The Man Rules

Since one day isn't nearly enough to celebrate the complexities and contradictions of fatherhood, we're celebrating "Father's Month" instead of Father's Day on The Man Rules Podcast. Dan kicks off the upcoming series of episodes by sharing some of his biggest joys and deepest struggles as the father of a young daughter. He explains how painful experiences with his own father have shaped his parenting choices--for better and worse. He asks himself, and all of us, what it means to be a conscious father and to do your best to show up every day as the man your child needs you to be.

Subscribe now, if you haven't already, so you won't miss any of the upcoming special episodes on fathers and fatherhood. We'll be talking with an author and professor on the ways ideas about men and fathers have shifted in the 21st century, a poet and artist on The Father Wound, and a filmmaker on the movie he made about modern Dads. We'll also be getting the Deep Dive Guys together again to talk about their own experiences as fathers and as sons. Please tune in and share your own stories with us on The Man Rules Facebook page...

The Deep Dive Guys - Dan, Tim Walsh, and Michael Dinneen - get together once again to talk intimately about intimacy. The Man Rules so often set men’s expectations about sex. There are rules about how often they should be having it, how they should (and shouldn’t) talk about it, and what it means if their partners don’t want it as often they do. The guys totally dismantle the idea that emotion and connection don’t play a very important role in male sexuality, and share their hopes for greater connection and intimacy with their partners. 

For more information about Tim, check out his website timwalshconsulting.com. And, you can find Michael on LinkedIn

In the mega-hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, there’s an entire song and dance number (“Turn it Off”) where a group of young men share their strategies for suppressing emotions with one another. One young man, who is struggling to accept his same-sex attractions, sings the following recommendation: “Imagine that your brain is made of tiny boxes,

And find the box that’s gay and CRUSH IT,

Okay?”

Even if sexuality isn’t the specific issue they struggle with, most men can relate to the idea that there are many, many thoughts and feelings that they must pack in boxes and hide in the darkest corner of the mind’s dingy basement. Otherwise, they risk being shamed, bullied, or ostracized by the family and friends for failing to properly demonstrate male emotional toughness.

Mark Greene, Senior Editor at the Good Men Project, is on a mission to help men throw out all of those boxes, leaving space to store more Relational Intelligence. His latest book, Remaking Manhood and the social media outreach efforts around it are aimed at helping educate the public about the epidemic of male loneliness and emotional suppression, and to give men tips on how to find and express their authentic selves.

In this episode of the podcast, he and Dan talk about how men can form stronger friendships and more intimate marriages and relationships. They also talk about what it means to be a father and how men can help their children develop their own Relational Intelligence. Be sure to check out the videos Mark has made available on RemakingManhood.com and share them with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

 

Man Rule #1384387438: A real man should never have to ask anyone if they want to have sex. His potential partners should, by definition, be overwhelmed by his raw, animal magnetism and immediately consumed by desire upon first contact. The question of “Do they want it?” should only be a rhetorical one. OF COURSE THEY WANT IT. Duh.Man Rule #11384387439: A real man is born an expert in sex stuff. He never has to ask a partner what they want or how they want it because he already knows. If he does make the mistake of asking, and his partner acts uncomfortable, refuses to answer, or even gets annoyed with him for asking, it’s because he has failed as a man and as an expert in sex stuff. It’s his responsibility to show other people what they want.

No wonder sex and intimacy is so often fraught with fear and confusion, right? Thank God for Mike Domitrz and his amazing work with The Date Safe Project. Mike spends his days speaking to young men and women across the country about sexuality and consent—topics that are sadly left out of many the conversations we have with our spouses, partners, and children about sex and sexuality.

Listen to this episode of the podcast for yourself and for your loved ones—especially your children. And pass it on.

Learn more about Mike Domitrz and his work at www.datesafeproject.org and at www.everydaymindfulnessshow.com.

If there’s one thing that Rob Weiss, MSW, knows for sure from his more than 25 years as therapist and sexologist, it’s that men don’t respond well to bullshit. That’s why his new book “Out of the Doghouse” takes care to help men understand what women go through emotionally when they’ve been cheated on without the usual shaming and finger-wagging.

Rob has spent much of his career counseling heterosexual couples torn apart by infidelity, and over and over again he’s seen men struggle to understand why their female partners just can’t “get over it” once they’ve apologized for cheating.  In this episode of The Man Rules podcast, he and Dan talk about why men cheat, how they can regroup and reconnect with their partners when they feel the urge to cheat, and how they can truly heal their relationships with their partners if they have cheated.

They also touch on some of the pros and cons of porn, the ins and outs of internet dating, and the struggles many men have today with expressing their masculinity and sexuality in healthy ways.  

John Lee has been on the forefront of the movement to help men with their health, psychological and spiritual well-being and recovery for decades. He has written 23 books on men’s issues, recovery, anger, grief, relationship, creativity, and spirituality. He has taught his techniques and theories to thousands of individuals, couples, families, groups, corporations, and therapists all over the world.

There are a handful of men that we can point to and thank for having the courage to challenge the Man Rules long before it was safe enough or accepted as okay. John Lee is one of those men.    In this episode, Dan and John talk about the progress men have made in the last few decades. John talks fondly of the time he spent with Robert Bly, one of the true pioneers of looking differently at men's lives and how the two of them had the privilege of being with hundreds and even thousands of men who were looking for a way out of the quiet desperation tearing their lives apart.   Dan and John cover a lot of material from the unfortunate portrayals of men in the media from idiot to hypermasculine warrior, the significance of the superhero resurrection, the importance of mentors, the lack of depth in many of today’s discussions about masculinity, and their hopes for the future.   Hear two generations of leaders of this powerful conversation about masculinity come together for the first time.

When Dr. Jon Caldwell, a psychiatrist and Medical Director for Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, was a kid he worked at a golf course where his job was to pick up golf balls in the rough and take them back to the clubhouse. He saw that when a golf ball had been hit by a lawnmower, the shell would break open, and the elastics that make up the core of the golf ball would start to spew out.

You know where we’re going with this, right?

The inner core of elastics represents the internal pressure, emotions, and painful memories that influence how we, as men, respond to the various interactions and situations we find ourselves in day to day.

In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Caldwell explains the ways we tend to react to adverse experiences are related to the ways in which we did or didn’t attach with our caregivers as children. There is a lot to this idea of attachment and it is essential to understanding how men experience and engage in relationships as adults.

Caldwell also explains how, through mindfulness practices, we can learn to choose for ourselves how to respond moment by moment rather than reacting and letting fear, anger, or The Man Rules dictate how we show up.

Terry Real was talking about men and intimacy before it was cool. Pause.

Seriously, this guy has been a thought leader in helping men break out of the bondage of the Man Rules for three decades. If you care about men having fulfilling relationships that balance intimacy and vulnerability with genuine strength then you will like Terry. He doesn’t mince words. He is direct with humor and compassion much like the relational approach to therapy that he has developed.

He wrote the first book calling attention to the epidemic of male depression, I Don't Want to Talk About It. Sharing his own challenges with depression Terry broke the silence about men’s depression. Terry helped our culture to begin to understand that if you don’t pay attention to the Man Rules you will miss so much of men’s depression because it hides in men’s need not to be or look depressed. It is against the Man Rules to be depressed because it is a weakness. I have a good friend struggling horribly with this right now. Like hundreds of thousands of men right now he has this story inside of him beating the sh@# out of him saying that he just needs to “Man up” and get off his ass. Meanwhile, his depression is tearing him apart piecemeal.

What’s great about Terry is that he doesn’t let men off the hook and he doesn’t let women off the hook. We all have a part to play in the relationships that don’t work. As Terry says, “Leading men and women into increased intimacy – men have to open up their hearts and women have to open up their voices.”

As always the Practical and Tactical portion of this episode has some great advice for creating true intimacy in our relationships. Like immediately. 

“Easy Going Dan and The Deep Dive Guys? Is that the name of that hip new rock band all the kids are listening to these days?” No. (Although that would be an awesome band name.)

One of our goals for The Man Rules podcast is to model different ways men can communicate. For this episode--the first in a regular series of “Deep Dive” conversations--Dan’s friends Michael Deneen and Tim Walsh join him to talk about the personal troubles and triumphs they’ve experienced lately with their spouses, kids, family members, and co-workers. They also discuss some barriers they’ve been working through--like anger, reactivity, self-doubt--and offer one another emotional support and feedback.

Hearing men talk in this way might make you a little bit uncomfortable at first. Most of the time, when you hear a group of men talking on a podcast, radio show, or TV show they tend to be focused on only a handful topics: sports, money, comedy, and/or getting laid. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with those topics, but it does, unfortunately, reinforce the idea these are the only things men care about. By choosing to open up about their inner lives in a public forum, Dan, Michael, and Tim hope to show that men are interested in building deep personal connections with others and can benefit tremendously from the kind of emotional support they are taught that they should not need or expect.

In this episode, we are also introduced for the first time to “Easy Going Dan.” Long may he rock the stage.

The most interesting thing about Dr. Allen Berger isn’t where he’s been - though he’s definitely been a few places - it’s where he’s come back from. After the traumatic loss of his father at age 11, Allen developed a drinking problem, which led to him dropping out of high school in 9th grade, which led to him joining The Marine Corps at age 18, which led him to serve in Vietnam, which led to an addiction to narcotics, which led to him narrowly avoiding jail time by being one of the first soldiers to enroll in the U.S. military’s first addiction treatment program.

From there he began to shift his focus from The Armed Forces to the invisible forces that keep men stuck in their own emotional and spiritual prisons. He has been on a journey of self-examination and self-improvement ever since and has inspired many others to begin their own journeys.

He has spent time with many of the thought leaders who helped shape the first and second waves of the men’s movement and has been trained as a psychologist and therapist by some of the best mental health and addiction specialists in the world. Allen is a bestselling author and I am proud to also call him a good friend.

Don’t miss Allen’s Practical and Tactical tips for building better relationships. And, make sure you stick around until the end for the celebratory - and very spontaneous - drum circle led by two very special, surprise guests.