Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - How to Help Men Be More Emotive with Mark Groves

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Mark Groves bridges the academic and the human, inviting people to explore the good, the bad, the downright ugly, and the beautiful sides of human connection. His goal is to empower individuals to step into their power, transform the way they relate to themselves and others, and create authentic change for life & love. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep189. Mark Groves is a Human Connection Specialist, Author, Coach, and founder of Create the Love and the Mark Groves Podcast host. In other words, he's a speaker, writer, motivator, creator and collaborator. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of The Resetter podcast, have I got a heartfelt conversation for you with an incredibly beautiful man? His name is Mark Greaves. And what he calls himself, and I love this, is that he's exploring and philosophizing the complexities of human connection. And that's exactly what we talk about. We go into detail on how you can create relationships that match your values. what do you do when there are challenges in your relationships?

How do you take radical responsibility for your relationships? And one piece of this conversation that really got my brain excited is how we can be curious about our relationships as possible tools for our own expansion, for our own growth. So there is so much to learn in this conversation with Mark. And I would say that one of my favorite pieces is around the mid part of the conversation, we really talked about how men and women communicate differently. And as a lot of you know, I've been really focused on how to create a world where women feel heard.

And what I learned in this conversation with Mark is we also have to create a world where men feel heard, where men can be more emotive. And so this is an incredible. conversation where we explore that. And I would say that neither of us have the answers, but we both had a lot of questions. And we had a lot of insight in talking to each other about how do we create a world where women feel heard and men are allowed to be more emotional. And this is going to be such a gift to so many of the relationships in your life. So Mark Groves, founder of Create the Love, I really truly from the bottom of my heart, I'm excited to bring this episode to you.

Enjoy. Hey, Dr. Bindy here and welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. enjoy. I'm going to just jump in and say thank you for being here, Mark. I really appreciate you coming on the Resetter podcast. We're excited to, I'm excited to have this chat with you. Oh my God, pumped to be here, can't wait to jam. No idea what you're going to ask, which that's the adventure.

That's the adventure. That's, see, let me tell you, there's a lot of places I want to go with this conversation, but I'm in the process of writing my fifth book and I'm totally geeking out on words. And so as I was doing a gentle preparation for this interview, there were a couple words you used that just really sparked interest of my brain. And let me start with the first phrasing, which is radical responsibility, that you took radical responsibility for your life. What is that and how do we all accomplish that? Well, you know, I think the context of even taking responsibility for one's life is pretty daunting sometimes. Yeah. You know, it can feel overwhelming.

And I think what's going on unconsciously there is that responsibility, if you say, okay, everything that's currently in my life is there because I'm saying yes to it. That's a pretty basic fact. But then if you accept that fact, now you're like, well, shit, if I said yes to it, then that means I can say no to some things. And if I actually sit with the truth that I'm choosing everything in my life, including my habits, my rituals, my reactivity, then that means I could have chosen differently. And I think that's where we hit usually an unconscious block because when you wake up to the idea that you have choice, radical responsibility that says, I'm not actually going to tolerate less than my best self. I'm not going to tolerate less than my most optimal potential.

I'm not going to tolerate any behaviors that I know are actually not helpful to relationships and not conducive to that type of life I want to create and also not aligned with my values. So many of us are actually making choices day in and day out that are not aligned with our values. And then we wonder why we're anxious and depressed because the choices we're making are saying, I don't actually even live the thing that is at my most core important to me. And so because when we're aware of radical responsibility, we then can look back at our whole life, usually unconsciously, and we go, oh, shoot, why did I choose those things then? And so most of us actually stopped there. And I would say that that is actually the source of so many addictions, whether that's normalized ones like, you know, our phones or shopping or sometimes food or even exercise. That one can be celebrated. You know, we have these distractive techniques that are really about not paying attention to the dissonance that comes when you are making choices that don't align with what you want and who you are.

Here's an interesting part of what you just said. How many people do you think actually know what their values are? You know, very few actually sit down and write that out. I remember I interviewed Stan Taken, who's like one of the world's foremost. psychologists and relationship experts. And he said, if you look at the main reason that relationships fail, it's because people fail to make clear the agreements at the start. And so I don't think till we have,

till we continue to violate our own boundaries or experience the violation of our boundaries, you know, maybe we're dating someone toxic, maybe we are someone toxic, maybe we're experiencing a drug addiction or whatever it is. Most of us think of rock bottoms as being something like waking up in a ditch or drinking too much and crashing a car. But rock bottoms can be experienced in health and losing your job. But we wait for these deep moments of suffering before we change. And that's when we recognize, oh, wait, there's something out. And because our society has normalized this

idea that if you're depressed or anxious, there's something wrong with you and you actually need to treat that. And I'm not saying there's not a time and a place for intervention, pharmaceutical interventions. But anxiety is actually an indicator that you're not, you're not actually living a life in alignment with what your values are. It's also an indicator that you're not expressing your core emotions. You're not connected to one or more of them. And I think that's rare, too, to be connected to our core emotions. So I just had this really interesting thought. You know, there's a lot of talk about how we came out of the pandemic and everybody's got a mental health challenge now from the remnants of that. And if I take the definition of anxiety that you just gave,

my thought is the way I view the pandemic is it was a pattern interrupt. It was a moment where everybody was forced to sit down and we had to sit there for so long that we had to re-evaluate our life. And then I'm wondering if we, as we've come out of the pandemic, if we had hunches about we weren't living in accordance with our values, relationships that people were locked at home with that weren't necessarily serving them anymore. And if we didn't make those changes coming out of the pandemic, perhaps that's a piece of why anxiety is at the peak, is the people who didn't, who saw a glimpse of something that needed to change in their relationships, but actually have chosen to not change that.

So many of us exist in relationships that we don't have hard conversations. We let the relationships steer itself like a child, you know. We respond the same way in conflict that we learned usually unconsciously as kids. Like most of us don't take responsibility for the relationship we want to create. We're not even saying like, hey, I need to look. There's a lot of people these days. At least the information is readily available. When I was 20, if you were going through a breakup, you just listen to boys to men, you know, and you got more sad or whatever was out.

It's really true. Thank God Adele didn't exist. I mean, Adele would have been a killer. I'm so glad that music wasn't out there. But all joking aside, I think you're right. First off, the pandemic was an incredible psychological stress. It was a collective trauma. And I don't mean just the experience of having to confront our mortality, which like,

when you think about confronting mortality, we don't look at it because the idea of confronting your mortality is too much for the system generally. Because then we recognize our temporary time on this planet, which then when you look at people who are in palliative care, the five regrets that the dying is a book written by Brani Ware. She was a palliative care nurse. And she saw these five things that most people regretted when they got to death door. So we all experienced that. We also experienced, you know, a lot of, um, like psychological techniques used to shape our behavior, that's also, there's ethical, there's always ethical considerations about the use of nudge tactics, which is what they call

the psychological techniques used by public health. And so that actually has an impact on us. And, you know, I think for us not to look at what's occurred and actually acknowledge that there has been a collective trauma. And now what you're saying about relationship, yeah, COVID had people at home with, relationships that they were often avoiding at their work. That's right. And so it amplified what was already there. Yeah.

And it also, for a lot of couples, they finally had time together, and they found resolution, and they deepened their intimacy. And, I mean, it really forced us to, we don't normally spend 24 hours a day with our partner, which that's not necessarily healthy either because there's no balance of individuality. But I agree with what you said. there was a pause and that pause we can use to start to question who we are, which is a healthy thing, to start to be like, oh, why do I do what I do?

Why do I tolerate what I tolerate from myself or other people? Yeah. I mean, I've made radical changes post coming out of the pandemic. And by asking myself that question of like, why am I doing this? And what do I want the future to look like? like there was a lot of introspection that went through me. And one of the things about relationships that I, a question I've been asking myself lately has been,

what's the purpose of relationships? You know, like if we really think about it, human connection feels really good. I mean, we can just have beautiful conversations like we're having now. We can have friendships that just fill us up. But when we start to step into these long-term relationships, whether it's an intimate one, a friendship one, a work one, there's a whole other level. It moves from being this sweet

connection to being what I think is like a growth tool. And we learn so much about ourselves in relationships. And I don't think we talk about that enough. So I'd be curious what your thoughts are on literally, what is the purpose of connecting and being in long-term relationships with people? Well, you make a good point that, you know, we don't, we're not taught relating in school very seldom. I think like, you know, let's just throw a number, probably like 0.001% of education platforms actually teach it in schools. And so what happens is that you have us all wanting to be, I think it's also ironic that you get to be like 15 and 16 and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I guess I'm just going to enter relationships and be good at them.

Yet there's been no outside intervention to teach you. So you replicate the relational patterns of your parents generally and what you've learned in romantic comedies and Disney and also probably pornography too you know so this is how we're informed till we start to actually look and learn and start to take courses or listen to podcasts like yours and so the purpose to when you look at the long-term impact of healthy relating versus unhealthy relating there's a study done by Harvard it's the longest running study looking at well-being. And it shows that the greatest predictor of your health at 80 is actually the quality of your relationships at age 50. So not your blood pressure, not your cholesterol, the quality of your relationships and not just your romantic relationships, any type of

relationships. So that shows you that how we relate has a dramatic impact on our health. So relationships and their purpose in our lives is, you also said this too, is to, to, is to to be a mirror to our potential because any trigger or any friction in relationship is an opportunity for you to grow. And I could tell you when I was younger, when I got feedback from a partner, I wasn't thinking, oh, this is amazing. Thank you so much for the mirror of my possibility. You are?

I don't understand. Definitely not. I remember complaining to my dad once on the phone about my girlfriend in my, like, early 20s. And my dad said to me, oh my God, Mark, she was complaining about something which she had the right to complain about. So if you're listening, you were valid. And I said to her, well, it's so bad. I don't even want to say what I said.

But hey, it's all about growth. I'm very different now. But I said, well, if it's so bad, why don't you leave? I told my dad I said this. And he was like, Mark, oh, my God. And I remember, I didn't necessarily understand what he was saying. at the time. But you know, it's one of those seeds that plants in your psyche. He said, a relationship is a separate entity. There is you and there is her, and then there is the investment

in the separate organism. And what you just did was not invest in it. And I think when we can start to see that feedback from a partner, if delivered in a healthy way, is actually an invitation to our evolution. And the purpose of relationships from a biological, perspective is we need other people. Like when you are lonely, the same parts of your brain light up as when you experience physical pain. And what is posited about that is that it will draw you to seek out help, to seek out others. So we are tribal by species, by nature. And we need other people. And I think what got confused and still does in the language of don't need nobody, don't need a man, all that stuff, which is valid from the cultural experience

of divorce and financial abuse and all that kind of stuff is that you do need somebody, but when you depend on somebody who's unhealthy and you place your well-being and yourself worth in another person's hands who is not reliable, you're going to get hurt. And so I don't think as a culture, we're coming back, but I don't think as a culture we really explain that nuance, especially to young girls and to young boys. And so what happens is, is we don't necessarily have the ability to, like the greatest struggle people have is, how do I be in a relationship and maintain who I am? Most of us give up ourselves for love or give up relationships to maintain self. Yeah. And you actually, that's so powerful

because where my brain is really grabbing onto is this idea that there's actually three entities in a relationship. There's each individual and then there's the relationship. And I think you could probably say that about friendship. You could probably say that about work relationships. So if you look at those three entities and you're somebody who's into self-growth, which I feel deeply that that's your your plate in life is a growth mindset. So you've got somebody who's willing to own their stuff, somebody who's willing to keep working on themselves. And then you've got the other person in the relationship who's not as keen on that. And so they're kind of staying stuck in wherever they are on their human journey.

And if they're not doing introspective work, you're doing a ton of introspective work. And now you're coming together into the relationship. Sometimes, and I've noticed this in many relationships in my life, that sometimes you feel like you're the hardest working person in the relationship. And it becomes difficult. But yet, when you look at that on the flip side of relationships is really honoring and letting somebody be who they are and not trying to turn them into, onto your passions. So do we have any like tried and true ideas on how we take the entity of relationships

and really pour into that entity so that both. both people in the relationship can grow as humans. Yeah, such a good question. And I would imagine a conundrum that many people face is this idea that I feel like I'm the one leaning in. I'm the one suggesting the book or the podcast or the course or the therapist or whatever it is. And that you'll notice is often true in relationship, is that there's one person who's sort of more extended and the other person who's more shelled up. And there's lots of different language for that. There's the term overfunctioning versus underfunctioning.

You might think of one as being anxiously attached and the other one avoidantly attached. And so when we consider that, one thing I would always invite someone who seems to be the one constantly growing and changing and then being like, hey, do you want to come along? The first part is, is that a pattern? Like, is that a childhood pattern? Were you trying to take care of other people, help people, change people, heal, people because what happens is we overextend ourselves and send this invitation and then we're continuously disappointed when they don't show up. Yeah. And that if we look, is that a familiar feeling that you had as a kid where people

weren't showing up? You desperately wanted someone to. Maybe you became a perfectionist. Maybe you became, maybe you're now a therapist, a coach, a caregiver, because that's so often the pattern is like you become and start to monetize the very survival strategy that you have a kid. Right. So I would say most people that are in caretaking roles generally came to that from the experience of overfunctioning as a kid. Survival, right? So it comes from survival. I want to maintain this environment. I want to maintain safety. And if I take care of everyone, maybe that'll help. And, you know, it's just a natural skill set we move towards. So the first part is the recognition of the pattern. The second part is I recognize this when I was healing anxious attachment

and healing this chasing my partner is I remember thinking, well gosh, if I keep inviting her to show up differently, but I keep standing in the space that she needs to step into, then how can she? And I think it's on like a micro level, that's, hey, I'm texting this person who hasn't responded yet. Let them have the space to move towards you. When we think, about the third entity, I think about it also as this sacred space between us and other. And it is this invitation for them to stand fully in that space too. So if I keep doing everything for another person, they never have to become an adult. If I keep doing everything for them, they never actually have to do it for themselves. And then I resent them that I'm doing everything.

But meanwhile, I'm the one doing everything. Right. So this sense of radical responsibility is like, oh, wait, what's familiar for me is leaving myself. What's familiar for me is being disappointed. I say, hey, read this book. This would help us. When we start to actually step back from that, we say, hey, I learn this thing. I found it really helpful for me to be able to understand us. And I really want to create just a deeply connective relationship with you.

And is that something you're interested in? So beautifully sad. Well, a different way because what you're doing is most of us shrink and continue to reach down to pull up instead of saying, hey, like you kind of think about it like two adults facing each other. Instead of infantilizing your partner by treating them like a child, you're like, hey, show up, come over. And here's the invitation. And sometimes, I remember asking Julie Gottman and John Gottman this, they wrote a book, called Seven for States or Seven Dates. I can't remember, but it's an incredible book,

and it's seven essential conversations all a couple should have. And I said, well, if the other person doesn't accept the invitation to read the book, that's a red flag, right? Like, you should kick them to the curb. And she was like, Mark, no. I still remember. That's a red flag. Yeah, she was like, you should get curious as to why they're resistant about the book.

Maybe they have another avenue they'd rather learn through. Maybe they're scared of what it's going to bring up for them. But at the end of the day, the truth is that you can only invite people to show up, and there will be a timeline where you can no longer wait. And after you wait past that timeline, the cost starts to become your own physiology. So I hope that answers your question. Yeah, no, that was really good. And the word curious is a new word that I'm obsessed with as well,

because I think it's a better way to look at a challenging situation, is to be curious about it, as opposed to be like blamey about it, you know? So what it, let's say you're in a relationship that is tough and it doesn't feel like the other person's doing the work that you would like them to do. What does it look like to help them to actually articulate that like curiosity and leading them into a place of like, I love what you said where, you know, are you. wanting to bring a different creation to the relationship. That is, the word creation is even amazing.

Like that is a really interesting, interesting way to look at that. But how can we say this to our partners in a way that doesn't feel threatening, that feels like an invitation, that feels like a new dimension? You know, a lot of the people that are, listen to this podcast have been married a very long time. And it's very easy to fall back into old patterns. And it's, you have to stay awake. And really, if you want to evolve that marriage or that relationship, it takes constantly reinventing your something as simple as the language you use with each other. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So how do we do that? How do we keep that sort of spark through our question

asking so that we can see where that that partner is at along the journey. Well, a few things to just first say. One is that your relationship, we're going to be recreating relationships in a different way when we orient to them from a place of radical truth. So most of us, our relationships are not the place that we are all of ourselves. And there's a number of reasons for that. Like Harrier-Learner talks about how I remember asking. her like why do women seek out relational information more than men?

Because that's my experience. I'm sure it's your experience with audience, right? And she said, every subordinate group must learn the needs and nuances of the dominant group. And she said, so what that means is, if a woman didn't learn how to dance with and become emotionally fluid, it could mean death. It could mean rape. It could mean pain. And so it is natural that the health of a relationship tends evolutionarily to have fallen on women's shoulders.

I think we can all agree that in our experience, certainly from a heteronormative perspective, that's true. It feels like the barometer of the health of the relationship, women tend to be more attuned to. Yep. And this can be true in same-sex relationships, too, where one partner just tends to be more attuned to it. Right. And so there's just the context of that I think is important because when I was talking about overfunctioning versus under functioning, that like I'm going to do all the emotional work. No one person can do enough work for two. It's impossible. So well said. Like you have to be met and most people are used to not being met. So the first qualifier, I'll say, is that your conversations might come with. with a fear that your relationship might end. That's usually why we avoid hard conversations, and that's usually why we avoid invitations to meet us.

Now, I'm not saying to become some superhero. I'm saying to meet us. That's not an expectation or a standard that is unachievable. So you're not asking for the world when you say, hey, we need to learn how to be, to communicate emotionally together. Here's what I think would help facilitate that. It's really important to me that I understand your needs and your wants and your struggles.

That's important to me. Is it important to you that mine are understood? Some people might say no. But you've got to ask the questions. And here is the radical truth about this is that when you become fully liberated in your relationship and for a lot of people who've been married 10, 15, 20 years, they got married under different pretenses. They got married for different reasons.

Yes. So at 32, 35, 55, 65, 65, there are all of a sudden like, holy shit. I'm in this relationship and I've forgotten about myself. Yes. And so my first invitation is come fully alive. Like come fully alive. everything you love bring it into your life because I could tell you that if my partner,

because I now have this perspective, if my partner came to me and said, I want to do this, this brings me alive. I'd be like, sign me up. I might not do the dancing part very well, but I'll do it because it matters to you. Wow. Because if you don't grow with your partner

and your partner will grow away from you. And by the time they leave, they'll already be gone. And then you'll want to change. And so my invitation is, change when the request comes. Because I see that so much especially, and it's due to so many, it's not anyone's fault, but the way we pattern in relationship is generally inherited. And so men don't be the one who invite the expansion.

They sometimes do. And then they'll experience the similar circumstance in the opposite direction. But what happens, women initiate divorce more than men. By the time they first say something, it's about two years until they walk out the door. when women have a challenging emotional situation about 60 something percent of the time I can't remember the exact stat they turn towards friends

when men have a challenging situation it's about the same turning towards their partner so when men lose relationship they tend to lose their emotional support and so that's why I see this all time in my DMs like she left now I'm getting it and that's beautiful you're getting it and it might be too late to get it

but at least you're getting it and so my invitation to people is like, come fully alive because, and what would bring your partner fully alive? Because if you're resenting your partner that you're not doing things you love, that's your fault, not theirs. And so when you come fully alive, the relationship is invited to come fully alive. You are liberated. And although they might have resistance to your liberation, the relationship is actually now liberated

from the patterns of silence, resentment, holding in. Because men, being with a woman who is not censored, to me is the hottest thing in the world. Like, I look at my wife and he tells me the truth I don't like. But damn, is it hot? Yeah. Every man needs to think like that. How do we replicate you?

That's pretty impressive. It's only once you garner the gold from their feedback. When you finally, for a lot of people, they don't know how to hold the shame that comes with feedback. This idea like, if you're telling me, I need to grow or change, then, Basically, what I now am thinking unconsciously is I'm not good enough. I can't take care of you. I'm not enough for you.

Instead of, holy shit, she's telling me how to become powerful. And if I can meet her in this power or her, him, or whatever, then we're liberated. Amazing. You know, my parents have been married 60 years. Wow. 60 plus years. Yeah. And so I've had a front row view of a very successful relationship.

Now, it is also, you know, a 50s, you know, they were like the, I call them the 50s couple where it was very, you know, gender-based and very traditional. But when they had their 40th wedding anniversary, I asked my dad, I said, what's the secret dad? Or maybe it was their 50th. I was like, what's the secret to a lasting marriage? And his first thing he said was when the other person wants to change, let's. them. And you might just be amazed that what they're changing into is something that you want to

join. That's so beautiful. Isn't that incredible? That's so beautiful. I remember Dr. Alexander Solomon, who's like a world-renowned therapist, she said, you will have many marriages in your lifetime and sometimes it will be to different people. Right. And I love that. This like invitation because if we expect our partners to be the same that means we expect ourselves to be the same and then we're projecting that on our partners and often we're afraid of our partners changing because we are afraid they'll grow away from us we think that it's changing the agreements of the relationship but if if you're not developing new interests new directions new passions then likely you're stagnant and i think it's tony robins who says if you're not growing you're dying and i think about that a lot

A lot of us are afraid to expand because we're afraid it will fracture the relationship. But what ends up happening is we end up internalizing that fracture. We end up disconnected from our own souls. We end up with anxiety. We end up depressed. We end up with poor relationships, with substances, with everything. And they become these coping mechanisms. And as Gabor-Mante says, the wrong question is why the addiction.

The right question is why the pain. Right. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting because what I'm seeing just in speaking to a lot of the women that are listening to this podcast is that when we go through the menopause experience, we have this neurochemical armor that starts to come down. You know, our hormones are changing. Our neurotransmitters are shifting. And all of a sudden, what I'm realizing and seeing in my own life and in friends and in our community is the traumas that you haven't healed are bubbling to the surface. And then you're in a relationship. If you're in a marriage or a committed relationship, those traumas come up and they start to influence the relationship. And it can be very difficult. And when I look at the research on menopausal women, you know, 70% of menopausal women are the,

70% of divorces that happen over 40 were initiated by women, just like you said earlier. sense, yeah. 45, between 45 and 55 is the most common time for a woman to commit suicide. Wow. So you are literally looking at women once they hit their 40s that become and have, start to have this internal conflict that they don't know what to do with. And John Gray interviewed him on my podcast.

And he said that like 90% of people that go to therapists are women. So I want to go back to this idea where as women, our internal drive is to go to the therapist, talk to a friend, like talk it out so we can move beyond it. And sometimes I think for men, it's, you all don't, we haven't, our society hasn't given you that platform to do that. And so it becomes harder for men to be able to process some of the feelings that are going on inside their mind. If you're in a heterosexual relationship, you know, what can we do to help the men in our lives be able to be more expressive and process that, but not have it to always be

us? That's the one doing that with them. Well, I mean, again, such a really important question and nuanced. I mean, the first thing I'll say is that men need men, you know, men need men's groups. Men need spaces with other men, that there is actually openness to talk about challenges. You know, I think about a lot of friendships, which there's nothing wrong with having male friends that you just talk about the game with or golf with or work out with. But can we find places and spaces that are actually about opening up male vulnerability? The reason those generally, I would say all men need men only spaces for that is because as soon as a woman as in the room, it changes because we go into performative peacocking, you know,

like all of a sudden we're like, oh, let's take care. Like, I got to experience, cool. You know, and just like a man would change a woman's space. It's interesting, though, because like when you think about emotional fluency, men are not socialized to be emotionally fluent, right? Like, the acceptable emotions out of men tend to be anger and maybe happiness and just like, blah, whatever that emotion is. And, you know, when Brunee Brown's research, she talks about how when a woman, when a man cries in front of a woman,

she actually loses respect for him. Really? She starts to not trust him. And you think about that, yeah, that's in her, I think her first dead talk, it might be in her second one. And she talks about it in one of her books, too. And so when I think about that,

I think about how we're socialized. And when you think, when men start to step into emotionality, which usually becomes because they don't have a choice. They hit a rock bottom, their wife leaves them, a partner breakup, whatever it is, that they now are opening this box that they've shoved away in a closet

because society says, listen, we want emotionally fluent men. We desperately need them. Oh, wait, go to war, kill people, and do most of the world's most dangerous jobs and if you show emotion, you're probably going to get called a sissy. And if you show emotion,

your partner might actually reject that emotion because they don't know how to trust male emotion, which there could be many reasons for that. So when a man chooses to step into emotional fluency, he is ultimately going against everything. He is going against all the programming that says, this is what a man is. So it's a beautiful fracturing that occurs

because ultimately what the man is saying, by embodying it and becoming it, is that I decide what a man is, not society. But in order to do that, they have to be ready to lose membership to define masculinity. Now, you also look at the way the media

has portrayed men, and certainly truth to some of it, but is toxic masculinity, men are bad. That messaging, especially to young boys without nuance, has them where they don't know how to have a healthy relationship

to masculinity. You know, I had someone and I remember once asked me, like, how do I teach my son that? I was just going to say, I have a 20-year-old son. I was like, tell me how we do this. Well, I remember her saying, like, how do I teach him to be masculine and have emotion, express emotion? And I said, well, teach him that they're not connected. They have no relation. Emotionality is a human experience. It is not male or female. Now, what we notice is that how you're raised and what you're exposed to changes, you know, how you're going to express and what is safe for you because if you learned, even as a woman,

that anger is not safe. We often hear that, right? Like she's too much. She's crazy. She's this. Then they'll shut down from their emotion. Again, remember how I said, anxiety is a symptom of repressed emotion. So if you don't have connection to grief, anger, joy, like core feelings.

then it's going to show up as what Hillary Jacobs-Hendell would call an inhibitory emotion, which is anxiety. So when we consider inviting our partner to start to speak more emotionally, I think the first part is to put into context that however old that man is versus however old you are is the amount of years that he has been conditioned to be one way. Right. So if you're 30, you got 30 years of a head start on emotional fluency. Yeah. So what I noticed when I started to step more into that, and I was in sales, so I knew how to

use language, but I didn't know how to use language about feelings because there were so many unprocessed things. Like I would often shut down, which is more of a male behavior to become avoidant, to shut down, to withdraw. Stonewall is the term. And it took me a while to lean in, but I had a partner who sometimes would get reactive to it because we were processing stuff together. But what I, I had a partner who I asked, like, I might get these words wrong. Because I remember a woman I was dating, I said something and she would like react to the words. And I'm like, wait, that's not what I meant. Like, just give me a second to like find. Because it's not dissimilar to a toddler learning language. And I don't mean that to like infantilize men.

I just mean that the process of putting words to feelings. Like right now, a part of, me feels, that's a really important part in delineation of language. A lot of us say, I am angry. I am sad. But what happens when you say I am is you must become everything after that. And when you say I am sad, you now can't be something else. So if you say a part of me feels, now you've distanced yourself from the feeling, so you are not the feeling. And then you also give space for other parts. Like, you know, someone getting engaged might feel anxious.

And if they just are anxious, then that actually might destabilize the whole curiosity that they have. Because there might be a part of them that's excited. There might be a part of them that's afraid, right? Right. And so we have to create space through language.

You were talking about the importance of language. We have to create space through the language we use to create space for all of us because we're complex. And I think when men accept that reality, that they are complex emotional beings, which usually happens because we have to figure that out. Right.

You know, there's a saying that anger is sad's bodyguard. And I think that's very much true that anger, when we don't have space for grief, grief gets expressed as anger. But when we have space for grief, both exist. I also heard that anger is a form of creating power over somebody. You know, it's like we get angry. and I love that idea of it, you know, it's sadness, you know, sadness is bodyguard. And it's like, well, there's no room for where sadness can go.

And if you're feeling sad in a relationship and you're feeling powerless, it's like anger will show up to try to grab power. So this beautifully said, one of my thoughts as I'm listening to you is so fascinating. You know, I've been really in the trenches trying to understand what women need right now in this modern world because feminism that has really taken us only so far. You know, it's taken us to this place where we feel, we actually feel like we need to be less emotional. We need to be more manlike to be able to sit at the table with men. And yet that's what I think as women, the beautiful part if you look at us hormonally is we have this wide estrogen and progesterone together make

us very emotional. We have a big spectrum of emotions. Whereas when you look at men, you guys are run primarily by testosterone. It typically is a hormone that doesn't make you as emotional. But when we look at society, we have put men and women in these camps and what, and I, and really categorized like women are overreactive and we have all these emotions and men are non-emotive. And what I'm hearing in what you're saying right now is that actually men would like to learn how to be more emotive. They'd like to learn how to connect more, but the society doesn't allow them the space to do that. Is that correct? And what would be your vision of how we could create a society where men feel like they could be more emotive

and could have more of that human connection pour out of them and be acceptable? it. Yeah, I mean, when I think about, I have a son now who is almost four months old, and I consider how do I engage with him in a way that he feels safe to feel and, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, I think it starts with raising children in a way that they feel that they're safe to feel all the things and they're connected to emotion, but they're also learning boundaries from their parents. That's obviously very important. And the other thing, too, is when I, think about my wife and I navigating conflict, which, oh my gosh, like talk about hormonal shifts during pregnancy and then post birth and me really needing to understand and contextualize what's going

on. And I'm now exposed to much more estrogen pheromonally post birth and how does that impact my physiology. There's all these things to consider. And when I come back to often, and I think I heard Peter Attea say this, that when he is really frustrated, frustrated with his child, he thinks about himself at 80 and remembering that this could possibly be the last time, the last memory with their child. And so that invoking this like, oh, this is such an important moment and my stuff needs to go to the wayside. And I've been really practicing that. And I think having that emotional space, so first off modeling it, mom and dad or dad and dad, mom and mom, the navigation needs to be when you're handling conflict that you model healthy conflict and

repair in front of the child. Now, not every repair needs to occur in front of the child, but what's really important is we tend and most of us have memories of our parents fighting, but usually behind closed doors. And we almost never got to see mom say sorry or dad say sorry in front of us. That's actually so important, modeling that with them. important. The creating a world that invites male emotion, you know, I forget who I heard talk about this, but the idea that men tend to emulate men who get women. That makes a lot of sense, right?

Interesting. So if you see women choosing men who are like super muscular, super masculine, and I'm talking in the definition of like guarded, quite. but stern, warrior, you know, not too emotive, but like powerful, lots of money, all that kind of stuff, which historically evolutionary, that makes sense. Women tend to choose men who can procreate, protect, and provide. Right. And men tend to be drawn to women. This is evolutionarily speaking, it's all the things that are sold to women, much like all those things that are sold to men, become more virile, become more strong, become, make more money. Women are so this idea of like, make

sure you look young, never age. And hip to waist ratios, that is one of the, you know, fur-child-bearer. It's a thing, for sure. Shiny hair, you know, lips in swollen lips, because that infers arousal. You know, so when we can start to actually just monitor that those things are going on, because they're just part of how we are evolutionary and biologically, we could choose to say yes or no to what we want to. But when I hear a woman talk about what kind of partner they want, and this can be true of men, but we'll stay with this part that you asked. They are like, I want someone emotionally capable who can dialogue, who's trustworthy, who's this, this, and this. And I remember reading this study of speed dating where people put all the things they wanted. But then as soon as they

had a connection with someone, that went out the window. And so we have to, I like to call it like, we have to take charge of our charge. Because a lot of the times I'll hear someone say, I just can't help who I have chemistry with. And I'll say to them, but that's like, that means you have no discernment over who you choose. That means that you're thinking chemistry draws me to good partnership. And then I just ask, have you ever been drawn to someone who's not good for you? Almost everybody's like, hell yeah, because we're being drawn to some of these other factors that we're evolutionary drawn towards. So if we can start to make a discerning choice between who we're drawn towards and who is healthy for us, we start to cultivate healthy attraction and chemistry,

and we start to find dependability, loyalty, emotionality, attractive. Now, this doesn't mean you can't throw out the idea of a partner who you feel safe with, you know, all those other things. It's that when we start to choose the people we say we want, other people will start to emulate what's being chosen. And I would say that emotionality and emotional agility and Influency is the currency of the future relationship. Yeah, agreed. But we're kind of in a, like everything, you know, we're in a flux. We're in a flux where things are reorganizing, and a lot of us find ourselves in relationships

that were chosen based on previous priorities or what we were taught were our priorities. You hear that a lot. Someone's like, well, I got married because they were like, say, if they're the same religion, they're this, they're that. And I was a certain age. Right. And then at 40, they're like, I don't actually, I'm not even attracted to them. Yeah. I mean, that's a whole other can of worms.

Is there anything we can do as women to open the space, if you're, you know, whether it's a friendship, a work relationship, a marriage, like, is there anything we can do to open up the space to allow men to be the men in our lives to be a little more emotive? I'll give you an example. So my son is 20, and I remember when he was a little kid, I started to see, I also have a daughter, and I started to see that when there was a conflict, he wanted to look away, that that was more in his, and I had read a book called The Wonder of Boys, and I saw that that was an issue. But then as a woman, I know that when we're in a conflict situation with a man, when a man looks away, we feel unheard. So I would tell him at a young age, I would say, when you look me in the eye, I actually know you're listening to me. So can we have this conversation with us looking at each other so I know that you're hearing me?

And I don't know if that was right or not, but I remember trying to express to him at a young age that I needed certain cues as a woman to be able to feel like I was, that he was hearing me. And so I feel like, and when I listen to you, I feel a little bit the same way, like how can we as women open up the space so that men feel safe to express their emotions? Is there anything we can do to create that open dialogue? I mean, first, acknowledging you for how you approach that,

I would be really curious to hear, I would love you to ask him. Like, do you remember me doing that? How has that impacted your relationships today? Did that feel safe for you? Did, you know, just to hear him? A lot of that is modeled with mom, right? The relationship with women.

And sometimes when our partners, like if, let's say, women didn't get raised with emotive fathers, and then their husbands, maybe were not, then their relationship with their son can be impacted because they don't know how to hold space for that. Maybe they see them as a boy, and so they like as a male so they might even unconsciously reject parts of their son. Although I want to be mindful to come back to that idea of like, how do women do all the things to create emotional safety for men?

Because I think what will happen is, and I'm sure for a lot of women listening, is like, why do I, wait, I got to do all this? Like, what about them? And I'd say when we come in with that energy of, like, jadedness, that can be off-putting, but I don't want to minimize the truth of why someone might feel that way. But I think it's just having those conversations of saying, hey, you know, I notice you don't tend to like to talk about your feelings.

I'm wondering, is there anything I can do that would make you feel safer to talk about anything? Is there anything that would, is there any question I could ask? Or is there a way I respond that could be helpful or isn't helpful? And then we allow our partner to tell us. We allow them to say, yeah, actually, here's what I need. And, you know, when people are not connected to what they need, it can be really hard to start to develop a connection to it, which we were talking about, like, how many people actually know their values?

A lot of people don't even know what they need. Right. So when you make relationships about other people's needs, when you start to stand in your own, again, that reorganizes the relationship. So I think when we fear triggering our partners so that they can't open up emotionally, it again causes the shutdown of conversation. And then the person pursuing the dialogue ends up continuing to carry this burden. So another really great way to do it is to work with a therapist or a coach,

because what they end up doing is they end up basically being the translator for both people's needs and wounds. And, you know, it takes two people who are like, I'm actually interested in changing how we do this. If you could start there, like, hey, how we communicate, does it work for you? And the other person's, if it's not working, they're probably like, nah, it doesn't. You annoy me or whatever the thing is. or I feel like I shut down or I feel like you're constantly bickering or whatever it is.

If you can just get to we want to do it differently, okay, how do we do that? Now the door's open. Yeah. What do you suggest? And they might have a suggestion. I will tell you after talking to a lot of women that they would love for their husbands to go to a therapist with them. And the husband doesn't want to go. I've seen that over and over and over again. friend of ours really close friends, their relationship just ended because he refused to go. She did exactly what you said where she tried, she tried, he wouldn't go, she left, and that woke him up. And so again, I think this conversation is a beautiful opening for all of us to see how we can connect better as men and women, regardless of whether it's an intimate relationship or not.

But I'm like a huge fan of therapy. I'm a huge fan of talking out my emotions with my friends. Yeah. And I'd love for the men in my life to be that too. But I also realize that's not perhaps in their desire. And what do you do in those situations? Well, you know, for men, I think a great intro is to go to a men's group. That, I mean, all of it requires this putting down the armor.

Yeah. And we can't force someone to put down the armor. And as I said earlier, and maybe I probably didn't declare it, but it's like most people unconsciously in their mind have a timeline. Like, I'm going to invite if they don't accept that invitation, if there's not a change in, let's say, six months, then I'm going to have to take a different step. So, you know, when we actually approach our partner from that perspective of like, this needs to change. And here's, I'm committed to doing this. Here's what I'm committed to. I'm so interested in creating a powerful, a mode of relationship with you, something connective.

And I want to go deeper. I feel like I don't know you anymore. And I want you to know me. We have this opportunity. Do you want to do that? And if the other person says no. Often the pattern change for the person who's always been chasing is to finally not chase and to say, okay. So what I hear you say is that you're not interested in that.

Did I get that right? Yeah. Okay, well, if you're not interested in that, then we're at an end here. We're at an impasse. Yeah. And when you're ready to potentially invest in it, I am here to have that conversation. But at this point, I can't chase you anymore. It's up to you to move towards what you desire, and if what you desire is not this,

then I respect that. Yeah. Because what happens there is, now we're saying, like, you have the sovereign choice to say, you don't want to pursue this relationship. And I'm making a sovereign choice that I want to pursue this relationship, but under these guidelines. Yeah. And if you don't want to meet me there, then now,

I'm in sovereign choice that this doesn't work for us either. Yeah. And that to me is this powerful individuating. Yep. That then now we have two adults, mostly, who get to choose what path they're going on. And we're no longer trying to keep each other in this relationship because that's what you're supposed to do or people who get divorced hurt their children. You know, I get asked that a lot.

Like, how do you, should you stay? together for the kids. And I'm like, that's the wrong question. It's if you stay together for kids, do something about it. Because when you look at the health of children, ideally parents together love each other. Parents apart love each other. Parents together dislike each other, parents not together dislike each other, treat each other disrespectfully. Those aren't better than each other. They're the same. Yeah. And what you teach your children is to stay in difference, to stay in relationships that aren't healthy, to not be able to let go of something with grace. And that's why as adults, when we witness our parents do that, we don't know how to leave with grace.

We don't know how we're, because their divorce had an impact on us, we think that our divorce or our whatever will impact them. And it doesn't mean it doesn't impact the children. but teaching how two adults can navigate something racefully and love each other when it ends. That's unconditional love. Oh, that's so beautiful. You know, I was thinking as you were talking, two books that I read when my kids were little were the wonder of boys and the wonder of girls. And one of the things that I gleamed little pieces from both those books was as parents

with boys, we tend to be like, you know, how you doing little man, bucking, little guy, you know, it's very much like I remember really even catching myself with my son, not calling him a man when he was like six months old, right? Like we're like, come on. Like, have I said little man yet? I might have. Yeah. But you don't, but those subtle cues are sort of like grooming them for this patriarchal position. And then with women in the wonder of girls, what would often happen is that we compliment little girls on their hair. how pretty they look. My daughter had this really cool, like big hair, blonde, curly hair, and everywhere we went when we were in supermarkets, people would be like, you're so beautiful,

you're so beautiful. And I would always make a separate comment and say, yeah, and she's smart too. And she's kind and she's funny. And I would always add another attribute because I didn't want her to see, hey, the world gets you and loves you for how you look. And I think we forget that that messaging comes to play now when we're in a long-term relationship. 100%. And those are the things that we're budding up against. And going back to this pandemic idea, I just feel like we have a moment to rebrand this. We have a moment to rebrand masculine, feminine.

I mean, there's so much that's changing in our world. And what I'm learning from this conversation with you as a woman is we have a moment to open up the door for men to be able to express themselves differently. Yeah. Yeah. And to understand that we are not the same, but also there is the way we navigate emotion is different. And whether that is either developmentally or through socialization as well, I'm sure

there, you know, there's lots of confounding factors to both those things. Because what you're talking about, I remember there's a study where they give people a baby girl and a baby boy and they already start to use language. that's different, which of course will shape, as you're saying, how they see themselves. I remember I interviewed Dr. Laura McNally and she said that when children are like 9 and 10, that's when girls are being judged on how their body looks and boys are being judged on how their body performs. Wow.

And like a boy can, you know, do whatever to potentially become faster, the fastest get in the class or whatever. But for girls, they have to change their body, something that. And so she said that a lot of children where historically a child or someone as an adult would go into a plastic surgeon with like a picture of Tom Cruise's nose. Now they're using these like FaceTune apps and weird shit filters, you know, stuff like that. And so we also have to understand that we're growing up in a time where social media is amplifying these things too, right? And like you can make millions of dollars based on your butt. You can make millions of dollars based on the appearance of having a Lamborghini. and helping people make money.

Again, I'm not shaming any of those things, but it's very real that if we place our self-worth in how we look or in our status, what happens is when those things get taken away, you won't know who you are. You won't believe you have value. And, you know, I say to people often that the universe will remove anything that you place your value in

to remind you that it doesn't live there. And so when we lose a relationship, and we feel empty inside, it's just that the part of you that you defined yourself with, with the relationship, is now vacant for you to fill, which is a very different way of thinking about it. And so as we create this future of being able to relate

and be able to be emotionally fluent, if we can step into that radical responsibility for how we show up emotionally. Because what I think about is, like, if I'm in a relationship and I show up fully, I'm like, okay, I had all the hard conversation, I invited them towards the thing I want. I really even got pretty good at language.

And they still didn't want to meet me. It's not my shit. It's not my shit. I know that when I look back upon my life, I can be proud of how I showed up here. And that means I can let it go or dive deeper into it if they choose. And what ends up happening is we end up building

a really expanded self through relationship. And then either they meet us, in the future or someone else does. But when you're in that state of flow, it actually won't matter to you who it is. Oh my God, that was so beautiful. That was so eloquent. I really honestly love the way you put words together.

So I just want to compliment you on that. As somebody who really geeks out on words, that was beautiful. So let me finish up with this thought. I have two questions for you that I ask every guest this year. One is, do you have a self-love practice? that you actually do on a daily basis. And the second one is, what do you think your superpower is

that you bring to the world? Gosh, my self-love practice, it kind of shifts based on what I'm needing, but I'd say the one thing I always come back to is exercise. That one is a big one for me, is like needing to move weights, needing to be very mindful about my health,

my body, my vitality. As a father, that's especially become, I'm like, ooh, man, I realize now I'm like, I must have had a lot of spare time before I had a baby. Oh, yeah, yeah. How old is your son? He's only four months. And I'm like, oh, God, yes. You had a lot more.

I said to Kai, my wife, I was like, man, I must have been around a lot before. Yeah. It's like I. So the first part is working out. And you know, there's other ones like meditation, writing. I've been, I'm not sure. you've ever heard of the Miracle Morning by hell. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's been on the podcast. Oh my God, he's great. I love his energy. And so I had him on the podcast and I was like,

damn, this guy is inspiring. I'm going to do all those things and see how it impacts my life. And so it's been amazing. One thing I've noticed about having a kid is I'll be like, oh, get up before mom and him. But now they just keep getting up earlier. I'm like, yo, you guys. It's like, you're killing me here. And then what is my super? of power. That's such a good question. You know what? I'd say it's levity. I'd say it's that like one thing that I've found in my own experience of myself, but also in my experience of speaking at conferences and stuff and workshops and retreats, is that I allow people to feel into the vulnerable things, but then find the humor in their experience. Because to me, it's like, if you can't laugh at the ridiculous,

of the things we choose, the things we do, then you won't be able to let it go. You know, you've got to find the joy and the humor and even our mistakes. And I think that's a superpower that I'm harnessing. The world needs that superpower for sure. And we take things quite serious and personal. So, Mark, this has been incredible. I really, I really appreciate this conversation. I have been out really talking about what women need in the world and, you know, about five minutes into you and I chatting. And I was like, you're the guy to talk about what, how we can create this beautiful space for men as well. So I just thank you. How do people find you? Well, thank you for having me. It's such an honor. And for the listeners, the watchers,

thanks for trading your time to listen to me. I don't take that for granted. You can find me at create the love.com is where all my relationship, courses are. I have a podcast called the Mark Groves podcast. And I also have a substack. That's just substack.markroft.com where I just write about my my musings. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you. Keep spreading love in the world. And we're just so grateful that you came and had this conversation. And as always, let us know how we can support the work you're doing. I feel like those of us that are really working to create a deeper human, we just need to, we need to rally around each other.

So I appreciate your part in changing human consciousness. So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and,

let me know what your biggest takeaway is.