Pornography: The Silent Dream Killer Every Man Needs To Hear with Alex Charfen

Alex [00:00:00] I've been married for 22 years and for a lot of my marriage there was this very confusing condition there where my wife and I would have a challenge and she would say, I wish you would see me.

Alex I wish you would hear me. You know, she didn't feel seen, she didn't feel hurt. She was actually saying that. And Hector was so frustrating.

Hector Fellas, what's going on? I hope this episode finds you well, and I hope this episode leaves you better than when it found you. , Today's episode is with Alex Charvin, and he is a repeat guest of the show. He came on about a year ago, so I'd encourage you to go back and listen to that first episode with him where he was about to head out on, out on a sabbatical After, , decades of helping entrepreneurs grow their business, increase their efficiency, and optimize, you know, really being about total optimization from a, you know, a business and a, life and even health perspective.

Hector He's really taken a, a new path and gone inward and taken that same approach to figuring out how do we work internally? how do we, , clean up and clear out some of the, crazy programming or the shit [00:01:00] that is the trauma that is, holding us back because, , we talk about it and, and growing is so, , important.

Hector But I might venture to say that healing might be even more important and something that guys are not doing nearly as much. And this, , episode gets into all of that and how to do it and why to do it. And , so it's a great listen. , I'm honored that he decided to come and grace our show again 'cause it's one of the few interviews that he is done over the last couple years.

Hector And so enjoy it. , It's gonna be a good one. You might wanna listen to it a couple of times, but let's get into today's episode with Alex Sharpen. Alex, welcome back to the Modern Masculinity Podcast. Thanks for being here, man. Thanks for having me, Hector. I appreciate you, man. I ask our guests, you know, because you've got a, highlight reel of career accomplishments, and I probably mentioned some in the intro, and I think that those are all great, but my favorite way to, , introduce, if you will, the, guest is to ask them to take us into their world and sort of share the, challenges or obstacles that they're still going through as a man.

Hector And, and the first conversation we went through, sort of, you know, that transition that you [00:02:00] were, you know, going through in your career and with your family or your, partnership and all that. But, , I'm curious, what are you, what are you going through now? What sort of muck are you, you know, working through today as a man?

Hector You

Alex know what, Hector? I wish I could give you muck and like what I'm going through, but I can't, dude. Like I'm, I'm having like the best time of my life. Like really right now, I'm 52 years old. I turned 53 on Wednesday. been with my wife for 22 years. I've got a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old that are thriving and things are going as well as they ever have.

Alex Like, honestly, I'm better than I've ever been. I wish there was like some, some like dark night of the soul that I was working through that I could talk to you about, but like, I've been there, you know, that's what I've done like for the last year and a half, and I've processed so much. I've got so much out of the way that I just feel like really fucking great about everything that's going on.

Alex You know, there's this business coach, , I'll remember her name in a second, but she says, you should feel comfortable in the fact that 50% of your thoughts will always be negative. I call bullshit. That's someone [00:03:00] who hasn't processed their trauma. That's someone who hasn't like their, that's someone who's like.

Alex Address your issues and get real about what's going on and like, take every trigger and really treat it like an opportunity. You get outta that stuff. You, you know, there's like, there's hope. I think any business coach or any coach in general who says 50% of your thoughts are gonna be negative is selling you down the river.

Alex Like you're going into a place where you don't need to go, you know? And I think one of the big things for us as men is that we're told like, things are gonna be hard, things are gonna be negative, things are gonna be challenging things. And so we go looking for it. And I think eventually you have to like get to a place in your life where you're like.

Alex And I'm gonna approach this with the expectation that as a man, if I put energy into my life, it's gonna get better. And I think we're kind of discouraged to do that. And it's confusing.

Hector Yeah. I think I've heard the stats people say more than 50%. And I, and what's interesting is that they're not taking into the effect that those people haven't done the work.

Hector They're running [00:04:00] on, you know, crazy matrix programming. There's all this sort of stuff that, , when people take the time, like you said, , to do the word go in, heal, whatever they need to do, , it changes things completely. And you can live in a, in a totally new paradigm.

Alex You really can. I think that there's just like some stuff that we've been convinced as men, I think there's some things that we need to understand about relationships that make everything easier.

Alex You know, and I, the world today is kind of convincing us of the wrong what I mean, Hector, . You and I recorded a podcast right before I went on sabbatical. So I stopped working about a year and a half ago and I went all in on sex intimacy in my relationship. And part of the reason that I did that is I heard this coach say that if you work on sexual shadow work, that it topples all your other shadows because sexual shadows sit at the base of like our trauma, our reactivity, our challenges, what comes up for us.

Alex And so over the course of the past year, I've leaned in, I'm like, okay, so you know, Katie and I have been, my wife Katie and I have been working on some stuff. And like over the course of the past [00:05:00] year, one of the things that came up for me, I'll just use one example. I have like some serious abandon or had some serious abandonment issues that I didn't really like understand or process.

Alex I think as men, when something challenging comes up, we suppress it, we push it down, we try and like not face it. And that suppression, that not facing what's going on, that not accepting what's going on is what keeps us in that negative place. So over the course of the past year and a half, there was a time where, you know, I'm not working, we're working on our relationship.

Alex And this thing kept coming up where my wife would leave and I would feel anxious, you know, and my wife actually planned like a week long trip and I felt massive anxiety. I'm like, okay. And in the past I was like, I'm just gonna stuff it down. I'll do what I need to do. I'll withdraw, I'll like make this work.

Alex And this time I'm like, wait, like I'm 52. The fact that I'm getting anxiety 'cause my wife is going up and leaving for three or four days is actually like a real problem. And so I worked with an EMDR therapist. I went deep on that part of me. We've got a therapist in [00:06:00] California that we do EMDR online and like we, I've really examined like what is this abandonment issue?

Alex What is this challenge that I have? Where is it coming from? When I came to recognize it's from my childhood. Like I, I had a surgery when I was like, less than a couple weeks old. And in 1972 when I had my surgery, they didn't use anesthesia on infants. Like I did a lot of research on this. So I had an open cavity operation without anesthesia.

Alex And back then, the way that you had to heal as a baby is like, there's a lot of vectors for infection and all kinds of other stuff. So they put you in an incubator and you heal in an incubator by yourself. And so that was like one of the first exposures I had to the world and I meditated on it. I approached that part of me, I like really spent some time with the part of me that's anxious.

Alex I did a, a mushroom ceremony on my own where I went in deep and like really spent time with that part and was able to process it and overcome it. And Hector, now my wife leaves and I, I'm okay. I mean, I miss her. I have rational feelings towards it, but I've gotten the [00:07:00] irrational, reactive feelings out of the way.

Alex I think as men, we're not taught to do that. We're not taught like, Hey, if something's coming up, like bring it up, bring it to the surface, feel it, you know, so much of what we've been taught as men, and I know, I don't know if you have the same conditioning I do Hector, but since I was a kid, I've been told, stop moving, stop being so loud.

Alex Stop making everybody else uncomfortable. Stop feeling like really just numb yourself and stop feeling. And the opposite of that is what really allows us to become the person that we're supposed to be. It's feeling every feeling and really digging in. You know, anybody who's read my book, the Entrepreneurial Path Personality Type, there's a chapter about feelings about how we don't feel and how we don't need feelings, and how, like we don't have feelings like the rest of the world.

Alex And Hector, I was so, so unbelievably, undeniably wrong. That chapter. I wish I could recall every book that's out there, there's like 10 or 15 books out there. I wanted all come back so I can fix it. Because the message that we don't feel as men [00:08:00] is like the opposite of what we need to hear. We need to like feel fully and feel our feelings and process and understand, and then things get easier.

Hector Yeah. I've shared this on the show. I, I remember my, , when I first started dating my, the mother of my kids, my ex, , she would stay over for like half the night and she lived about an hour away. So she'd wake up, , about three or four in the morning to beat traffic home. And I remember bawling almost every time she would leave like uncontrollably, we'd wake up and she'd leave and I'd just, I remember sitting there and going, I don't know why I am crying right now.

Hector I have no idea what's going on. And, you know, like similar to you, I sort of shoved it down. And years later in our relationship, she traveled a lot for work. That inability for me to deal or work with myself was a huge riff in our relationship. And, , and so I, I look back on that and I'm like, man. and it came too slow and it took too long for me to figure out what were the triggers, and maybe it wasn't supposed to work or whatever, but I, I look at all that and, and there are guys who, you know, for me it was like crying uncontrollably, but I think anger or all these, you know, [00:09:00] emotions that come up that guys don't know how to navigate or work with and they think, oh, I'm just angry, or I'm just whatever.

Hector When really there's some more work to be done. And for so long, I think guys, it was all about going out, right? Going out and exploring conquest. Like it was a very external focus. And now the world has sort of been, you know, conquered or it's been explored and, and I think that the new frontiers for guys to sort of go inward, you know, and for us to explore what, what hasn't, what, what's been avoided for millennia, perhaps.

Alex Yeah. I mean, I think for a hundred of years, this is hundreds of years, this has been obscured from us. You know, we're just not, like, not told what we need to hear as men. And if you're a man in a relationship, like this is what I wish I had heard 20 years ago. Like, really, I wish somebody had sat me down and said this.

Alex Like, look, it's not gonna be fair. Stop trying to make it fair. It's not transactional. Stop trying to make it transactional. Stop inventorying every offense, every issue, every challenge, everything. She said, like, let go. Let go and [00:10:00] understand that you're responsible, 100% responsible as the man.

Alex You're responsible for setting the tone in your relationship. And therapists won't tell you this because therapists treat everybody as equal. Like you have issues, she has issues. But here's the reality. Hector, when we look at your old relationship, the last relationship you had, were you stronger than your, the person you were in a relationship with?

Alex Physically? Physically, yes. Yeah. Physically stronger. Yeah. Were you more dangerous than the person you were in a relationship with? Sure. Were you more dominant than the person you were in a relationship with? Sure. Okay, so we need to accept this as men and understand that in a male-female relationship, the only way to create emotional safety is for us to go first.

Alex And nobody will tell you that. Nobody will tell you that because here's the reality. Let's just look at reality. When you have a man and woman in a relationship, if a man is creating dysregulation, the woman will be dysregulated a hundred percent of the time because he's stronger than she's, he's more dominant than she's, he's more dangerous than she's, [00:11:00] and no therapist says this, and I don't know why, but like really, as the man, you need to first calm things down, get in your body, stop the reaction, stop the reactivity.

Alex Like learn how to process your emotions so that you can sit with your wife when she's processing emotions and be part of the catalyst that helps her bring those forward. And if you do that, you'll have everything in your life that you want. Everything that we want is men and on is on the other side of creating emotional safety for the person we're in a relationship with.

Alex If we are willing to take the first step and let go of all the resentment and frustration and all the stuff from the past and say, look, I wanna reset, I wanna reset and I wanna connect with you, and I want time and I want space, and I want us to get into a place where we are actually connected. It's that as a man, you can do this and you can step into the relationship and change things dramatically.

Alex and the challenge for most relationships, Hector, like I'll ask you, if you had a relationship that ended a year and a half [00:12:00] ago, if we go back to that relationship, what type of process and structure did the two of you have to connect? There was none. None. 99% of the guys that I ask, it's none.

Alex But here's the answer that I get most of the time. Well, we're together a lot and we're around each other a lot and we're proximal to each other. But when I ask. How much time, how much space did you have uninterrupted between the two of you on a regular basis? Most men will tell me, I don't think we really did.

Hector You said something about, you know, getting into your body, and I think a big sort of holdup that guys have is they're like, they feel sort of disconnected or that emotions are sort of this, this ambiguous enigma that they don't, really understand. And I think that maybe a shortcut or a, a sort of a way into that is through, the body, right?

Hector Because there seems to be a lot of disconnect between, , between those two, right? And thinking that, my emotions are just sort of out in the ether or they're in my head or something. But, you know, there's that, classic book that the body keeps score [00:13:00] and I think that.

Hector Guys see that and they go, oh, that's for women who, you know, were sexually abused, or that's for people who have, you know, this extreme sort of trauma when in reality, like you're saying, all these sorts of emotions are lingering in our body somewhere. and it seems like you've really spent a lot of time to go in, find those, work with is a weird word.

Hector , Deal with is an even weird word. Word, but, but really no, it's process come into contact with them.

Alex It's processing them. It's processing, it's, it's like understanding that there's a place where you're reactive, understanding there's a place where you're triggered. Maybe there's a place where you're consistent and really reactive and triggered and admitting that, and then saying, okay, what's the work to do here?

Alex that phrase. Every trigger is an opportunity. Sounds like kind of blowing something off. It kind of sounds like, oh yeah. It's one of those things people say. But dude, if you stop and you say like, Hey, wait, every trigger's really an opportunity. If I'm triggered, if I'm reactive, there's something behind that that's making that happen, I'll go process that.

Alex I'll work with somebody like calm that reaction down so I can be more present so I can be [00:14:00] more aware. That changes everything.

Hector Yeah. It's amazing when, when someone, you know, takes the time. I've, I've fallen in love with breath work over the last, you know, several years. That's really been my way out of this and my connection to somatic work, at least, you know, the, door in, 'cause meditation, I, I've studied and practiced meditation for, you know, probably a dozen years or so, but there was always this disconnect between, between me and the body.

Hector Like I, I felt like I was never able to fully access those emotions. And it seems that only once you go in there and, and the problem is it's pretty scary. It doesn't feel good. It's like, it's the most uncomfortable thing to do, and yet it seems to be the only way to.

Alex Yeah. I have a reframe on that.

Alex By the way, I love breath work too. I mean, I've, I've studied breath work for over a decade. I think it goes back to like 2012 or 2011 or something like that. I went deep. I worked with a personal breathwork work coach for a couple years. I mean, I have this theory on breath work, I think as empaths, which, you're an empath, you know that, right?

Alex We feel the feelings of the people around you. Like all of us who [00:15:00] have childhood trauma usually create some type of empath personality because we wanna know what's going on around us. It's a defensive mechanism, and as an empath who is tuned into the world around you, you often feel everyone else's feelings.

Alex But when you're doing breath work, like for me, I feel like breath work brings me internal and allows me to feel my own feelings and allows me to really access what's going on. And I can't tell you how many times I've been in a breathwork session and just had tears come through, like. Bawling, crying but for no reason.

Alex Just something needed to get outta my body. Something was stuck and it comes through and like, , my friend Giovanni Baro, who, who runs a company called, elemental rhythm, who I'm actually certified

Hector to teach breath work through. And I almost forgot, I can't tell you how many, , tracks I listened to that I, I've used the other ship app and he goes by geo on there, but that's the guy.

Hector Yeah, he's amazing. Geo's amazing.

Alex And his tracks are so clean and so good and so artistic and so well done. [00:16:00] And, you know, , sometimes I'll lay down and I'll do a 20, 30 minute breath work track and it just feels good. Other times there's a massive purge and a movement of emotions. And these days I also use another strategy called Time and Neutral.

Alex You know, I think meditation has a lot of expectations with it. And for us as men, the more embodied we can get, the more we can connect our body to our mind, the better everything goes for us. And so one of the things that I do is I've stopped trying to quote meditate. I just do time and neutral. I throw on an eye mask.

Alex It's right here to my desk. I lay down on the floor, put a bolster under my knees. I set a timer for 10 minutes and I expect nothing. My only expectation is that I'm gonna stay there for 10 minutes and I'm not gonna get out of the the time in neutral, and I'm just gonna let the clock run out. And whatever happens, happens, it doesn't matter.

Alex And here's what happens, Hector, you do that and the first time 10 minutes feels like a half hour. The first time I ever did it, I remember setting the timer for 10 minutes and then laying there and thinking like, oh man, I probably [00:17:00] didn't set the timer because it's been forever. And so there's no way it's still running.

Alex And I looked and it'd been like four minutes. And so just know that it's gonna feel like a long time. But I did this consistently. I did it over and over again, and then it got to the point where I would set a timer for 10 minutes and it feel like a lot less where I'd set a timer for 10 minutes and it feel like kind of a time warp that it went off too early.

Alex And then it gets to the point where sometimes I set a timer for 10 minutes, lay down. It feels like I take a too few deep breaths and the timer goes off and I'm like, what the heck just happened? And I know that that's the space where my brain had some time to just be where I got, like what science now calls nons, sleep, deep breaths.

Alex It's like just being not in a sleep state, but allowing your mind to have no input and just be, and Naan talks about this too. He says, you know, if you do this long enough, your brain gets to the place where it creates the habit of calm, where it creates the habit of presence. And as men, we [00:18:00] have been convinced that what we need to do in the world is act and fix and do and build process and make structure and do things.

Alex And you know what? Most of the time, especially in a relationship with your spouse or with your partner, what is really they're looking for is presence. They're not looking for anything else other than you just being present.

Hector You gotta tell that to my 6-year-old daughter. She always loves, she goes, dad, what's the plan?

Hector And I go, I go, beautiful. We're just gonna be, we're just gonna be, you

Alex know? And, , lemme explain what I just, just said. So Hector, when I say that just presence is required, lemme give you like a really specific scenario. like I said, I've been married for 22 years and for a lot of my marriage there was this very confusing condition there where my wife and I would have a challenge and she would say, I wish you would see me.

Alex I wish you would hear me. You know, she didn't feel seen, she didn't feel hurt. She was actually saying that. And Hector was so frustrating. And I remember thinking like, I see you, I hear you we're together all the time. I don't understand. [00:19:00] And then finally through doing massive amounts of research, through really studying this stuff through looking at like not just modern things, but like tan and Daoism and.

Alex And like the belief systems that have been around for relationships since the beginning of time and really studying the masculine and feminine. Here's what I found. For us as men, if we want our partner to feel fully seen and heard, we need to create presence. And here's what I used to do. My wife would have an emotional reaction.

Alex This is why she didn't feel seen and hurt. Katie would have an emotional reaction. As a man, I feel threatened by emotions. Most of us do. We've all been told we shouldn't feel. We've all been told we shouldn't have emotions. And so I'd be listening to her, having her emotions and my first thought, like, I can admit it now.

Alex I wouldn't admit, admit it, back then, I didn't even really understand it. But my first thought was, how do I fix this? Can you relate to that, Hector? Oh,

Hector yeah, yeah. There there was no, I didn't know any other way. How fast

Alex can I make this go away? That really was like the thought, right? And so here my wife is having an emotional reaction.

Alex There's something wrong. There's something challenged. She wants to be seen. She wants to be [00:20:00] heard. And immediately I'm trying to fix it. And if fixing it didn't work, then I try and build process around it so it never happened again. And if process around it didn't happen, I felt threatened. I felt insecure.

Alex So I would withdraw. And if withdraw didn't work, then I'd get angry. By the way, fixing it turns her into a project. Building a process turns her into a project. Withdrawing turns her like into something that you don't wanna be around. And getting angry turns her into the enemy. Not one of those things lets her feel seen.

Alex So here's what I like discovered, like, holy shit, why hasn't anybody told this? to us. Has men. What I discovered was when Katie has an emotional reaction, it's an opportunity, like a massive opportunity. Because what I do now is, I mean, first to be honest with you, it kind of gets me excited. But let me take you back to the first time this happened.

Alex I created the hypothesis that if I can sit in my wife's emotions with her and help her process and just be present and just be aware and not react, that things would change. So I [00:21:00] entered into the situation with the expectation that if I'm present and aware, things are gonna change. And I remember the first time it happened, kitty was having an emotional reaction.

Alex And I remember talking to myself and saying like, okay, breathe. Breathe. There's no threat here. There's no wooly mammoth. You do not need to react. You do not need to get activated. And I sat there and as she was talking, I breathed. I let what she was saying, like not, I didn't deny it, I didn't suppress it.

Alex I didn't like deflect it. I let it come over me and I breathed and I processed in the moment and I stayed in my body. And I asked her like, how does that feel? Is there anything else coming up for you? And sometimes Hector, like early on there was things she was telling me about me, things that like I really didn't wanna hear, but God, I wanted her to be seen and heard.

Alex And so regardless of what she said, I validated. I accepted. And when she said, there's times where you didn't make me feel seen and heard, I validated. I said, you're probably right. She said, there's times where you've been really mean and you've been violent, you've been angry, and you've been [00:22:00] loud. And it scared me.

Alex I said, I'm so sorry. You're absolutely right. There's times where you've really like not been the person I wanted to be in a relationship. You're right. Like all of those things are absolutely valid. So I sat there and I validated. I didn't fix, I didn't build a process. I didn't withdraw, I didn't get angry.

Alex I listened. And then as the conversation continued, I kept asking her like, tell me more. Is there anything else you wanted to say? Is there anything else coming up for you? What else is going on? And she got to the point where she said, you know, there's nothing left. I've explained it all. And so I just, one more time would ask, is there, are you sure there's nothing else?

Alex And she'd say, yes. And then Hector, I'd asked this, I asked this question that completely blew me away. I'm like, okay, we, we talked about a lot of things. What, out of the things that we've talked about, do we need to like handle or do something about. She said nothing. Nothing. And in the past, I would've inventoried 15 things that I needed to go work on, and I would've done 'em without telling her, I'm just trying to be the right, [00:23:00] the good guy.

Alex You know, I'm trying to, to please her to make things right, to fix things. And these days, when we go through that conversation, 90% of the time or more when she's having an emotional reaction and I provide masculine containment, there's nothing else. And as men, we don't understand that. Like, hey, you can just be, and everything will get better.

Alex And what happens when you do that? Like you sit there in the emotions, you listen to all of it, your spouse, your partner, will finally feel seen and heard. And that is more regulating and more calming than anything else because as, human beings. I want us to all understand something. We all have the childhood wound of not being seen, not being heard, not being acknowledged, not feeling good enough, not feeling like we're enough.

Alex And so here's what happens. The payoff is actually for you, for the man, like in the most dramatic way. Because if you're willing to sit there with your spouse as who's having a reaction, if you're willing to process in the moment, if you're willing to like really feel the feelings and stay [00:24:00] there with her when she says there's nothing else left and there's nothing you need to do, you'll feel a masculine energy in your body you maybe have never felt before.

Alex It's like in the modern world, we talk about how men don't have an initiation. You know, we don't go out into the woods and get like our hand put in like fire ants or anything. Like what, what ancient tribes used to do. But what if the initiation that we all feel like we're missing is sitting right in front of us?

Alex What if the initiation is actually becoming the person who creates emotional regulation in your relationship? What if the initiation is processing all of your shit? Getting the triggers out the way so that you can be present and aware and in the moment with somebody that is an initiation that will, will create more progress, more growth, more personal development in your life than just about anything else?

Alex But as men, we're not taught that. The modern world doesn't tell us that. The modern world actually has told us, Hey, you have feelings [00:25:00] and you have wounding. Feel your feelings, feel your wounding. But that's it. And so when I go into the world and I look at like so many of these men's coaches that are like screaming and yelling at men to become more masculine by getting yelled and screamed at, it's like, wait a second.

Alex Like we're in a world of a bunch of men who've discovered their wounding but haven't discovered the solution, and they're sharing from the wound, which is crazy relatable. And gets a lot of likes and a lot of attention, but it keeps us all stuck.

Hector the analogy or the metaphor that has emerged on this show is, , that of like a furnace and a fire.

Hector 'cause I had a guest, , recently ask me, they're like, I don't, I don't get this whole polarity thing. it was a very interesting conversation. 'cause they sort of came from a, a different mindset than I think both you and I share. So I think the easiest way I can, I can explain it, is, it's like a fire in a furnace.

Hector You know? , If the fire melts the furnace, there's no good. the fire can't be so strong that it, melts the furnace. And the furnace can't be so overbearing that it stomps out fire. It actually requires both of those energies to create something useful. When you have a fire without the furnace, it burns out.

Hector [00:26:00] There's no direction to it. But you, give that structure and all of a sudden the two can, can actually create something, And so, I'm curious, you've, in your first life, if you will, did a ton on, you know, optimizing for the business, optimizing yourself. It was very, you know, let's call it outward external sort of optimization, and I'm using that term loosely.

Hector But recently, you know, as you sort of done this sabbatical and sort of transition, it seems like you've taken that same approach, but to, I don't know if optimize is the right word, but to process like you've, taken that same approach to really going internal and doing that same amount of work, , on the inside.

Hector Can you talk a little bit about that and, and maybe some of the other things that you've learned along that path?

Alex Yeah. So my whole life I've been obsessed with capacity. Like, how much can I do? How much can I get done? , How much can I accomplish? How many people can I help? You know, and honestly, how much success can I create?

Alex and I did a lot of that. I turned 53 on Wednesday. I'm not working right now. I don't have to ever work again in my life. I'll, but I don't have to. There's no [00:27:00] financial motivation to do it, and I think for us as men, we're not ever really explained that like personal development and optimization can happen so much faster than we think because you can go like, go try and work on all of this external stuff.

Alex You know, most personal development frameworks say, Hey, here's all this stuff you should go work on. But as a man, what I think you should work on is lean into your relationship or lean into your relationship with yourself if you're single. Process, the triggers that come up. Quit trying to build something, work on what's already there, work on what's already happening.

Alex Quit trying to like go do something else. Like understand where you're and process those triggers, process those issues. I think every man should be in some type of therapy. I recommend because recommended it for over a decade and it has amazing results. But if we're not doing that, if you're not like working on yourself, you can do all the personal development you want and you're kind of scratching around the surface, [00:28:00] it feels like you're being productive.

Alex But what you're really not doing is facing where you are and admitting what's really going on for you. So I think that for us as men is like crucial. Crucial to really like work on the inner work, work on ourselves. That's not to say that you shouldn't like try and remain in good shape. I mean, I, one of the, the reasons that I came to sexual shadow work is.

Alex I'm all about energy and the capacity, like I told you, like, how much can I get done? And so how can I increase my energy? So like I stay hydrated, I eat well, I meditate, I work out, I do all those things. But if you do enough research on energy and capacity, you come across sexual energy. It's the strongest energy we have.

Alex It's called chi or gene, depending on the different, like belief systems through the past. And we've already, we already know this, like sexual energy is the strongest energy we have. We don't look at it like that in the modern world, but that's how like all of the, the older techs look at it. And so you wanna develop yourself personally, work on that.

Alex It's the most compressed and fastest and [00:29:00] most intense way to figure out what's really going on and to move your life forward. And I think, you know, yes, work out, but do all the other things. Start taking an inventory of what's really going on with you. And if you apply some effort there, you're gonna change things a lot faster than if you go after someone else's framework for what they think you need.

Hector Yeah. I remember the first time I, , you know, I was probably like 14 or 15 and I heard someone talk about like, semen retention, right? It was just like, loser, right. Or like the No nut November. And I remember it just being like, what a fucking bunch of loons, you know, like, I remember having that thought and also having to reconcile that with the fact of after masturbating or watching porn or whatever, this complete lack of energy, right?

Hector Mm-hmm. It was like, it's just this, drought of motivation of ask. Like it was just a tangible sort of feeling. And so that's what sort of kind of like always thought I was like, okay, maybe you know, they are onto something and then you start looking into, a lot of eastern.

Hector [00:30:00] Spiritual sort of traditions that, that emphasize this more. And it's like, these people couldn't have been this wrong for so long. Like there's gotta be something here. for maybe for guys who are not as maybe spiritually inclined or research or like, what are some of like the practical or, tangible things that you've seen or that they could take away to help sort of bridge this gap and maybe open the idea that there's something more to this energy than just, you know, just making babies?

Hector That's a really good

Alex question, Hector. oh gosh, it's kind of hard to say what they should do without talking about like what reality is today for men. I think that the reality today for most men is that we don't understand our sexual energy. So we ignore it until we feel like we wanna have sex and then we pay attention to it.

Alex And honestly, I think most of us are systematically and repeatedly traumatizing ourselves. Lemme explain what I mean by that. , This isn't my favorite topic to talk about, but I'm willing to talk about it now because I'm on the other side of it. But when I [00:31:00] was, I'm 52, and when I was about eight or nine years old, I was exposed to hardcore pornography for the first time.

Alex It was back when there wasn't the internet or anything like that, but there was like videotapes and playboy and penthouse and other stuff in my house. My dad had a lot of it, and so I was exposed to it very young and it was stimulating and exciting and interesting, and I felt like, like, like I was learning something and I was figuring something out, and like, honestly, that those hooks that got in when I was like really young stayed there my whole life now.

Alex I used pornography as a way to escape, as a way to soothe, as a way to feel better, as a way to disassociate for most of my life. It was hard to admit just how much it was robbing from me. It was hard to admit just how much it was actually doing. And now that I'm on the other side of it, fuck, I can talk about it so much more intelligently because here's what's happening when you watch pornography, like you just have to look at it logically as a man.

Alex So number one, you have instant gratification. Number [00:32:00] two, hyperstimulation. Number three, total disassociation and lack of connection. And number four, there's a level of self-loathing there. Lemme explain what I mean by that. So first, if you're watching pornography, you're in a place of lack of connection and you're self-soothing and you're in this place where like you have instant gratification.

Alex So as a man, is instant gratification a good thing because here's what happens. Our like whatever we do at the sexual level in our lives is going to permeate all of our lives. That's how strong sexual energy is. And so if you're in a place with sexual energy where you're getting instant gratification and hyperstimulation, what does that do to the rest of your life?

Alex The rest of your life? You're expecting instant gratification and everything to be super stimulating. And so when it's not, it doesn't feel like it's going right. And when we're watching pornography, we're in this place of disconnection and disassociation. It's not a connected, alive place. It's a [00:33:00] fucking alone,

Alex disconnected, disassociated place. And then the last thing, when I bring up self-loathing, when it comes to pornography, like let's be really honest. You're putting yourself in the chole position. You're watching other people have sex as a way to entertain yourself. That is not a position of power, that's a position of victim.

Alex You're literally putting yourself in the position of victim, in the position of cuckold, watching someone else do something that you wanna do. So let's carry that over to the rest of your life. If you're getting instant gratification and hyperstimulation and, and you're alone and disconnected, and then you're in this place watching someone else do what you wanna do, you're gonna do that in your life.

Alex You're gonna look for instant gratification. You won't work hard if it's not immediate. You're gonna look for hyper hyperstimulation. And let's be honest, most things that make us successful are not hyperstimulating. They're actually hard work. There's things you have to like make the donuts do it every day.

Alex You're in this place of disconnection and disassociation. If you don't think porn is stopping you from connecting the, with the people around you, stop using porn and watch how [00:34:00] much changes. And then that last one, like putting yourself in that place of victim over and over and over again, that is carrying over to the rest of your life.

Alex And for those of you who are watching and you use porn, like I wanna be very fucking candid and real with you. I know how hard it's to stop.

Hector I saw a post on, I know it was a tweet or whatever you call 'em these days. And they were talking, it was sort of around this. And one of the, the women, she responded, she said that, of the men in her life, the ones that she seems to have the most respect for it, often almost to a t she finds out that they don't watch porn and that she says that there's just an aura, there's a presence, there's something intangible that those guys exude on a subliminal or, you know, not even on a conscious level that she as a woman is picking up on.

Hector And, it's a palpable sort of effect. And so if we think that it, you know, it doesn't really matter. It seems to matter a lot.

Alex [00:35:00] It matters like crazy. if you're one of those guys who's so still stuck in the, like, it's harmless, it's no big deal. I mean, I was there, believe me, I justified it a million different ways.

Alex It's a release, it's easy. I'm not bugging my wife. I'm not like all these things. But you can't get past what I just told you. And here's what I can tell you from experience. Like this is embodied. I stopped using pornography. It took a long time. I had slips. I had to like really get through it. And then I finally was like, I'm gonna draw a line in the sand.

Alex I'm gonna go 30 days with absolutely nothing. I made it like 17 and I like saw something online. I'm like, shit, I'm gonna reset the 30 days. And I made it 30 days with nothing. And once I was past that 30 days. In those 30 days, here's what I started feeling like. I felt different about myself, completely different about myself.

Alex But Hector, what was even more powerful is when I went out into the world, like I felt the world reacting to me differently. When you say there's an aura of about a man, here's what I believe. When we're willing to stop leaking our sexual energy that actually builds up in [00:36:00] our inside of our body and the world around us feels it.

Alex When you're a safe man who's not objectifying, who's not leaking sexual energy, who's not outta control sexually, the world around you will feel it and people will treat you differently. You will treat yourself differently because being in that place of like containment and holding your energy and not having these frenetic or compulsive things happen actually makes you feel so much better about yourself.

Alex And so I know it's hard to get started on this journey and don't expect yourself to be perfect, but if you are using pornography in any way right now, ah, man, set a date on the calendar. Tell yourself you're not gonna use it anymore. Give yourself 90 days, and at the end of 90 days, you can always go back.

Alex But my hallucination is, you're gonna feel so much different about yourself. You'll never go back.

Hector One of the things that seems to come up is that there's this like, what do I do with, right? It's like, because I think at first, you become aware and then you realize that it's out of control, it's leaking, it's all those places.

Hector And then so for, [00:37:00] for me, and I'm, I'm very much in this, still in this part of the journey of, okay, there's an awareness there. Porn is not really the issue that it was, but now how do I, how do I cultivate it? How do I utilize what do I do as a, you know, , with it per se. Are there ways that you have found to sort of, I don't know if channel is the right word, but like transmit No, it's the right

Alex word.

Alex It's transmuted channel. Yeah, man. Like, fuck, it's so amazing on the other side. So here's what I now know about pornography. For me, porn is a signal. It's a signal. It's actually a gift. And God, I would've never said that before in my life. But as I was going through this process of getting out of it, one of the things that I did, and I don't know if every everybody needs to do this, but man, it sure helped me was I was just open.

Alex I finally, like, my wife knew all about it. My friends knew all about it. I'm like, fuck this thing that happened when I was a kid, it's carried through my whole life. Like, I really need to get past this. And so I was open about it because anything that we hide in the shadows, that shame is going to make it like worse and worse and worse.

Alex That's that [00:38:00] suppression, that feeling that we have. Why you keep seeing like guys with doing really bad behaviors in public, like we see it all the time. And when you like trace back to what, where that guy is, they're in a very suppressive environment. We see it over and over again. And so when you stop suppressing that energy, when you stop doing that, everything changes.

Alex And when you lean away from porn, for me, here's what I found. If I have the calling to go watch pornography, it means I'm off mission or out of integrity, period. It means there's somewhere I'm not admitting something, I'm not talking about something. I'm not telling somebody something. I'm not doing the right thing for myself.

Alex I'm not working on my mission. I'm not like moving forward because when I'm engaged and excited, pornography is the last thing on my mind. When I'm not in the right place, when I'm not moving forward, when I'm not trying to do something, that's when it comes up. And so when it does, I ask myself like, Where am I out of integrity? The fastest way to regulate your nervous system is to be an integrity. [00:39:00] Being in integrity means you're telling people what's going on. You're not hiding things, you're doing what you say you're going to do. You are going through on, every commitment that you've made, and you're actually working to make yourself better.

Alex And if you're not, if that signal comes in, if you have that distraction, use that distraction to tell you where you need to focus.

Hector Yeah. what's interesting is you talked about some of the symptoms of, you know, porn and what it can create. And it seems like that's sort of what society is experiencing.

Hector Like at a macro, you know, where guys are just watching other people scrolling, instant gratification, gambling, like all these sorts of things seem to be sort of symptoms of guys not. Not taking, control of their sexual energy. And, and I'm actually reminded of, a chapter in Think and Grow Rich, , Napoleon Sort as well.

Hector Yeah. Sexual. Yeah. And I remember reading that and going, what the fuck is he talking about? You know, like being so far out of it when we, kind of bring it back. It, seems like, and I'm talking about an uneducated perspective, that the same energy that [00:40:00] creates a baby is the same energy that can create a business or that can create a, create

Alex anything, right?

Alex Create anything. And when you're leaking out that sexual energy, you reduce your capacity to create. Let's talk about that chapter from Napoleon Hill. I've read, think and Grow Rich so many times. Like, it's, it's one of those books that I keep going back to. I have a first edition copy. My wife got me, it's downstairs in a safe.

Alex I'd like to go read that one because it feels different. But I love Napoleon Hill, but I don't think he had it right on the sexual transmutation chapter. By the way, everybody reads that book, but everybody ignores that chapter. Would you

Hector agree? Sure. Yeah. Well, I think it's even taken out of some additions.

Hector I'm

Alex right. The abridge ones don't have it, and it's like, oh, sexual trans, that's kind of weird. I'm not gonna really think about it. What? What does he mean? Right? here's what I think it was trying to really tell us, is that when we leak our sexual energy, when we don't contain our sexual energy, when we don't contain our energy in general, that's when we are not gonna accomplish what we wanna [00:41:00] accomplish in this world.

Alex And the challenge with how Napoleon Hill describes it is he describes it as like a place of lack, of place of white knuckling. A place of like, Hey, you don't have sex, so that all this energy comes through somewhere else. But for us as men, that's really fucking hard. And also, I don't think we should stop having sex.

Alex Like sexual energy's amazing. You can cultivate it, you can grow it, you can carry it in your body, you can circulate it in your body and use it like for anything that you want. I think what Hill was really saying is if you have out of control, leaky sexual energy, you have an opportunity to contain it and that containment of that energy is gonna pay off everywhere else.

Alex And if you look at tantric and Daoist like philosophies as men, we can actually get to the point where we're having sex, but we no longer have to ejaculate to have an orgasm. And I know that that's a crazy concept for most people. When I first read it, I thought it was impossible. But if you're willing to like contain your energy and do a lot of practices [00:42:00] and have a rational self-pleasure practice where you are like working with your edge and not going over the edge, you can get to the point where you have energetic orgasms that do not require an ejaculation and they're infinitely better than a normal orgasm.

Alex Doesn't happen for me all the time, but it's something I've worked with. It's something I've cultivated. It's something I've worked with with my wife. And when you get there, it's extraordinary. And it doesn't feel like, oh, I'm doing this like horrible, tough, really hard thing. It actually feels like kind of exciting.

Alex And each time that you have any type of sexual experience, it's like, how can I build this up more? How can I make this more intense? And it's an entirely different way of looking at it. So transmutation, yes. I think we should transmit our sexual energy into productivity if we're leaking it and then in our relationship, we should cultivate it and grow it and

Hector harvest it and use it.

Hector You talked about that, the ability to contain it, and I'm reminded of, , we were watching the movie [00:43:00] Turbo, which is a, a Ryan Reynolds film. And I don't, I don't know my opinion on Ryan Reynolds. It's not, I hate that I like this movie as much as I do, but, but there's a scene when the snail goes through the engine and, , you see the pistons firing back and forth.

Hector And my son's like, what is that? And I'm like, oh, that's an engine. And he's like, how, how does it work? We're like, whatever. And I was like, well, they have, they're creating small little explosions in those things, and that's what powers it back and forth. And, and so it just reminds me of this sort of controlled explosion that creates movement that creates force.

Hector And if you were to just have that explosion be uncontained, it would be catastrophic. And actually in the ability to contain it, that you, create some, some movement with it.

Alex huge difference between containment and suppression. I just wanna make sure that we understand that, the analogy you just used is good because an explosion in an engine is contained and it moves the thing forward and it like works as a system.

Alex That's okay. Suppression is just not allowing the explosion. You know? So as men, we have to understand that like, yes, you're gonna have the feelings. You contain them, you process them, you work with them. You do not [00:44:00] suppress them. You let them come to the surface, you feel them. And that containment of feeling, our feelings of allowing our feelings of not letting our sexual energy or energy in general spill out everywhere, you know?

Alex And it's not just through objectification of women, like when we're outta containment our energy, we can objectify, we can threaten, we can be loud, we can make everybody else feel uncomfortable. Like all of those things. If you're in a place where you're raising your voice to make a point, you're not good.

Alex If you're in a place where you're using energetics or violence or like volume to make a point, you're probably making the opposite point. And so for us as men, when we learn how to like actually use our energy in a productive way where we can communicate clearly where the person who we're communicating with doesn't feel threatened or frustrated or scared, we actually are seen and heard.

Alex And I wanna go back to something we were talking about earlier just to make sure that I make this point. You know what I said was, as a man, we need to make our partner feel seen and heard. We need to create emotional [00:45:00] safety for our partner because here's what happens. This is why it's so massively beneficial for us.

Alex If you sit with your partner and you create emotional safety and you hear her and you see her, she will connect to you in a way where you will feel seen, heard, and validated like you never have before. And this is important for us as men, like sexual validation and sexual attraction. For us to feel attractive is crucially important.

Alex If you want your partner to be attracted to you, if you want your partner to like have trouble keeping her hands off of you, help her with emotional containment. Help her process stay in that moment with her and everything will change. I'll share just a really fast story. Hector, a friend of mine has been having challenges in relation, his relationship for a while, his wife has some C child abuse, had childhood abuse and some other things that had made it so like intimacy has been very challenged.

Alex And I've been working with him for a while and we've been talking about this process of like sitting down with your partner and letting her process, staying in it with her. [00:46:00] And it's not easy. Like it takes a few tries. Like sometimes you're in there, you're trying and you get emotional, you get triggered like you need to start over again.

Alex You need to do again. So finally in the last couple of weeks, he got to the point where there's been a few times where they sat down and he really helped her process and he left me messages afterwards. He's like, dude, that was amazing. I felt so strong. I felt so good. She felt so much better afterwards.

Alex She was like sitting, you know, sitting in my lap, holding. I was sitting in my lap, I was holding her. She was like so close, so connected. Well. He's provided emotional safety a few times, and then they just recently, he left me a message that they woke up and his partner's first thought was, we should have sex.

Alex And he was like shocked by it. She doesn't initiate, she hasn't in forever. He's like, what's going on? I'm like, dude, what happened? He's like, I was so excited. I got up, started getting ready, and then I was like, really trying to make everything happen and I ran outta time and I had to leave the house, and I'm like, dude, that's not the goal.

Alex But because he was so taken aback [00:47:00] by it that it was like, oh my gosh, what is happening? I've talked to him since and like since then they've, gotten together and like things are totally different because she feels safe. If you are not having the intimacy you want with your spouse, chances are it's because she doesn't feel safe, because if a woman feels safe and she feels connected to you, biology will make it happen.

Alex That she wants to be physical.

Hector I'm glad you brought that up because the listeners have heard it and the impetus for the show was my ex. She told me one time, she said, , I don't think you're man enough to be with me. And the shitty part was that, you know, I can say it now, but I had so much leaky energy I had, so I was not providing that emotional safety.

Hector Sure. We lived in a nice house. Sure. I was physically protecting her. Right. Nothing would ever happen, but I was not providing that emotional safety. because I wanted to fix, or I wanted to please, or run or, or, or, or maybe

Alex just didn't know a better way. Right. Like, give yourself a break, man.

Alex Right. Give yourself a break. you were [00:48:00] working off the conditioning you've had for your entire life, that as a guy, if something's wrong, you need to jump up and fix it. And so you didn't know a better way. So like, don't beat yourself up over that man.

Hector I don't, , anymore. , You know, I've worked on, I've, I've forgiven myself a lot.

Hector There's still more work to do, but I say that because I'm sure that there are guys who are in that same space going, I'm providing that safety. when she uses safety and we use safety totally different is a totally different language. '

Alex cause here's what most women will tell you by the way.

Alex They'll say something like, I feel physically and financially safe and emotionally starved.

Alex And the emotional starvation is because they don't feel seen and heard. Because when they're emotional, there's a reaction, there's no connection, there's disassociation, and they continue to not feel seen and heard. Because here's the reality of a hundred percent of us, not just women, is that every single one of us has a triggered inner child inside of us that needs.

Alex Processing and [00:49:00] support and understanding and compassion in. And as men, we need to go do that for ourselves. We need to work with somebody. Get into a men's group. I'm in a men's group. It's like one of the best things I've ever had where I can be vulnerable and real with other men. I have a therapist that I work with.

Alex I'm a chiropractor that I work with. I have a coach that I work with. Like I have people that I go and I've got friends that I can get on a call with and process what's coming up so that I can sit with my wife and help her process because I set the emotional tone for our relationship. And as a man, I have a 24 hour hormone cycle that is really consistent.

Alex Go look at the chart for a woman's hormone cycle throughout the month. It's all over the place. And so as a man, you show up with the consistency, with the strength, with the dominance, with the containment, and you allow her to emotionally process. The act of doing that is going to make you a better man.

Alex It's going to connect you with your spouse in a way that is indelible. You can't break through that connection. I've been very successful in my life, but the thing I'm absolutely the most proud of is [00:50:00] my relationship. Because when I go out in the world, I carry the confidence of knowing that I have the most secure attachment out there.

Alex When I go out in the world, I know that if anything happens to me out there, I can come back here and I'm safe when I go out in the world, no matter who I see or what I'm told or what happens, I have a marriage that is the foundation of my life and nobody can take that away from me. like look at the reality of your life, yes, you know, there's a lot of things you can put time and energy into, but if you want emotional regulation, central nervous system regulation, maximum capacity for yourself as a man, like put time and effort into your relationship and it will help everywhere else.

Alex you mentioned my past life, Hector. You know, I was a business coach for a long time for ages. Of clients. , My businesses did about, I don't know, around a hundred million online, maybe a little bit. And my clients did hundreds of millions, like billions online. Some of the people I've worked with, like one, we just did a hundred million in a weekend, and of a lot of the people that I worked with were couples.[00:51:00]

Alex And there was this bizarre thing in our coaching program, if we could get couples into the program and they would focus on the business, things would get a little bit better and the business would do better and numbers would go up. But then after they focused on the business, we would often have them focus on the relationship and it's like, just put some minimal process in place, a line every day, meet once a week, and we got 'em to do this.

Alex The business would explode. It's counterintuitive because as entrepreneurs, if there's a problem, we wanna go focus right on that problem. I'm gonna sit on the business. I'm gonna put every, all my time into the business. What's interesting is you put some time and effort into your relationship. You get a little more secure, a little more grounded, a little more present, a little more aware.

Alex Everything else in your lifechanging.

Hector We were at a, it was called Scout o Rama. I was put on like by the Boy Scouts. , Recently I took my six and 7-year-old and they were talking, one of the, booths is, we were talking to the guy and he was telling him, you know, here are all the things you need to take out on a hike, you know, sunscreen and water and, and all these sort of basics.

Hector And, you know, there's the classic sort of, if you were stranded on a desert island, you know, what would you take with, wanna ask a [00:52:00] little bit different of a question, and I don't wanna put a number on it, but if you were in that sort of situation where you had to take not things, but you had to take practices, you know, , with you, , what are the things that you absolutely are putting in that bag

Alex no, that's easy for me. this is gonna be an answer that'll probably get me made fun of and, and like joked about. But I mean, a rational self pleasure prep. It's not like the most popular thing to say as a dude, but if you study Tantra or Daoism, or you look at any of these systems, one of the things that is a massive opportunity for us is to understand ourselves better.

Alex And for us as men, most masturbation or self pleasure that we've done has been in the dark. We don't wanna even admit it to ourselves. We're watching other crap that is like, you know, ugh. It's permeating all of our body and our mind. And if you step away from all of that and you cultivate a rational self-pleasure practice, which means spending time with yourself every day, and self-pleasure, not for the point of orgasm, but just for feeling and for undoing all the abuse you've had in your life.[00:53:00]

Alex Because if you've used pornography, you've abused yourself. It's just how, it's like you've caused some sexual issues. I mean, Jesus these days, I can't remember the name of the disorder, but there's actually a disorder from repeated masturbation with pornography that men can no longer get an erections or ejaculate without having pornography.

Alex So the way to undo those things and the way to understand yourself and the way to get really present with yourself, take 10 or 15 minutes a day and have a rational self-pleasure practice. There's a book called The Multiorgasmic Men by ManTech Chia. , There's another one called the Multiorgasmic Couple.

Alex There's a ton of books. Those are the two that I would recommend. And in and there, there's like a 15 or 20 minute rational self-pleasure practice where you spend time with yourself. You feel you don't like rush to an orgasm or rush to an ejaculation, but you feel and you undo some of the damage that society conditioning, masturbation, pornography, all that stuff is done.

Alex You start reconnecting to your actual sensitivity. And Hector, I just wanna like have a warning here. When I started [00:54:00] this, it was probably six or seven years ago, it was the est thing I've ever done. I know that that sounds silly, but I would sit down with no pornography with nothing else. I tried to get any level of stimulation and nothing worked, felt like I was broken, nothing was happening.

Alex Like I was numb, completely numb because what I had done was rewire my sexuality. So if there wasn't hyperstimulating pictures in front of me, I didn't feel anything. And I talked to some friends of mine that do men's work, and I talked to a couple coaches and they all said the same thing. They're like, look, you just have to trust that if you spend time quietly with yourself and you continue to like, feel yourself and touch yourself, that eventually you're going to start feeling and just like, don't judge.

Alex I judged like crazy. I had a hard time with it. It was difficult. And then there was finally a day where like, Hey, wait, I'm feeling something. And now I do a rational self-pleasure practice almost every day. And it's not about ejaculation, it's about [00:55:00] feeling, it's about undoing the conditioning. It's about being with myself.

Alex It's about understanding myself. It's about connecting with myself and my sexual energy not to, to blow it out. To cultivate it and to grow it. And I think it's like one of those really hard things to talk about. You know, I was never one of those guys that was like in the locker room talk or making fun of other guys or like, you know, talking about this stuff in a way that's derogatory.

Alex But I know that all of us have heard it, and I know that even bringing something like this up feels so vulnerable and so charged. But if it's something you're willing to lean into, it'll change your life.

Hector I would imagine that a lot of guys are, were at a point where I, I think his name is Montauk Chia, is that right?

Alex Yeah,

Hector yeah, yeah. Multi orgasmic man. , he's the funniest follow on Instagram. I bought one of his courses because I was just like, I will try anything. Whatever you tell me. I don't, like, I was, at the end of the rope , and willing to try and I'm just so grateful that you are willing to be vulnerable and, and share, , because so [00:56:00] much of what this podcast is, is to, bring the otherwise.

Hector Shameful things, you know, things that were, were previously shameful into the light, to, you know, purify a lot of these things 'cause they don't have to have these negative, , associations or they don't have to be twisted in, into ways that are harmful for us. I would imagine that we're gonna look back in history and go, wow, that, period where porn was out there and all this stuff was out there, stimulation out there, and they didn't see the effect, they're gonna go like, wow, that was crazy that they were just letting eight, 10 year olds.

Hector Like, like I think we're gonna look back on it and realize that it had some serious implications , and hopefully guys can start to, to do the work to undo some of that trauma. , this is fun. I mean, I'm so grateful and honored that , you graced us with , an encore.

Hector , If people want to get deeper in your world, just follow up with you. , Not follow up, but just stay connected and, follow you. , Where's the best place for people to go?

Alex Best place is Instagram. So, you know, I'm kind of coming back online and doing it slowly, and I'm sharing what I've learned on Instagram.

Alex I don't have anything to sell right now. like, I'm not even building an email list. I'll [00:57:00] start soon, but I'm just kind of sharing some of the more foundational, more, more important stuff that I've, learned. And so I'm at Alex Charfen on Instagram, and if you do follow, like shoot me a message, I'd love to know that you're there.

Alex And, , yeah, I appreciate. The support and attention, and if you have any questions, like, comment on one of my posts or shoot me a direct message. This is what I'm doing right now. I'm figuring things out, I'm sharing, I'm understanding better. And so any feedback that I get is crucially awesome. So I would really appreciate it.

Hector Yeah, I caught one of the videos and it was sort of the impetus for reaching back out because, , yeah, it's just, it's great to see that you are going even deeper in this work, and I think we need, , pioneers if, I can use that word, like you to sort of go and, , you know, take some arrows, uh,, if you will, so that, , it's a little easier for the rest of us. .

Hector I'll ask you again. I ask every guest, and, and maybe it's the same answer, maybe it's updated, but, , Alex, in your opinion, what is the definition of modern masculinity?

Alex I think the challenge with the definition of modern masculinity is that when you say masculinity, people think toxic.

Alex And I think that in today's world, masculinity has been made [00:58:00] a bad word. But what I think modern masculinity should mean is we live in a modern world where we don't have a lot of threat. And if you do the right things, you don't experience a lot of challenge and that allows you to. Process and understand and get real and get into your body and be present To me, the most masculine thing you can do is be present and in the moment making decisions from this place of I am here right now.

Alex That will change everything in your life.