their capacity for stress, responsibility, and growth without burning out.
• Mentorship and generativity: Why older men are often waiting to be asked—and why younger men need guides more than motivation.

We explore the tension between comfort and integrity, safety and growth, and strength and compassion. This episode isn’t about softening men or glorifying toughness. It’s about forming men who can hold authority without fear, lead others without crushing them, and build lives that are both demanding and meaningful.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

Being a man today often means carrying responsibility without a clear map for meaning. Work used to define everything. Service, provision, and endurance were enough. Now, many men are left asking who they are when the old scripts no longer hold. They often wonder what strength is supposed to look like in a world that’s changed.

In this episode, host Timothy sits down with military veteran and entrepreneur Scott DeLuzio. They have a grounded, wide-ranging conversation about masculinity, service, leadership, and identity after uniform. Drawing from military culture, entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and generational change, they explore how men are shaped by systems that prize competence and toughness and what happens when those systems fall away.

You’ll hear us break down:

• The military’s masculine culture: Why structure, hierarchy, and shared mission accelerate growth and how that culture can both build and limit men.
• Combat vs. support roles: The unspoken hierarchy inside the military, why most service members are enablers rather than fighters, and how that reframes masculine worth.
• Teamwork and leadership after service: Why veterans often succeed in entrepreneurship by rejecting the “do it all yourself” myth.
• Scarcity vs. abundance thinking: How competition for attention and status undermines men, and why collaboration creates more room for everyone.
• The provider identity collapse: How our grandfathers’ work-based purpose shaped masculinity and why that model no longer sustains modern men.
• Fatherhood and overprotection: How today’s parents have created safer childhoods, and the unintended cost of limiting failure, risk, and resilience.
• Letting boys struggle well: Why strength is built through responsibility, exposure, and earned competence, not constant rescue.

We highlight the tension men feel between duty and meaning, protection and growth, independence and belonging. This conversation doesn’t offer easy answers or nostalgia. It provides something more durable: a clearer understanding of how men are formed, what they’ve lost, and how they can rebuild purpose without abandoning strength.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

Being a good therapist isn’t just about technique. It’s about presence. It’s about knowing how to hold space without flinching, how to challenge without shaming, and how to stay steady when someone finally tests whether you’ll leave as everyone else did.

In this episode, licensed therapist Timothy sits down with trauma clinician Bianca Thomas for a raw, deeply grounded conversation. The discussion centres around men in therapy, gender dynamics in the clinical room, and why so many men struggle to feel safe opening up. Together, they unpack what actually helps men heal and where the mental health field still falls short.

You’ll hear us break down:

• Why do men test female therapists? How boundary-pushing, sexual comments, and humour are often safety bids, not disrespect.
• Vulnerability vs. emotional collapse: Why men fear that “opening up” means losing control, and what healthy vulnerability actually looks like.
• The gender gap in clinical training: How modern therapy education often overlooks male socialization and leaves clinicians underprepared to work with men.
• What builds real safety in the room? Directness, credibility, humour, and consistency.
• Rupture and repair: Why conflict in therapy isn’t failure, but one of the most powerful healing tools when handled well.
• Sex, shame, and silence: How sexual dynamics show up in therapy, and why avoiding them does more harm than naming them.
• Why do men need other men? The role of community and “me too” moments in helping men finally seek support.

We stay with the pressure men carry every day, the pull between connection and self-protection, between showing up and staying guarded. This conversation doesn’t promise quick wins or clean solutions. It offers something more useful: honesty about what men actually need to heal, grow, and stay in the room.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

Joining the military isn’t just a career choice. It’s a moral, psychological, and identity-defining decision that reshapes who you are, what you belong to, and what you carry long after the uniform comes off.

In this episode, Air Force veteran and dual-licensed psychotherapist Timothy Wienecke offers a clear-eyed, deeply personal breakdown of what military service actually gives, and what it takes. Drawing on over a decade of clinical work with veterans and his own lived experience, Timothy walks listeners through the realities civilians rarely hear before signing on the dotted line.

This isn’t a recruiting pitch. And it isn’t a bitter veteran rant. It’s an honest conversation about power, purpose, loss, and responsibility. It’s meant to help people make one of the most consequential decisions of their lives with their eyes fully open.

You’ll hear us explore:

• Purpose, structure, and direction: Why the military can be life-saving for people who feel lost and why that structure is so powerful.
• The real benefits include housing, healthcare, education, and skills development. And how they can set you up if you use them intentionally.
• Brotherhood and belonging: What makes military bonds so deep, and why they often come at the cost of your civilian community.
• Identity loss and assimilation: How military culture reshapes obedience, authority, and selfhood. And why parts of who you were may not come back unchanged.
• The job vs. the branch myth: Why your military job matters far more than the uniform you wear.
• Combat, hierarchy, and shame: The rarely discussed guilt carried by non-combat veterans in a warrior culture.
• Moral authority and killing: What it actually means to give up control over how your labour is used. And the moral injury that brings many veterans to therapy.
• Active duty vs. Guard and Reserve: Why “part-time service” often carries full-Timothye risk with less support.
• Who thrives and who struggles? The values, expectations, and red flags that predict whether service will be growth-building or deeply damaging.

This episode holds the tension at the heart of service. The pride and the anger. The gratitude and the grief. The ways service can save your life. And the ways it can cost you parts of it.

There’s no right or wrong answer to whether you should join the military. What matters is making the choice informed, intentional, and honest. This conversation doesn’t tell you what to decide. It gives you the clarity to decide for yourself.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

Being a present father isn’t about perfection. It’s about intention. It’s what you do in the tiny windows between work, exhaustion, and everything else pulling at you. It’s the choice to show up, even when time is tight, and life is loud.

In this episode, licensed therapist Timothy sits down with Marine Major and children’s author Olaolu Ogunyemi. He explores modern fatherhood through discipline, community, and the evolving identity of men in today’s world. Together, they walk through what it means to lead without dominating, love without disappearing into work, and parent with both structure and vulnerability.

You’ll hear us break down:

• Presence vs. proximity: Why being physically home isn’t the same as being emotionally available.
• Role transitions that actually work: How to shift from major to dad, from leader to listener, without losing yourself.
• Discipline as teaching, not punishment: The real meaning of discipline and why yelling rarely builds character.
• The power of community: Why no parent should raise a child alone and how military culture gets this right.
• Rewriting fatherhood narratives: Especially around Black dads, and how showing up consistently can break generational patterns.
• Small habits that create core memories: From schedules to rituals to “trash time,” and why those tiny moments hit deeper than big gestures.

We sit with the real tension parents feel today. Wanting to provide, protect, and succeed while also wanting to be gentle, present, and remembered for more than the hours spent at work.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

Most men are told to “listen better,” but almost nobody teaches the actual skills. In this episode, therapist and professor Tim Wienecke breaks empathy down into a practical, trainable system you can improve in 30 days. No personality shift required—just simple tools that help you communicate clearly, stay grounded in tough moments, and understand what people actually need from you.

Tim teaches the same framework he uses with counseling students: a 30-day daily drill that improves emotional recognition, grounding skills to keep you out of fixer mode, and a three-level reflective listening method that makes conversations easier and more productive. You’ll also learn the one question that prevents most difficult conversations from blowing up, plus how to apply these skills in romantic partnerships, leadership, and parenting.

Whether you want to connect better with your partner, lead more effectively at work, or simply be the man people feel safe opening up to, this episode gives you a complete step-by-step system you can start using today.

What You’ll Learn

• The 30-day stranger exercise that builds emotional accuracy
 • Why the Eyes Test is a helpful baseline for empathy
 • How the Emotion Wheel expands emotional vocabulary
 • Grounding techniques that help you stay present
 • The three types of reflections: simple, dual-sided, and summary
 • The question that keeps conversations from going sideways
 • How empathy shows up differently in parenting, leadership, and relationships

Chapters

00:00 Why Empathy Is a Trainable Skill
 00:50 The Eyes Test and Your Baseline
 02:10 The 30-Day Stranger Exercise
 03:10 Using the Emotion Wheel
 04:00 Skill 1: Grounding So You Stop Fixing
 06:40 Skill 2: Reflective Listening (Simple → Dual → Summary)
 12:00 Skill 3: “Am I Helping or Listening?”
 15:10 Applying the Skills: Kids, Leadership, and Partnerships

Tools Mentioned

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test - https://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/mite/

Emotion Wheel (vocabulary expansion tool)- https://feelingswheel.com/

Recommended Reading

How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? — Alan Alda
Motivational Interviewing (3rd ed.) — Miller and Rollnick

Get them from delivered by your local bookstore:

https://bookshop.org/lists/amp-32-empathy-and-communication-reading-list

Full Fact Check and Show Notes: www.americanmasculnity.com/amp32-skilled-empathy 

📊 Research Notes:
The 36-item Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test measures emotion recognition accuracy. Studies show empathic accuracy and reflective listening improve with deliberate practice. 
John Gottman's research finds 69% of relationship conflicts are "perpetual"—the goal

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

What happens to men’s mental health after #MeToo—once the headlines fade and you’re left with shame, confusion, and a culture you didn’t choose but still live in?

In this final part of the Men and #MeToo series, licensed therapist and veteran Tim Wienecke sits down with advocate Michael Brasher for an unhurried conversation about the “water” men were raised in: intergenerational violence, confusing sexual scripts, status pressure, and the stories that keep “good guys” from seeing the harm they cause.

Together they unpack why so many men feel attacked or shut down when they hear terms like #MeToo, “rape culture,” or “toxic masculinity”—and how those reactions are often about fear, shame, and status threat, not about being hopelessly broken. They also talk about young men’s dating anxiety, the mentorship gap, and what it takes to build a version of masculinity that is both strong and deeply safe for others.

The episode ends with something rare: an explicit on-air fact-check. Tim revisits several overstatements from the conversation and corrects them using current research on sexual assault, harassment, unwanted consensual sex, and male survivors—modeling how men can be emotionally honest and factually precise at the same time.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How intergenerational violence and family secrecy shape men’s addictions, relationships, and blind spots
• Why the “good men vs. bad men” story blocks accountability and repair
• What the latest data say about sexual assault, harassment, and unwanted consensual sex for both women and men
• How shame, empathy, and self-kindness interact when men try to face their own harm-doing
• Why status threat feels like a physical reaction in men’s bodies—and how to ride it instead of exploding or shutting down

Parts 1 and 2 of this series give you practical tools:

• Part 1: What to do when you’re accused
• Part 2: How men can support survivors without walking on eggshells

This conversation (Part 3) gives you the cultural context and emotional landscape those tools sit inside.

🔗 Full fact-check, references, and show notes:
www.EmpoweredChangeCE.com/american-masculinity

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Send us a text

 Most men want to support survivors—but freeze when it matters. This guide teaches the three phases men need to show up with safety and presence. 

Many men believe in the MeToo movement but freeze when it’s time to actually show up. In Part 2 of the Men and MeToo series, therapist and veteran Tim Wienecke outlines a modern masculine framework for supporting survivors—focusing on emotional regulation, relational skill, and community presence.

PHASE 1 — Support Yourself (01:20–07:30)
Learn to regulate anger, fear, and protectiveness when someone discloses harm. Address your own shame, past behavior, and cultural conditioning before trying to hold someone else’s story.

PHASE 2 — Support Your People (07:30–32:00)
Master listening without interrogating. Explore the Continuum of Harm, the 10-Level Boundary Scale, and simple scripts for showing up without making things worse.

PHASE 3 — Support Your Community (32:00–45:30)
Move beyond online performance into real-world action. Learn how to enter survivor-led spaces, when men should lead (and when we shouldn’t), and what healthy masculine presence looks like.

Chapters:
00:00 – Why Men Freeze Up
00:50 – Survivor Statistics
01:20 – Phase 1: Managing Your First Reactions
03:40 – Responding Without Blame
05:40 – Looking Honestly at Your Past
07:30 – Phase 2: You Can’t Do This Alone
11:00 – Building Your Support Circle
17:00 – The Continuum of Harm
22:00 – The 10-Level Boundary Scale
31:00 – Recap
32:00 – Phase 3: Taking This Work Into the World
33:30 – Why Online Outrage Fails
36:20 – Real-World Support
38:00 – Walking Into Spaces That Don’t Belong to You
40:20 – When Men Should Lead
44:00 – Strengthening Community
45:30 – Closing

This is practical masculinity that repairs. If it resonates, share it with men who want to do better.

Series & Resources:
• Part 1: What To Do When You’re Accused
• Guide: How to Walk Into Spaces That Don’t Belong to You – https://americanmasculinity.gumroad.com/l/xvcnj

• How to Build a Men’s Group That Holds You Accountable

Key Facts:
• 1 in 4 men, 1 in 2 women, and even higher rates among trans/non-binary adults experience sexual violence (CDC 2023; NSVRC 2024).
• Very few cases result in conviction due to evidentiary limits—not because survivors are lying.
• Questioning or interrogating survivors increases self-blame and isolation (Ullman & Peter-Hagene 2014).

Full fact-check and citations: www.americanmasculinity.com

What support do you need as you try to show up better for survivors in your life?
Your story might help another man take his first step.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.