Speaker 1: This is how men think with Brooks Like and Gavin
Speaker 1: de Gros and I heard radio podcast. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Brooks Like, this is how man think.
Speaker 1: And this man to my left in his nice flannel
Speaker 1: fall sweater, Mr Gavin de Gras, I'm cuddly today. I'm guy.
Speaker 1: But you've got you've got camel pants on, which also
Speaker 1: means I'm awarded. Don't hold me too, because it means
Speaker 1: that he's single. He's got bright red with camel kids.
Speaker 1: Your wife will hinder you from leaving the house with
Speaker 1: flannel shirts and cargo pants and the same. It's true.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're right that that's so true, because um
Speaker 1: my wife when she met me, she goes, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to read your T shirt And so now you look
Speaker 1: at me, Oh, you're wearing a blank one. My T
Speaker 1: shirts are almost blank t shirts. Yeah, that's funny because
Speaker 1: I almost flip flops. My dad does that. So that
Speaker 1: that deep, deep Roman voice you're hearing is a guest
Speaker 1: co host we have too. Yeah, have you want to introduce?
Speaker 1: You want me to introduce? I want you to introduce.
Speaker 1: This is your special So we have Boris Kojoe with
Speaker 1: us in the house to celebrate an actor. Family man.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get more into your story and we have
Speaker 1: Eve Rod Sky in the house with us celebrated. We're
Speaker 1: diving into a dynamite. Are all fighting? Three minutes ago
Speaker 1: before we went on, Literally there was Forest and I
Speaker 1: were fighting so much that he called his wife and
Speaker 1: I took her side. Amy is super fried out about
Speaker 1: this podcast is all about and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear you guys talk about it. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear what she's all about. So, Eve, you have a
Speaker 1: new book. It's called fair Play, and it's a game
Speaker 1: changing solution for when you have too much to do
Speaker 1: and more life to live. And it's out now. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about this book. Your goal with this book
Speaker 1: and you said before it was your gift. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: my goals is to get men to do more in
Speaker 1: the home. Yeah, that's my goal. Um. But actually, so
Speaker 1: I wrote fair Play as a love letter to women,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk about sort of how this started. Started
Speaker 1: with a text my husband sent me where I was
Speaker 1: sobbing on the side of the road. So we'll get
Speaker 1: to that. But but sorry, but I'll just really quick,
Speaker 1: but really with this book, fair Play became my love
Speaker 1: letter to men because I interviewed five men and women
Speaker 1: for this book. Um from that mirror the U. S
Speaker 1: Census in terms of ethnicity and social socio economic status,
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot. I learned a lot for men,
Speaker 1: and I learned that you're being locked out of your
Speaker 1: house is over glue sticks and other things like that.
Speaker 1: So I can't wait to get into it, but I
Speaker 1: will tell you quickly about that fateful text that was
Speaker 1: sent to me seven years ago where I was pulled
Speaker 1: over the side of the road sobbing, and the text
Speaker 1: my husband sent me, Seth, his name is Seth, just
Speaker 1: said I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. And so I'll
Speaker 1: just picture the picture the seat. I have a breast
Speaker 1: pump and a diaper bag on the passenger seat. I
Speaker 1: have buddy returns for a new baby, because you know
Speaker 1: the story policies like two days in the back seat.
Speaker 1: I'm a lawyer. I'm a Harvard Training attorney. I have
Speaker 1: a client contract on my lap with a pen that's
Speaker 1: falling between my legs as I'm trying to mark up
Speaker 1: a client contract in between traffic stops trying to pick
Speaker 1: up my first kid, who was three years old from
Speaker 1: his transition preschool program that in America, because we really
Speaker 1: value working parents last literally like five minutes. And so
Speaker 1: as I'm raising to get in, Yeah, I knew I
Speaker 1: was gonna be late to pick up Zach, but I
Speaker 1: get this. I'm surprised you to get blueberry sex and
Speaker 1: I just no. But you know what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: I was thinking if my marriage was going to and
Speaker 1: it should be over something way more dramatic, like my
Speaker 1: affair with an NFL player, Like that's what was going
Speaker 1: to happen to me. I thought, that's that's how my
Speaker 1: marriage would end, right, like some really dramatic, cool fight
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean or this awesome affair. But instead it's
Speaker 1: over offseason blueberries. And that marriage actually did end. No,
Speaker 1: it survived. It survives question, And because I'm just getting
Speaker 1: the context of this, Yeah, did he know all of
Speaker 1: that that you had going on at that moment? Was
Speaker 1: he like, oh, my wife, is this, this, this, this, this,
Speaker 1: And I still choose to send this to the father
Speaker 1: of your child. He is, but you know, I know
Speaker 1: about the breast pumps and the baby, and he did
Speaker 1: know about that. But I will say that from a
Speaker 1: woman's perspective, right, I'm thinking, I'm so overwhelmed. I can't
Speaker 1: even manage a grocery list, and I used to be
Speaker 1: able to manage an employee team. Um, and slowly my
Speaker 1: career is sort of fading away from me after my
Speaker 1: second son. And more importantly, I'm so overwhelmed from literally
Speaker 1: all this. What I what I found out is called
Speaker 1: a second shift for women, the mental load invisible work.
Speaker 1: Um that I couldn't even at that point communicated to him.
Speaker 1: And I think, Brooks, what you just said is so
Speaker 1: important because he didn't know what was happening to me,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know what was happening to me. Literally,
Speaker 1: I had no idea what was happening to me except
Speaker 1: for that I knew my marriage and be ending over
Speaker 1: offseason blueberries. I just can't believe you could forget blueberries?
Speaker 1: Right then? The organic ones, what's the problem? They come
Speaker 1: on your pancakes from rooms, you know. Apparently I became
Speaker 1: the fulfiller of my husbands smoothie needs, right. I mean
Speaker 1: that that that's that's what you become watching ESPN with
Speaker 1: socks and pretty much pretty much well, you know, men,
Speaker 1: men statistically have twice as much leisure time as women
Speaker 1: after kids. After kids, Um, they do five to fifteen
Speaker 1: five to fifteen hours a week less after kids come along. Um.
Speaker 1: But again back to my love letter a man. What
Speaker 1: I found out when I went on this quest after
Speaker 1: the blueberries fateful day seven years ago was not only
Speaker 1: that this phenomena has a name, second shift, mental load,
Speaker 1: all these emotional labor things that women talk about. There's
Speaker 1: three articles alone on this issue. But my favorite was
Speaker 1: this idea of invisible work because of what Brooks you
Speaker 1: were just saying, how can you value? How can you
Speaker 1: men value what I'm doing if it's invisible? And so
Speaker 1: I went on a quest. I went on a quest
Speaker 1: to make everything visible that I've ever done for my
Speaker 1: family and my husband. That took more than two minutes.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you know Excel, if you
Speaker 1: ever work with Excel, but I write I did write
Speaker 1: things in my hands too, That's what I mean. But
Speaker 1: I do write things in my hands. I love. That's
Speaker 1: a very nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties way of studying. Ninth.
Speaker 1: So basically, this Excel spreadsheet I I created from seth
Speaker 1: after that day that was crowd source from women all
Speaker 1: over the country who didn't even know me turned into
Speaker 1: tabs and I in about twenty sub tabs over a
Speaker 1: thousand items of invisible work, and I titled the Okay,
Speaker 1: well women, women I didn't even know, we're calling me.
Speaker 1: They were getting this Excel sheet from friends of friends,
Speaker 1: and they would say things to me like, well, you
Speaker 1: didn't you forgot applying, You forgot applying sunscreen. You forgot
Speaker 1: raspberries right right, You forgot buying the blueberries that was
Speaker 1: in their groceries was easy, but you forgot applying sunscreen.
Speaker 1: And so I'd say, well, no, you just don't how
Speaker 1: to know how to use Excel. Just have to scroll right.
Speaker 1: It's under tab ninety two under medical and healthy living
Speaker 1: well some have zero, some have zero. So I mean,
Speaker 1: then you have to blame the wife. If you're getting
Speaker 1: married to somebody who's zero in so many different ways,
Speaker 1: then that's your fault. Because the problem is that women
Speaker 1: fall in love with the potential. They never they never
Speaker 1: just say oh I love you, who you who you're
Speaker 1: standing in front of me. No, I love you once
Speaker 1: you do this, When you do that, when you maximize
Speaker 1: your potential in this area, when you stop wearing flip
Speaker 1: flops and socks. When you do you own blueberry smores.
Speaker 1: They never fall in love with the actual person is
Speaker 1: standing in front of him at the time. They always
Speaker 1: fall in love with the potential. That's when your expectations
Speaker 1: become the death sentence. Well, you just said something very important. Literally,
Speaker 1: the most important thing that I found in fair Play
Speaker 1: is about expectations. That it's all about communication and expectations, right,
Speaker 1: because that should I do spreadsheet? That I that I did?
Speaker 1: Should I do spreadsheet? And should be part of vows
Speaker 1: did I do spreadsheet? You're about right? Actually so well,
Speaker 1: I can learn more about you from talking about those
Speaker 1: tabs like garbage, and I'll talk about them in the second.
Speaker 1: But the should I do spreadsheets? Remember I just told
Speaker 1: you I'm a lawyer, but I'm also trained as a mediator,
Speaker 1: so I'm trained. I'm actually literally trained in communication. I
Speaker 1: grew up in a single mother household where I helped
Speaker 1: my mother eight years old, manage eviction notices and utility
Speaker 1: bills in piles for her at eight years old. But
Speaker 1: that that that is a whole different disposition that you
Speaker 1: have to add to the book title. Because the fact
Speaker 1: that you grew up in a single mother house already
Speaker 1: conditioned you to think and live and breathe a very
Speaker 1: very specific certain way because single mothers, single mothers, single
Speaker 1: I'm generalizing now, but single mothers raised their their daughters
Speaker 1: to be completely independent and never never, never need anything
Speaker 1: from a man. That's the very generalization. I get it.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes, uh, women come out of a household like that,
Speaker 1: not just being empowered and being self sufficient and being
Speaker 1: and being confident, but also completely rejecting the notion of
Speaker 1: a man being a partner or Yeah, learning how to
Speaker 1: communicate even if you're trained in it, that's right, And
Speaker 1: I think that's you're right. I think that's before he
Speaker 1: sent the text, Seth knew what my my mother, what
Speaker 1: she brought to the table. Um, she's a very interesting person.
Speaker 1: But I think what he realized, right, was that even
Speaker 1: in a household where I vow this was not gonna
Speaker 1: happen to me, and where I thought I was setting
Speaker 1: myself up for success before you even get into the relation. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's right. You've got to start fresh.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't project all of your paradigms from
Speaker 1: from your failed relationship. You need to rewrite this book
Speaker 1: now bring But there there's learnings. There's learnings from because
Speaker 1: I think what happened was I did have all those
Speaker 1: learnings you're talking about. It came too late, right, It
Speaker 1: came a little bit too late where I had to
Speaker 1: be sobbing on the side of the road over blueberries
Speaker 1: and send my husband a nineteen million megabyte spreadsheet with
Speaker 1: zero contexts that just had a subject line said, can't
Speaker 1: wait to discuss, can't wait to discuss regarding the blueberries.
Speaker 1: Should he have not sent the text at all with
Speaker 1: the blueberries praise the blueberry thing different? Or should he
Speaker 1: have gone and gone blueberries? I get your own blue
Speaker 1: Because if you're married to this woman and she just
Speaker 1: gave birth to two children, she's still breast pumping, she's
Speaker 1: a lawyer, she's working, which means she's working. Unless you've
Speaker 1: been on vacation Siberia for six months. You have been
Speaker 1: part of this life, so you understand where she's at.
Speaker 1: So you don't need to have her pull up the
Speaker 1: side of road and letting you, letting you know the
Speaker 1: state of mind she's in. If you're a husband who
Speaker 1: is somewhat present, you totally understand that you don't bother
Speaker 1: her with with blueberry text messages. You got the blue
Speaker 1: Bears and you made her favorite smoothie and maybe even
Speaker 1: put it in her bag before she left. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love why. I think you're very woke because I
Speaker 1: will say that there's not I don't think but it
Speaker 1: is well, but it is. It is why you were
Speaker 1: disagreeing with the list thing that she was saying, because
Speaker 1: you just knowing you now you your father of two
Speaker 1: boris to so special needs child, which is like thirteen children.
Speaker 1: So in my mind I didn't know that. I just learned,
Speaker 1: not now that. In my mind, you're like, uh, men
Speaker 1: do like I'm you were making the noises earlier. You're like,
Speaker 1: men do so much and it's because you, I believe,
Speaker 1: do so much. So you can't understand a man that
Speaker 1: doesn't do these things for his family or his wife.
Speaker 1: I get that because I align. I aligned with you.
Speaker 1: There are no absolutely I think that men are to
Speaker 1: It's the same things, the same I have the same list,
Speaker 1: but this is what was happening. Mine is getting tampons made.
Speaker 1: But other than that, I have the same list for sure.
Speaker 1: I get up at five every morning, I do everything.
Speaker 1: What happens though, when you say I do everything and
Speaker 1: the other person says, I do everything right. And so
Speaker 1: every book, every single book that had been written until
Speaker 1: fair Play, well, there were some very unhelpful solutions, like
Speaker 1: women should just strike and walk out of their house.
Speaker 1: Other ones said, moved to a foreign country where your
Speaker 1: husband knows the language but you don't, so he has
Speaker 1: to fill out the school forms. Okay, that's in New
Speaker 1: York Time Times New York Times, it's actually suggested that.
Speaker 1: But even the most helpful situations just said make a list.
Speaker 1: So as you saw, I made that I do spreadsheet,
Speaker 1: the best list in the world. And what I realized
Speaker 1: is that it unleased a storm. In my house, there
Speaker 1: was a scene, no evil, but in other homes, women
Speaker 1: were texting me things like w TF, I'm doing it.
Speaker 1: All other women were saying to me, at this rate,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to stay in my At this rate,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to stay in my marriage. And so
Speaker 1: what I realized is that sometimes consciousness raising is not
Speaker 1: always the best thing unless there's a solution. And so
Speaker 1: that's why I went out to understand what was happening
Speaker 1: and speaking to men. And here's what I found. I
Speaker 1: have to cancel all my stuff after this second. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is what I found. I found that the
Speaker 1: smallest details were causing the biggest problems. I had a
Speaker 1: man tell me that he was locked out of his
Speaker 1: home over a glue stick. You can't make this, He's not.
Speaker 1: But here's my I don't know the story. He's not
Speaker 1: out of the home. I bet your wife does. YEA
Speaker 1: stick was just the less straw. Yes, it's not actually
Speaker 1: locked out over the glue stick, just like you weren't
Speaker 1: actually or he wasn't you weren't so mad at the text.
Speaker 1: There was so many things layered into that. That's exactly right. No, literally,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I say, is immediate or I say
Speaker 1: the conscious man ud know that you won't of course
Speaker 1: you won't send it. There's something the text clinically aware
Speaker 1: of the emotional, physical, and spiritual place my wife is
Speaker 1: in at every moment. Because say that again, that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful line. I think most men, it's true. That's the
Speaker 1: secret to happy Now, that's a dedicated ded dedicated to
Speaker 1: his kids. I know that you know, happy life, happy wife,
Speaker 1: happy life. So I know that her state of mind,
Speaker 1: her emotional state, her spiritual state, her physical state. Uh,
Speaker 1: controls and influences what the rest of the world looks like.
Speaker 1: For us. She's the nucleus, so my job is to
Speaker 1: make sure that at all times that she is in
Speaker 1: a state that is conducive to a happy living. Right.
Speaker 1: It's very you know, but that's why I'm happy you're here. Simple.
Speaker 1: Life is not easy, trust me, I know, but it's simple,
Speaker 1: especially for men. We can we compartmentalized. For us, it's
Speaker 1: very simple, which sometimes also leads to issues between us
Speaker 1: and women because for you ladies, Uh, your brain doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. Your brain works differitely, right, So you
Speaker 1: have a literally an orbit of a million different satellites
Speaker 1: and things all playing into one at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's why you don't go to sleep at night. I
Speaker 1: laid my head down and twelve seconds later I got
Speaker 1: you on the same gone. That's how man for seven
Speaker 1: hours straight. Because what happens is we we go to
Speaker 1: the to the sleep box. We say okay, now I
Speaker 1: can leave everything behind. Now it's time to sleep, sleep,
Speaker 1: and we go to sleep. Right. It doesn't work that
Speaker 1: way with you, guys, so we have to learn skills
Speaker 1: in order to communicate effectively. Knowing that we have different brains,
Speaker 1: we can literally be like I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm
Speaker 1: busy on board at all. At the same time, there's
Speaker 1: there's something my wife says all the time, all the things.
Speaker 1: That's what she said. So we go to a restaurant.
Speaker 1: We go to a restaurant. We sit down, like, babe,
Speaker 1: do you know what you want? She's like all the things,
Speaker 1: all like I want these four appetizers and these three
Speaker 1: entrees and six pounds. You're not pounding that and then
Speaker 1: eat your food? Yeah, And then she want mine comes
Speaker 1: to and ordered the same thing for twenty years at
Speaker 1: the same place, and she always looks to be adventurous,
Speaker 1: and then she orders stuff that looks great, and then
Speaker 1: she envisions how it's going to look, and then it
Speaker 1: comes and doesn't look like joy and the pain of
Speaker 1: men and women. It's a beautiful thing. It adds. It
Speaker 1: adds for men, I believe it adds. Yeah, it adds
Speaker 1: vibrance and color and like just variation to our life.
Speaker 1: And look, I shouldn't out this, but I was dealing
Speaker 1: with a little bit of a broken heart. So I
Speaker 1: called Rick one of our co hosts, and I had
Speaker 1: called him a few days in a row to talk
Speaker 1: about my broken heart, and finally he was like, Amy,
Speaker 1: I have to coach water polo, coach baseball. Although the
Speaker 1: car cooked dinner, I don't have time for this with you.
Speaker 1: And it was like, but I get it, like he
Speaker 1: had his things going and I was just one more
Speaker 1: thing throwing him off. But you also want and I'm like,
Speaker 1: he just felt at the little girl with the broken heart,
Speaker 1: but you know he saw it very differently. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: back to Brooks. What you were just saying, no about
Speaker 1: it's not about the blueberries, right, or it's not about
Speaker 1: the glue stick. Why is this man being locked out
Speaker 1: of his house over gluestick? Right? So when I spoke
Speaker 1: to his his partner, she said to me, I've been
Speaker 1: working for three weeks on a homework project for our
Speaker 1: kid where we went to the library, we xerox copied
Speaker 1: pictures of Albert Einstein, cut them out, did the captions,
Speaker 1: put them in order, worked on the book, report, got
Speaker 1: the costume because this kid had to be impersonating Albert Einstein.
Speaker 1: All I needed was just that one thing, the glue stick. No, well,
Speaker 1: she did she but she she texted in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day, and so this is what was happening
Speaker 1: right when I. So men were saying this all the time, right,
Speaker 1: I'm getting these So I ended up calling it the rat.
Speaker 1: And what I realized was happening. The number one thing
Speaker 1: men were telling me they were frustrated about with home
Speaker 1: life was this idea of nagging. So what is nagging?
Speaker 1: It's the rat. It's the random assignment of a task.
Speaker 1: Get me tampons, Go get me a glue stick, go
Speaker 1: back to the store. From the point, because men, if
Speaker 1: they want something, we'll just go do it. Well, I
Speaker 1: won't ask him to go do I won't ask Gavin
Speaker 1: to go do something for me. I'll just go do it. Well.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what fair plays about, because I found that
Speaker 1: with men that when they get ownership, everything changed. She'll
Speaker 1: just let me tell you one last thing about the
Speaker 1: system and then we can go into it. Everything you
Speaker 1: need to know about the way the system works. And
Speaker 1: it's based, like I said, a lot of data for men.
Speaker 1: Most of the experts actually in my book are men.
Speaker 1: Um It was about mustard and I'll explain what I mean.
Speaker 1: So somebody has to know eventually that your second son,
Speaker 1: Johnny likes french Is yellow mustard. That's the only way
Speaker 1: he eats protein. He dips his his mustard, you know,
Speaker 1: his protein and mustard. That's what I call conception. This
Speaker 1: is a business concept. Conception. Then somebody has to notice
Speaker 1: that the mustards running low and put it on a
Speaker 1: list with other groceries for the week. That's what I
Speaker 1: call planning. That's another business concept. Then someone has to
Speaker 1: get their butt to the store to buy the French's
Speaker 1: yellow mustard. That's in my data where men came in.
Speaker 1: They stepped in at the execution, and it was always
Speaker 1: a problem because that you come home with spicy dijon,
Speaker 1: you come home with a nasty mustard with the seeds
Speaker 1: in it. And so men all over the country were
Speaker 1: saying to me, I'm not doing anything for my wife
Speaker 1: anymore because every time I bring home the mustard, it's
Speaker 1: always wrong. And women are saying to me, ready to burst,
Speaker 1: okay one second, and then women are saying to me,
Speaker 1: last thing, I'll just finish my little round thing. Women
Speaker 1: are saying to me, Eve, you want me to trust
Speaker 1: him with my state planning. He can't even bring home
Speaker 1: the right type of mustard. So that becomes brooks. Like
Speaker 1: you said, not about mustard, not about blueberries, but trust
Speaker 1: what it is. But it's about trust, the trust cycle.
Speaker 1: Can we go down and take into a trust cycle?
Speaker 1: It's it's it's comes. What do you think it's about? Okay,
Speaker 1: we have the same My wife always brings up the
Speaker 1: same very this very example about orange juice with it
Speaker 1: without pulp. She always brings that that up. See, the
Speaker 1: thing is this, wait, wait, are you do you bring
Speaker 1: home the right type of orange juices? Or were you criticize? No, no,
Speaker 1: I want to hear that. Do you have a do
Speaker 1: you have a spicy dijon situation? Okay? So we tell
Speaker 1: me how every day. Okay, but tell me tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about those okay. Well, the text message,
Speaker 1: she she she likes to involve me in group text messages.
Speaker 1: You hate, I hate myself. I never I never pull
Speaker 1: into things where I can handle it. Wants to be inclusive.
Speaker 1: And then she wants to put me in a text
Speaker 1: message and say hi to some people that are doing
Speaker 1: some stuff for us at the house and and yes
Speaker 1: he's coming to the house tomorrow, so just and then
Speaker 1: she texts me individually and says, just send, just text
Speaker 1: into the chin, just chime, just chime in, and just
Speaker 1: say that you will You're happy to see them tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, and then I say great to see
Speaker 1: you tomorrow. And then she calls. Did you say that?
Speaker 1: You should have said that if they want anything, they
Speaker 1: can call you. And why did you say? And I'm
Speaker 1: like you, I'm here board, meeting sixteen things and you
Speaker 1: text me this. I thought I was helping Cleario. Wasn't.
Speaker 1: So don't put don't don't just don't. Don't pull me
Speaker 1: into the situation. If you have to monitor and control
Speaker 1: every single word that I tell or or texted for me,
Speaker 1: I'll copy it and I not texting myself. I love it,
Speaker 1: but I'm still more interested in the orange shoes non
Speaker 1: pulpe versus pope. How did you have the conversations? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening. We're fighting over. Does that sound like
Speaker 1: you want to get married? It's not the problem. It's
Speaker 1: not about that man. Don't get married. It's not a
Speaker 1: pulp it's not about the problem. Don't worry about it's
Speaker 1: it's about effective communication, right, And the problem is, and
Speaker 1: I keep reminding my wife about this too, when she
Speaker 1: tells me that Sophie was wearing the wrong outfit to
Speaker 1: the dance or to the this out of the ask,
Speaker 1: and that that Nicholas should have I should have get
Speaker 1: the hair product and put it. We became parents the
Speaker 1: exact same time, the exact same moment. We became parents. Right.
Speaker 1: The notion that people who get married become one is bullshit,
Speaker 1: don't believe it. Yes, you coordinate, you collaborate, your synogize you,
Speaker 1: it's more fun to do together. Great, you will always
Speaker 1: remain individuals, and therefore you have paradigms that anchor it
Speaker 1: in your hard drive, which is a subconscious mind that
Speaker 1: will not change, will not change. That's from zero to
Speaker 1: seven years. A lot of information is put in a
Speaker 1: hard drive and then it's done. Right, So I'm the
Speaker 1: person who I am because of what happened the first
Speaker 1: seven years of my life. Same with you, right, So
Speaker 1: that's never gonna change. So all we can do is
Speaker 1: learn each other's dance steps, which is the execution that's
Speaker 1: based on the paradigms that we have been taught when
Speaker 1: we're zero to seven years old. Right, So we have
Speaker 1: to learn how to effectively communicate around those paradigms that
Speaker 1: have made us who we are, and it won't change.
Speaker 1: So the fact that we became parents the same exact
Speaker 1: time means that I will do things my way and
Speaker 1: it won't change. Because I'm a great father. I'm a
Speaker 1: hell of a father, I'm present, I'm there, I do
Speaker 1: everything great father, and I will continue to do things
Speaker 1: the way I do things. Sometimes my wife doesn't like
Speaker 1: the way I brush my teeth. Sometimes she doesn't like
Speaker 1: the way I chew my food. Sometimes she doesn't like
Speaker 1: great It happens on both sides, But I, for some reason,
Speaker 1: men have the capacity to accept who their wife is
Speaker 1: and the way she does things, even the things that
Speaker 1: she tells us to do right vice versa never doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Disagree with that, but this is the problem. So I
Speaker 1: had a boyfriend spent the night the other night. Girl, Well,
Speaker 1: what's the point of spending that doesn't matter? So he
Speaker 1: used my toothpaste, and the way he squeezed the tube
Speaker 1: freaking bizarre to me that I had to go back
Speaker 1: in and smooth out the tube, and I thought, whip,
Speaker 1: Could I live with this? Could I live with this?
Speaker 1: And then I thought I guess I would just undo
Speaker 1: the tube every day different Now you wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: You just get resentful and you'd finally end up dumping
Speaker 1: stuff on your husband's pillow when he forgets to take
Speaker 1: out toothpaste. Hold on, we need to take a break.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to that and this whole conversation because Gavin,
Speaker 1: I had just been listening here, this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break first. We'll come back and set
Speaker 1: back from break. This brooks like in a studio even
Speaker 1: though you haven't heard him yet. We got my buddy,
Speaker 1: Gavin DeGraw, We got even Boris with this, and we
Speaker 1: have a This is one of our most polarizing debates
Speaker 1: that we've ever had. I love that we have different
Speaker 1: energies coming from different sides of us. Now to touch
Speaker 1: on just listening. My thoughts here is I'm listening to
Speaker 1: you Amy about the toothpaste, and I'm listening to you
Speaker 1: Eve about wanting to know from Boris the pulp or
Speaker 1: no pulp. My thoughts when I'm listening to this discussion
Speaker 1: is I go to the macro level we live in
Speaker 1: for the a very fortunate country. We're very fortunate people.
Speaker 1: You can afford toothpaste. You can afford the choice between
Speaker 1: pulp or no pulpe. We live in a country where
Speaker 1: you can go to a store that provides it for you,
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is give them a
Speaker 1: little money for it. Like when I when I hear
Speaker 1: these things and that we're bickering over them, and that
Speaker 1: families bicker over them, and that your husband says, where's
Speaker 1: the blue bear, I'm surprised you didn't get blue bear?
Speaker 1: The fuck cares? You are so fortunate to be living
Speaker 1: in the United States of America, with the people around us,
Speaker 1: the loved ones that we have, that I can't even
Speaker 1: really engage in this, that I don't even know what
Speaker 1: to do with this, to be in the United States
Speaker 1: not paying Canadian taxes now what you meant to say.
Speaker 1: But also so that's for I have another thought of
Speaker 1: this now. Now, the other side of this is, and
Speaker 1: I've learned this through being, are and women of color paid. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the other side of this is that I've learned
Speaker 1: this through being is that details matter immensely, especially to
Speaker 1: my wife to females. So whether how the toothpaste is
Speaker 1: like that was an issue from my wife. She's like,
Speaker 1: can you put the toothpaste in the drawer? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're going to bed right now. The lights are gonna
Speaker 1: be out for nine hours. I'm gonna be up before
Speaker 1: you come back. I'm gonna use that toothpaste before you're
Speaker 1: ever going to see it again. But I was like,
Speaker 1: you think that, No, I said that. I said I
Speaker 1: said that, And I'm like, why does it matter that's
Speaker 1: in the drawer, And she's like, it just matters. It's
Speaker 1: just like I just wanted in the drawer. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: we have that conversation the first two years, and then
Speaker 1: we stopped, and then we don't have the conversation more
Speaker 1: because you just now resentment. No, she she keeps bringing
Speaker 1: it up. But we just swallowed and we go, you're right, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: And that's when the man goes into the couch. And
Speaker 1: that's when the man that's when the man settles on
Speaker 1: the couch, and that's he won't get up anymore. Because
Speaker 1: every time we attempt to do something, our way we're
Speaker 1: being told is the wrong way. So that's that's the
Speaker 1: whole we are. We are on the bench, we are
Speaker 1: on the couch, and that's where we stay for the remainder.
Speaker 1: That's when he starts texting someone else. Well, I found
Speaker 1: a lot of actually anything. That's what I will say
Speaker 1: that nagging men, men who were saying that they were nagged. Right.
Speaker 1: I also did that to my wife. And of course,
Speaker 1: put your coffee instead of in the in the sink,
Speaker 1: can you put it in aswasher? That's six away. But
Speaker 1: this is the thing, like what you said about being fortunate,
Speaker 1: We are fortunate, right, And this is why I just
Speaker 1: wrote an artifiction about course did fortunate. But this is
Speaker 1: the thing I talk about this in Harper's this Week
Speaker 1: that this is the real midlife crisis. This is the
Speaker 1: real midlife crisis. You think it's about breast implants or
Speaker 1: green Ferrari. And I'm saying this for you, Kevin, because
Speaker 1: you right, but but I do have breast implants, okay,
Speaker 1: and and you're and they look really good right now.
Speaker 1: The real midlife crisis is like what happens right when
Speaker 1: you're in midlife and the person who's supposed to love
Speaker 1: you the most ends up presenting you the most over
Speaker 1: this bullshit, right, And it is because of communication. I
Speaker 1: had a woman who said to me, this is about
Speaker 1: how women communicate, and maybe it's different for men because
Speaker 1: you would be willing to come to the table. And
Speaker 1: that's why Fair plays my love letter to men, because
Speaker 1: when you think in systems, which is this book is
Speaker 1: about any man. So a man who plays sports said
Speaker 1: to me, I love systems because I watched sports and
Speaker 1: I play sports, and I would never put my point
Speaker 1: guard in as my center. Right, you know your role.
Speaker 1: So it's all about knowing your role. But to get there,
Speaker 1: you have to communicate. And one thing, I'll just end up.
Speaker 1: I'll just no, no, no. Then you want us to
Speaker 1: be spontaneous and advance. I don't. I don't actually spontaneous
Speaker 1: comes out of systems. No, but it doesn't. I don't
Speaker 1: really have to tell you to do it. I want
Speaker 1: to all women say that women say, and the time
Speaker 1: it takes you to figure it out, I could just
Speaker 1: do it myself. Right, That is completely counterintun but it
Speaker 1: is not. It is cultural gener is that it seems
Speaker 1: to be acceptable in Western civilization for men to be
Speaker 1: browbeaten in conversation. I would never do that. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the conversation that you let off with started with
Speaker 1: a browbeating on the husband and like, just look at
Speaker 1: our entertainment. Every single sitcom is based off of the honeymoon,
Speaker 1: which is what the guy some sort of a dunce
Speaker 1: and the wife always knows better than him, and he's
Speaker 1: an idiot, and his best friends an absolute moron too,
Speaker 1: and it's, you know, the same, the same formula on
Speaker 1: every single show. So we're sold this sort of idea
Speaker 1: that sort of made this has created these these these
Speaker 1: preconceptions going into marriages. I think that we're taking Hollywood
Speaker 1: to heart when we go into these relationships. I think
Speaker 1: women are looking at their men like they're these incapable
Speaker 1: morons who hang out on the couch because they're not
Speaker 1: thinking sensitive enough, when actually all they're saying is all right, relax,
Speaker 1: I'll get to it in an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: or like I gotta I just got out of work too,
Speaker 1: I'll fix the dishwasher tomorrow. Well, I think that's right,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I know, and women were
Speaker 1: even saying to me worse than that, So I agree.
Speaker 1: I think there is a lot of there is a
Speaker 1: lot of man shaming, especially a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of man shaming, and and so I think that's no.
Speaker 1: I think that's correct. And so when you look at
Speaker 1: something is a system though, where you know your role
Speaker 1: and you have explicitly defined expectations. There is not man
Speaker 1: shaming because men also do invisible work that women don't see.
Speaker 1: But women were saying things to me even worse. They
Speaker 1: were saying, my husband doesn't have the brain to wash
Speaker 1: the dishes. Literally, they were saying to me that he
Speaker 1: can't even multitask. You know, I do. I don't think
Speaker 1: talk that in that caddy way about women. It doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But I appreciate that that's not what we do. Men
Speaker 1: are really private about their relationships. But and so what
Speaker 1: we're trying not to shame. I think for some reason,
Speaker 1: I hear a lot more shaming about men between women
Speaker 1: than shaming about women between men. Well, I love that,
Speaker 1: so thank you men. I think that's I think that
Speaker 1: we're innately we like to hang out and we like
Speaker 1: to both with each other, but we're very private. I
Speaker 1: think that bad our relationships, which is a good thing.
Speaker 1: It can be a good thing. What if I tell
Speaker 1: you that I went to the top neuroscientists though in
Speaker 1: the country, right to find out whether women are wired differently,
Speaker 1: if we're better multitaskers, right, and so this one and
Speaker 1: the first of all obviously the answers, No, men have
Speaker 1: just as great executive function and multitasking abilities as women do,
Speaker 1: and even better everything. You're you're better, you're you're not
Speaker 1: better at multitasking. But but but you are just as
Speaker 1: good as that are good as it is a serious subject,
Speaker 1: it is seriously, of course it is different. We totally do.
Speaker 1: But you know, I want to say one thing too.
Speaker 1: It starts much because it starts. It starts with numbers.
Speaker 1: It starts you know, women out number men. Okay, So
Speaker 1: so in terms of eligible women and eligible men, women
Speaker 1: out number men. So your pool of of eligible men
Speaker 1: is much smaller than my pool of eligible women when
Speaker 1: we start dating. That's where it starts, right, So, so
Speaker 1: you're more likely to compromise on your values and principles
Speaker 1: when you're picking your mate. Then what if we do
Speaker 1: it as men? So that's where it starts, and that's
Speaker 1: why women are more likely to accept a mate giving
Speaker 1: the potential that he brings to the table. Whereas we
Speaker 1: look at women said, if she's not all that right
Speaker 1: then and there we don't we don't want it. So
Speaker 1: that's where the show starts because you're already compromising before
Speaker 1: you even step to the to the to the what
Speaker 1: is it called podium? But where do you get married?
Speaker 1: You're already compromising and already in your brain, and your
Speaker 1: brain starts working about how to improve the situation. What
Speaker 1: it really means is how to better him. Right, So
Speaker 1: that's where the communication starts being. But I didn't compromise.
Speaker 1: My husband was literally perfect before we had kids, perfect
Speaker 1: and perfect well statistically, well, what happens, right, is this
Speaker 1: invisible layer of keeps growing and growing and growing, and
Speaker 1: you stopped communicating. You stop communicating. That's what happens. And
Speaker 1: what happened. Then I had a woman say to me,
Speaker 1: I can't communicate with my husband. It's so sad. Women
Speaker 1: all over this country don't feel like they can talk
Speaker 1: to you men about these things. Because I had to
Speaker 1: write you a damn paperless post in my book because
Speaker 1: they were afree to bring up these conversations. And woman said,
Speaker 1: I will never bring it up. And then you know
Speaker 1: what she tells me twenty minutes later, and ironically, the
Speaker 1: same woman who says she could never talk to her
Speaker 1: husband about doing more in the home or the fact
Speaker 1: that she would like him to maybe move the toothpaste
Speaker 1: or help her with the transporting of her kids. Twenty
Speaker 1: minutes later in the conversation, she says back to man jaming,
Speaker 1: she dumps wet clothes on his pillow when he forgets
Speaker 1: to take him out of the wash and put him
Speaker 1: in the dryer. I mean that I have a woman
Speaker 1: who's locking her home. I have a woman who locked
Speaker 1: her home, as you said, locked her husband out of
Speaker 1: our glue stick. Another woman's telling me, are people getting married?
Speaker 1: How about this? What about how do you get married?
Speaker 1: But that is the real method, because you said up
Speaker 1: your expectations and your communications early. That's why I had
Speaker 1: to write a book. It's not just a card game.
Speaker 1: It's a book about how you communicate about these things.
Speaker 1: And it took ten years of mediation experience to figure
Speaker 1: it out. I can tell you, yes, well, there's so much.
Speaker 1: There's so much in this, there's so much. You should
Speaker 1: get to put that cup in the sink. If she wants,
Speaker 1: she still does she did yesterday yesterday. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to go back to one thing you said,
Speaker 1: possibility change between the sink and hold on hold It
Speaker 1: is a possibility to change ye of the counterwher done.
Speaker 1: Let's go that's a reasonable person standard. I talked about
Speaker 1: that the book. One thing that really irritates me is
Speaker 1: when somebody says, I can't talk to my husband about this.
Speaker 1: How dare she say what he's capable of? I know
Speaker 1: if my wife says I can't talk to you about this,
Speaker 1: how how dare you limit me and box me in
Speaker 1: that you're the person I love the most in the world,
Speaker 1: that I am not capable of being sensitive to your
Speaker 1: kneeds or just listening. Drop the MIW you want to
Speaker 1: take them and take that clip out listening, don't discount,
Speaker 1: don't discount your men. Maybe may not discount for us
Speaker 1: a little bit because I know and that's a mic drop.
Speaker 1: By the way, if I bring it up, I know
Speaker 1: the answer I will get and it will not go
Speaker 1: well for it. But you hear that, so I think, Amy,
Speaker 1: so multiply that time. But that's what I heard there.
Speaker 1: Afraid to have conversations ex Okay, okay, let's let's say
Speaker 1: this happens, right, You go to your partner and you
Speaker 1: address something and it doesn't go well. Here's here's that that,
Speaker 1: here's the defining moment, the pivotal pivotal point. What do
Speaker 1: you then? What do you do? Then? Right? Do you
Speaker 1: give up? You dump clothing this pillow? Do dump clothing
Speaker 1: his pillow? Make it worse? You you grow resentment? No, no, seriously,
Speaker 1: because because when when when Sylphie was born, we were
Speaker 1: just hot Hollywood couple and Sophie was born and she's
Speaker 1: diagnosed with and we crash and two months into our
Speaker 1: marriage and it's just the most traumatizing crazy I don't
Speaker 1: wish it on anybody. So as an example of adversity challenge, right,
Speaker 1: like communicating, So now we're here with this baby and
Speaker 1: we have no idea what this is and what happens next.
Speaker 1: That that that's the most trauma tizing experience you can
Speaker 1: have PTSD immediately all this stuff. Now, we got help
Speaker 1: and we figured out how to communicate and speak to
Speaker 1: our different approaches in terms of pain, sorrow, um um um, anger, fears, right,
Speaker 1: because we process this thing completely different, because we're different people, right,
Speaker 1: But we didn't let it divide us. We used it
Speaker 1: to eventually became invincible together. Right. And it's the same
Speaker 1: with communication, because that's an example of heightened stakes in
Speaker 1: the communic in in a moment of communication needs right,
Speaker 1: Same with the with the pillow, same with anything else
Speaker 1: that What matters is how do you react when there
Speaker 1: is a lack of communication when there's an issue. Do
Speaker 1: you let us drive you apart? Okay, and because then
Speaker 1: it compounds against worse and worse and worse, or do
Speaker 1: you battle through that moment? Right? You figure out there's
Speaker 1: things that you are on the same same page about,
Speaker 1: which is very important. A lot of people forget that.
Speaker 1: You have to remind each other of. Let's step back
Speaker 1: three paces and say, okay, what do what do we
Speaker 1: agree with? Uh? What do we agree on together? In
Speaker 1: your case with the clothes, it would be clothes need
Speaker 1: to be watched. Okay, we agree on that, we can
Speaker 1: we agree. Let's work our way up from there. Um
Speaker 1: So in this coin, I'm from another country. Um by
Speaker 1: now you've probably heard it, but I'm from Germany. So
Speaker 1: so it's the culture is very different over there. It's
Speaker 1: everything is very different. And here there's this This is
Speaker 1: we live in this instant society where everything is instantaneously,
Speaker 1: has to be instantaneously. Everything is hyper sensitive, everything is
Speaker 1: hyper competitive. It's like you got to maximize your potential
Speaker 1: at all. You've gotta be the birst you. You gotta
Speaker 1: be the birth. Like it's NonStop here and people killing
Speaker 1: themselves for it. Um. And it's the same with the relationships.
Speaker 1: It's like, if it doesn't work right now, we've gotta
Speaker 1: right away, we're gonna we just got this plastic bottle this. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I agree we we have. There's there's certain blessings
Speaker 1: and stuff that we have here and then there's a
Speaker 1: lot of curses about what this is right now, especially
Speaker 1: in this country. But communication is another example of in
Speaker 1: this throwaway society, we are very very fast to give up,
Speaker 1: to walk away, to run for the hills, and and
Speaker 1: and in marriage, what's so precious is to use those
Speaker 1: moments and those challenges in order to grow and to
Speaker 1: be able to grow as individual and also grow together.
Speaker 1: And and that's what I always remind my friends off
Speaker 1: when they asked me for our secret, I always say,
Speaker 1: we we give each other the space and the opportunity
Speaker 1: to suck up. That's what it is. We give each
Speaker 1: other the opportunity up, and we don't turn our backs
Speaker 1: and we don't run away, and you give each other that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But you also sounds like you give each other permission
Speaker 1: to actually communicate. Yeah, but it starts with it starts
Speaker 1: with knowing that right now it's not and it's okay,
Speaker 1: that's right, but that is communication. But this is the thing,
Speaker 1: so that what she was telling me, she's dumping the
Speaker 1: clothes on her pill or another woman who said she
Speaker 1: started backed up man shaming Gavin. A woman who again
Speaker 1: said she doesn't want to talk to her spouse about it,
Speaker 1: but she started an Instagram account called my husband doesn't
Speaker 1: pick up and so literally she takes pictures of everything
Speaker 1: that's out of place in their home and she publicly
Speaker 1: shames him on Instagram. Um, this happened in Japan. Literally,
Speaker 1: I don't think peop would believe me. People don't even
Speaker 1: believe me in BuzzFeed just came out with the Japanese
Speaker 1: version and the woman got five hundred thousand followers within
Speaker 1: one week. I guess because she has the Japanese version
Speaker 1: of the ship my husband doesn't pick up? If this
Speaker 1: is how we're communicating, right, this is why we're and
Speaker 1: no husband, right, will you end up a worse do
Speaker 1: you end up resentful? But when you can actually come
Speaker 1: to the table and that's why this is I'm so
Speaker 1: happy Brooks what you said. I'm literally gonna take that
Speaker 1: clip and take it with me everywhere. When women say
Speaker 1: to me, when I go to the out in the
Speaker 1: country and I interviewed people, and I say, play fair, play,
Speaker 1: bring read this book together, bring it to the table.
Speaker 1: Has all the communication tools. It's a system so you
Speaker 1: know your role, so you understand the expectations. You're setting
Speaker 1: yourself up for success. And women say to me, well,
Speaker 1: I can't. I wouldn't even know how to talk to
Speaker 1: my spouse about this, even though I wrote, write you
Speaker 1: the paper lest post. I give you a deck of
Speaker 1: cards so you can have hard values conversations in a
Speaker 1: very fun, easy way. Women are still saying to me
Speaker 1: all over, he wouldn't hear these conversations. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: to know. I'm resentful, he's tired, he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: talk about these things. What do you say to women
Speaker 1: all over when they're afraid? So I'll say this, man,
Speaker 1: we can miss a lot men, we can miss a lot.
Speaker 1: In in my relationship with my wife, I'll miss a
Speaker 1: lot of things, things that meant something to her. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that I should have like had a nicer
Speaker 1: place matt out or I didn't know that that meant
Speaker 1: something to you. I didn't know that having candles lit
Speaker 1: when you came home meant something like I'll miss I'll
Speaker 1: miss a million things in my relationship. But I'll say this.
Speaker 1: Men can move mountains when it comes to their significant
Speaker 1: other when and it's it's select few times they will
Speaker 1: movecking mountains. For they will. There's they are unstoppable when
Speaker 1: they want to and when it's when it's brought to
Speaker 1: them in that So I I apologize I didn't have flowers.
Speaker 1: I apologize I didn't have But when it comes to it,
Speaker 1: if something's important to you, I will move mountains. So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry it wasn't the dijon. I'm like, but I
Speaker 1: am here, and sometimes it takes like it's it's sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to go through a valley to figure that out.
Speaker 1: You have to like communications off, things are off and
Speaker 1: you're not connecting, and then just whatever it is that
Speaker 1: brings it out, Like I just don't want women to
Speaker 1: discount their men because their men love them and something
Speaker 1: there's a reason why whatever it is they're not connecting
Speaker 1: that their man isn't delivering this because boris you know,
Speaker 1: being married, when you're super connected to your wife, you're
Speaker 1: doing every little detailed thing you're like, you get so
Speaker 1: much joy out of it, giving her joy. And then
Speaker 1: when you're not connected to your wife, like really dialed
Speaker 1: in connected, you're not doing all of those things. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that we still aren't capable of it
Speaker 1: and won't move mountains if it's brought to our attention
Speaker 1: and not in a let me dump laundry on your
Speaker 1: pillows makes you up, um, But in a way that's communicated,
Speaker 1: and men are capable. We say this on the show
Speaker 1: a lot too. I think humans need to work on
Speaker 1: the skill of listening. I think it's a powerful thing
Speaker 1: of the skill of listening. And my wife and I
Speaker 1: in our relationship, we say, um, listen to understand, don't
Speaker 1: listen to respond, And I want to read our like
Speaker 1: our wedding song. I have the lyrics from our wedding song.
Speaker 1: Just what you were saying about this, um instagra, Graham
Speaker 1: account stuff he leaves laying around or whatever. Um. This
Speaker 1: is in our wedding song. It's called all this time
Speaker 1: by one republic Um. We've got all these words, can't
Speaker 1: waste them on another. So I'm straight in a straight
Speaker 1: line running back to you. And we picked this song
Speaker 1: because of those words like I can't talk to Gavin
Speaker 1: about something wrong with my wife, like and and complain
Speaker 1: to him. I need straight in a straight line back
Speaker 1: to my wife. I'm not wasting these words on another.
Speaker 1: They're coming to the my heart, They're coming to my
Speaker 1: compass points. I will say that this is what what
Speaker 1: ended up happening after the book came out it's been
Speaker 1: out ten days, was that I got over three emails
Speaker 1: to just info Evrodsky, like not even something that they knew.
Speaker 1: They had to find my name and men saying I
Speaker 1: want these communication tools my my partner. I want to
Speaker 1: play this game. I feel like there's invisible work that
Speaker 1: I'm doing that my wife doesn't know about. I don't
Speaker 1: want her to be at RESENTO meter ten. I want
Speaker 1: us to bring us down. I wanted to work on
Speaker 1: our relationship, and I do feel like I feel that
Speaker 1: way women did to throw away the script that we
Speaker 1: have written. Thank you. We want you to say that
Speaker 1: is the biggest thing that women, in my opinion, need
Speaker 1: to do. We all have that script. If he just
Speaker 1: did this just said that we have to throw that
Speaker 1: burden toss. How about also the other thing, The most
Speaker 1: important thing that I say as a mediator is when
Speaker 1: emotion is high, cognition is low, do not give feedback
Speaker 1: at the moment women men will retreat. That. It is
Speaker 1: just sort of the pattern I see and all of
Speaker 1: my my work, ten years of work doing you retreat.
Speaker 1: Women will go in and they will keep going in
Speaker 1: and feedback in the moment when you can have emotion
Speaker 1: is low cognition is high, that's when you have those conversations.
Speaker 1: But you know what you said, Brooks was phenomenal about
Speaker 1: moving mountains, because what's so pointing about that is that
Speaker 1: men are driven by emotional validation. Women are driven by
Speaker 1: emotional attention. So what that means is that if we
Speaker 1: haven't gotten the acknowledgement or the appreciation from our spouse
Speaker 1: in a while, yeah, because we do move mountains invisible mountains, right,
Speaker 1: We're moving mountains every single day. So if all we
Speaker 1: hear is the yap, yap, yap, and never the honey,
Speaker 1: thank you for this, or wow, this was amazing, we
Speaker 1: completely One of the biggest things to men is acknowledgement.
Speaker 1: They just appreciation. That's how we s that's how we're
Speaker 1: seeing because I believe, like you, you do ten million things.
Speaker 1: I'm sure behind the scenes that your wife isn't even
Speaker 1: aware of it. You made a list. It could be
Speaker 1: ten times the size of that um. But any little
Speaker 1: slightest acknowledgement of you're a good man means the world everything, everything,
Speaker 1: and that could come verbally, it could come in shape
Speaker 1: of a sandwich. You can come just thank you. I love.
Speaker 1: It's huge acknowledgement to a man, he'll move mountains. I can.
Speaker 1: I tell you something interesting though, that I found though
Speaker 1: I tried to introduce gratitude into the system. So this
Speaker 1: the fair place is really about sitting down to talk
Speaker 1: about your values, about these things in the home that matter.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean by that is that we're talking
Speaker 1: about values over garbage. Very similar to what you were
Speaker 1: saying before, about the fact that this is not about
Speaker 1: when we said these small little details. But really it's
Speaker 1: what I came to the table. You're you're saying to
Speaker 1: me before about I come as a single mom with
Speaker 1: all my baggage. You're talking about the years of stuff
Speaker 1: we bring into our relationship. What happens right when you
Speaker 1: sit down, and I forced you through this card game
Speaker 1: to have to have a values conversation over garbage. So
Speaker 1: I'm not fighting with you and saying just take out
Speaker 1: the freaking garbage with no acknowledgement. But I say to
Speaker 1: my partner, I care about garbage. The reason why I'm
Speaker 1: stalking you over garbage and why I keep asking if
Speaker 1: you put the liner back in and seeing if it's
Speaker 1: if it's spilling over is because I grew up in
Speaker 1: that single mom household because it was a lower reset
Speaker 1: in Manhattan, and in the eighties, we didn't have a
Speaker 1: garbage can, and we had one of those take out
Speaker 1: that egs and garbage spilled out over onto the floor,
Speaker 1: and so I was a dehydrated child because if you
Speaker 1: turned on the light in my apartment, there'd be water
Speaker 1: bugs and cockroaches that scattered everywhere. So if I can
Speaker 1: say to you, I'm triggered by garbage, and that's why
Speaker 1: I care if garbage goes out. And then my husband
Speaker 1: when we started communicating better where I wasn't just crying
Speaker 1: and sobbing over blueberries and not telling him, and he
Speaker 1: was very generous and wanted to move mountains for me
Speaker 1: said things to me like, well, I don't value garbage
Speaker 1: the same way you did. I grew up in a fraternity,
Speaker 1: and I lived in the fraternity. I had a Domino's
Speaker 1: pizza boxes my pillow, and so what happens when we're
Speaker 1: at different places. What he said to me finally was
Speaker 1: I care that it means something to you, and I
Speaker 1: see that it mattered to you because of your childhood
Speaker 1: and so, but I also care about what's reasonable. What's
Speaker 1: not reasonable. It is for you not to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: I'm I am taking out the garbage, for you to
Speaker 1: stalk me with the garbage liner. But what's reasonable in
Speaker 1: our household? And we talked about these types of conversations
Speaker 1: in the book. What's reasonable is to expect the garbage
Speaker 1: will go out once a day. Why don't you just
Speaker 1: make the garbage your task? Well I did. Actually, we
Speaker 1: readal we redeal what I call the daily grinds, the
Speaker 1: hard ones that no one you have to hold forever,
Speaker 1: like dishes or laundry. Yeah, you read deals every week.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a staff meeting, and treating the
Speaker 1: home like an organization, our most important organization. But when
Speaker 1: it was his task and he wanted to take that task.
Speaker 1: We decided what's reasonable for both of us. Garbage goes
Speaker 1: out at seven pm. He said, I'll put it in
Speaker 1: my calendar like a work appointment. I will move that
Speaker 1: now and get that garbage out as long as you
Speaker 1: never mentioned the word garbage again. And then garbage started
Speaker 1: going out at seven o'clock in our house. But we
Speaker 1: had to have a values conversation over garbage. And nobody's
Speaker 1: having these conversations because he wouldn't know that. He didn't
Speaker 1: know he was triggering me. And everybody has triggers like that.
Speaker 1: And but you have to be able to put him
Speaker 1: out on the table. And and and I love what
Speaker 1: Amy said about the script. You've gotta you gotta be
Speaker 1: flexible enough to change the script once you understand. And
Speaker 1: people always strote his word out love love language, which
Speaker 1: is no, no, no, you know what I mean, But
Speaker 1: it's but it's it's learning how each person communicates. And
Speaker 1: then go from there and and stop stop judging and
Speaker 1: stop what he said, stop changing and man shaming and
Speaker 1: something that's something that guys just can't we don't we
Speaker 1: you want to drive a man away, that's you want
Speaker 1: a man to leave. Yeah, you just all you gotta
Speaker 1: do is shame him a couple of times. It will
Speaker 1: never see him again. That's right. Period, he's checked out.
Speaker 1: What about that guy who's I want to find him.
Speaker 1: I want to find the husband who is the recipient
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Speaker 1: Let's get into more of this, boris you gotta roll? Um? Dude?
Speaker 1: I also want your mission. I love your mission. I
Speaker 1: can align with it because you have a fitness app
Speaker 1: designed to serve people. Yes, I love that you and
Speaker 1: your wife do it together. The whole family, my brother,
Speaker 1: myself and his kids, our kids with eight of us,
Speaker 1: and we well well really quickly. Covid is a family
Speaker 1: fitness app that basically, um demystifies workout and nutrition because
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there extremely intimidated by the
Speaker 1: fitness industry because they all they speak about is six
Speaker 1: packs in some abots and a lot of us don't
Speaker 1: have the money go to gym and don't don't have
Speaker 1: the time there you go, don't have the time to
Speaker 1: go to the gym. Um, and our kids have never
Speaker 1: been more stationary. Um, they sit in school, they come
Speaker 1: home to sit on the couch, they play video games,
Speaker 1: they play with their phones. So this is actually in
Speaker 1: the history world, this is the first time generation as
Speaker 1: a as a shorter life expectancy than their parents. So
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty serious. Uh So, what we're
Speaker 1: sharing with people, my brother was a pro athlete like myself,
Speaker 1: and and he is a trainer and a nutritionist and
Speaker 1: a life coach. And what we are telling people is
Speaker 1: we don't want you to climb on everest. We want
Speaker 1: you to spend five minutes with us every day, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it fun. And we move and we
Speaker 1: we get the whole family involved. We have kids, we
Speaker 1: have NFL players, we have terry crews came through, we
Speaker 1: have active athlete athletes were in wheelchairs and we move
Speaker 1: five minutes today and it creates a habit. After a while,
Speaker 1: it creates a how off the habit it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's spills out into your day. You have a
Speaker 1: sense of accomplishment. You did, your relationships are better, your
Speaker 1: performance at work is better. Create energy, your energy exactly, um.
Speaker 1: And it's become this WiFi of a movement where people
Speaker 1: they send us comments we saved their life, contemplating suicide,
Speaker 1: reigniting relationships with your family, um, because finally they felt
Speaker 1: seen and they felt like they're part of something. Because
Speaker 1: working out an hour and a half is not realistic.
Speaker 1: It's not sustainable. And the same with food. When you
Speaker 1: tell people who love sodas to stop drinking soda, it's
Speaker 1: not sustainable because they won't do it. But if you say,
Speaker 1: make an adjustment every day, even if it's just cutting
Speaker 1: your soda intake by half just one day, right or
Speaker 1: or I'm not telling you to deprive yourself a food
Speaker 1: that you love, it's not realistic. And it's not sustainable,
Speaker 1: but but it is sustainable. It's spending five minutes together
Speaker 1: as a family having a great time and then creating
Speaker 1: habits based on that. So it's a op it app.
Speaker 1: You can download it on on your in the app store,
Speaker 1: and we we hang out every single day. We have
Speaker 1: simple and effective tips on nutrition and work outs, mindfulness.
Speaker 1: We do yoga, meditation. Yeah, I was just gonna ask
Speaker 1: you meditation. I want to. I've started to get into
Speaker 1: more arts, gab we're talking about this. I'm like painting more,
Speaker 1: listening to like instrumental music, like different things, but meditations
Speaker 1: or something that I've never got into. But I don't download.
Speaker 1: And then when I get up, I don't touch my
Speaker 1: phone for an hour. As you become when you do,
Speaker 1: you become reactive rather than active. So I just take
Speaker 1: care of myself. What's like the fundamental approach to getting
Speaker 1: started in the meditative sort of capacity. What you do
Speaker 1: is you start with two minutes and then you you
Speaker 1: when you're ready, you do five minutes and what and
Speaker 1: and the main thing is your stillness. And what has
Speaker 1: helped me when I first started is focusing on your breathing.
Speaker 1: And I know that's an abstract sort of word, but
Speaker 1: what it actually is, you're literally listening to yourself inhale
Speaker 1: and exhale, and you're you're imagining your lungs expanding and contracting.
Speaker 1: And that's what you start with, that's what you focus on,
Speaker 1: because that's that's what what um What calms the noise
Speaker 1: in your head down, all the thoughts that we have,
Speaker 1: It calms everything right down. That is the purpose to
Speaker 1: have have less essentially to be uh, to have more
Speaker 1: room to think or to think less, think less. Um. Look,
Speaker 1: your thoughts are the language of your brain, and your
Speaker 1: feelings are the language of your body. So your your
Speaker 1: physical vibration is the manifestation of your emotions. Right, So
Speaker 1: the goal is to really be in your body, to
Speaker 1: really feel every your your your bodily functions of people,
Speaker 1: the breathing and your heart rate and everything else. And
Speaker 1: that's what what turns the noise down in your brain
Speaker 1: and it gives you a capacity to be more present
Speaker 1: everyday life, sleep good, more energy, better relationships. Do you
Speaker 1: drink caffeine? Do you drink caffeine? Never have? In our
Speaker 1: drink none. Just we've been here, well, boris I want
Speaker 1: to say thank your insights. Um where can they find
Speaker 1: co fit? You already said on the app store? Where
Speaker 1: can they find you? Where your Instagram? Right there? Awesome
Speaker 1: and we'll put it on our show notes. Everything to you, guys,
Speaker 1: gotta follow us. I love your insight, man, and thank you.
Speaker 1: Just respect for you as a human being, just your
Speaker 1: energy in this room. I can feel you're a great man,
Speaker 1: a great husband. Appreciate you coming. Thank you. We're gonna
Speaker 1: wrap this upright here, Boris, You're the man. Appreciate you
Speaker 1: coming in. But we have so much more to cover
Speaker 1: Next week. Eve is going to come back to continue
Speaker 1: this conversation, one of our biggest polarizing debates. We want
Speaker 1: to know what you guys at home listening think and
Speaker 1: if you have any questions. When you have a new
Speaker 1: voicemail that we will answer your questions from. You can
Speaker 1: reach us at one eight eight eight four three zero
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy seven. So let let us know your thoughts,
Speaker 1: your questions, anything you want Eve to touch on next
Speaker 1: week one eight zero seventeen seventy seven. And that's it
Speaker 1: for this episode. How men think. We always appreciate our
Speaker 1: listeners coming in Until next week. Take care of one another,
Speaker 1: love one another, and we'll see you right back here.
Speaker 1: H