What is going on everybody? It's Sathiya Sam here welcome to unleash them in within. Man oh man two, we have a treat for you today. It's possible you have heard of the book No more Mr. Nice Guy that was written by a man named Dr. Robert Glover. And he is our featured guest of today. This guy is a probably the best selling author that we've had. This guy has sold a lot of books. And he actually alluded to in the interview that the royalty checks get bigger and bigger every year. Which means even though it was written 20 years ago, the message continues to spread and reach more people and change more lives. And so I brought him on really, because I think that nice guy syndrome drives a lot of addicts, especially people who struggle with porn addiction and sexual misbehavior. And we actually get into why that is a thing. Why is it that you know, nice guys and people pleasers and that sort of thing. Why do they fall into this more debilitating, secretive sexual misbehavior? We talked a little bit about just the qualities of a nice guy. He talked about the three covert contracts that every nice guy makes and lives by. And then we talked about the recovery process at the end. And he gives some really good advice. And I asked him one of my favorite questions, which is like, hey, it's one thing for us to like, identify our dysfunction and heal from it. But then how do we actually make sure that we don't repeat this in our kids, you know, in the future generations? And he had a really insightful answer to that. So this was a very robust interview, I could have I actually had another appointment, I was so bummed because he was good to talk for like another 30 minutes, but, but we kind of cut it off probably around the hour mark. And, and I know that you're gonna get so much value from this. Let me really quickly read his bio just so you have an idea of who it is you're about to listen to. And then we'll jump in. Dr. Robert Glover, coach, speaker and educator is a relationship expert with over 40 years of professional experience, the author of the groundbreaking no more Mr. Nice Guy, the best selling dating essentials for men, and the recently released dating essentials for men frequently asked questions. Dr. Glover has helped 1000s of men worldwide, get what they want in love, sex, and life. Here's my interview with the legendary Robert Glover. So here's the million dollar question. How are men like us who work hard, have good motives and a God given purpose supposed to fulfill the calling on our lives and the dreams in our hearts? All while establishing sexual integrity, thriving relationships and a meaningful connection with God? That is the question. And this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Sathiya Sam, welcome to unleash the man with them.
Well, I'm here with Dr. Robert Glover. What an absolute privilege author of no more Mr. Nice Guy. Thanks so much for carving out some time to be with us today.
Thanks for the invitation. I'm looking forward to talking to your audience.
Yeah, so you have a message that I think a lot of my audience, myself included, could resonate with this challenge to say no challenge to stand up for ourselves to hold our boundaries, our values, whatever else it might be. I want to get into all of that. But I have to imagine, Robert, that for you to kind of venture out into this territory in the first place, you must have had an experience yourself. Do you just tell us a little bit about your personal element and how that ties into the work you do today?
Well, you and I chatted just for a moment before we went live. And so yeah, just a little bit about me. I grew up basically being trained to be a nice guy. My mother, you know, trained me and my brothers even told us to be different than our father who was kind of the selfish, self centered, you know, angry, man. And so that was part of my training to be different from him. I grew up in the in, in the 60s and 70s with kind of radical feminism that basically, you know, that preceded the whole toxic masculine movement, basically, you know, it began that all men are bad, you know, men are the cause of all problems in the world. So I want to be different than all those bad men. Yeah, I also grew up in a fundamental Christian church, and kind of the message was, you know, you know, turn the other cheek be nice, you know, and, you know, be a be a passively pleasing man, even though that's really not the message of Jesus. But you know, at that that's kind of the takeaway, you know, be that really good guy, which led to me like hiding a lot of things about myself and my flaws, my mistakes, my sexuality, my needs, my wants. So all this was kind of the perfect storm to create, you know, this passively pleasing man that you know, thought that that's how the world should work. I couldn't understand why more people were trying to be nice and generous and caring and conflict avoidant, and I thought all of that should just work just fine till a couple years into myself. Good marriage, and, and I got real frustrated in my relationship. I've tried to be a nice guy trying to treat my wife. Well, she never, she always seemed angry all the time, it was never good enough, she never wanted to have sex. And I got involved in an inappropriate sexual relationship. And, and you know, then I ended it because it didn't feel right. But about a year later, the person I was involved with told my wife about it, and she wasn't happy. And she said, you know, you're a sex addict, you gotta go get help. And I thought, well, I thought, you're the one that needs help. You're the one who's angry all the time and never happy. And it's never good enough, and you never want to have sex. Okay, I didn't want my marriage to end. So I actually got into counseling and went to a 12 step group for sex addicts. to basically find out why me being a nice guy didn't make my wife, you know, more appreciative and responsive, and quit. Luckily, I landed into some good places, and one images, a 12 step group for sex addiction, I quickly learned I was not a sex addict, I had acted out inappropriately, but I wasn't habitually addicted to those behaviors. But what was beautiful about going to the sex addicts group was for the first time in my life, I just began to open up and reveal all the things about me. And I'd always kind of kept hidden and kept secret because you can't really but you see that those things about you. And it felt liberating to just begin to reveal me. And then I got it with a therapist around that time, and not long later joined a men's therapy group around sexual shame. And that began the process of that, that led to what I'll call my nice guy recovery. And I was as a therapist, and started working with couples and a lot of men were coming in with their wives or girlfriends, or sometimes singles saying, I'm a nice guy. I'm one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. How come my wife's never happy, it's never good enough. I give and I never get she never wants to have sex anymore. I don't, I can finish their sentences for them. And then there was the single nice guys and say, I'm a nice guy, women, I'll tell me I'm a nice guy. They all say Oh, some lucky woman. Well, you know, it'd be so lucky to have me someday, but they don't want to be my girlfriend. And so I started a no more Mr. Nice Guy, men's group we met every other week. And I just started writing just things I was learning about my own personal recovery. Were this nice guy syndrome came from how it got reinforced family culturally, religion, and and how to start breaking free from that by being more conscious by opening up to safe people by being honest, by being transparent by connecting with men by making our needs a priority, but having boundaries, things I was learning in my own recovery. And people kept saying, Robert, you should write a book, you should go on Oprah, this could be a best seller. So over a period of about six, seven years, I just kept writing and then editing. And finally it turned into the book No more Mr. Nice Guy, which then took about three more years to get published. Just because publishing companies editors kept saying, Robert, we like your book, but our marketing department says men will buy a self help book. Well, it finally got published 20 years ago, this month, in print, and, and the royalty checks keep getting bigger. Every man men by self help books, yeah, men by self help books, especially on Amazon well by myself. So that's, that's so you know, for almost 25 years, and in probably 25 or more years, I've been working almost exclusively with men, and doing workshops and online courses and coaching and speaking I was just in London two weeks ago to speak at a men's conference there. So that's, that's become my, my passion. And my mission is, is working with men to help men, you know, be their best selves and live their best lives.
Yeah, that's, that's phenomenal. And the work you do is really well, it's needed now just as much as it was needed 20 years ago when it came out, and more. So more. So yeah. 100%. So I want to get into all of it. But I can't help but think there's maybe a couple of people who are like, Oh, I don't I'm not a nice guy, you know, that's not me, and maybe are either resisting that identification, or maybe they're not sure that they actually identify with it. Can you can you just give us the prototypical nice guy or at least mentioned some of the characters and qualities of that person?
Yeah, and that's a good question. And not probably not every guy listening to this is a nice guy. But But I my guess is most guys that are making an effort to be involved in self improvement. might have some of those tendencies. Yes. Because we want to be good guys. Right? So and that's what I kept telling the publishers back in the day. Men want to be good men, though. They'll buy a book to tell them how to do that. So it very briefly, I believe the nice guy syndrome as I define it, I think it's partly a result of just natural temperament. You know, I'm pretty easygoing guy I'm not I'm not regressive, I don't like conflict and people are arguing nearby or I makes me anxious. And so part of it is natural temperament of this, you know, being maybe a little bit more passive, not as aggressive conflict, avoidant, pleasing us, you know, we're all born with a temperament that, you know, then develops through our life experiences. Now, I also believe, for most men, part of the nice guy syndrome is what I will call an inaccurately internalized view of self and the world based on our early life experiences in childhood. So if you know every child has painful experiences, because we're poor children, we're little We're helpless, we're vulnerable, we're immature. And these things feel really overwhelming to us. And when every child experiences some kind of pain or discomfort, they instinctively do two things at an emotional level, not a thinking level, because we're not online yet with our prefrontal cortex. But in a very primitive part of our survival brain, we start internalizing, there must be something wrong with me that I caused this. And if I, if I caused this, I must be able to be different or fix it. And so what happens for nice guys at a very primitive emotional level, we start trying to become what we think other people want us to be, so that we get their approval, and we get our needs met, and we get loved and liked and have connection. And again, this is all I'm simplifying it in terms we can understand as adults, is really much more of just an emotional internalizing into our emotional system. The second thing that nice guys tend to do at a very young age, I mean, we're talking three weeks old, three months old, three years old. The second thing is also then start trying to hide anything about ourselves, that would cause a negative reaction in anybody. And in my experience working with nice guys, in my own work, I've come to see that the two primary things that nice guys hide are their needs and wants, and their sexuality, because we think people will respond negatively to me, I think needs or wants. And most nice guys do try to be neat. And so modelers, we operate with something that I call covert contracts. And a lot of a lot of people read the book say that this part really was a profound aha for them. And it was for me my own recovery. So the three covert contracts that nice guys tend to operate by so you know, your listeners can kind of check out, see if any of these apply. Okay? Over Contract Number one is that if I'm a good guy, I will be liked and loved, and the people I desire will desire me. And then this is kind of a common meme right now kind of in social media is is the quote, nice guys, that you know, befriend a girl, listen to her talk, help her solve her problems, treat her differently, I call that nice guy seduction. But it's a covert contract, if I'm different than the other men, if I help you out, if I listen, if I'm good guy, then you'll like me, and you'll want to be my girlfriend. And then then when the women all of a sudden, go, Wait a minute, I didn't know you had that agenda, I thought you were just being a nice guy, you know, I thought you actually just cared about listening to me talk about my problems, you know, and, and then and then the guys get resentful, and bitter. And then you know, you can read a lot of blogs and, you know, articles on the internet, where women are talking about this nice guy pattern of the guy treating you nice and then turning and being, you know, jerk to you. And, and that's, that's, that's a covert contract, I treated you well, you didn't respond by wanting to be my girlfriend. And then that leads to resentment and often a lashing out, which is not very nice. So nice, guys, I'd begin to book with that. That nice guys is a misnomer. We're really not that nice. Okay, second covert contract. If I meet your needs without you having to ask, then you will meet my needs without me having to ask. So if I read your mind and do everything for you, you'll read my mind and do everything for me. Now, of course, you don't know we have that contract. You don't know that. That's why I'm being nice to you and meeting your needs. And you don't know that you're expected to meet mine. So I'm not going to tell you what my needs are. Because I want you to read my mind and just know them. And because I'm afraid if I tell you what my needs are, you'll reject me, or you're shaming me or you'll leave. Right.
And, and so I was just gonna say I suppose your typical nice guy would especially because you're saying this can develop at a very, very young age, like early development emotionally. It's very early, emotionally. Yeah. And so I imagine that you become very attuned to the needs of other people as a result, because that's how you're getting your affirmation and everything else. So nice, nice guys can actually do they can hold up their end of the contract very well in the sense of meeting the needs without the request, and then naturally, they expect it in return.
Yeah. And just to expand on that point, because that's a good point is that we do we become very attuned to these things at an early age. And one of the reasons is this kind of going a little bit deeper. It's kind of get down down to the core stuff. Is that If you're an infant, and again, this is all pre verbal pre analytical thought, because the prefrontal cortex doesn't start coming online in children until year and a half or so when they can start verbalizing and they start differentiating between himself and other, it doesn't finish developing and mental Ram 25 years old. That's why our car insurance goes down if we quit doing such stupid stuff. And so we've been racing our cars and wrecking them, so that it's purely because the prefrontal cortex, the decision making part of the brain doesn't get fully developed till we're in our early 20s. Okay, so that means just the amygdala, which is the fight fight freeze, part of our brain, the part that regulates unconscious, survival, heartbeat, heartbeat, regulation, breath, all of that ran by a little part of our brain about the size of our little fingernail on the stem of the brain that's fully online when a child is born. And the theory is, is that it stores up emotional memory, that then becomes part of the DOS, the machine language of the mind that all the apps, you know, run on top of that is wired into every part of the brain. It's hardwired into all of our senses as well. And so that part of the brain internalizes this emotional belief that we don't think out. And we don't even have picture memory for it, because we don't start storing picture memory till later, four or five years old, typically. Right. So what happens if you're a helpless little child, and you begin to experience inconsistency from your parents in terms of them being attentive to your needs and your wants? That's frightening, it's overwhelming, it feels like death to a child. And so often children will become needless and whitelists are highly attuned to meeting the needs of others. And they're not thinking this out. But it but if we, if we could put words to it be something like, Oh, my, my mom is stressed, my dad is angry, my parents are fighting, you know, my mom, they're depressed, or they're, they're distracted with my siblings, or, you know, we don't think it. But okay, if either become needless and want less, then there'll be okay. And there'll be more likely to be able to take care of me. Or if I take care of them, then they'll be okay. And they can take care of me still. And if then, you know, giving to get, but it's very primitive and very, very primal. But at that, once that gets wired into our emotional operating system, that's how we go about creating every adult relationship. And they all tend to take on this codependent, I call borrowed, functioning flair. If I take care of you, you'll take care of me because I don't have to have an identity without you and how you view me must be how I am. And if you aren't meeting my needs, I don't know that I can get my needs met. So it plays out in in a lot of really unconscious manifestations.
And I suppose neglect, neglect is kind of like the extreme version of this. But there could be like the, the less obvious version of this where it's like, maybe the child does express their needs, and they, they get met with a negative response from the parents or something like that as well. And the message that the child obtains from that is still more or less the same. Like be be nicer, be kinder, don't ruffle the feathers, it all
gets internalized on bad. It's called toxic shame. Now, here's the thing, and I'll get back to covert contract number three in a moment. But every child internalizes toxic shame because every child has less than perfect experience in childhood doesn't mean our parents are bad. Some parents are pretty crappy. But sir, hey, you know, and I'm not trying to be mean, I mean, some some are just addicted, depressed, abusive, I mean, and even just neglect, I mean, a parent, a child's needs are so constant. That, you know, for example, my mother, my mother, married at 17 had my sister about two years later, and 19 had me a year and a half later, you know, and then and then add my sister two years later. So that meant by time my mom was like, all 23 years old, she had three babies, you know, two of us probably still in diapers. I mean, she had to be stressed by that, right? And so that that meant she just the very nature of that meant that she could not be a perfect parent and meet my need in a completely timely, consistent way. I mean, it's just reality. And that's a reality. But a child will always internalize their the cause of that. Now, there's many ways of coping with it, a child might become needles and warrantless. They might just stick a thumb in their mouth like I did and suck their thumb. They they might cry a lot they they make it and then when we develop, develop, develop into adults, it can take lots of different forms. We might become you know, oppositional defiant, we might become addictive, we might become rebellious, we might become passive, we might become pleasing we might become perfectionistic. All of those are just an attempt to try to be okay. Right to try to get our basic needs met of connection and love and to be fed and held. And so all of this is all going on at a really, really early age in life, but it affects our developing brain into adolescence where it tends to get really solidified into our identity. And then we carry that into adulthood. And that's kind of how we that's how we are in the world is where we just don't even question it. Right? You know, this is how I need to, you know, we don't know we have these, for example, these three covert contracts. But for nice, guys, nice girls. It's the only way we know that to interact with the world. And we think it should work. Every child believes their internal paradigm, their roadmap should work. Now, unfortunately, the paradigm was formed when we were six months old. And now we're still thinking it should work when we're 26 or 36, or 66. And then when it doesn't, most of us, especially nice guys, just double down and try harder, trying to do what works. And then when it doesn't, that's when kind of that's when the dark stuff comes out. That's where we start going underground hiding stuff lying. You know, it just you know, that's where that's when the messy stuff shows up for us as adults is when our paradigm doesn't work. Now, we don't know it doesn't work. You know, Einstein said that the thinking that got you into the problem you're in is not going to resolve the problem that you're in, you know, we have to have a shift in paradigm. And that's, I think that's the work that you and I and you know, a lot of coaches and therapists and ministers and others bring is how can we shift the paradigm. That's what Jesus was about. He was shifting a paradigm a paradigm based on law, you know, you get God's approval by obedience to law. Jesus came and said, Now God loves you. You can't you can't be good enough to get God's approval. You He is love, you are loved. You are loved, you know, you know, except the love of God, that's what I bring to you. And that was a changing paradigm. And he got nailed to a cross for changing the paradigm. People weren't ready for a paradigm change. Yeah. So so that paradigm changes are difficult. So I'm going all over the map. Quickly. Third covert contract. Yes. And that is if I do everything right, then I will have a smooth problem free life. But again, you know, every every you know, the Talmud, the New Testament, the Old Testament, every every you know, book of religion is basically said, nobody does it, right. Nobody gets it. All right. But the nice guy really answers Peter panish belief if I'm good I if I can be good enough inherently and do everything right. And please, everybody, never, but nobody's mad at me, then I'll have a smooth problem, free life, nothing will ever go wrong. No, nobody will ever get mad at me. You know, I'll get everything I want. And, and that's what leads again to a lot of that resentment, and passive aggressiveness, and victim pukes that my second wife used to call might be, you know what, I would be nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. And then she wouldn't give me what I want. Or she would tell me, you know, she'd be unappreciative of me. You know, I think cleaning the kitchen. And she goes, How come you didn't wipe the counters off? And I'm not done yet. Yeah, instead of saying thank you for loading the dishwasher and doing the dishes. It's like having your comedian do that. And I blow up, and it's my second wife used to tell me, she said, I'd rather be with a jerk with an asshole. At least I know, the asshole is gonna be mean to me all the time. You're nice to me, and everybody thinks you're a nice guy. And then when I'm not expecting it, you're an asshole. Badly. So that's why that's a core problem with the nice guy syndrome, not only do we not get our needs met, we don't get the love we want. And of course, we're not going to have a smooth problem free life because life isn't smooth and problem free. And and so we're living with this nice day, nice guy paradigm. And the bottom line of it is we end up being resentful, again, passive, aggressive, angry, we often then go to hidden, secretive type behaviors. And I know you deal a lot with that. And it's because that's the only way we know how to get our needs met, is this kind of hiding those things? And then you know, begging for forgiveness instead of permission when we get caught. And so that's the way a lot of this nice guy syndrome gets manifested in the men that I work with. And perhaps the men that you see a lot of
very much so yeah, and I mean that this is why I wanted to bring you on because I think you you probably just described the life of I would guess a lot of our listeners if not to a tee, certainly in varying capacities. And that's particular particularly relevant I think, for guys who have sexual issues, because like you said, this leads to hidden behaviors. Can you just comment on that a little bit? Why does this lead to hidden behaviors? Because I think I think it's just be easy to assume, but I would love to hear you explain the connection.
Okay, there's probably a lot of dynamics on right. And I can tell, like, what happened to me and what I've seen in other men. Sure, part of it is, in most systems, when I say systems, I'm talking about families, religion, churches, culture, you know, organizations, most systems are like the Borg. If you're a Star Trek Next Generation fan, or like The Matrix, if you're, you know, major fan, where the individuals in within the system have to go along, to get along, basically, you have to give up a part of you for the well being of that system. And these systems usually have traditions and mores and laws and rules and expectations of the people inside, in order for the people inside to be able to be a part of it and benefit from, you know, the group, you know, care, you know, because we're tribal by nature, so our ancestors survived within tribes, you know, we either we either feasted together, or we, you know, we famine together, you know, we we thrive together, we died, you know, and to do that individually was much harder. And so they're, they're sharing the group resources, where, even if there's not enough for everybody to have a lot, at least, if everybody has some, it increases likelihood of survival. Okay, that tribal nature has evolved into various institutions, it could be, you know, country, it could be culture, it could be religion, it could be governments, it could be communities, it could be family critiques, you know, extended families, like, like, you know, we had up until about 5060 years ago. So within those systems, there's something that it's called Fusion that takes place, fusion is where you do give up part of you to have the benefit of being in the hole. But unfortunately, in most systems that they go on for very long, the parts that people have to give up to be part of the whole the person and that they have to sacrifice don't really go for the mutual benefit of everybody involved, it just really goes to keep the people who are in power in power. Yeah, and the people in power, don't want anything rocking the boat that keeps them in a power stance. And again, this happens in government, it happens in churches, it happens in families, and in families, usually, the person in power is usually the most anxious person, which sounds kind of interesting, because the most anxious person needs to keep this thing managed to manage their own anxiety, whatever that might be. And so, since most children and for example, what what's your cultural background? Well, where did
my parents are both East Indian from India, okay, East India. Alright.
And so I, I've worked with a lot of Indian men, Pakistani men, Asian, Vietnamese, all considered Asia. Sir, India, especially, is a very fused culture, where I talk with Indian men, even men that either grew up in the US or Canada or Europe. But they'll still say, you know, my parents, you know, pick where you know what, what occupation, I'm going to have to be an engineer, an engineer, or a doctor to make your parents happy, and give them bragging rate or bragging rights to with their brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles and all their friends. Oh, you know, little Raj. He's an engineer, he went to MIT or, or, you know, I see she, you know, he's a doctor, and he teaches at Stanford, you know, that's part of that culture, you know, because the British left behind the universities that teach people how to be engineers and doctors. That's what you have to do to make your parents proud. And you have to get really good grades so they can brag about you. And then you have to go to the prestigious institution, work in a prestigious institution. You know, you can't go be an entrepreneur or a life coach, your parents are going, No, you're bringing shame on the family, no matter how well you do. You know, you're not a doctor, you're not an engineer. You have to work for Amazon, you have to teach at Stanford, whatever. So there's all that fusion, right? You can't be you. You can't be a poet. You can't be a singer. You can't be I had one Pakistani client live in the US all his life. And his parents were insisting he go to med school. Well, he was pretending to go to college while the time playing in a rock band. And he was terrified to tell his parents he wasn't actually going to college to be pre med, right? He's he, he was actually afraid his father would kill him lit while he was that afraid? That fusion, right? And then then the Indian men I work with say, and then once I've accomplished all this, and my parents can brag to you know, all my aunts and uncles about, you know how well I'm doing, then they want to retire and I take care of them. And I go, what age do they want to retire and you go and then it's always good to somebody. 45 I had one of my clients came, I saw him in England was there two weeks ago and it was there. It's Robert, can I come to Puerto Vallarta next week? And you know, come do some sessions with you in person. I said, Yeah. He's of Indian heritage. And and he just happened to mention I we didn't go into detail talking about it. He financially takes care of his parents and He's only about 34. Right? So his parents are. So that's fusion and is really, really strong in Asian culture, Western culture, it's still strong, I grew up, you should go to this kind of church, you should politically believe, like, we believe you should, you know, be this don't bring shame on the family, be this be that Mary, you know, I didn't have my wife picked out for me. But you know, it's kind of like, I gotta pass mom's approval. So that's fusion, that's fusion. So what happens when children grow up in this fuse state, where they're required to give up part of them for the well being of the big people who have the power is that there's usually one of two options. Now the healthy option, we get to admit it, it's called differentiation. But because children don't have the power to differentiate, and I'll say more what that is, there's two options for a helpless child. One is hide everything that you do. Now me growing up and like in a fundamental Christian church, you know, the message was was never hide your sin, hide your mistakes, hide your, but that message was there I work I've worked with a lot of Mormons, it's especially strong in the Mormon Church, where the whole culture is everybody hides everything. So nobody's real with each other about what they struggle with. And you know, you've mentioned pornography, somebody to a Mormon told me, I don't know if I don't know how, you know, this is accurate or not, that the state of Utah has a higher percentage of porn use than any other state. Yes, you're nodding your
head, right? Yeah, that's statistically true year over here most most years. Yep.
Okay. So you know, so think about that here is one of the most fundamental of religious groups that teach purity and being good. And all the guys are sneaking off to look at porn, right? All right, that is that hiding of when, when it doesn't, isn't okay to be you, just as you are? flaws and mistakes, insecurities, you know, when you can't be you, you go hide it, right, you go hide, and you go underground with it. Again, that's usually our needs, or wants or sexualities, or opinions. So that's one route that I see the men I work with take, and that's the route I took, just hide everything. That's why when I start going to a 12 step group, and just telling everything, like, Wow, I can't wait to come back, that's good. And then the second thing that a child can do is they they push back, they become oppositional defiant, and kind of for that child and the both are usually determined by temperament, natural temperament of the child. And almost in every family, if you have an oppositional defiant child, you'll have a nice guy child, or and vice versa, right? So the oppositional defiant is, if I give up me to do what you want, I don't exist. So I have to do the opposite of what you want. Which means, you know, if you're, you know, we're religious family, and we're really into religion, you know, sexual purity, you know, I'll go out and have sex, if education is a priority, I'll start getting D's and F's and flunk out of school, if you know, this is, you know, I'll start using drugs and alcohol at 14 years old. And so it is it's a push back against the imposing rules and expectations of the emotional system using family oriented or, and often religion in religious families. So what happens with that person is they spend their their life doing the opposite, basically cutting off their nose to spite their face. So you know, so they start doing drugs and alcohol, being sexual getting into trouble and getting in getting in the, you know, going into the principal's office, getting busted having to go into military to get and then maybe they have some come to Jesus moment, you know, either in the military or they get married or have a child or near death experience. And then all sudden, they realize I can't keep living that way, right? Yeah, maybe I should go back to school to get a degree. My parents were right. I am smart, right? I'm messing my life up by pushing back. But most of those, if they take on the nice guy pattern, they still believe their shames right near the surface, it says it's only a matter of time that people find out, I'm really this, this losing this loser, that's this person that messes everything up. So I call that the I'm so bad, nice guy. They're trying to be a nice guy. But they think that their shame and their badness is right next to the surface, and everybody's gonna find it. I'm what I call it. I'm so good, nice guy. My shame is so pushed down so far that I don't see it. And I think I'm so good. And everybody should like me, and everybody should want to be like me, but they're still driven by shame. In fact, that's the two core pillars of nice guy syndrome, shame and anxiety. And pretty much everything a nice guy does is trying to manage their shame, and manage their anxiety. So bringing it back to your question. For example, we're all sexual beings. You know, we're wired that way. We're created to be sexual beings. You know, I I'll get playful with my religious friends and people I talked to, and I'll say, What was the first commandment that God gave to Adam and he won't help me with that. On the first commandment that God gave to Adam, and it just says Be fruitful and multiply. And that literally means golf a lot. We don't translate it that way. Because we were the religious people get uncomfortable with that there was sex, right? So, but the first commandment God gave to Adam and Eve was co have a lot of sex. Right? And I mean, did you get taught that in
church? Definitely not. Not without translation. No, not without
it. But that's what he said, Be fruitful and multiply, just literally, it's a poetic way of saying, have a lot of sex. Okay, yeah, you kind of go, I never really even thought about that. So but again, it's and then and then I'll tell you guys, okay, go into the go to the Gospels. And you know, a lot of a lot of, you know, Christian men I work with got to have some pretty strong issues around sexuality. And again, I grew up in a fundamental Christian church, I have two degrees in religion. I was a minister for eight years, I get it. But if you go look at what Jesus taught was recorded in the gospels of what Jesus taught. He never condemned anybody for having sex. He never condemned people for being pregnant sex outside of marriage. He never condemned people for having premarital sex. He never condemned homosexuals. Now, if you go to a lot of churches nowadays, that's what you hear preached constantly. But Jesus did not preach that. Now, the one story that's in the gospels that involves sexual infidelity was, you know, a bunch of religious right ringers, you know, brought a woman, there's just a woman, not the man, the woman in the very act of adultery, right? It was a setup. And you know, the the story is, Jesus wrote in the dirt, until everybody got really uncomfortable. He said, the person who's never sinned, you get to throw, because the Old Testament law said she'd be stoned. Right, we're gonna kill her. And he said, the person that has never had committed a sin, you can still relate to the first rock. And then that's when he started writing in the dirt. I don't know what he wrote. But all of a sudden, the people kind of shuffled off. And then she was left all by herself. And and then he asked her, you know, it's adult, you know, where's your husband? He's so well, you know, I can't remember what she said, to get 500. I've had five husbands. And he goes, you're right. And the man you're with now isn't even your husband or something like that. And he just said, you know, if they don't condemn you, I don't either, right? Go Go and sin no more. Now sin just means missing the mark is an archery term, you know, you shoot your arrow at a target. And if it falls short, you don't go to hell for that. You just adjust your aim. You just do a little better next time, right? So he said, Go and do better is what he said, Go and do better. But he didn't condemn her. Right? So most of the sexual messages that is propagated in religion is not it's not necessarily the Word of God or the word of Jesus. Right? So but what happens is most children in in most cultures and with or without religion, grow up with sexual shame. I'm bad for being a sexual being even though it is how we were created. It's how we're made, it's how we're wired is whether you believe in God evolutional how or why we look at it. We are sexual creatures, and that's essential for human survival. Now, we hit adolescence as boys, and we have all these raging hormones, and all of a sudden, we start noticing girls, but at 1314 15 years old, having sexual access to a real life, human being isn't much of an option in most cultures. And so, so what are boys we're going to what they're going to do, their brains are their home, everything's wired, that you know, to fulfill the first commandment, God gave Adam and Eve, they're wired to be fruitful and multiply, but they don't have access, they don't have the options. There's the way culture again is set up 14 year old boys tend not to have sexual access, but it's the height of when they should have sexual access. So what happens when you don't have access to a real live human being, and don't have a culture or family that would even actually support up in a sexual human being or teach you how to be sexual in ways that you are not going to fundamentally hurt you in the long run? Right? And if we just get the message like I got in my church, sex is dirty, evil and sinful. So save it for the one you love, you know, save it for marriage, I'm going What's wrong with that? There's something about that deadline up and then then we're supposed to be able to get married, and now all of a sudden sex isn't to flip the switch. So the real question then is what do we do? And says, For most Nice Guys, we've already been going underground or hiding, you know, waving. We just start hiding our sexuality. Now, in my era, you know, my age. What what that typically meant was if one of your buddies you know, found his father's Playboy magazine, or Hustler magazine under his dad's bed or whatever, You got together some friends and you know, you looked at the pictures and you talked about it and maybe had fantasy and maybe you learned the joys of masturbation. But what I will ask a question in a lot of my workshops and alas guys, think about your first sexual memory, whatever that might be. Maybe it was the first time you remember having a wet dream, the first time you and the next door neighbor girl played, I'll show you mine, you show me yours or maybe even being sexually violated in some way or your first kiss? What's your first sexual memory? And I'll ask them to just think about that for a minute. And then I'll ask them, was it in a positive environment? Did it occur out in the open? Could you go tell your parents about it? Would they say that's fantastic? You've reached another developmental milestone, let's go out and have pizza and celebrate? Or was it hidden? Was it secretive? Was it shame filled? Did you feel bad about yourself? Did you think you're going to hell, I'm doing something wrong. Now what that actually does that shame actually cross wires sexuality and amps it up at a young age. And now it starts seeking some sort of fulfillment. And so you know, if you talk to enough people, boys and girls, adult men and women, when they're boys and girls, their sexuality gets cross wired to being secretive, shame filled. And And again, we're supposed to grow up to be adults, and now sexualities all really okay and in the open, and we can talk openly about it and know so what happens like for me, you know, at my age, I discovered, you know, some dad's Playboy magazine, you saw your first naked woman or two, and you had fantasies about it and started masturbating. My my son and stepson are in their late 30s Now, so they grew up with the internet, and especially grew up with broadband in or just the beginnings of broadband internet when they're like 1450 Yeah, and once we got to computer and broadband internet, they were spending all their time stealing music on Napster and down and watching porn, right? Yeah, it was just so ubiquitous and accessible. Nowadays, everybody has their their mobile phone that has faster cell connection than even the broadband Internet back in the 90s. Hey, Oh, yeah. And and that and that means you know, and you know, this porn drives the internet, something like, I'm probably misquoting, but something like 70% of the bandwidth on the internet is pornography. That's, that's how that's how big of a void in a sense that porn fills for, for so many people around the world. So what's happening is we have this natural urge to be sexual is wired into us. Access often gets, we don't have access to be able to be sexual, the sexual experiences we do have get wrapped in shame. That and guilt and secrecy that that just
puts it on steroids, right? turbocharges the sexual drive it makes it bigger than it just is by itself. And now we have the all these you know, access points over here using the terminal of pornography. But even we men we can pack around our drug in our brain and it's a form of fantasy. Every woman we see we start fantasizing what it looks like what what would it be like to zero naked, have sex with her. And then and then we're driven to masturbation. It I tell the guys I work with Listen, it's called a sex drive. Because it's meant to drive you to a real life human being and put body parts and body parts is not called a sex drive to drive you to your computer or your cell phone or your hand. It's met that fulfillment in connection with another human being. If I called porn, safe sex, you don't have to, you know, get a woman interested in you. You don't have to, you know, convince her. You don't have to have rejection deal with, you know, losing your erection and coming too quickly, her being pointed, you don't have to deal with any of that you can just create this perfect world in your head and fantasy and porn. And you can go to your favorite porn site and over and over and over again, you can find the best of whatever you want. And why would we quit doing that? I mean, it is in there, especially if you're not allowed to be sexual in an open transparent way. This hidden way of doing it takes on such power and it is difficult and challenging. To break that habit. I've worked with so many married men that said oh you know once I get married, I've been looking at porn I've been masturbating I won't need to you know, I'll have a real life person with real life body parts. And the funny thing is, guys always go back to the porn and then they hide it from their partner. And then they feel shame and guilt around their partner and then get their partner finds out their partner feels devastated. Both from the from the lie and the secrecy and the fact that their partner wanted to look at other naked women and maybe isn't even looking at her all that much. And so all of that is such a mess. No, I don't think porn is bad. I don't think it's evil. I just don't think it serves men. Well, just like I don't think sugar serves us very well is built into a natural drive to have carbohydrates in our in our body. But the way it's been processed, doesn't serve as well, or I think the same way. It doesn't serve us. Now, what happens though, is when most men decide they want to try to quit porn, that it actually they're quitting it from a shame based place, I'm bad doing something bad. And so anything where shame is driving the bus is probably not going to be very successful, and trying to change our proceed bad behaviors. Yeah. And that's why it's so hard to let go.
Yeah, well, and that's exactly and that that was my experience, you know, trying to get trying to get free of this stuff. It was a very shame driven. I use the guilt and the condemnation to try to motivate you to behave better.
How'd that work for you?
Yeah, no? Well, at all. So I guess I have to ask that on the other side of this, you know, for the nice guys who are making these covert contracts, they have they have the two pillars in their life the shame? And I'm forgetting what the other one. Yeah. What is a man to do it? To break out of this and to actually change things in his life? What did you do to turning the tables?
Here's what I did. It's a process, but I find it it seems to be a pretty systemic process that helps men number one, I went and got help. I say this, uh, no more Mr. Nice Guy, do not try to work on your nice guy issues alone. Don't try to work on porn issues alone. You go get safe people into your life to help you with this. Now, excuse me, as I said, I got lucky, I stumbled into some safe environments where I just started revealing me. So that's a beginning place. Yes, if shame and anxiety are the core drivers of nice guy syndrome, perhaps a porn use of a lot of addictive behaviors, I believe. If we can start bringing that shame, the anxiety out into the open and share it with safe people. It begins to relieve both the inner shame where we think I'm bad, I'm evil. And we begin to get more accurate feedback from people that say, No, that doesn't make you a bad person. You know, that maybe doesn't serve you but it's actually pretty common. You're pretty normal. Really, this is normal. I'm not the only person that sneaks away and looks at porn know, pretty much everybody does, you know. So, to normalize it to not that I'm not bad is such a big piece of removing the shame from any process anything begins to let you kind of get back to the you know, the, the, the, the the factory settings of who how you are wired to be as a male as a human being. Okay, yeah. So find sake people and begin revealing yourself, begin finding out that other people are just like you, you're not alone, you're not terminally unique if you're not messed up in some fundamental way. Yeah, release the shame, getting the you know, the feedback that you know, you're okay. That's number one. I then also started working on being honest, where I, you know, all the things that I kept inside and hid, I started telling the truth to whoever needed to know the truth. And that time, I was married to my second wife. So whenever I caught myself in my head spinning up a story of what I was going to tell her because I didn't want her to be mad at me about something, I made a commitment to her. I said, I'm going to want to catch that, I'm going to come to you, I'm going to tell you, Hey, I was gonna lie to you. Here's the lie, I was going to tell you, here's, here's the truth. And I came to find out oh, this isn't actually that bad. People don't actually respond terribly to the truth. I'll tell story in a minute about that. I'll tell the story. Um, I this is pretty early on. When I was in the 12 step group, I was going to I attended it for maybe about six months or so I started working with a therapist. And, and about this time, I remember having this kind of dark sexual impulse. And I didn't act on it, but it scared me to even have that dark sexual impulse. I didn't even know I was capable of thinking, you know about that. And I didn't do it, but I thought it kind of scares me. So I went to my 12 Step group a couple days later, and I told them, You know, I had I had this impulse didn't act on it, but you know, I had the thought, and they always go, thank you for sharing Robert. Nobody says you're an evil human being. Could you and then that I had an appointment with my therapist already set up. So I left that meeting and drove to my therapists office. And I told her, I said, I had this this impulse and she just kind of looked at me with kind compassionate says, well, let's explore that and see what it means. Okay, that wasn't so bad. And then I'm driving home. And I used to tell my ex wife that her middle name ought to be overreact because that's what she did to anything and everything it was, it was like That's why I didn't tell her a lot of things. I didn't want the overreaction. And I thought, Okay, I'm a baseball fan. So I'm batting 1002. For two, I've told two different, you know, entities this secret, you know, nobody's gone, you know, south on me, nobody's reacted. I'll go tell my wife and even if she has reaction, I'm still batting 666. So I got home. And I said, I need to talk to you went back to the bedroom sat down, I said, I was need to tell you, I've already told my 12 Step group this or he told my therapist this. And I just want to tell you, the other day, I had this thought this this sexual impulse and I said I didn't act on it, but it kind of scared me. And so I told them and I just I want to tell you, and she looked at me she said that doesn't surprise me. And I'm glad you told me she'd never mentioned it again.
343343 and
I'm gone hey this tell him this bringing things out into the open thing isn't so bad. So So you but you have to release shame to do that you have to do it safe people and work at being honest. Another piece of this as I started working at connecting with men I joined a men's group called Step group by them Zalmen I realized as I started working with guys that identify as nice guys, most are more comfortable around women were were approval seekers, if we get a woman to approve of us think we're good guy like as tellers. I used to think of a woman wanted to tell me your problems. I was special, until I realized oh, women will talk about their problems. Daddy, buddy, you the checkout stand person, their cat, it doesn't matter. They're not special. But I thought I was special. Because my mom told me her problems. I'm special, right? So I started connecting with men. And I'm still in that process. I've been doing my own work for over 30 years. And it started in men's groups. I'm still in a men's program a bit. I'm just started the fifth year of it. And I still work exclusively with men. So something about connecting with men, I think men, our relationship with men, we can be more honest with men, there's no sexual agenda with men. So we're not trying to do what I call maintaining the possibility of availability like we do with the woman. And so we just can be real with men. And I actually I, I teach that I think the masculine masculine is masculine and feminine energies in all of us. And without going too far. I believe the masculine is a source of love, we usually think of the feminine about as being about love. But the feminine is a seeker of love. The feminine seeks to be filled with love. It's an empty bucket with a hole in the bottom in us and women that wants to take in love. The masculine is action. And if you're like Scott pecks who wrote the road less traveled, his definition of love, is intention and action. Those were what I define as masculine traits. So I feel loved to death by the men that I'm with. And I love my wife dearly. She loves me dearly. But it's like, you know, it feels like her love for me fluctuates from moment to moment, you know, throughout the day, this morning, when she first got up and came outside and I was writing in my journal, she looked kind of all crabby and like, she was upset at me. And we talked about taking the dog for a walk, and I'm gonna water the plants. And she's okay, I think she still loves me, but she isn't acting real loving. And then we go for a walk and walk and she kind of starts warming up and being more affectionate and being you know, just more kind of playful with me. And I go, Oh, now it feels like she loves me. I don't experience that with my girlfriend's only experienced that with with feminine creatures, excuse me.
Right. And that makes sense. Because, guys, they're just, they're just there.
Were there. And then again, is intention and action. That's what love is. Now we have a feminine side that has one as another really piece of our own recovery at teach men, our husband, our own feminine, we have an empty bucket inside of us that seeks to be filled and it runs out the bottom as quickly as it comes in. If we go looking to other big empty buckets with big holes in the bottom, to fill our bucket up, they're just they're gonna go like that, wait a minute why buck is empty. But I tell you guys, if we can husband, our own feminine, take really good care of ourselves, take good care of our needs, connect with men, nurture ourselves, get enough sleep, move, eat well live with purpose and passion, meditate, whatever, we can fill in our own bucket that's going to overflow and be attractive to a feminine creature. Okay. So again, this kind of got going off on different tangents so so connecting with men is a big part of that. Learning to set boundaries. I remember I started working with one therapist and the very first session I had with her she put a string on the ground and started talking to me about boundaries. Now I was in my 30s my second marriage, I already had a PhD in marriage and family therapy. I've never heard of boundaries. So boundaries are your ability to say yes, no, I'm going to I'm not going to you. We get to decide Who comes into our space, what they can do in there, how long they stay, when it's time to go, you know what we're willing to have to give up ourselves and what we're not. That's all boundaries. And children aren't taught boundaries we're taught the big people can do to the little people, whatever they want. We're not told that timeout, you know, I know you're angry. But you know, once you go cool off a little bit, and then we'll tell you, we can't do that. So I learned to set boundaries. And then maybe, maybe all these are important, but the other piece was throw out, is learning to make my needs a priority, asked for what I want, surround myself with people who want to help me get my needs met, and practice being a good receiver for the people because nice guys are often terrible receivers. Yes. Because we have guilt and shame. Now my experience is if a man is doing those things, got safe people in his life, he can open up and reveal to reveal his shame, anxiety, and all of that learn to soothe yourself, learn to breathe, and like when my wife seemed crabby this morning, you know, part of me wants to jump in what's wrong, everything, okay? I just breathe and soothe myself. And she'll tell me if she wants to tell me she'll, you know, whatever. Maybe she slept better, I don't know. But my anxiety was I gotta fix it. Right, soothe ourselves learning to be honest, be transparent, have boundaries connect with men meet her needs of priority. All of those I've found begin to squeeze out any any, anything that would make having these little secretive hidden behaviors at all interesting. They, you know, I'm grateful. I've never been hooked on porn. And but again, I've worked with plenty of people that are and I can understand why you hooked on. But what my other bad behaviors I've worked on, I find if I fill my life up with enough goodness, those other behaviors, usually they're secretive, they're hidden, they begin to diminish, and we're doing something in secret acts and starts feeling bad to you. Yeah. And so you go, I don't like this. I don't think I don't want to do this anymore. It's not as it's not shame. It's just paying attention that if you eat enough sugar is gonna feel bad. You know, we don't need to be shut up shame about it. We just need to pay attention to it feels bad. Maybe I shouldn't eat so much sugar.
Yeah, well, one of the things we see in our communities that are satisfied heart rarely wonders. So I agree with what you're saying. Like, I think if you're finding if you're finding the right ways to get these needs met, if you have healthy alternatives. Yeah, your appetite for some of these more toxic things actually starts to just diminish.
I agree. And I'll throw into that. But But here's what most men come away with, oh, I have to get my mother woman in my life, or I have to get a woman in my life to have that happen. Or I have to get the woman in my life to consistently Love Me desire me want to have sex with me, then I will do those things. And I'll keep saying, if we if we factor in that a woman has to be in the equation for any of this husband in our own feminine filling our own bucket. That's actually a quick, slippery slope back into those hidden behaviors. Because the women in our life are never going to show up and love us like we want to be loved, be sexual, like we want them to be sexual. And which is kind of curious because a lot of times the men I work with have loving sexual lives. And they actually don't let their wives be loving and sexual to them. Because they're not very good receivers. Yeah, that's what they do after practice receiving and again, that often is a good way to practice beginning with Matt letting men get to you. So yeah, so the more you have a satisfied heart, the more your your bucket is filled, the more you're just taking good care of yourself, the less you have these impulses to go do these things, you know, whether it's eating the carbs, or or you know, looking at the porn or binge watching Netflix or surfing for hours on the internet for cameras, you're not going to buy, they're all the same thing. They're all just kind of, you know, they're they're all junk food satisfaction, they don't really satisfy.
Yes, I totally agree. So you've been so generous with your time and I just wanted to ask one last question, if that's okay, do you still have time for another question?
Yeah, we're, it's time to quit.
Okay, perfect. Perfect. Good. So my question to you is, you're also talking to father so I'm sure you're talking to people who resonate with the nice guy message. And we obviously like we can draw the connection, like my audience is very, most familiar with how much childhood and early experiences kind of flavor and formulate some of our experiences as an adult. And one of the questions I'd love to add someone like yourself, who just has such a great expertise, and a knowledge about the subject is what so in addition to just recovering from nice guy syndrome, these five things, I was taking notes, we'll make sure that we put them in the show notes and everything like that. What can what can a guy do when he becomes a parent, to raise his own kids and make sure that they don't become nice guys? What role can they play in changing things generationally?
Okay, that's a good question. And It can also be kind of a faulty question in that all of a sudden, it becomes this attachment to outcome, which always leads to suffering. And okay, I gotta be good enough parent that, you know, my, my child, my son, you know, whatever doesn't ever become a nice guy. My doctorates in marriage and family therapy. So I did you know, a lot of couples therapy, but I used to do quite a bit of family therapy as well. And you know, I'll be blunt, I used to tell parents, you're gonna pick your kids up, you're gonna mess your kids up. I mean, we're imperfect. And our children, even if we were perfect parents, they're gonna go out into an imperfect world and get messed up. Yeah, and you know, going back just even a few 100, especially a few 1000 years ago, children were raised by either a very large, extended family, or a tribe, not by one parent, not a single mom, or even not two working parents who are exhausted and no time or energy. They were raised by a tribe. No one parent can ever sufficiently give a child everything that child needs to be a fully functioning adult, it just can't happen. That means is I mean, I worked through my own dad issues before he passed away. And he was a very flawed human being. But when he passed away I was I was totally at peace with who he was as a human. And I realized he was imperfect. I'm a dad, I've raised one biological son, he's 37 have a 16 year old granddaughter, I've raised four stepchildren, I'm raising two kids now. My stepdaughter should team i steps on is 17. I've been in their lives for about seven years or so. So since they were, you know, pretty young, and I, raising my son, I could have been a much better father. He's an amazing dad to my granddaughter. But But I think what I learned the most, is, you know, let your kids be who they are, love them for how they are, don't try to get them to be something that they're not either because, you know, we want them my dad wanted me to be a sports star. My mother wanted me be different than my father, you know. So I those are the messages. You know, growing up in fundamental church, I got to be like this differentiation, and we didn't get to talk about that. But differentiation is the ability to ask yourself, what do I want? What feels right to me? Well, what what's in my heart, and then to be able to follow through on that, even if you have changed back messages from outside of you, in the form of neurotic guilt, or, or threat or whatever, and the anxiety between your ears and say, I'm gonna get in trouble or this might be wrong. Yeah, the only true morality comes from the ability to ask yourself what feels right to me. Because if we're borrowing somebody else's morality, this is SSN. That's right. That's wrong. And that's, that's not coming from our heart from who but what we believe to be true. That's a false morality. Now, people say, Well, that makes for a subjective morality. But I think it's better than a false morality. That if we asked if we bothered, ask yourself what feels right. Does me You know, I get away looking at pornography feel right to me, I don't know that it's immoral. But if it doesn't feel right to me, I should probably stop doing it. Yeah. Right. So but most of us are not encouraged to ever ask ourselves, what feels right. What's my truth, and then we're not supported. So what if, as parents, we paid enough attention to our kids, and again, Scott Peck in the road, Less Traveled has just a great session on parenting that I really love. And he says that parents pay attention to their children in timely, judicious and I had consistent ways to that. Children internalize, I'm lovable. My knees are important. And I can count on the world to be just like my family, and that I feel lovable and my needs get met. Now, when parents aren't consistent, aren't judicious don't meet the needs of time, the ways that children's internalize a different, I must not be that lovable. My needs not must not be that important. The world is going to be like my family. And if kids have to take care of their parents needs, a child will internalize a fourth core belief. I'm not good enough. No child is good enough to take care of their parents needs, right? Most adults have a hard time taking care of your own needs. So if my my now I'll call it my third round of parenting, raising my son and stepson. It's kind of a unique situation in that they don't speak English. I live in Mexico. My wife's Mexican. And she doesn't speak a lot of English either. You know, I said, I just had a client visiting, you know, this last week, and I love bringing people into my home, where my kids and my wife get introduced to people from different walks of life and speak English to them. And so they realize, Oh, if I want to have this big life in a big world, I have to learn English. And there's, you know, I could be a trader, I could be a pilot, I could be an attorney. I could be this you know, and so, so anyway, I get to watch my family talk a little bit of English, you know, to my client who was here visiting with us And so, but because Spanish is not my first language and I've learned it in my 50s and 60s to, to be in relationship, my wife, I can't have long, deep conversations with my kids, right? It's just not, it's not the cards. So I had to ask myself, what can I bet? What can I most do? And really, I just came away with almost because they're the same age as my granddaughter, I mean, stepdaughter, 15, granddaughter 16 steps on. I thought I will, I will treat them like I treat my granddaughter, and my granddaughter. I just love her to death. I just give her so much love. Yeah, I message her. I tell her how great she is a hugger. You know, I just I just I just love her. Yeah, so that's mainly what I do with my two step kids. And you know, mom kind of gives the orders the directions yells at them schools and this and that. They like getting disciplined by me. I don't yell at them. I just say, All right, we're not going to do it that way. Understood. Okay. All right. We're done with it. Yes, they like that. My stepkids always liked the way I discipline, but I just love them to death. And so what I would say, if you can just think in terms of how does my child receive love even what is their love language? Is it me spending time with them? Is it my praise is giving to them? You know, what, what is it affection? What is their love language, you know, in Seoul flight with one child, you may go spend time with them and do things and take them out and do the things. I always took my sons around when I went camping with men or to baseball games. I bring my boys so they get to go be around that. If they're leveling for like my stepdaughter, her her love language is affection and words of praise. Every time I see her coming, I hug her and give me a kiss you I tell her how beautiful she is. All in Spanish, of course. So I love I just love on her. And both of the children. You know, they all have their own strengths, their own weaknesses, their own personalities. But both are flourishing, I believe, because I've just, I just showered them with love. Yeah. And yeah, I don't have to I don't have to do a lot more than that. I can do a lot more than that. I treat them well, and just love them to death.
That's beautiful, man. Beautiful. Man. I I feel like I had another 15 questions for you here to get you in for another round at some point because do it? Well, yeah, we hit on a lot of concepts. But this has been so rich. I know that, that this was a message my audience needed to hear. So thank you, thanks for just telling it so directly. And if people do want to, obviously the book is no more Mr. Nice guide. But if people want to find out a little bit more, or get a bit more plugged into what you're up to Robert, what's the best way for them to do that?
Yeah, just go to Dr. glover.com, to Dr. G L O V E r.com. It's got my books, there's got podcasts that I've recorded, it's got my, my online, my on demand video courses. It's got workshops that I lead. And it's got everything that I do. And you know, you and I were talking a little bit for the call. And you know, I mentioned that I'm in the process of building a large I hope it to be the world's largest online community of conscious men, every subscription community, where men get access to all the all the content I've ever created, to community calls to curated journeys of mastering integration, to coaching to community that is, you know, it's going to be big. And so I'm working with several of my coaches to get this built. We hope to launch this in February 2023. When we're talking, we're shooting for June of 2023. We're going to call it integration nation. Because in no more Mr. Nice Guy talking about being an integrated, man. Yes. So we hope in the next couple of weeks to have a landing page up for it just a single page where people can, you know, sign up to start getting information about you know, how it's developing. So if people listening to this want to just go try to see if integration nation.net as.net pulls up, you know, the the landing page, there'll be a couple more weeks yet but Sir, we're gonna we're gonna start letting people know what we're doing and giving men all over the world. And you know, we're so excited because even now with with the open AI, you know, the the chat GBT this out there, we hope to be able to have everything, you know, I've created 1000s of hours of content, and we hope to have it available in every language with new PT and we have a search engine built into it. So it's going to be big, it's going to be big. And you know, it's kind of the It's my legacy is you know what, what I hope to leave behind that I think will make such a difference in the world. So you know if your listeners want to go just go see if the if the landing page is up whenever they listen to this, which is integration nation dotnet
perfect. Yeah, we'll put the link in the show notes and and I'm sorry, it'll be a matter of time before they can click on that and it's active. That's perfect. Dr. Glover, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate this.
Thank you for the invitation. It's been fun. And I look forward to coming back again.
Fantastic. Well, well, I don't know about you. But I learned a lot. I took so many notes. I think that's the most notes I've ever taken for an interview. Really appreciate Dr. Glover and his time. And just everything that he offered us today. This was this was incredibly rich, here's what I want you to do, I want you to pick the one thing, what's the one major takeaway that you can run with from this because this was a dense episode. If you look back at like the actual talk times, I probably spoke for like less than 10 minutes in this interview, maybe even less than five, he was just offering nuggets, and I was just letting him do it. And what I want you guys to do is to pick, pick, like the one thing that you're going to take away from this, and then I would go check out his stuff because his his stuff is so good. And even just on his website, like he like he said, he's been really intentional about building resources, and really trying to try to just make sure that he's leaving a legacy behind. And that's a good thing to hear from somebody who's this expert level, because what it means is that they're going to make all their good stuff as available to you as possible. So I would capitalize on that, to the absolute best of your abilities, links are on the shownotes. And if you heard this, and you're like, Okay, I'm a nice guy. Now I better understand a little bit of my own sexual dysfunction and misbehavior. And maybe you're looking to get some help with that. Well, we set aside time every week to speak with people like you. The link is in the show notes. And you can just book a time straight into my calendar or somebody on our team. And we can see if you want some help. And if we can specifically help you get free pornography addiction and other sexual misbehavior. Our system is very simple. It's very aligned with Dr. Glover's, we want to get to the root of the issue. And we want to really figure out what's causing all this, we help you kind of resolve those roots, and then build back a new life quote, unquote, a new belief system and a new way for just living so that you can go about your life without any of the any of the misbehaviors. And so the link is in the show notes. I'd be happy to speak with you and see if we can help you out. And without further ado, guys, that is everything for today. Much love to all of you. Thanks for listening. And one last thing really quick. If you got some value from this, if you think there's other people who need to listen to it. Please share this. Don't be shy about it. That might be one of the greatest gifts you can give your loved ones is just sharing valuable content. Hey, thanks again for listening. We'll talk soon guys, bye. Hey, everybody, its Theo. Again. Thanks for listening to unleash the man within. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about a free ebook that I wrote for you called The Ultimate Guide to porn recovery. It provides a basic framework for the recovery process, and a few of my top tips completely free of charge. You can get it now at www dot ultimate recovery guide.com. That's www ultimate recovery guide.com. Now if you've been impacted by the podcast, and you want to show some support in less than 60 seconds, there are three ways you can do that. First, you can leave a rating or review on your podcast platform. This lets people like you know that the content here is valuable. Secondly, you can share this episode with someone in your life that might benefit from the content. If you're passionate about helping other people experience freedom and success in their lives. This is one of the easiest ways to do that. And lastly, you can subscribe. I personally only listen to the podcasts that I subscribe to. If you're seeking daily encouragement, guidance and insight in your recovery journey. I highly recommend subscribing to unleash the man within. Thanks for listening. I look forward to connecting with you very very soon.
The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast by Sathiya Sam and his guests are for general information only and should not be considered medical, clinical or any other form of professional advice. Any reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk.
