Men’s Emotional Leadership Development with Owen Marcus | Emotional Intelligence and Resilience

0:00 Hello and welcome to Real Men Field. This is your host, Andy Grant. I'm an author, coach, and healer. You can learn more about me at be andygrant.com. Real Men Feel exists to remind men that they're human beings and that they have the right to express and experience all of their emotions. We have conversations that most men are not having, but that all men can benefit from. My returning guest today is Owen Marcus. Owen is a pioneering coach and author known for integrating emotional Physiology and attachment theory into men's emotional connection. His 30 year journey has had him featured in Men's Health, The New York Times, ABC News and the Today Show.

0:41 Owen helps men transform their relationships and leadership skills, offering new insights into achieving personal and professional success through emotional Wellness. We enjoy a wide-ranging discussion covering emotional leadership and resilience, and lots of somatic therapies that Owen has studied and used since the 1970s. Listen in and learn about Rolfing, Holly, vagal theory, antifragility, attachment theory, and many more aspects of our Physiology and how it relates to our personal and emotional growth. You'll also discover what conservatives and liberals both get wrong regarding men and emotions. Let's get to it.

1:23 Hello Owen, and welcome back to REAL Men Feel. Thank you. It's an honor to be grandy. You've been a guest a couple of times. I had to go back and see you. The first time you're on was back in 2018 talking about emotional intelligence in men. And then more recently you're on in November of 2020, and that's when you were sharing every man. We are your global community for men. And so I know that you've left every man and have started a new community. So. So tell me. Tell me what you're up to. Yeah, I was one of the founders of Every Man and brought all the programs that I already had and developed all the other programs that Every man had. And yeah, it just wasn't working out. So I took my core team and we started MELD at the beginning of the year, which stands for Men's Emotional Leadership Development. And we're doing everything and more that we did with Every Man and really dialing in the, you could say the technology that we developed, which is primarily based on the what we call emotional.

2:22 Let me back up emotional Physiology, which is the how our emotions really start with our bodies. And is that is that focus on the physical, is that different for most sort of therapies that are out there? Yeah, most therapies these days, it's starting to change, but for, you know, the last few decades have been really pretty cognitive or analytical, which I would say we're sort of more top down oriented. And I just had good the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time back in the late 70s when somatic psychotherapy was starting out.

3:05 And so I got to study with the people that were developing those therapies. So back then what we were doing was very fringe. Now, these somatic therapies are like the hot therapies to study. And so for all these decades, I've been studying and really applying how to work with the people, men and women, but now primarily with men on or through their physical body of physical experience to better dial in and better connect to their emotional experience and be able to express those experiences in a way that gets other people connected. So does somatic therapy mean just it's any sort of therapy that has touch involved or is it something else? That's a good question.

3:48 Cause in the broad sense it means anything to deal with the body. So it could be massage, it could be Rolfing, which is one of the things that I've done for decades. It could be really any kind of body work in a general sense, and then any kind of psychotherapy that utilizes the body as part of the psychotherapy process. So now most of the time when people are talking about somatic therapies, they're usually talking about somatic psychotherapies. And I've heard of Rolfing a lot. I don't, I don't think I've ever seen it. So I'm not really sure what it is. Can you, can you tell us about that? Yeah, It was developed by Doctor Rolf. She never wanted it named after her. It started back in the late 50s.

4:36 And she. The story is that she was working on her son because no one else could help him and he got well. And then one person after another and then she ended up in Eslin, Big Sur in California. And that's really when it took off and she started working with people there. They saw these amazing results on 2 levels. Their bodies changed, their physical structure changed, and their emotional state changed. And So what she developed is a series of 10 sessions where the goal is to realign the body physically with gravity. And so we don't usually think about the body being aligned with gravity, and we do if we're building a building or a bridge, but we don't think that our bodies deal with gravity, and they do. And our body functions better when it's better aligned. So she'd work with function and movement. But what everyone found out is in the process of getting rid of the old chronic tension, so the body would line up and so it's like literally the skeleton had enough room to do what it needed to do.

5:40 A lot of old trauma and emotions would get released. So when I got Rolfed up back in the late 70s, did the 10 sessions, nine months later, I was an inch taller and 20 lbs lighter. And I wasn't fat. I just had these huge tight legs where all my tension was. A lot of it was emotional tension or trauma, and when that let go of, my legs just dropped away and I went from a waddle to a normal walk and my structure really changed. But probably what changed even more was my whole emotional state changed. I went from being very uptight, not only physically but emotionally, to much more relaxed. And that was really the impetus for me doing everything I've done ever since.

6:26 Oh cool, so that was your your gateway drug, so to speak it. Was it was and I resisted. Yeah. Only reason I got into it because I had a roommate in this is Boulder, Co and the Ralph in school was or he is. He was an attorney had given up his raw. Excuse me, law practice of eight years and he argued his case every night. And I said all right, all right, I'll try. And that's all it took one session. I was like. Sold. Cool. So men's emotional leadership development does, does that mean you're really working with men in, in, in business and government people that leadership is really part of their their career? Yes and no. I mean, we do B to B like Google's been one of our biggest clients, but most of us B to C and you know, working with men in a more of a consumer way, a one to one or or grooves or trainings. Now what we found is as men go through our process and there's a lot of ways they can do that.

7:26 They become better leaders and, and often it's just in their primary relationship or, you know, at home, they're, they're showing up in a more embodied emotional way and they're not working at it. They've, they learn these skills that were never taught. And because they're intrinsic skills that we should have and we're hardwired to have them, that once these guys learn them, it's easy, it's natural, and they just find themselves, like with their partners, behaving differently because that's who they want to be and that's who they're being. So it can. It's improves one's leadership of their own life. Not necessarily. Only if I'm on a leadership track for my career. Right.

8:09 And so most of my coaching clients come from because they want to work on the relationship, but most of my coaching clients are either entrepreneurs or like C level executives. And so after a couple of months, you know, the relationship sort of turns around because they've turned around using these simple skills. And then we start working with applying these skills and their Business Contact. No, from the the the last time we spoke briefly, but before recording the show you, you mentioned Poly vagal therapy, which I had not Poly vagal theory theory. All right, so. So what is that theory? Yeah, it we just had the fellow that invented it on our program a couple weeks ago.

8:51 And it was his name is Steven Porges. And he was actually, he, he was the first research director for the Ralph Institute. And he, he was a scientist that really started discovering that we have this. You didn't discover the nerve, the vagal nerve, which is the tentacranial nerve, which is the largest nerve of the body. But he started, he started to discover its impact on us and its impact on, on our physical and emotional health. And one of the things that him and others have discovered is that 80% of that big nerve goes from our gut all the way up through her body into her brain and 20% goes down.

9:31 So it's a big reason that everyone's talking about the gut brain now. And so he, he explains through his research how all that works. And he got involved in Rolfing because he was working with Rolfing. They did some research decades ago. And, and because Rolfing again works with that. So one of the things that he discovered is that as mammals, and particularly as humans, we had this ability to Co regulate. And so I'm looking at you now and I'm listening to you now, Andy. And you're relaxed, your voice is relaxed, you're engaging. So the first thing is you feel safe, which is a the first thing that we're always at least unconsciously looking for is this person or is this situation safe? So assuming and you are safe, I start to down regulate, I relax. So my Physiology starts to express that I am safe. My voice is a voice of someone that's safe. My facial muscles, my my body movement represents unconsciously that I feel safe and that creates this sense of Co regulation.

10:39 So we start to connect to each other and I start to mirror your behavior. You start to mirror my behavior and we start to connect. And in theory we learn this as a kid, but the problem is we didn't get enough training as a kid. So we don't get into what they call secure attachment, which is a core of what attachment theory talks about. So as in one of the things that happens when we work with guys, particularly like in a group setting, is men start to teach each other how to Co regulate, how to connect in a vulnerable and authentic way. So that starts to train their bodies on how to do that with others. So you mentioned vulnerability there and that's something that we talked about on real men feel often. What are sort of the misconceptions that people still have about men and vulnerability? Obviously, you know, the biggest one in our culture, culture is that to be vulnerable as a man is to be weak. And we all sort of know that it takes courage to be vulnerable. But we often don't do that because if we are in the normal setting, we're often shamed or rejected or, you know, all the things that we experience.

11:55 But I'm sure you see this with your work. We do with our work, we create a safe space. One guy ends up being vulnerable and it shows everyone in the space that it's safe and suddenly everyone's being vulnerable. And we we like with a course of a few minutes we can flip it 180°. Yeah, that's a fine time and time again it takes that first man to kind of break the ice and then, yeah, everyone gets permission, feels that sense of safety or or and starts to down regulate and and relax and really open up. Because we want that and we need that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you seeing that happen if like if you work with with like a Google, is that able to happen in their own meetings going forward with without you present? Yeah, or at least they tell us it happens more. And So what we do to get there is we teach them some simple skills.

12:48 We sort of chunk down what we do. And you know, I have a whole manual, 100 page manual and we'd look through all that for Google. So we take the essence of that and we teach these men how to connect to their own somatic experience, which again down regulates. So it has them feel more relaxed. And as they're connecting to their own experience, we teach them to be able to read other people read the non verbals. And we we go through exercises where they learn how to do that. And these, you know, we primarily work with Google Apps, which is a scientist. So these are brilliant people and, you know, you would say they're in their head, but they really want to connect and they pick it up real quick. And they find that once they learn these skills, that takes a little practice.

13:34 They start implementing them in their meetings and in, you know, dealing with their associates. And so rather than go in there, maybe with me being the bull in the China shop or just in their head, they remember to slow down, connect to themselves and start to, you know, reach out and connect to these other people that they're interfacing with. And what they find is their meetings are more productive. And I've heard in the past you say that emotional intelligence is a real driver behind any man's success. So is is this one of the ways that that that shows up by be the better relationships, the better communication at at at work and and that that having that place of safety in any in any interaction you have? It Yeah, it does.

14:25 And, you know, ever since Goldberger, what's his name? Dan. Well, anyway, wrote his book about emotional intelligence, which has been decades in many decades, this whole thing of emotional intelligence has gotten really popular. I'm all for it. The But is is they. They don't tell us how to do that. They tell us how we should be, which for men so often creates more performance anxiety. So you go, you want me to be this way, You don't want me to be that way, you want me to be this way. All right. And then we're not giving tools. So guys get more stressed out. And the whole DEI thing is stressing a lot of guys out, but we're not giving guys the simple tools that we all sort of had growing up.

15:12 And So what happens is they might try, but they fail. And then then guys, you know, one of the ways that we Orient is we, we take on things that we think we can succeed at and we sort of like challenges, but when we think we can't succeed at something and we haven't been succeeding at it, we just sort of walk away. We give up. So a lot of guys are giving up everything from relationships or try to try to use these skills that they'd never been taught in these professional situations. But when we can take these guys aside, put them in a safe place, which I used to think it would have to be just a, a, a male setting, but I've done it now in Coed settings, but in a safe place where these men have an opportunity to sort of screw up and learn what they didn't get to learn as kids. They will learn it.

16:02 And once they learn it, and then they can apply it in these professional situations and actually create more of what they call now psychological safety, which is another thing that's gotten really popular. But you can't create psychological safety unless you're creating the things that we're talking about, like Co regulation. And are these are these skills that anyone? Can learn. Anyone can learn. And are they only kind of learned through experience? It's, it's not just a book. It's not, you know, it's not some online meeting. It's got to be you go somewhere and you're physically with other men. No, you, we've done it, to my amazement, very well virtually.

16:46 But to infer what you're saying, it needs to be interactional. I mean, you can read about it, you can study it, you can learn the science about it. And which is one of the things I love about Porges, he knows the science. Hell, he's written books, half a dozen books on it, but he interfaces with the practitioners, first of all, first, now the therapist, and he gets all this feedback. So you got to learn it not just cognitively, you got to learn it experientially, which could be virtual, but it's the interaction that teaches you. And what are some of the specific skills? You mentioned simple skills a lot, So what are some of them? But one of the skills that we teach is what I call the Roc formula, ROCR, is we slow down the relax, which is the key thing because when we slow down, because people tell us, you know, I've always told me relax.

17:40 Oh, relax, all right. But then again, it's a performance thing. I get more stress because you're telling me to relax and I don't know how to. So we teach people how to relax. A lot of that is this somatic mindfulness. That's a general term, which is being aware of your body. So when you're aware of your body, you're telling yourself, you're telling your body, your unconscious, your emotions, and your conscious mind. Hope that I'm saved. Because when we're in a threat response, our awareness is out here and it's sort of going back to the past, remembering things, thinking about the future. It's that's where we are when we're in a threat response. But when we're down regulated and relaxed, we at least have some awareness of our own experience.

18:26 So when we can't be aware of our own experience, particularly somatically, our nervous system, down regulates, our endocrine system down regulates, We go from a, a sympathetic fight or flight response or the parasympathetic frozen response to this state of being able to socially engage and which was again, which is what Ford just talked about. So that's the key. Slow down, then you relax. The O is you open up to being vulnerable. And I know you'll like this, but it needs to come from a place of, of being relaxed because if I'm trying to be vulnerable, I'm not relaxed and I might be trying, but I'm well jacked up.

19:09 You're going to pick that up. It's going to be a, a dissidence, an inconsistency, and you're going to, you know, be like doing what you're doing. Like this doesn't feel right. But if I'm relaxed, even if I'm feeling nervous, but I'm willing to feel nervous, there'll be a congruency. So it's not like you have to be Mr. Mellow. So, you know, we know this when people are giving speeches, if if they just say, look, I'm nervous, they're willing to be nervous. The audience relates to him, but if they pretend they're not nervous and they're pushing through that, the audience feels that tension. And so when we could be vulnerable to our own experience and maybe express it in some way, we open up.

19:51 And again, we prove to the other person that it's safe. So they start to open up. And then the C is we reach out for connection from the vulnerable place, from being aware of our somatic. We reach out and we take a risk. And and that's scary, particularly from a vulnerable place, because we might be rejected, we might be shamed, we might be ignored. And that takes courage. But a lot of people, particularly if they're a little open, they're going to sense that and they're going to respond. I in. In a matching way or positive way, receptive way, Right, Right. Or I guess I mean they don't have to I. Mean no, they don't have to.

20:33 And and you know I don't always practice it, but I when I do and if they reject me, yes, it hurts the but is I, I, I can always go yeah, but I took the risk right. And like any exercise, you do it enough you get stronger at it, you get better at it. So even if I don't always succeed, I'm always honing that skill of being able to show up that way, right. Yeah, important. And no, for me, anytime I'm learning any new skill, but especially, you know, when I was first daring to, to, you know, share some of my experiences and talk about depression and suicidology and such. If, if, if someone didn't receive it well, if if the first time I shared with someone, someone was like, oh, you're an idiot. Get out of here like Oh my God.

21:18 Like I might never have done it again. So it's really is important again, that's why you have that safe space. You you learn these skills ideally in a circle of men that that support you so that if someone ever does reject or just ignore whatever you're you're trying to connect with about, you don't go well, there goes that. I will never, I'll never share again. I'll never open up again. Like, no, it's it's just that that one time. It's not because it doesn't work. Exactly. And you know, it still hurts, but you go, you know, I was sharing this whole thing last week in my men's group and they honored me. You know, guys were crying, they were cheering me, whatever. It's like I was received. So no, the issues with this one guy I'm talking to, not with me. Right, right.

22:04 Yeah. You, you can bump into someone else's stagnant growth or difficulty being vulnerable. So they just can't deal with, with you. And, and yeah, it's not about you, it is about them. Yeah, right. So is that, is this notion of practicing this, is that really at the core of of emotional resilience? Yeah, it is about practicing it and you know the term antifragile. No, yeah. Nassim Taliban wrote this book, it's been out for several years, called Antifragility, and I love it. The title's a little confusing, and he talks about being fragile, which we understand about what that is, talks about resiliency.

22:48 And then the third one is what he calls antifragile, which is really a continuation where it's more than resilient. And it's, and I think it's sort of what we were just saying earlier, it's having these experiences and failing at them or having challenges and leaning into a challenge and getting stronger from these experiences 'cause it's more than just being resilient. It's using these challenges and mistakes and failures to become more robust. And his simple example is, you know, you go and work out with weights and every day you you might put a little more weight on it. So it's still hard and you might fail, but over time you're getting stronger.

23:31 And just as your body or your muscles get stronger, when we lean into these kinds of challenges and failures, we get more anti fragile, we get stronger. And, and that's one of the powers of the groups that you have, and I have is guys can fail. And I do. And, and one of the things I've said from day one of all my groups and trainings is make mistakes. Like Bucky Fuller says, if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. So make mistakes, and it's easier to make mistakes in a safe place. Yeah, so one thing about like the definition of resilience really means coming back to another state. So if if I'm always angry, emotional resilience could mean, well, you temporarily got me happy and I'm going to go back to my angry state.

24:20 So I like the notion of, yeah, being robust is kind of going beyond the the the old normal. So yeah, I like that. I like that. I'm going to look for that book. That sounds cool. What sort of challenges are you seeing men that that have them coming to meld today? Well, pretty much what we've seen, you know, I've seen for really decades, probably the biggest challenge is men struggle in relationships. And I mean, we don't get guys that are, you know, hugely struggling, but we get guys that are often, you know, successful professionally, but the relationships don't model the the success they have in other parts of their life. And they're smart enough to realize, and this is where I started, where I was a consistent available and they go, you know, it's not working out. Maybe I need to work on myself.

25:12 And some have tried therapy, some haven't. Some are sent by their therapist, and they're looking at, you know, developing these skills. And it's maybe realizing it's not that there's something wrong with me. It's just that I didn't get to learn what I needed to learn. And so they're coming for, you know, to develop relational skills. They're in a transition in their life. That's another reason they want to develop these skills in a professional way. Another one is they want real friends because, and you probably see this and do that, you know, as we get all those men, most men in the research supports this, have fewer, fewer friends.

25:52 So when we were in school, maybe the military, we had really close friends. So we might have friends, but we don't. And most men will say they don't have that closeness, the intimacy, the support that they had when they were younger. And we miss it. And it's like, where do you go to do that? And so guys are coming because they go, you know, I, I want a, a venue where I can be real and I can be with other men are being real and we can have a real friendship. So what's what's a typical experience for a a consumer of, of of MELD? Is it, is it online and virtual? Is it a a weekend, a a week, multiple weeks or everything all the? Above So most guys start out doing what we call a core program, which which is a program I developed before I ever started every man.

26:44 So it's been out for, you know, 10 years, had different names and it we, it was six weeks. We tightened it up down to four weeks and now we're going to expand it to three months because it's a really rich program where we teach the basic skills, again really through interaction. And a lot of the skills are these somatic skills that guys really relate to. Because again, you probably see this so often, if we come at guys purely emotionally, some will resist, some will run. But when we come at it through the Physiology and the science of the Physiology, guys relate to it. So we get a lot further, a lot quicker and we just want to make that program a richer program.

27:30 So that's usually where guys start. And then we have retreats. We have, I run a 12 week intense group coaching program. Yeah, we have individual coaching and then we also have ends up being about a nine month certification program. That's like three parts doing this time off in between some parts where we teach laymen and professional coaches and therapists and psychiatrists these skills so they can do that one to one or in Group settings. And we've been designed the course. It's like 100 different lessons, and we've done it three times over the years and we'll do it again.

28:11 And it's a deep, deep dive in our work. And it's a huge transformational experience for men because you know you're learning it from doing it. And so you're doing it with yourself and you're doing it with the cohort that you're in. And they're working on you and you're working on them. And you can't go through this program and not be changed. And you you did mention doing some, some Coed things as well. And I know you have a you're doing your first couples retreat soon, is that right? Yeah, so. We're doing a six day couples retreat down in Costa Rica for the Valentine's week in February. We've been, my partner's a couples therapist and Dalia has been the therapist or couples therapist for decades. We've been doing couples weekends for, I don't know, seven years since you heard before that, but we were invited to do this couple's retreat down in Emmaloa, which is amazing retreat center in Costa Rica and maybe the nicest one down there. And so they invited us to come down and leave this couple's retreat down there.

29:22 And it's we're already more than half sold out. And so it's taken this what we done before and we can and just enriching it. And it's a whole me tight retreat. The homie type is a term that Sue Johnson developed and Sue Johnson was also on our program, but she recently passed away, which is really unfortunate. And she was the the person that developed emotional focused therapy, which is a now a very hot therapy. And and she took the whole attachment theory, which again, I said sort of started with babies and really found a way to apply it to couples. And then she developed a whole therapy around it and being a scientist, she did a lot of research around the therapy. And even though she's gone, the therapy continues to grow. And so we've taken that approach and and her homie type sort of program and enriched it and now we're doing it over essentially a week.

30:22 Pretty cool. So you've developed all these programs, you've been learning the Physiology and emotionality and masculinity of of being a human male for for decades. How did you learn what it means to be a male? I think I learned it by not learning it like most of us. I mean, I grew up in a family that I used to think was pretty normal. And then as I got into all this work, you know, made my 20s, I realized it looked normal on the outside, but wasn't normal. It wasn't normal in terms of healthy normal. It might have been average, but the average part was it was a lot of connection.

31:03 And the more I got into this and the more I realized that I didn't have what now they would call secure attachment. And I think that was actually part of why I developed Asperger's was I didn't know how to connect. So with that and my dyslexia and a few other things, I was sort of pushed into really learning this. And like they say, the best way to sort of learn something is to sort of teach it. So not that I really wanted to teach it, but I wanted to be in the men's group. And I started one when I had an integrated clinic back in Scottsdale in 1995 and saw that, you know, just being with men in a real way, I could learn this. And then I've been in men's groups ever since then and, and just being in that kind of peer-to-peer setting and then bringing in all this other technology that really facilitated it with myself and thousands of men. Now we've seen, you know, applying this method and in these peer-to-peer settings, men's lives can change or transform pretty quickly.

32:12 And we have a lot of guys that said, if I wasn't in this group or didn't do this program, I would have killed myself. And they did a documentary film on this group and this approach several years ago. And one of the guys in the in the film says, yeah, you know, I was going to kill myself. And then I remembered I had this group and I could call Owen and and the group and Owen would take care of me. And they did. And I'm like, I'm alive because because of it. So how does that feel? It feels. Great. I mean, it's, I mean, it's this group that I started in Idaho essentially 20 years ago was a group that they did this film on. And there's several men just in that group. A few of them are bats that said that, yeah, this group is what saved their life.

32:58 Because, you know, you've seen these vets, the trauma that they've endured and the impact of that trauma is huge. And they need a safe place to unpack that. So with all the training you've gone through that you've created, that you put out into the world, does anything stand top of mind that if you wish, you know, more men knew this one thing? Is there a one thing? Probably that, you know, if they want to change their life and their relationships, which is often what they want to change, and then their own experience of their own life.

33:39 The short chorus is to use your body as a tool to get there. And that's what I've been honing for coming on 50 years. But in the last 30 years, particularly with men and I'm and, and, and the research is catching up to what we're doing. It's just getting, proving what we did. And they did a big study on on this course I told you about. And it was published in in the premier psychological journal, the APA journal about this course, an 18 page paper about, you know, the value of this work and what it did for these men.

34:20 And so, yeah, I think if guys can use their bodies as a vehicle to change their lives, they'll see a huge benefit from it. And you don't. Mean, you know, get up and take action in in that traditional sense, but using using the the inner wisdom or the inner healer, the their body in a new way, Yeah. Yeah, using the their awareness of the, the body, you know what's happening in their body. Learning some, you might say science, some principles that I could teach in a few minutes, but really learning how to apply it. That's the thing. And practicing in a safe place to apply these simple skills and then applying them to life because they weren't. You're going to see reinforcements in your life. It's going to, it's going to compound and, and because we're hard wired to use these skills, once you learn them, they pretty much stay there.

35:14 It's not like you got to remember them. It's just, it's just like we got two arms and you know, I've just gotten really good at using my right arm and my left arm is sort of atrophied. But if I start to strengthen it, I start to use it for different things to get stronger. It's as agile. And so I get this ability to be and redemptorist. And so that's sort of what we're talking about with the body is we got this huge resource that we think in most ways in this culture, it's just a vehicle that gets from place A to place B to eat food, to have sex and maybe do sports with. And, and for most guys short of that, that's it. But it has a lot more capacity to serve us than just those few things.

35:58 Great. They mentioned that relationships are often the the driving force for a man to to seek help, to seek growth. Do you have any any advice for women that see their men struggling? More, more and more women send men to us because they see this and and women care about their their man, be it their partner or their son or whoever. But in a general sense, a couple of things first, and this is sort of what like port just tells therapists to tell their clients. And I would adapt it for women telling men it is that men really want to succeed, but they don't because of a couple reasons. One is the culture that we've grown up and and you know, women grown up in this in this culture too. So they're limited for sure.

36:53 But men, and I think most women would agree that men are more limited than women are in general. And like the biggest one is men can't show their emotions. So we got all these cultural beliefs. A lot of them are subjective or inferential or, you know, they're not necessarily plastered and billboards, but we know them when we believe them, we often as kids are teaching them to our friends, like, oh, you're a crybaby because you you're crying because you hurt your knee, you know, So we we reinforce or enforce these beliefs. So the culture is in some ways our enemy as men. So if women, when women understand that, that gives them and men a little more space. And then the other part is the trauma that men have suffered. Again, it's not taking away women from the trauma they've suffered.

37:47 But traditionally as men, we've seen we get our approval by how well we perform. And a lot of that performance has been on the physical realm from, you know, now we, you know, we went from the farm to the to the industrial revolution where it was less physical, but still in the beginning where it was physical, to the, the tech revolution, where in general, work isn't physical, But still that belief that, you know, we need to be strong, we need to be big, we need to do all these physical things. It's imbued in US. And that could be a limitation for certain men. And, you know, we're the ones that generally go off and fight the wars and with that come back traumatized.

38:33 So there's all these things that men are dealing with. And there's a fellow named Richard Reeves that wrote the book of boys to men. We had him on our program, too. He's a Brit. He was working for the Brookings Institute. Now he has his own based on his book. And he just unpacks the whole dynamics of boys to men are suffering. And he distills it down to say, look, the liberals have it wrong and the conservatives have it wrong. The conservatives want to take us all back to the 50s where whatever the man wants is what we all have to do. He knows best. And then the liberals won't see it as anything you do for men and boys.

39:14 You're taking it away from the women and girls. And Reeves says, and I would agree, both are wrong. And we, it serves women to understand and really support the development of boys and men, but it's not the development in the way that we traditionally have seen how to develop men emotionally. And what I would say specifically around that is that particularly since we left, you know, the farm for the Industrial Revolution, women had to show up because men, you know, had to go to work. So it's like the women became the sole parent.

39:55 The T-shirts were women and then the nurses and therapists are women. So what's happened over a few 100 years, what it is to be emotional as a man has sort of skewed towards the feminine. And it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just how it's happened. And so some of psychology or therapy and the culture is trying to have us be emotional like women. And I say to women, I say to men, women are really good. At knowing when we get it right, they're not nearly as good at telling us how to get to right. But you put me, you or any guy in a good group or good training, the the experience of being with other men is going to hone that guy's emotional skills. One, because he's going to see it and maybe there's a little teaching, but mainly because he has a, again, a safe place to practice it.

40:56 And So what I've seen over the decades of working with men is when guys get it, a lot of it's just the practice. Women love it and they don't understand necessarily what we're doing entirely or how the guy's getting it, but they love the result. And the joke in my ongoing group or groups has been the best night for romance or sex has been the night of the group because these guys come home and I've had women because I used to live in this small town. These women come up to me and thank me for, you know, the group and what the guys were their husbands were getting from from the group. And a few of these women literally said things like, he's so attractive and I want to rip his clothes off because he's present, he's masculine, he's vulnerable, he's open, he's engaging.

41:49 And the women just melt now. They don't know what we do in our groups, but they like what is produced out of that, right? They like the. Results. Yeah. Cool. So, Owen, what's the best way for people to learn more about Meld? Go to our website meld dot community. It's MELD and then community spelled out. We have newsletters which you know men and women can join. We have a free membership which is just for men and they, you know, they can learn about the programs we have, the thought leaders we bring on.

42:29 We're here to really support men and creating a new model of what it is to be a man. Awesome. Yeah. And that that's a model that, yeah, always, always needs updating and expansion. And it's really is something that I think is is really alive and ever changing. Yeah. And and you know this as well as I do that men are really wanting it and more than ever or seeking it out, I think we've always needed it. But each year men are more open, maybe more courageous, maybe bigger necessities, but whatever. They're coming to all our programs because they want this. Awesome.

43:12 Well, Owen, it was great to connect with you again and learn all about MELD and I love how you are bringing so much science and research into personal growth and to leadership. So kudos to you and hope the great success with MELD and all of your upcoming events and retreats and, and everything else that you create. Thanks for everyone for tuning and listening to us today. Please visit realmenfield.org. There'll be a blog post for this with this episode, and there'll be links for all the books and the programs mentioned, ways to catch up with Meld, and way to dig deeper into all the books that no one mentioned. Wherever you're discovering Real Men feel, please subscribe, follow, like, share this with somebody, post a review or comment.

43:54 You can always reach out to me at realmenfeel@gmail.com. I'm always glad to hear from you and until next time, be good to yourself.