Fathers, Sons, and the Fight for Tomorrow with Tom Bresnahan

[00:00:00] Hector: Fellas, what's going on? I hope this episode finds you well. And as always, I hope this episode leaves you better than when it found you. Today's episode is with Tom Bresnahan, and he is a coach for teens, but really, he helps the parents get their teenagers life back, essentially. And we talk about some, instances

[00:00:51] Hector: where, he's really able to make a huge difference in the teen's life, But most importantly, through the work of the parents , so we talk about all of that.

[00:01:02] Hector: And most importantly, the sort of the challenge and the struggle that a lot of young men face today, given the societal sort of constraints and the financial and all these things that are going on, just don't make it easy for a young man who is going out there trying to, live a happy, prosperous life, which I think we all are.

[00:01:23] Hector: I'll at least have the opportunity should have the opportunity to do that. So anyways, y'all enough of me, let's get into today's episode with Tom Bresnan.

[00:01:31] Hector: Tom, welcome to the modern masculinity podcast. Thanks for being here, my man.

[00:01:36] Tom: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:38] Hector: Take us into your world. we're going to talk about the work that you've been doing with young men. We're going to talk about the book that you've written. you've been helping people for, almost a decade and a half, but take us into your world.

[00:01:49] Hector: What sort of, Plight or journey? What sort of weight burdens do you feel yourself still working through and carrying as a man, a father, a business owner, a leader? What sort of things are you? Do you find yourself still navigating?

[00:02:03] Tom: Sure. I mean, that's a big question, obviously, but as, as far as an origin story, if you will, because I think we all have that no matter what work we're in, what led us to sort of, Wanting to be in that field or serve that person or community, whatever. I grew up in the seventies in sort of a crazy household.

[00:02:23] Tom: I'm the oldest of five kids. My dad was a Korean war veteran, kind of a nutty alcoholic, things were kind of crazy. So, When I later in life had to work through a lot of stuff and went to counseling therapy, stopped drinking and smoking weed. When I was in my twenties, I was an actor in films and television for years.

[00:02:42] Tom: And then in my mid forties, when that sort of petered out, I went back and got my degrees and have been doing this ever since. And when I saw. Around 2012, when the iPhones and all the screens had been out for about five years, I really saw young people starting to struggle and with addictions and focus and behavioral issues and all that.

[00:03:08] Tom: And I remembered

[00:03:10] Hector: We're going to get into that, though, Tom. Before we do that, I want to Take us into your world though, today, you're a father, you have a, a teenage daughter, you have a business, you have clients, we're going to get into all that, but before we hopped on, maybe it was the recording, as like those sorts of things today, do you find yourself still navigating as a, man?

[00:03:28] Tom: I mean, I'm navigating what everyone else is navigating, right? Being a father. Being a business owner, keeping all those plates spinning. my daughter's a senior in high school. She just turned 18 yesterday. She's a great kid, high functioning in many ways, but she goes sideways sometimes, and I have these visceral reactions and I find myself having feelings that I'm.

[00:03:50] Tom: Coaching the parents I work with to not have, and then my daughter will be like, what's up with you, Mr. Therapist, teenagers can be sassy and all that. co parenting again, as we all know, half the marriages end in divorce. So half the young people out there have parents that are not together.

[00:04:07] Tom: They're going back and forth between two households. My daughter does that. So her mother and I, we've been divorced for six years. It was a little bumpy. The first few years we've worked things out. But we still knock heads sometimes. So it's hard. And again, as you, I'm sure know yourself as a business owner, the economy was a little tough in the last couple of years.

[00:04:27] Tom: Things seem to be loosening up now. So, you're dealing with all that and then getting older. I don't have the energy levels or the stamina. I can't play full court basketball with teenagers like I used to 10 years ago. So, I think we're all dealing with that stuff.

[00:04:43] Hector: Yeah, well, I think what's challenging as a, I think as a man, And maybe everybody, but it's specifically men who are in the role of leading their family, not that we have this front that we try and put on or a facade, but it can be sort of challenging to always hold that stoic or that center or that grounded sort of place.

[00:05:04] Hector: And I, I, too, am a, I think that the new term is like a solo dad because. If we call ourselves single dads, the internet will get mad at us. Cause they're like, you're not single that. So we are solo dads. And in that regard, we are sort of responsible for the emotional management of the entire household. And I think that can be tricky sometimes when we're navigating our own sort of emotions and then trying to.

[00:05:29] Hector: still be a good dad or a father and my kids are five and six. And so the help is a little more hands on in the sense that I'm, making mac and cheese and, getting dino nuggets and playing I hop waitress and, and I find myself still trying to, ground and center myself because there are times when, I'm reacting or I'm shorter than usual and it's not their fault.

[00:05:49] Hector: It's just, I'm going through my own shit and there's no backup. , there's no one to tag in necessarily.

[00:05:55] Tom: Yeah, 100%. And that's so much, I think, learned behavior. It's the modeling you saw growing up and what's in the unconscious. As we know, the unconscious is running the show. For instance, my daughter and her mother, she's 18 and her mother's obviously 50. So. They're, they're both women now. And contrary to what is said in the culture, sometimes men and women are totally different.

[00:06:22] Tom: Our brains work differently. We all know the average woman speaks 25, 000 words a day about men speak 10, 000. We see things differently. So , to your point, a lot of times I just have to hang back and let them kind of do what they're going to do and don't react because if I react, then they turn it around on me.

[00:06:42] Tom: I'm like, Hey, hey, they'll gang up on me, but I just kind of let things slide and just be cool and try to be the rock. Then they come back around. They almost sense, especially my daughter. She tests all the time. She's poking at me to see if I'm going to react. And when I don't, she immediately will soften again.

[00:07:03] Tom: And even her mother does that. So, yeah, I think that's sort of a burden that. That we have as men and fathers, that we always have to be cognizant of. And then just real quick about the unconscious and your childhood programming, part of what I said, my dad is 92 now he's sort of sundowning. It's kind of sad.

[00:07:20] Tom: He was a Korean war veteran, this macho, ran marathons when I was a kid. and I, I see how some of the really tough kind of ways that he was with me. Yeah. I will look at my daughter and think she's so spoiled or she has it so easy compared to how I was when I was a teenager. But it's not really.

[00:07:44] Tom: I had it hard. It was kind of crazy. She's just getting a more healthy sort of, upbringing, if you will. And so I think a lot of times with parents that I work with, especially the ones that maybe had Rough tougher childhoods. They have to realize that your kid's not soft. He's just not going through the the intensity that you were going through and you can't get mad at him for that Even though that'll come up for you.

[00:08:16] Hector: Yeah. Well, I think the, the concept of emotional intelligence is obviously that is That's growing. I'm 30. I'm probably like the typical millennial, generation or, or, or age and emotional intelligence seems like something that is,if you were to say that to most millennials, they would at least have an understanding of it.

[00:08:34] Hector: many of them might have even read the, the book or emotional intelligence 2. 0. And my reason for bringing that up is that I think previous generations, there was less of that familiarity. There was less of that understanding of. What goes on internally, whether we're a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, my, my daughter, she is a very emotional being.

[00:08:57] Hector: I mean, it was one of her greatest gifts and also one of the things that she's learning to sort of navigate and I can see that there are times where she just loses center. And my, my mom and my dad, they want to come and fix things. What's wrong with her? What does she want? What is it?

[00:09:11] Hector: It's, it's the spoon or it's the ketchup. I mean, it could have been anything to set her off. And what I've sort of realized is that it is, not about any of those particular things. It's actually about her processing, whatever emotion is going on. And that just seems much more foreign to people of my parents generation, and, they're 60, 60 something.

[00:09:33] Hector: And, that concept of let's just fix it and the problem will go away when it's no, that emotion is still lingering there. If you just give her a new fork or you just give it, it, that, that thing is still going to be there, until it's processed and digested the right sort of way.

[00:09:47] Tom: Well, it's really good that you understand that because I'm closer to your parents age, obviously and and to your point As much as you can, you have to let kids problem solve on their own, whether it's emotionally or functionally or and, solving problems around the house or whatever, because that you really saw that happen in the nineties where there was this sort of thing.

[00:10:09] Tom: We can build the perfect kid and we got to get them into the right preschool and they have to be on the Ivy League track by the time they're in third grade. And we really know now that that doesn't work. Jonathan Height. A colleague of mine, he has a bestseller out now called the anxious generation. His previous book is called the coddling of the American mind.

[00:10:29] Tom: And he really talks about it in that book about where sort of that build the perfect kid and make them sort of immune to any mistakes or teach them the best way to get at that. That

[00:10:43] Hector: I was a product of that. I was born in 91 went through that whole system. And exactly. You take failure out of the equation. You remove failure as an option. And all of a sudden we get you really anxious or we don't Do any we don't try because the likelihood of failure is, I mean, it's imminent in most things that we do, and I see so many kids my age just wanting to be perfect at the expense of happiness, fulfillment, real success.

[00:11:09] Hector: And so they sort of limit that. I know I limited myself because I didn't want to fail or do things that I wasn't good at.

[00:11:14] Tom: and you're one of the very young millennials, as that the Gen Z's are turning 12 to 27 this year. There's 68 million of them. they are really struggling because of what you just said that they, they're the first generation to grow up with screens and phones and the internet and all that.

[00:11:32] Tom: And, They have a very low tolerance for sort of,that old saying, being able to hold two opposing ideas in your mind or sort of deal with problems and be able to compartmentalize.okay, this isn't going right, but I've got to focus on school today. Or this isn't going right, but I've got to get my homework done or that they really don't have that sort of resiliency built in largely because of how they were raised.

[00:12:01] Tom: And now we're, we're just really trying to scramble and fix it.

[00:12:06] Hector: Well, I think social media is, I think has a lot to do with it. And it's not just social media. I mean, it's, it's the whole thing. It's tech, it's screens. It's the, it's that draw to whatever that draws, whether it's the dopamine or distraction or whatever it is, like I, I, myself. , I've implemented quite a number of, of habits with tech and I've got, limits on all my things and notification silence, and I still feel myself being pulled to distraction.

[00:12:32] Hector: And, when I have a few minutes in between a call or something like that, just the natural inclination to, to just pull out my phone and start scrolling through my Twitter feed. And what I don't think a lot of people are realizing is the downstream effects of that. It's not that easy. In and of itself, I don't think is, is actually the challenge.

[00:12:48] Hector: It's the fact that, okay, now you, you had three minutes, but you ended up spending eight to 10 and all of a sudden your, your energy is pulled in all different ways. Your, your, your brain isn't, you're, you're focusing on things that frankly, oftentimes don't have anything to do with your life and that's not.

[00:13:03] Hector: I don't think that's conducive to people living a grounded, focused, centered, productive sort of life if they're worrying about all this shit that doesn't matter to them.

[00:13:11] Tom: Yeah, of course. And I relate. I have a, I don't really have an issue with any of the platforms other than Twitter. Twitter. I can just like, and I have a one hour like, and I just like when the little thing comes up and you have a five minute warning, I'm like, fuck. I don't do it. And, and, and what you said, the real distinction for your audience and anyone listening, because I've, I've done so much research on this and, and obviously my experience with over 300 families now and my own daughter as well,, It's not like the 10 minutes, the 10 minutes, the 10 minutes here, here, there throughout the day, that's worse than if you just did one block of one hour.

[00:13:54] Tom: Okay. Because especially with their developing brain, as we know, their brain isn't fully developed until they're 25 and boys. Brains develop even slower girls, 22 ish boys, sometimes 25 and that executive function, the neofrontal cortex, right above the eyes, it atrophies that they know. So that 10 or 15 minutes, , every hour all day is almost worse than just, you can have one hour of video games.

[00:14:22] Tom: You can have one hour of. the phone and social media, and then you're done. You got to turn your phone in and it's hard. I mean, I can't, if we had had those when I was a teenager, I would have been addicted to, I'm sure I would have. So it, I know it's hard for parents, but if you don't put those limits on them, you're literally messing with their brain development.

[00:14:43] Tom: We know this Steve jobs and all the tech Titans wouldn't let their kids have. iPads and iPhones because they knew how addictive it was.

[00:14:54] Hector: , it's tough. I'm curious because I think that this is a sort of a, maybe it's a symptom or

[00:15:00] Hector: I don't think anyone would necessarily argue with me or would get upset with me if I said that the world is a little bit fucked up these days and that if we have, Any inkling of moving towards whatever out of this past this above this, that men are going to play, I mean, if not half the role, obviously a large role in bringing us, society, culture into that new world.

[00:15:25] Hector: And I think that families, it starts with the individual and then once it goes past that the family unit and then obviously communities and society. But I think that men. We have enough responsibility, but I don't think that we should shy away from it. We do have the responsibility to give our kids, our boys and girls, fighting chance at this next little bit.

[00:15:45] Hector: And to your point, if we just send them in with the programming of previous generations, I think we're just dooming them to failure. So I'm just gonna stop there. I'm curious, like, when I think about what we're doing as men or even what the show is trying to doing, maybe I'm just trying to self aggrandize myself and give myself some, some self importance.

[00:16:05] Hector: But I do think that, you These conversations can have as large of an impact on, where we move to as a society.

[00:16:13] Tom: Yeah, 100%. , and to sort of illustrate what you just said, that great point with a few examples. So in my own life, as you said, men leading men being an example, that mature masculinity that I'm always trying to push the young guys and even their dads to, to sort of shoot for, it's my daughter, Scarlett, She's a great kid, but sometimes she's really snotty and disrespectful and can be kind of a brat.

[00:16:44] Tom: honey, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry. but I get to choose how I react. , \ I can, you know, don't you talk to me that way, or don't you be respectful, disrespectful, kind of how maybe my dad was 40 years ago, whatever versus, okay, let her be a little snotty.

[00:17:01] Tom: That's all right. I can pick and choose and sort of lead from that place of strength where they, they respect you. She kind of knows, all right, he's not on me for everything, but there's certain sort of. Deal breakers that I can't cross the line and another maybe societal way to sort of illustrate what I feel you brought up was,you see the only fan stuff in pornography and whose fault is it and the girls are all sluts and the boys are all loser incels jerking off to porn and all that.

[00:17:34] Tom: So it's if, if men aren't watching pornography, if they're not paying for only fans that doesn't exist. those things dry up immediately. So I always tell my young guys, I think men and, and the dads, a lot of, a lot of the dads, a lot of married men are into porn. There's a lot of sexless marriages, as we know, and marriages where there's, sex once a month or something.

[00:17:59] Hector: So porn is just as addictive as drugs, alcohol, anything else. So how do we change the society? stop doing that shit. To that point, I think for sure. and I've had my own battles with, with all of that, that what I realized as I, when I, when I got divorced or like when I divorced was kind of starting to happen and it was, not only was it like really painful, which is I think at the root of all of this, it was so strange that my natural reaction, like just a reaction, not even like an intentional or mindful action, but a reaction was to start opening up dating apps or, going on tinder or looking for this, like whatever.

[00:18:40] Hector: Looking to fix or or just what I what I realized it was like it was looking for something to sort of pacify the wound, right? It was just like take away a little bit of the pain and it was only when I was Willing to turn into that sort of pain and that hurt and all the betrayal and all those sorts of things Did it become easier to not go on porn or put, to delete all the apps or, or any of those sorts of things.

[00:19:06] Hector: Right. But it was if, because I just told myself, just stop watching porn, just go, no fat, like you just don't, don't do it. And my brain, my nervous system kept craving whatever was on the other side of that. And so I think that, for me, doing a lot of breath work, doing a lot of, inner child, like all those, so the healing work, yeah.

[00:19:27] Hector: It's so important if we want to stop, these other problems that sort of emerge when guys are just, , they don't have a sense of self worth. They don't have a sense of self confidence there, and they also don't know how to deal with or work through any of those emotions because we, as men, we're not supposed to have those.

[00:19:46] Hector: So, so not only do we not talk about it, but we don't even know how to, let alone navigate it. insane. So

[00:19:51] Tom: and we do have the emotions, obviously the whole sort of stoic, nothing bothers me that that whole meme is not reality, we all have it. And I've gone through my issues with drugs and alcohol and a little porn and all the dating apps and all that stuff too. I think most of us have, but I also know that. Those were just escapes to not look at my own pain for me to not look at how did we get to this place of divorce? How did we get to this place of, I chose this woman, we had a child, we built a life together and then it fell apart. And if I don't look at that, then I'm going to repeat it. the old saying, the universe will keep bringing you back the same lesson until you get it.

[00:20:37] Tom: And so it's. It's not even turn inward. It's just turn off all the distractions and all the ways that you know you're acting out addictively to not feel and then it's going to come up. You've probably heard the saying, don't worry about getting in touch with your feelings. They'll get in touch with you.

[00:20:58] Tom: Well, the way they get in touch with you is when you stop all the ways that you're acting out and numbing out. And that's when. Yeah, it's not easy. You're going to have a dark night of the soul. You may be crying, you may feel anger, but writing, reading, praying, meditating, like you said, breath work, working out, building yourself as a man.

[00:21:23] Tom: I tell all my young guys. Today, the bar is so low. I'm saying if you can stay in shape, keep a job, be focused, be ambitious, show up for an interview and be like, how can I bring value? What can I do? How can I make this enterprise more money? They're like, hire this kid. where they're used to and this is even guys that come in with graduate degrees because so many of the dads I work with are very successful businessmen, fortune 500 executives, and they'll tell me they'll be like this kid came in.

[00:21:58] Tom: He was like MBA from blah, blah, blah. And he's like saying, Oh, so when, how much time do I get off? And when am I going to get a raise? And, and, and, He's they leave my office and I'm like, I don't want to work with this kid. I don't even care that he went to an Ivy league school and has his MBA from Wharton.

[00:22:18] Tom: He's an entitled little jerk. And it's, it's, it's something that I think is. Again, we as the older men have to teach these younger guys how to sort of, and I don't mean sit down, shut up and listen, but I mean like be quiet, learn, listen to the older guys, find some mentors and, and really take direction and, and, and let them Show you how you can get the success you want.one of the things just real quick, I know I'm yammering here, but one of the things I asked teenage boys is I say, so where do you want to be when you're 25, would you like to have a cool job that you're making good money with room for growth and, a cool apartment, maybe with some roommates, a hot girlfriend and a cool car or something.

[00:23:13] Tom: And then you're doing fun things on the weekend. I've never had a teenage boy say no to that question. And so then my job there is to help him reverse engineer that to where he is today. So if that's where you want to go, how are we going to get you there? And it's not from smoking weed, vaping, jerking off to porn.

[00:23:35] Tom: goofing around with your friends, Netflix and chill and doing that bullshit. That is not going to get you there. A little of that, we get it. You're a teenager. You're in your early 20s. Maybe you're in college, but you, you got to be focusing. You got to be locked in. And, and so many young guys. I don't think have mentors and role models to be telling them that.

[00:24:00] Hector: One of the, one of our early episodes was, about the rites of passages for boys. That's sort of gone by the wayside. And,the ones that are the things that are still doing those sort of initiations are not not. Not the best pass, whether that's gangs or, usually it's the gangs or it's the groups of friends who are not down the right path.

[00:24:24] Hector: But there's no, there's no structured way for, for like you said, a boy to, To gain those skills to become a man. And so I'm curious if, if you see those, those things already possible or how you've been, trying to, catch it before, catch it before it breaks, if you will, by, by reaching men, before they even get to their twenties, I would imagine.

[00:24:47] Tom: Yeah. A great, great question. And I don't think there's a lot of rites of passage. I think in sports, kids that play football or baseball or lacrosse, there's a little bit of that. the Boy Scouts now seems to be over. That's kind of been a, Weird thing that happened to that. I'm starting live events next year where i'm going to have the dads and the sons and kind of that rite of passage and and that sort of father and son reunion if you will on an emotional level and cleaning things up and really You know helping the young man do that transition from boyhood into young manhood.

[00:25:24] Tom: I'm really excited about that. But to your point I don't think it's happening a lot And it's, it's, it's, it's really a loss for the culture. It really is. And, , it's a big reason why I think young men are struggling even more than young women. Young women are struggling too. There's this thing that's happened in the last five years where if you're for young men and men in general, that means you're anti women.

[00:25:51] Tom: It's not a zero sum game. You can care about both. Both. And again, I have a teenage daughter. I want her to have every opportunity in the world, but it can't be at the expense of young men. I think we've seen the Me Too era and powerful men had, you know, there come up in some had to deal with things they did to hurt women and keep women down, but you can't paint young men with the same brush.

[00:26:17] Tom: That for the sins of these older, powerful men, like for instance, I was in Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein, I was in acting class with Ashley Judd, this is over 30 years ago. and I remember when she went to the, allegedly to the Beverly Hills hotel to have a meeting with him about her career and.

[00:26:38] Tom: Something again, allegedly crazy happened. And, he's someone who deserved to go down, but you saw in Hollywood where now all men were bad. And then you have these superhero movies where a hundred pound girl is beating up like, six foot five army guys and shit. It's just really stupid.

[00:26:57] Tom: And the kids are all confused. They really are. They don't know a buddy of mine teaches acting at a big. acting school in Manhattan and, cause I was an actor. And so was he years ago. And he was like, you can't imagine how crazy it is now. All the boy meets girl scenes, like in romantic comedies and movies, all the kissing scenes or love scenes or all that.

[00:27:18] Tom: They can't do those in class anymore because you're not allowed to touch. Cause there could be some microaggression or something bad. So they have to do all these exercises, but you're not allowed to touch the other person. It's kind of crazy. It's kind of nuts. So, yeah, I know that was a long winded answer, but, the rites of passage and letting boys be boys.

[00:27:43] Hector: They're more rambunctious. They've got testosterone pumping through their system. Again, even Scarlett will tell me, she'll be like, Dad, a girl will pass a note or be on her phone or joking around, and the teacher will go, Stop that, Jennifer. Be quiet. And a boy will do the same thing. He gets sent right to the office. That's just not cool. And you're right that there is this idea that if you are for men, you're against women, for the longest time I didn't want to start this show because in whatever small capacity, I thought that my platform would, be canceled, right?

[00:28:16] Hector: that was a crazy thought that I was being just because the idea of putting masculinity in the title of the show immediately turned off. So yeah, I mean, there was, there was some guests that I reached out to and they probably weren't the right sort of guests, but they were like, I don't believe in a platform that, is, is about masculinity.

[00:28:33] Hector: And it's well, what do you, what do you mean? it's not that, okay, well, I think what they, what, what they're missing is that alongside it. The rise of the sort of feminist movement, men, men didn't men weren't that new place for them wasn't established, right? If women sort of had this elevation, which they should and is great and fantastic, we didn't account for.

[00:28:54] Hector: So now what role do do men play? If if men are no longer the sole breadwinners, then what? How do they provide in a way that isn't just financially? And I think that there are answers to that. But if if a guy Doesn't see any, isn't aware of that. Potential or isn't aware of that sort of value and they think that they're the only thing that that separates themselves The only thing that they have to offer distinguish themselves from other other men is how much money they make Well, it's like it's no wonder that you know There's a rise of the internet girlfriend or these e these e girls or these the AI sort of stuff Only fans you mentioned like it's just it's not a It's not a, a surprise necessarily that men are turning to them because they're like, well, what, what are we supposed to do?

[00:29:43] Hector: And it's a real question that they have, that a lot of people aren't dignifying with an answer

[00:29:50] Tom: Yeah, I'll dignify it because I don't, I know what's going on. So, I, I, I know for a fact that, and, and, and so does everyone else. I'm not saying this is like my thing, but birth rates have cratered. Marriage rates have cratered the satisfaction of the, the sex is getting along and having fun and all that is at an all time low.

[00:30:13] Tom: So. We know that's not good for anybody, whether you're a teenager or in your 40s or 50s, it's, it's, there's this animosity between the sexes and this blame and this, and it's, it's this sort of, to me, I think the, the core underpinning of it all is this sort of wanting to make us all the same. And not realizing that men and women are different.

[00:30:38] Tom: Their brains are different. They act differently. I don't, I think toxic masculinity is almost a slur. It's just goofy. We, we don't have enough masculinity. It, toxic masculinity is fine. When there's a disaster or a fire or an earthquake or a flood and all that. Right. And

[00:30:58] Hector: or a spider in the house.

[00:31:00] Tom: or a spider come save me, but otherwise, and, but the women aren't happy.

[00:31:05] Tom: They're not. And again, I'll say it, whoever I piss off, sorry, we can talk about it. If you want,DM me, but it's, it's like the women are not happy. They're not, they're miserable. That most of them don't want to be a boss girl. They don't want to be lonely. They're not interested in making tons of money and I have all my power and I don't care and all that.

[00:31:29] Tom: And they don't. And then, and you know this, you seem like a cool guy. You seem like a, like an alpha, it's like most women, even if a guy will let him, her boss him around, they don't like it anyway. They're bored. They're like, now again, the other end is some knuckle dragging macho guy.

[00:31:49] Tom: That's saying. Stay in the kitchen and cook my food. That's a trope from the 1940s or something that doesn't even exist anymore. They keep pulling that out. I think a thing you see, and I say, this is sort of like calling it almost a cultural Rorschach, if you will, that there's a case going on now in New York city where this, you know, former Marine or something on a subway,

[00:32:15] Tom: this crazy guy was terrorizing people on the subway card. He grabbed him and choked him. And apparently the guy was still alive when the paramedics got there, but you can see he's on trial, but why aren't they saying, and, and, and this guy apparently had 43 previous convictions and all that.

[00:32:32] Tom: You really see how the culture is vilifying the very sort of heroism and I think healthy masculinity that they would want if one of their loved ones life was in danger. every person on that jury, And every person that's outside, saying, send him to jail. He's guilty. If their mother or their father or their son or daughter was about to be maybe injured or worse by some crazy guy on a subway car, they would want that guy to.

[00:33:04] Tom: To grab them and save their family member. And so I really feel and this, and I know this is long winded, but I feel it's really important for our audience. There's this public persona, I think, which has made us so worried. And then what we really feel in private. And I think until those things start to come back to be as one, we're going to suffer as a culture because again, I think there's a lot more people that feel like, you know what,

[00:33:28] Hector: know what,

[00:33:29] Tom: he choked him and maybe it let, but the guy was going crazy and he could have hurt people on a car and he was nuts and had 42 prior convictions.

[00:33:36] Tom: We're not going to put this guy in jail. I think most people feel that way, but they're afraid to say it because they could lose their job or, or hurt their career or whatever. And I think that is really hurting us as a culture. And it really hurts young boys because, that's who I really care about.

[00:33:55] Tom: That's this next generation, you know, the pool of men that maybe my daughter's going to pick a husband from. They see that and they go, Hey, I want to be heroic. I'd love to help out, but then no, maybe I'll be the one that gets in trouble. And I think if we don't correct that as a culture,

[00:34:11] Tom: We're headed for the rocks.

[00:34:13] Hector: Yeah. One of the, another, former guests of the show, Dr.

[00:34:16] Hector: Robert Glover, , he wrote the book, No More Mr. Nice Guy. And I, I for sure, you say, Oh, you look like an alpha and I was like, well, geez, I'm glad that's the case now because I was the nice guy, the pushover, the boundary, just, I was the, the happy wife, happy life, that I made that my M.

[00:34:34] Hector: O. to the demise of my, of my relationship, right? Because like you said, if at a certain point when a guy does everything You know, the woman wants and been like, it's just, it's not attractive. There's no, like the whole thing. And we've talked about that quite a bit on, on the show and the mistakes that I made, but, but to that point, there's the, there's this idea of the nice guy.

[00:34:52] Hector: And I don't think that, that's as much in the, in the culture anymore for the, for the, the Gen Z years. But, but I do think that a lot of millennial guys, 30 something year olds. May have that programming and not even be aware because you would have not, I, I wouldn't have identified that, as that before my divorce, and before my marriage sort of went the way that it went.

[00:35:18] Hector: But when I look back and it's and I'm, I can sort of take responsibility for all the things, for my share of it. It's oh yeah, that's where you were not playing your part. And, and I guess the, the reason I'm saying this is that. We don't want to be, the, the toxic, masculine of the aggressive, the,, the wife beater. Okay. So we're going to be the Homer Simpson. We're going to be the Tim Allen. We're going to be the Ray Romano. We're going to, all we're going to be on that side and we swung too far.

[00:35:41] Hector: And so hopefully there's this sort of balancing, this middle ground, but I think that can only, thankfully we've seen the two extremes. but it's going to take work to sort of find that middle.

[00:35:50] Tom: I mean, I agree with everything you just said and your points are, are salient. But what I would say to that is the sort of the wife beater, toxic, effed up guy, that's like a trope again from the 1940s or something. Does it happen? Of course, I'm certainly not saying it doesn't.

[00:36:08] Tom: But I think that's a small minority. I think most marriages, most relationships today, There's guys trying to find, like you said, that sweet spot where I'm not this overbearing, like guy, that's always trying to be the macho guy, but I'm not this little pleaser boy, wussy that she just doesn't respect.

[00:36:27] Tom: And it's boring. And, and so many guys they'll ask me like the dads and the guys in their twenties. so what do I do? What do I actually do? And I always tell them. You don't have to do anything. You have to come from your mature masculine. You have to come from the reasonable logic and, and what the specific situation calls for, respond, don't react, be calm, , certain reactions.

[00:36:57] Tom: Are just like, no, no, I'm not going to do that. And then they'll flip out on you. And it's okay, well, you can do whatever you want, but I'm not doing that. And then the woman will come around and say, okay, because you responded maturely. You didn't over explain But you didn't yell., it's sort of finding that middle ground.

[00:37:19] Tom: And,, so many guys have such a hard time with it. And I do too, sometimes, not

[00:37:23] Hector: You re you recently posted, you said you can't punish a struggling teen boy into being a better person. What do you mean

[00:37:34] Tom: of like whack a mole, every problem or thing that he does, whether he's vaping, smoking weed, drinking, acting out, he's into porn, he's yelling at me, he won't listen to his sister, he sneaks out at night, and they just, if I can just solve all the problems and punish him and take all his devices away and all his privileges, then he'll toe the line. I'm here to tell your audience that 99. 9 percent of the time that never works. What's usually going on is he's pissed off and upset, or afraid, or angry, or worried, and nobody understands what that is. Nobody's helped him figure that out. A lot of times it can be even below the level of consciousness.

[00:38:26] Tom: A lot of times it's about, The, the parents getting divorced or dad's never around or moms. And that's much more difficult. Parents don't want to do that. They want to, it's triage. They want to solve the problem quickly and get it handled. But when you're looking at the longterm, when you're looking at his maturation, when you're looking at your son or daughters, sort of developing their own agency and their own maturity and their own problem solving skills, and as you said earlier, making their own mistakes and learning, you've really got to get in there.

[00:39:08] Tom: And see, and I'm talking to the parents now, what mistakes you've made. I made plenty of mistakes and I know all the stuff I'm in the field. I made plenty of mistakes with my daughter in my marriage and even after. And if parents don't look at their mistakes and their role modeling, and they just want to sort of punish the kid and it's your fault, so many parents will reach out to me and say, Hey, this sounds amazing.

[00:39:33] Tom: We just read your book. We want to work with you. And I say, okay, great. We'll have his first session and then we'll have your first and they go, Oh, no, no, we, we don't need a session. We're fine. And I always tell them, no, no, no, no, you have to work. And they're like, but we're, and I say, there's plenty of stuff that we're going to need to work on with you.

[00:39:51] Tom: Just trust me. And the parents that say, you know what, you're right. And then the kid sees, wow, Tom's talking to mom and dad too. They're making changes. They know they've made mistakes. They know they've done things that have pissed me off and maybe caused me to act the way I do. That's when things really start to change in the whole family.

[00:40:12] Hector: law. Yeah, I think that's a great segue.

[00:40:15] Hector: I'd love for you to share sort of, I know you got a lot of different things and resources and ways for you for people to get support, but I'd love for you to share a little bit about the programs or the book. I even think there's a new one coming out. just that people want to go and go deeper into your world.

[00:40:30] Tom: Yeah. Thanks. I, I post pretty much every LinkedIn, and you can download my new book. It's called Take Back Control. It's really getting your son back on track or even your daughter, it's a free ebook. It's a quick read. You can download it. And then if you feel like you need help, you can reach out to me.

[00:40:52] Tom: The five critical steps that parents do need to do that I always tell them are, first of all, again, like we were just saying, you got to tell the truth. You have to start telling the truth about what you and your co parent have been doing. And maybe your part and why he's acting out. And then that's going to help him tell the truth.

[00:41:10] Tom: The second thing is you have to be a united front. So many parents, whether they're together or divorced and separate, they're not a united front. And so the kids will live in the gap. They know where mom and dad don't agree. And that's where they live. it's like divide and conquer. Even with your five and six year old, you can see them.

[00:41:29] Tom: I'm sure like do it a little bit in their own way. You have, the third thing is, is you have to agree on boundaries and consequences and even between the parents, because when he sees the parents having boundaries with each other, then he will start to respect boundaries. The fourth thing is, respectful communication instead of yelling and screaming and doling out punishments again, even between the parents and between the, each parent and the son.

[00:41:56] Tom: And then the fifth thing is, and probably the most important. You have to uncover and process past events, traumas, getting bullied in school. maybe a breakup for a girlfriend. Maybe he went through a time of having really bad acne. Maybe he was really short and got picked on for being the little

[00:42:15] Hector: How soon is too soon to start unpacking things like that

[00:42:20] Tom: To start what I'm sorry,

[00:42:21] Hector: to start unpacking things like that? at what age does that sort

[00:42:24] Tom: 13. I just got a new, I just got a new family the other day, last week, a 13 year old kid, he's in seventh grade and his parents are divorced. They're going out to dinner tonight at, at my. For the first time, the three of them in four years, and when I talked to this little guy, about wouldn't, would you, because he's an only child, would you like to maybe go out and do stuff as a family with your mom and dad?

[00:42:54] Tom: And do you wish they could sort of get along and everything? And he like started to cry. And he was like, yeah, and he's acting out and really having problems. So the parents are amazing. These, they're both willing to do it and they know they need to work together and, and start to, do things like that.

[00:43:11] Tom: So, to answer your question, he's 13 and just from two sessions with him and one session with the parents. And then, like I said, they're going out tonight and then I'm going to do a session with the parents Monday to find out what happened and then I'll have a session next. Wednesday with the young man, things are already changing and they just hired me a week ago because you get down to what's really going on.

[00:43:38] Tom: They were sending him to someone for the weekly 50 minute hour, but they were never hearing what you get it, what they need to do or what's really going on because they never even talked to the therapist.

[00:43:51] Hector: Yeah, I think a lot of parents, they look at, what's the problem? What's the kid's problem? And they don't realize , that they are usually the problem or , they at least, have a lot to do with it. And I'm glad you bring that up. we'll link all that up in the, in the show notes.

[00:44:06] Hector: Can you give the name of the book one more time for people who want to go and get that?

[00:44:09] Tom: The book is called take back control and it's in the pin post, as I said, Tom Bresnahan on X Facebook and LinkedIn. And then again, it'll be in the show notes. It's a quick read, even if you never work with me, it's my gift to all your listeners. If you have a teenager, even a girl, like I said, Read the book, whether you're with, their co parent, you're divorced, you're a single parent, you're going to get some great stuff to use.

[00:44:37] Tom: And like I said, if you want help, reach out to me.

[00:44:41] Hector: I love it. My last question here, Tom, is in your opinion, what is the definition of modern masculinity?

[00:44:47] Tom: Again, it's the mature masculinity. , it's the middle ground. And I'll illustrate that by the three parenting styles, which I'm sure you're aware of. On the one end, there's the authoritarian. Which is very sort of like yelling and screaming and controlling. And then on the other end of the spectrum is the permissive, where the parents let the kids kind of do anything.

[00:45:07] Tom: They can have parties at the house and smoke weed and drink and all that, right? You understand. And they, they want to be their friend instead of their parent. And then the middle ground is the authoritative. The parents are loving and friendly and all that great stuff, but they're the parent first. And they have age appropriate consequences, guidance, and all that, so the child really understands what sort of boundaries are and all that.

[00:45:37] Tom: And so, that I feel is where modern masculinity and the mature masculinity is. Nobody wants that cartoon character Andrew Tate thing, Bitches and hoes and all right. That's not, but, but they also don't want the little wussy pleaser boy who will just do anything they want. There's a middle ground.

[00:45:59] Tom: And, and, and I think the men that can find that are going to have the best,outcomes as far as their relationships with women, whether you've been married 20 years or whether you're a young guy in your twenties, trying to have a healthy relationship with a woman.they want that combination.

[00:46:16] Tom: And, it becomes exhausting when you feel you have to play this role where, like I said, finding the middle ground is easy because you're always like, okay, what's the logical middle ground. I'm not going to be a little wussy pushover, but I'm also not going to yell and be like, Mr. Macho guy.

[00:46:31] Tom: that's what women are looking for.