Mindful Masculinity for Modern Dads with Todd Adams

but we have to control what we can control and what we can control is how we show up in relationship can our son see that we're emotional can our son see that we're vulnerable can our son see that we're scared that we're mad that we're happy us guys aren't very good at expressing happiness unless our sports team is winning what about what about all the other times when we're having happy but we're too cool to to look out of control and happy welcome back to raising men

I'm joined today by somebody whose work has shaped countless fathers and families and conversations about modern masculinity Todd Adams Todd is the executive director of Men Living and co host of the Zen Parenting Radio podcast and a long time advocate for what he calls conscious masculinity Todd thanks so much for joining thank you Sean excited to be here so let's talk about conscious masculinity why it is what

what is it and why does it matter uh how do I start um so I heard a Ted talk a while back by a guy named Tony Porter he runs an organization on the east coast actually all over the place and uh it's about healthy masculinity and he presented a framework to me that I'd never heard before but he did not come up with it but um the first I heard of it was on his TikTok and he talked about the man box OK so there are plenty of examples out there in society of um

what masculinity means and I think everybody has their own interpretation of that for me masculinity means that we are sometimes stoic and sometimes strong and sometimes determined and sometimes singularly focused and there's other times when we are soft and gentle and nurturing

I think when we showed up as boys Sean you and I both identify as men when we showed up we were actually more emotional than our female counterparts they've literally done studies scientifically boys are actually more emotionally expressive than young women and then you know as toddlers and young adolescents but then society grabs a hold of us and says no this is the one way to be a man and being being a man means you gotta be tough you gotta be athletic as you get older

you gotta make a lot of money you gotta have a lot of sexual partners um I am based on how big my house is and I call that like that's a version of the man box the man box is um there's one narrow lens of what it means to be a man and that means to be tough to be impenetrable think about you know the movies and pop culture that we see of what the typical prototypical man is yeah whether it's superheroes or whatever it's just a bunch of guys that are just uh

super strong and super determined and show no weakness and go alone often huh go it alone boys don't cry all of the above so um your question was what's conscious masculinity it's it's a a more expansive version of what it means to be a man and um what I see on TV and from our leadership whether it's corporate or political um

there's there's not a whole lot of other ways to be in this life other than to be stoic and to be in invulnerable so that's my two cents yeah no I think that is you know the the the metaphor that I've used to describe that sort of thing is you know we've sort of traditionally when I grew up masculinity was all about imagine you're a castle and it was it's all about how thick your walls are yeah and and but in reality I think that masculinity is about how much they can enclose

how much they can protect and how much they can provide how much they can how how how inclusive the walls are meaning how big of a village can you have in there yeah and it's funny yeah go ahead as as you say that I didn't thought I didn't think I was gonna jump in the deep end here but let me go ahead and do that anyway so there's a framework out there called the 4 male archetypes and in the four male archetypes there's um it's a Carl Jung um concept he had a whole bunch of different archetypes

but there was a book out there called king warrior

magician lover and the one you're talking about is the castle and the kingdom and that is a very important part of what it means to be a man which is to provide right like as men we want to be able to provide not just money but provide with our emotional bandwidth and things like that so that's one of the four male archetypes the king then we got the warrior which is the one I talked about the impenetrable the the stoic one the strong but and then we got the magician which is the one who thinks

so a king sees and blesses um a warrior gets stuff done a magician thinks but then we forget about that fourth architect which is the lover and the lover feels the lover allows himself to be hurt the lover exposes himself the the lover will um express his um gratitude his emotion his love for all the different people in his life and we just don't hear about that one very often so I'm just trying to bring a little bit more balance cause there's times when I am in my warrior

but there's this whole other part of who I am that isn't allowed to be brought up to the surface because society doesn't think that that belongs and I'm just trying to change that narrative yeah I think that's a that's really important work and and so tell me you know specifically for fathers raising boys today

what how what do you think that awareness actually looks like day to day how do you how do you make that a practice um it's a great question and let me just kind of expand it to just like being a parent cause I've been doing a podcast with my wife for 15 years and um at at in my journey of talking to a bunch of groups and what it means to be a good parent and how do we become a good parent a lot of questions get asked of my wife and I and they'll be like well

tell me what to say when my kid is whatever you know you just found out your your teenage boy is watching porn or um

what do I say when they get a d on a grade or whatever and what we say to our kids is a lot less important than I ever thought it was when I showed up as a parent I have three daughters 22 20 and 18 and I thought what I said to them was really important it's not as important as I thought it was no what it is for me and this is a very uh non scientific concept one that I came up with uh it may or may not land with your audience but it's 60 30 10 so it's 100% 60% of his modeling

forget about everything else if you want your son to be a kind person be a kind person yeah if you want your son to read books read books if you want your son

to not use weed and not to get drunk then don't use weed and don't get drunk that is where I spend the majority of my time parenting cause I I I'll let out a secret you're teaching your kid what whether you know it or not you're teaching them every single day you want them to have a good relationship with their partner then figure out how to navigate conflict in a healthy way with your life partner that's the best way to do it so that's 60% of my energy thirty percent of my energy is

in what way am I spending time with my kid how what energy am I setting a boundary am I setting a boundary to be a jerk or am I setting a boundary saying hey I understand why you're interested in seeing naked girls on your on your iPad but here's the deal guy there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff on that that is just simply not true and there's a lot of stuff on that that is um it's actually toxic about and it's demeaning towards human beings especially the women in those videos so it's

not what you say it's how you say and then the last 10% is the words you're actually giving to them so that's my 60 30 10 model I think that's absolutely right I and I uh the modeling stuff is so important you just need to be the man you want your son to be yeah and that that handles the lion share of it yeah and I think and and it's the fountainhead of it all too it it everything else flows from that because as you're being the man you want your son to be that's going to result

in establishing appropriate boundaries in the appropriate way and how to say things in a way that that is that is fruitful and it will allow you to select that last 10% also select the appropriate words and and and say things the right way as well and and so it really just starts I I find you know we do a lot on on this podcast I do a lot of talking with people about you know I ultimately our goal is to raise excellent men right and there's the the the No. 1 rule associated with that

is to be an excellent man yeah and it's tricky because we uh if we're lucky we had a father growing up and their their dad brought them up in this world I think that we as human beings the goal is for us to evolve a little bit so hopefully I'm a slightly better dad than my dad was to me that's right and hopefully my dad is a slightly better dad than his grand than his dad was to him yep

and for me it's like just recognizing my own baggage so like growing up it's hard being a human being on this planet and I acquired a bunch of baggage growing up from my mom from my dad from society and one thing that I wanna do is investigate my own reactivity investigate my own baggage investigate all these things that brought me to be who I am and not to pass the bad stuff down pass the good stuff down to our kids but you know a lot of dads will say to me well when I was when I was their age

I wasn't doing this and I turned out just fine and my question is always like are we sure we turned out as fine as we think we did because there's always an opportunity for me to grow as a husband to grow as a father and I think too often there's a lot of moms and dads out there that are just um taking the

their own things that they haven't quite resolved and passing it down to their kids without looking in the mirror and looking at themselves and I know that can come out sounding harsh but if we're not doing our own personal growth work then how can we possibly ask our kids to do that moreover I think that in the past things changed a lot more slowly and so I think that my father had a different he he was in a different world than his father was in but it wasn't that much different

80% was the same but my son is growing up into a world that is so radically different from the one that I grew up in that the lessons are just not the same my paradigms are absolutely not the same and it is and I the part of the my motivation for even having these conversations is in recognizing that I I don't know what to do yeah how old is your son my son is 6 okay yeah so you're catching him nice and early but yeah I mean to your point Sean I totally agree

like I'm holding up my phone right now to the camera right that's a game changer in in probably in in the worst way now there's some some good parts about it too I mean it's a tool and tools can be good and bad

it's good and bad and um a lot of parents come to me and they're like oh my kid is addicted to their iPad and kid is addicted to their phone now I will say what did I do this morning I woke up and I went to work and I've been in front of my screen all day that's right I'm talking to you in front of my screen I'm about to do a podcast in front of my wife in front of my screen so it's really not about the screens it's how am I engaging with this technology and you can say well

this is my job and I'm productive but just own the fact that I I I can't own the fact for anybody else I am also addicted to my screen sometimes it's in my YouTube algorithm sometimes because I work too much but I am addicted to my screen and if we as parents can look at that first before we start telling our kids how to manage their own addiction to the technology and it's a whole to your point Sean it's a completely different world and we cannot experience the world the way our kids do because

it's completely different than when we were growing up it goes back to the modeling right you can't sit there and stare at your phone telling your child not to get off his iPad yeah and expect that they're gonna actually do it in fact every time you say that you're losing credibility with them and they know it and they know it they feel it they know it they're smarter than we give them credit for you know I I like to say that they're they're it's like they're prisoners

you like in a jail and we're the we're the we're the jailers and the prisoners have all the time in the world yeah to figure out how to escape and how to watch and see the patterns and all of that stuff and I don't have any time at all I wake up and I go to work and I I have to do all that stuff and my son just sits there and he gets to watch and he gets to figure out how to how to do what he's gonna do

no doubt you know I I you know a lot of moving on that theme many dads didn't grow up with emotionally available male role models most of us yeah and and yet somehow we have to figure out how to lead emotionally while still learning that ourselves and how do we do that it's a great question actually

that's I know we're gonna talk a little bit about the organization that I co founded and I'm an executive director of um it's called Men Living and and I'll take say more about it but basically it's a it's a virtual and in person space for guys to connect authentically and vulnerably that's in essence what it is that we're trying to do and it came from a weekend I had with my buddies so I was in my early 30s and I went on a golf weekend with my buddies and we did all the things that guys do

on golf weekends we gambled we drank we golfed I came home exhausted I get home my wife is like how was the weekend I said it's great she said how are the guys I said they're great she's like what's going on with them I'm like they're great she's like no no no what's happening in their lives and I'm like they're great she's like Todd am I speaking a different language what are they what's and Sean I shit you not I spent 72 hours with these guys who I went to college with

I've known over 10 years and I didn't have a single

moment of authentic connection with any of them I could tell you who they drafted on their fantasy football team yeah I could tell you if they're slicing the ball or if they're hooking the ball but I couldn't tell you if they're having a hard time in their relationship with their significant other I couldn't tell you if they're having a hard time with their their children as in their parenting journey and then I just had I haven't had many light bulb moments in my life but I'm like holy shit

if I spend the rest of my life with these types of relationships with other men where it's just shallow and sports and work and weather and don't get me wrong I love sports I watched the Bears game yesterday I I love um all these things that I used to love but I also know that if this is all that it is then it's not gonna work for me because my wife will go out for three hours and connect deeply with her girlfriends and know everything and I had 72 hours and I got nothing done

so your question is how do we do it um first of all you already know how to do it we all know how to do it we used to be experts at this when we were 2 and 3 and 4 years old when we got mad we banged on the ground when we got sad we cried our eyes out um when we got celebratory when we felt joy we celebrated we did all these things that uh we did so we know how to do it we just gotta like get out of our own way we gotta remove all these barriers that we have put in front of us

and our feelings and our heart center

so how do you do that you gotta name your feelings most guys don't even know how to name their feelings sure are you feeling mad hey how you feeling Jason um uh I'm mad oh you're mad is that a thought or is that a feeling well what do you mean what's the difference well thought is just some concept in your brain but sometimes when we're mad we feel anger in our hands yeah or we feel sadness in our throat or sometimes it comes out through water of our eyes

and we really want to start tuning into our body experience um you know let's jump over to schooling for a second most parents spend most of their time um with the uh with how smart their kids are yeah and we spend very little time with their emotions

especially our young men um so there's IQ which I spend very little if any time with my daughters regarding how smart they are at their school that's their journey I'm not gonna mess with their journey of schooling but we do invest a lot of our resources in how they're doing emotionally and how they can express it in a way and can they derive the wisdom and the value of these feelings in their body and we as guys just shut that shit down way too early yeah I um I'm blessed I guess with

with a a very deeply feeling kid in my boy yes he man he feels things deeply if if somebody else is upset in the room he can feel their yeah there's sadness yeah and he'll begin to cry yeah and in a lot of ways that can come off as maladaptive at his age

and there's a reflex that I have certainly having grown up the way that I grew up which by the way my childhood was freaking awesome yeah um but I wanna shut it down I I I I wanna I wanna make him laugh I wanna distract him and one time I

I was doing that and I'm good at that I deal with stress and and anger and all that stuff with humor and I deflect with humor a lot and so I'm I've got I've got 50 years of of skill in that yeah I call it conditioning and I don't know you I just met you for the first time um and first of all I want to own this I do this too and and I usually don't deflect with humor but when I'm feeling something'cause my guess is when your son is crying in an empathetic way I'm guessing

there's part of you that gets a little worried you should probably get a little uncomfortable so yeah and I I think I'm empathetic too I think I feel his pain and I want the pain to go away right and the pain is sometimes was some of our best teachers and my invitation to my clients and other guys and men living or whatever it's feel the feelings because a lot of guys will bypass their emotions and not feel it or invite their 6 year old son not to feel it instead like I'm so impressed

how you're really feeling all your feelings right now and let that come all the way through now there's a balance too because your son can lose himself to other people's feelings also that's not healthy either now he's 6 years old and he's gonna have to navigate that of when to put up that boundary so that he can keep himself safe and not not be um conditioned by the other who happens to be feeling something but in my judgment most of us guys are so shut off so shut down that we need to kind of

come more towards where your son is right now

you definitely need to air on the other side of it that's exactly right yeah I um with with respect to the men living thing it you know there used to be institutions in our culture that kind of took care of this a little bit we had churches we went to work in person right we there was I don't know clubs and even a neighborhood bar that you might go to and hang out with the guys or you'd have bowling leagues or those sorts of things and those institutions are getting rooted

yeah and what that means in my view is that it used you used to kind of by default have the outlets that you needed to have and that's not the case anymore you now have to you now have to be a lot more intentional about how you're gonna get those things now the positive aspect of that the benefit of that is you you get to be more intentional which means you can design exactly the experience you want as opposed to just OK I'm gonna go to bowling league on Wednesdays and you know

maybe we'll cry over some beers or something like that you can actually create the environment that you really want the downside is you have to do that otherwise you won't have the environment and you won't connect emotionally and I think that's partly what we're seeing as there's kind of a masculinity crisis in our culture is that men we don't we don't really do anything like that for ourselves that's actually what women do uniquely well yeah and I mean I I have friends whose

whose wives manage their personal calendars and so that happens well your wife isn't gonna isn't gonna do that for you no and and some do and it's kind of sad that's actually I can't speak for your experience Shawn but most of my experiences with other guys is they kind of lose a lot of their friends and they morph themselves into the friendships of their wives and their significant others yeah

you're you're friends with the husbands of your wife's friends right yeah and and to your point you need to be intentional on how to do that and uh you sometimes you need to be creative I think it used to be easier I think you're right the churches and the bowling leagues when I started this organization the only reason I started it is because I googled men's groups and all of them came up attached to a church now I grew up Roman Catholic I don't practice that religion anymore

but I wanted this to be outside of any type of ideology so at Men Living we got Democrats Republicans Jews Muslims Christians agnostics atheists like I the only thing I wanted us to have in common is we're both we're all men but I don't care if you're a Christian or an atheist or agnostic or anything like that so these institutions used to be put in place it was kind of more common and anybody who shows up you know there's 4 billion men on this planet and there is plenty of men's organizations

that have plenty of capacity and now that we have this ability this technology in front of us to be able to connect on zoom or in person uh but you need to go look for it a little bit whereas back in the old days your buddy be like hey you wanna join a bowling league and you would just do that nowadays you don't have a buddy who's asking you to join a bowling league you have to Google men's groups and go find one that's right um but it doesn't mean we can't do it

but it requires a little bit of effort and if we're as strong and as tough and as creative as we think we are as men then we should be able to do this and before we press record today I wanna talk a little bit about the difference between the our female counterparts and all that I judge that our female counterparts the moms have had to adapt to what I would consider patriarchal culture doesn't mean men are bad it just means that we live in a system where most of the power

resides in people who identify as men and our our female counterparts have adapted to that system and now it's our turn as guys to adapt because there are certain things us boys are getting left behind

we are not on girls are more there's more girls in college now boys have more behavioral issues in grade school like there's all this data to show that it's hard to be a man because it is because our factory jobs are going away jobs in the field are going away and there's all these openings of pink jobs you know teaching social worker nursing and all this other stuff right and it's our turn to adapt and instead of us adapting collectively we're just saying oh isn't it hard being a guy like yeah

it's hard being a guy and it's also hard being a girl so let's figure out how to be a guy in this world and maybe it means that you might be a social worker instead of a factory worker but we have the capacity to do it so going down a rabbit hole here but just want to throw that out there yeah I I think that's exactly right and you know there's nothing wrong with that and the people who resist change are hardly ever hardly ever have great lives right you know embracing change is the way forward

and that doesn't mean that all change is great and that doesn't mean that you can't influence it in a way that it helps you yeah but you know by by sticking your head in the sand and wishing things were different you're not gonna get anywhere yeah and by the way you're not gonna teach your kids that that how to how to react in the world unless what you're hoping to do is provide a counter example

that's exactly where I was gonna go as far as how do we teach our sons to do this so if you're in a traditional household where it's abandoned a woman um is the is your son and your daughter seeing you know the husband wash the dishes is the husband maybe it's a stay at home dad yeah like are we teaching our kids that being a man doesn't mean it's just one track it could be all these different things and um in in a lot of cases out there um there's this term that we use on the podcast

called the emotional labor I don't know if you're familiar with it but it's the labor that it takes the emotional labor it takes to run a household yeah and my wife is the CEO of our household whether it's right or wrong I have the same deal that's right and then I used to say stupid stuff like you know what honey just tell me what to do and I'll do it and the problem with that is my wife doesn't want we already have three children yeah now she yeah the monkey's on her back still I'm like okay

well just treat me like your fourth child and tell me what to do and she's like no I want you to meet me where I am I want you to initiate the scheduling of the dentist appointments or the doctor appointments or hold space for your daughter who just had a bad day at school instead of be like oh I'm not that good at feeling stuff so I'll just let mom do it so that's the emotional labor part of it

and there's too many of us guys that are being like oh I'm just not that's just not my way I'm just not good at that but if they want to talk about you know money and finance and all that I'll help but if it's about emotions that's their that's the mom's job and yeah uh we need to lean into that we need to have those conversations yeah there's a there's a a kind of a a deck of cards going around called Fair Play and it gets a it it gets a lot of there there are some very polarized views

about what fair play is but one of the one of the concepts that I think is really really really powerful um in that is of total ownership so what it does is it is it creates there are a bunch of cards that are you know things that you can own in the household one of the big criticisms is that there aren't enough cards that for for yeah men stuff it's mostly geared towards women and I and that's a criticism I actually kind of agree with yeah um but the key thing there is that

if you're going to take ownership of a card you own the card fully you're responsible for every aspect of it from beginning to end that taking responsibility for the thing whatever the thing is is a really really really powerful concept and and and it's important to be able to say you know to my wife okay I have this and so you know one of the things I own in our family is um if someone has to get up in the middle of the night it has it's gonna be me because I fall asleep really easily

my wife does not and so she wakes up at 2:00 in the morning to take a kid to the bathroom then um it really disturbs her sleep and she has a real hard time the next day but if I wake up at 2:00 in the morning to take a kid to the bathroom I go right back to sleep and it's not as disruptive to me still disruptive I don't wanna have to do it but it's just way easier for me than it is for her so that's one of the things I own in the family and so that means I'm really proactive if I hear something

I'm trying to make sure that she's resting the whole the whole point is that she gets to rest through the potential disruption

and I take it on and and that's that's a really really useful concept taking full ownership of the thing so that the monkey isn't on her back in spite of the fact that she's the CEO of the house and ostensibly she's responsible for making sure that the kids aren't freaking out in the middle of the night and don't pee in their beds but that's still my it's my task yeah and that goes out to communication and it's pretty simple and how many of us

including me sometimes I'm just making the Assumption oh well that's that's her job and she knows it or she's assuming that's my job and I know it and I don't right so communication is funny and I think it's interesting that you talk I've never heard of those cards but I kind of like them and it sounds like what you're saying is there's way too many what I would say can um conventionally female jobs and not enough and like what are like the male jobs cleaning out the garage and mowing the lawn

like is that yeah yeah going to work or whatever the thing yeah exactly and I've had so many conversations with the guys about this and it's really interesting and you know what is there's no such thing as a female job or a male job we have the capacity for both so that's interesting so yeah and I think you know if I were to steal man the position of the advocates of the system what you're trying to do is raise awareness to all the invisible things that happen in the household

that nobody gets credit for and that you know obviously you know typically and historically the women have to do and and so alright well let's document those things um I think that you know it's reasonable to say oh well there are also things that that men do around the house that that aren't recognize either okay fine

let's create cards for all those things it's it's great the whole point is to recognize all of the activity that you end up doing that isn't appreciated and if you both if the exercise is oh we're gonna come together and define all of these things and name them and then claim ownership of them and recognize that we can pass them off and who owns what and all this stuff that's a healthy thing to do if it becomes this way to battle about who's doing more for the family or whatever

well then it becomes pretty ugly and I think I think that has happened a lot and it it really I think it points a mag a magnifying glass at the um at the communication capabilities of the of the of the relationship and you know that can be bad and that can be good um it's interesting it reminds me of a story so for each of my daughter's birthdays we'd have a birthday party we have family over and I do a video so what I do is I take you know pictures and videos from the year

I set it to music and then we all watch it while we're eating cake and ice cream that's spectacular I love that I'm I'm gonna steal that idea please do and I've been doing it for my oldest daughters I think I stopped when she went to college so I did so for the first 18 years of her life wow I have a video for every single year what's interesting is one year in particular uh I did the video and then everybody claps at the end of the video it's just kind of like a kind courteous thing

and then like I think my mother in law who was alive at the time she's like oh my god isn't Todd the best doesn't he do such a great job with those videos and my wife was supportive of me but at the same time she's like okay just so you guys all know I decided on the date I created the invitations

I went and got the cake I wrapped all the presents I made sure you're all gonna be there she did like 12 different things to get this party I did this one little thing and I'm the one getting the accolades and everybody's so absolutely yeah and and cause all that other stuff is invisible well I mean of course you did those things that's yeah yeah and she deserves she deserves recognition for that yeah I love that you know I I feel like you and Kathy

uh model really strong partnership and you know how how do you look at that and how do you how does a healthy parenting partnership influence the way that our kids understand their roles how boys understand masculinity respect emotional safety what do you think about that um first thing you know I have a really really good marriage and um I have an amazing partner and I think she would say that she has an amazing amazing partner and a lot of people sometimes ask us like what's the secret

cause it seems like so easy for you to and by the way it's not always easy as a matter of fact upstairs we just kind of had she didn't feel like I was meeting her needs because something's going on this

week and all that so it's never it's never perfect but literally in this moment like we're in a a little bit of a teeny tiny rupture which happens from time to time absolutely um but one thing I think both Kathy and I have in common is that we do our own work what does that mean personal growth work therapy reading books listening to podcast talking to friends investigating my own reactivity investigating my childhood patterns of why I do things that are no longer helpful

so that's the one thing that we both do and it wasn't always like that she was always this personal growth freak where she's reading books and she's in therapy and she's seeing an energy worker

and she's doing all this stuff and I was just a guy who worked and brought home money and I didn't do anything else and I had this moment like if I am going to grow with this woman I need to get on the train otherwise she's gonna just go right past me so yeah the one thing I would say is the the secret to our uh marriage which is really really good is we're both working on ourselves and the other which is a big thing it's the ability to navigate conflict

we all have these different conflict styles I you know there's fight there's freeze there's flee and then there's one called fawning I happen to be a fanner so interesting when my wife is upset with me I get really small and I become like a little puppy dog that just wants to be back in the good graces of her and I want her to love me and I want her to tell tell me she loves me that way I feel good about myself

that's my conflict style and I'm working on it and I try to own it and I try not to show up that way but we all have different conflict styles and we're not taught this stuff in school we're taught all this ridiculous stuff of and I honor science and math and history and geography and all that but wouldn't it be great if we each had a class in how to navigate conflict styles maybe when we're in second grade 8th grade high school and one in college because the only reason I know about is

cause I read books on experts on how to navigate conflict in a healthy way and by the way conflict is a really healthy thing I actually grow closer to my wife when we resolve our conflict in a conscious way much more than we would have had the conflict never happened in the beginning so conflict although it's uncomfortable and scary it's a wonderful tool to to bring together um love and connection in a way because if we just kind of like tolerate each other and we stay out of each other's way

and we avoid all that conflict that is not the type of marriage I wanna be in I wanna be in a marriage that's alive and dynamic not one that's kind of hollow and surfacey so that would be my two answers do your own work and understand how to navigate conflict yeah my own experience my wife and I have kind of a I don't know that I would call it a manifesto or anything but it's a maybe a tagline and our what our what our marriage is about is we're trying to create a lives of excellence and joy and

and one of the things that comes with that is there's a lot of struggle and I remember you know recently we've had some really really really severe struggles that just kind of working through some stuff and we've got young kids and all of that and it feels tough it feels really really really tough and you know maybe you're thinking it's not even worth it sometimes and then we look around and we see a bunch of other couples that seem like they're way happier than us

but they have really severe problems like how is it that we feel so concerned about you know this relatively minor thing where these other people have gaping holes in their foundations and they go on like they why how do they have easier lives than we do and the reason is because we really we obsess over those things and we want them to be good and we want them to be excellent and we want them to be perfect and yeah I mean if you don't care what you know your lives look like

then it's a little easier to be happy go lucky but that's not gonna and you up where you wanna go and but man it's hard yeah it's funny I my wife and I have had the exact same conversations like are we making this harder on ourselves than it needs to be but I think that there's an and and I don't know this to be true but my guess is that there's an invisible um withdrawal of energy for the happy go lucky years I think that there's something hidden yeah and if you

if I am not dealing with problems challenges situations and instead of me drinking a few beers or me just going out with the guys and not resolving something with my wife yeah um in the short term I think that that's a really smart strategy but in the long term that is just a recipe for disconnection yeah so I I I first of all I totally resonate with what you just said like these people seem happier and they don't complicate their lives the way you and I are complicating it with each other

yeah so uh

but I also know that there's this life force in me that is uh that grows when I'm dealing with authenticity vulnerability yeah um challenges conflicts and not escaping so yeah yeah I and you know what the other thing is is maybe those other people are right um and maybe their lives are great and maybe it's easier also and maybe that's the way to be it's just not the way I'm gonna be yeah it just doesn't work for me yeah like keep doing your thing yeah but I'm not wired that way right

I gotta deal with this the way I deal with it right and you know just the idea of the comparison I have the same comparison in me yeah and it's there's not a whole lot of uh benefits from comparing our story to somebody else's but we also have to honor the one in us that's right that does compare yeah yeah it helps you kind of get a baseline but but sure but yeah I mean there's no you know yeah you know where in your work and especially with men living

where do you see dads getting stuck most often and what helps them move forward well some of this what I just said to you I think the minute that we feel some type of discomfort we try to escape from it as guys yeah I think like the only emotion that we're allowed to feel is anger when in fact there's all these other emotions that are cooking inside of our body if we can name it locate it express it so for me like at men Living we have these five suggestions

so I'll go more go over them real quick men living consciously so what does conscious mean

conscious just means am I aware what's going on in my body in my surroundings without judgment it's a really hard thing to do to live consciously by the way it's something I aim to do most of the time I'm not but I know that's what I'm aiming for men living consciously No. 2 men living curiously can I let go of the need to be right in an argument or at work or with my kid and instead take my hat off and then try to put their hat on and see the world through their lens that's men living curiously

the third one which is the one I like the best men living emotionally because we have so much work to do on this the only emotion we're allowed to feel is anger yeah um I the fact that your son your 6 year old boy 6 year old boy is an empath my ask for you is just nurture that as best you can as long as you can one story I like to tell is I was watching I was at the movie theater in my neighborhood and there's these two boys probably 4 years old maybe 5 and they were holding hands

two boys holding hands and for me I'm just like my heart just gets filled up like they they don't know what homophobia is they don't know any of that stuff and I honestly started crying a little bit like and the reason I cried was because I loved what they were doing and showing and I know the minute they get into first grade some kids gonna be like are you gay or whatever and it just makes me so sad to think that so um our sons are emotional until they get to school and you know

billboards and TV and movies grab a hold of them so but we have to control what we can control and what we can control is um how we show up in relationship can our son see that we're emotional can our sons see that we're vulnerable can our sons see that we're scared that we're mad that we're happy us guys aren't very good at expressing happiness

unless our sports team is winning what about what about all the other times when we're having happy but we're too cool to to look out of control and happy so yeah so men living emotionally um is the third one men living candidly which is can I can I speak from a place of truth with love and compassion and can I listen compassionately which is really hard thing to do and then lastly is men living intentionally where are you where do you wanna go and are you taking the steps

to get to where you wanna go do you have any intention so man that is

that is a fantastic list I I the end of that story with my son me trying to distract distract him from being sad um is a great lesson that he taught me which is that at some point um I was doing that and he said dad stop he's starting to laugh and and I feel I was feeling victorious and he goes dad stop and I go what he goes just let me feel what I feel you never let me feel what I feel and I was like I was you know what you're and I was like you're so right by that

I had another situation where the boy was um he's about 18 months old and um I said to him I said oh his name is lake I said lake give me a kiss and he comes over and he comes to kiss me on the lips and I move my my uh my cheek sideways so that he could kiss me on the cheek instead and my wife said to me she goes why don't you let him kiss you on the lips and I said yeah men men don't kiss each other on the lips and she goes that's all and I thought about it for like a day

and I realized that this is an artifact of like something really not healthy yeah and you know I resolved that I wasn't gonna let that do that

and now you know he kisses me on the lips and I kiss him on the lips when I drop him off at school and it's it's a beautiful moment that's so sweet and I appreciate your vulnerability and sharing that because there is this kind of embedded homophobia like men don't kiss other men on the lips unless they're gay or whatever I think Tom Brady got into trouble because he's talking about kissing his dad on the lips and Tom Brady was an adult and his dad was an even older

and some people get whatever grossed out by it like well I do kiss my dad I don't kiss him on the lips I kiss him on the forehead and on the cheek or whatever but first of all I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing that story and my hope is that you can continue to show your love in a way that seems appropriate to you I'm glad your wife challenged you I'm too that's awesome um and it's funny like but you even said so let me challenge you even though I don't know you

you didn't ask me to challenge you it's like give me a kiss do you have daughters too or just sons I have one daughter and one son my daughter is 3 years old so um kisses are not uh taken they're offered so when you say give me a kiss

my even better if would be like would it be OK if I gave you a kiss yeah because your daughter most and I'm I'm focusing on your daughter cause I have three of them consent is a huge thing you know when you and I were growing up we didn't learn anything about consent like we didn't even know what it was we had one day of sex education uh and it was very uncomfortable yeah for our parents so consent like or and now I put on grandparents like yeah I used to say to my kids oh

go go give Grandpa a hug and the reason I did that if I'm being honest is I want my I want to feel good about myself yeah so that my dad could feel loved from his grandchildren right when in fact that's I don't want to tell anybody to go do anything with their body right they they get to decide yeah um so just kind of start building that into your practice or investigate that and see what works because every family is different that's a great observation Todd

and I appreciate you challenging me on that I uh I I'm gonna give that a lot of thought yeah yeah and that's such a reflective thing I I I do it without even thinking about it and that's yeah that's exactly right yeah well I I love to um I love to finish off every single one of these conversations by asking my guest the same question and I know it's gonna be putting you on the spot but if you had to leave every father listening or every parent listening with one principle

a grounding idea for raising boys into good men what would that principle be an operating principle I would say model

the behavior that you wanna see in your son if you want your son to treat his partner with Equality treat your partner with Equality um and just do your own work it's so easy for me to project my unowned stuff onto my kids our kids are here to teach us we're not here to teach them I'm here to learn from my kids in the same way that your son taught you he said let me get this feeling out don't distract me with laughing like I think that our kids are here to teach us

a lot more than we're here to teach them and that's some people think that that's radical but I would say what is it that your kids are here to teach you my kids are here to teach me presence my kids are too old now but when they used to walk to school they would stop and look at the ants and look at the clouds and just be fascinated with the world and I'd be like come on we gotta get to school get to school this kid was teaching me presence that's right can my kid teach me

so look for ways on how your kids are here to teach you

yeah um that would be another thing I would think yeah I think that's that's a fantastic principle Todd thank you very much and and thank you so much for uh coming on and sharing your wisdom uh with me and the rest of our listeners I I really appreciate it uh Todd Adams is the executive director of Men Living he's the co host of Zen Parenting Radio and uh if you want to learn more about what he's up to and especially uh men living groups check out the links in the show notes

and to every parent listening thank you for joining me on Raising Men I'm Shawn Dawson and you are a great parent

raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino