The Better Man: Exploring Consent, Connection, and Courage with Eric Fritzmedrud

[00:00:30] 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 Eric Fitzmadrid, and it's a conversation that, oh, frankly, might make you uncomfortable. and the only reason that it might make you uncomfortable is because it's things that don't usually get talked about.

[00:00:49] Hector: Sex and gender and desires and porn. I mean, like we get into the stuff that every guy deals with, but very few actually talk about. And Eric was brave and and vulnerable enough to share his experience with it. And I think that these conversations are important because what. Has emerged from almost a hundred episodes of the show is that there is no one flavor of masculinity, that there is shades of it.

[00:01:22] Hector: And there are different ways in which masculinity and which a man expresses himself and expresses who he is. And I'm excited to provide a platform for these conversations to happen. I think it's important. So enough of me, y'all let's get into today's episode with Eric Fitzmadrid.

[00:01:42] Hector: Eric, welcome to the modern masculinity podcast. Thanks for being here. My man.

[00:01:45] Eric: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:46] Hector: The first question we always ask our guests is to take us into their world. a lot of shows start off with the highlights and the books and accolades and things like that. But as a man, as a provider, as a protector, all the things that we met are called to be at your stage in life.

[00:02:02] Hector: What, Things are you still challenged with or what, journeys are you still going through?

[00:02:06] Eric: So I think there are several, to start, I have an 11 year old son. so this is the first child that's going through puberty, from the beginning as a male and, thinking about how do I want to show up as a father for this child from the beginning is a new phase of development for me.

[00:02:29] Eric: My two older kids are both genderqueer and creative. One is kind of more mask leaning, and that's my 21 year old. And so, also thinking about what does it mean to me to be a parent and a father to an adult is a different developmental stage than I've ever been in. And I'm also polyamorous, so there's always an unfolding edge with my, I have two partners, I live in the same house with both of them, still raising the two kids who are still at home, so there's an ongoing cycle of waves of attuning to and attending to the needs of both partners, balancing the relationships, making sure that I'm fulfilling my obligations.

[00:03:16] Eric: And I think that as an ongoing. Maybe life developmental task for me as a chronic hyper functioner, one of the great tasks for me as a man is to acknowledge what I don't have control over what I can't fix and to be in clean, open hearted grief about that, and also to maintain an honesty with myself and with my partners about what I can't do.

[00:03:45] Hector: Well, so you don't have much going on is what you're saying.

[00:03:49] Eric: right. Exactly.

[00:03:51] Hector: Yeah. Um, when you look back on this, I don't know if you ever asked yourself, well, how the hell did we get here? Right. Like how far down these roads. And I'm finding myself asking that sort of question as well. When I was of the traditional path. I was going to go to school and get good grades and get a job and have the family and the picket fence and the wife that was The prescription that I had, taken.

[00:04:18] Hector: was written in. I went and hook, line and sinker. And so my question kind of goes back. Maybe the better question is like for you, it seems like there's, don't want to say the antithesis of the traditional path, but you sort of veered In a lot of ways, I'm curious when you look back on it, where does that willingness start or where did that sort of, where did you start to see the seeds of that, journey, where did the railroad tracks kind of start to veer a little bit to where now, you know, X amount of time later, you're in a place where you're doing things that are, just wildly different from what most people consider the norm.

[00:04:56] Eric: Yeah, I think in a way, the separate track has always been there. as a young boy, I was teased pretty severely in grade school because I was different. I was sensitive. I wanted and was interested in playing with the girls and their games. I was interested in playing house and taking care of dolls.

[00:05:24] Eric: I experienced what a lot of men experience In different ways and for different reasons, but I experienced a lot of teasing and physical abuse from other kids because I didn't fit in the hypermasculine mold and a lot of that also then continued in my junior high years, I was exposed to a lot of gay men, because my mom was working for one, and she did some side jobs for him that brought us into his home.

[00:05:55] Eric: And that meant that I got to see a lot of gay men around me, and that meant that I got to see a different model of what, Men together could look like, and these were men that I really looked to men who were successful, who were competent, professional, and by taking care of my mom and, through her, me, they were men who I really looked up to in my life. if you talk about traditional and nontraditional threads, I was also Catholic. I wanted to be good. I wanted to please God. I wanted to. Be monogamous and I continued those kind of two different threads of development through high school. I was turned to some of the boys in my high school and say like, Hey, you're gay, right?

[00:06:42] Eric: So I was in my mind, like I was the good ally. I was like, it's okay, it's safe to come out to me. I won't tell anyone, but you can tell me about your developing orientation, identity, whatever that might be. And by the time I got to college, I was like, Hey, you know, I think I'm going to join the Be Gayla Society, Bi Gay and Lesbian Alliance, was what it was called in my school. And a part of being around that community, I was like, I think I think I'm bi, actually. I think I'm not just a straight ally. I think I'm, I think I belong here. That's why it was the first organization I joined in college. And also, then I eventually, by the end of my first semester, I got into my relationship with my now wife.

[00:07:24] Eric: We've been married for 24 years. I went the monogamous path and kind of set a lot of that queer identity development on the side and also didn't really, hadn't really figured out how to integrate my high levels of desire, my kink interests. And so they kind of went into hibernation for a while and it ended up for me coming out sideways.

[00:07:46] Eric: I had two affairs in my first year of my PhD program. Hurt my wife very deeply and risked the end of my relationship and my family, which is not ever what I wanted to do or how I want to be. so I strove even more to kind of contain it. Twelve years later, I had my third affair. And in that process, again, I hurt my family.

[00:08:08] Eric: I don't think it was as much at risk of being torn apart because We had been through it once before because I had grown a lot by learning as a therapist about sexual identity, I had come out, around my polyamorous desire. so we had a little more opportunity to pivot consciously and to recover from that consciously without the solution just being me trying to put my sexuality and my identities at ease.

[00:08:36] Eric: in a tighter box. And so slowly these threads began getting integrated into what feels now like a much more holistic fabric. And I stay vigilant because I still don't want to hurt anybody and I'm still figuring life out.

[00:08:52] Hector: Yeah, as I think a lot of guys, as I'm saying, I'm 32 and feel like I'm starting over now. but what I also realized is I'm like, don't feel, I, yeah, I have a couple of kids and that may be making me a little bit different than most of the other guys, but most of the other guys were 32.

[00:09:08] Hector: They're like in the same exact boat. You know, they feel the exact same way. Yeah. I'm grateful that I have some experiences and some great people and mentors that, have given me a lot of skills, but there's still that journey. And one part of the process is like actually figuring out who we are. guys, my age are millennials and we were, given that track and it was very, very prescribed. Right. And it was like, we were right on the cusp of, It being okay to, to sort of come out and that conversation started to happen when, when I was in high school and those sorts of things.

[00:09:38] Hector: but I guess my point in saying this is that I don't think a lot of guys have taken the intentional time or the conscious effort to define who they are outside of who their parents and school and what kind of society has said that they should be.

[00:09:53] Eric: I see that with a lot of the men that I work with, that there's this late stage development. we often start with the process of just trying to fit into the mold, meet our responsibilities. Be a good man according to what we think that means and too often the notion of being a good man Fitting into those fulfilling those responsibilities fitting into those relationships It doesn't account for the reality of yeah, but what kind of person what kind of man am I?

[00:10:24] Eric: Artistic do I need to talk about my feelings more do I actually have? more desire or More emotional need that I've attuned to, that I'm actually expressing. And when we don't pay attention to the reality of how we are, it will often come out sideways. And that's where I think a lot of us get into trouble with behavior that's out of integrity, whatever that looks like.

[00:10:47] Eric: Whether it's substance use, or emotional self repression, or sideways anger, or like me, broken relationship agreements. You mentioned

[00:10:59] Hector: that there were a number of realizations about your identity and things that you were either suppressing or, or weren't, acknowledging about yourself and you kind of listed them off like it was an easy sort of, Oh, and then it just, and then it happened. And then I added this box and I, I checked to this box and I put this, as if it was a, and I'm kind of being facetious here because I would imagine that.

[00:11:21] Hector: It was much different of a process, but can you share what that looked like? if there were stumbling blocks, or tight corners that you had to come around, what some of those might've been.

[00:11:33] Eric: Yeah, I think there were a number of tight corners. So, from the beginning, as a high schooler, I was looking at two major threads of development, constantly reading books about sex and sexuality. And I mean, like academic, professionally oriented books. I grew up in the summers, watching Dr. Ruth show up on talk shows.

[00:11:57] Eric: And I was very interested in just knowing facts about sexuality. So that was an early aspect of my development. And also I had a lot of spiritual experiences young man. In coming from my Catholic background and then having it challenged by, New Age, non traditional spirituality from my summers with my father, had these two different lenses, but both of them often shamed sexuality and viewed sexuality as less evolved, less good, more animalistic, lower chakra, something like that. And so I was really struggling with how do I get there, how do I get from where I am, a teenage boy with very high desire, a lot of interest in sexuality. And also wanting to be a good person, whether that's spirituality in relation to the divine or whether that's just with my partners. And so I was constantly looking for how do I do that?

[00:12:54] Eric: I went through a period of time where I studied yoga very intensely. Now I'm not just talking about asanas, kriyas, meditation intensely about three hours a day, six days a week. I went through a period of celibacy. That was chosen and, that included eliminating masturbation. I was trying to find the right way.

[00:13:16] Eric: And about six months into that process, I ended up in a relationship and having, you know, very intense and very, let's say, creative sex. was one of those sharp corners. It was like, gosh, you know, I've gone so far down this path, but there's this other aspect of my being, and I feel more alive when I am also expressing that. I would say another tight corner came around my affairs, trying to figure out how to integrate. What really turned one of those tight corners for me was learning more accurate information about the psychology of sex and sexuality. diversifying my understanding of male desire, understanding that there are many men with many different kinds of desire, many people with many different kinds of desires, separating out fantasy from reality, separating out the fantasies of porn from the reality of kink or sex and sexuality, and really beginning to understand that sexual self expression is a part of psychological health. And that really began setting me down the path of beginning to weave these different train tracks of my life together in a more holistic fabric.

[00:14:28] Hector: Yeah. I feel like guys don't have not only the precedent, but they're fighting. mean, geez, I went to 16 years of Catholic school, so who knows? I mean, like, I just assumed there's just a Pandora's boxes there that I'm, you know, with every breathwork session, I'm just taking a little bit out of this endless well of, know, whatever shame has come along with that, because whether it's that or, society, or you mentioned porn, I mean, I just, I don't think that there's any sort of healthy models.

[00:15:00] Hector: image just coming to mind right now is like, I grew up watching Deuce Bigelow male gigolo, right. With Rob Schneider, a great movie, fantastic movie, but I don't know what I'm, absorbing as a eight year old, nine year old kid about sexuality from that.

[00:15:15] Eric: Right. Our models for sexuality a vibrant, active, and creative form in adult manhood. really do not include relationship, parenting, fatherhood. We are working, I think, to bring not just parts of ourselves together inside of our lived experience, but we're working to draw threads of our culture together.

[00:15:40] Eric: Many men will experience the division as they experience it in their female partners, the Madonna and whore complex, and you know, I couldn't do that sexual act with the mother of my children because that's dirty, but then I can't see the full humanity of the sexual partner that I could do that with.

[00:15:57] Eric: That kind of split, if we experience it in our partners, is really reflective of a split in us. That I don't understand how I can be loving, kind, nurturing, supportive, ethical, and also want to have sex like that. the reality is I do. And so we have to figure out how to bring these different aspects of our experience together, or we risk them.

[00:16:22] Eric: I mean, again, my lived experience and my experience as a therapist, did we risk them coming out sideways in some other form?

[00:16:31] Hector: Yeah. It's very in city. I mean, it's gonna come out in some sort of capacity. I experienced it in the sense of like, I had I mean, I guess it was just seemingly insatiable desire, but also, the inability for me to control the dragon, if you will, or for it to not be, this thing that takes over my life, I consumes my mindset and then dictates the health of the relationship of it.

[00:16:58] Hector: if I'm basing our, relationship off of this. my inability to manage it. that's not good circumstances.

[00:17:05] Eric: Yeah. And that's why I advocate for a lot of men. Actually, to focus on some other elements of personal development, after my first two affairs, when I took stock and really evaluated, like, how did this happen? And what am I going to do to try to make sure that it doesn't happen again? one of the big things that I did was I really tried to expand my male friendships and male community.

[00:17:29] Eric: I joined a men's group. I separate from the men's group. I developed relationships with a number of men. And I mean, not just friendships or Associations. I mean, like we're talking about our relationships. We're talking about our parenting. We're talking about our hearts at a deep level. And that really did help me integrate a lot.

[00:17:51] Eric: That's why I think there were so many years, 12 from those first two affairs that came very quickly back to back. And the third one, because I was attuning more to my multidimensional wellness. Like, how am I connected to people? Who are my accountability partners? How can I process my emotions in other ways?

[00:18:10] Eric: And that, to me, is one of the biggest things that's shifted my approach to sexuality, because it meant that I wasn't looking for all of my interpersonal needs to be met just by my partner, and not just by my partner, but through sex.

[00:18:24] Hector: Yeah. the purpose thing is, is really interesting. I remember going through a much bigger battle with, porn and it being a much bigger issue than it was. Then it is. And there are moments, but generally I've cut it out of my life. and there are two things that really helped with it.

[00:18:41] Hector: The first is, is like, I haven't been able to bring myself to lay next to my daughter after, engaging in, in that. So it's just like, that's a very, of the moment. I'm like, am I going to be able to lay next to her? and that's really helped, but also the urge or those things when I'm engaged in my purpose and I have a clear sense of, where I'm going and what I'm doing, I don't even stop to think about those things.

[00:19:04] Hector: It's just that urge, that need to like. I don't know, whatever, whatever, feel something just isn't there when I'm engaged in, I feel I'm supposed to be doing.

[00:19:14] Eric: What I love about what you're saying is that you're really identifying what health And wellness looks like for you, one of those components is maintaining that sense of relationship and closeness with your daughter. And another is this sense of connection and ongoing fulfillment in your purpose.

[00:19:32] Eric: And you notice the connection between where your interests are when you're doing those things. And it becomes maybe less about. Porn or not porn, like, don't look at it. It becomes more about do the health things. Do focus on maintaining my relationship with my daughter. Do focus on maintaining and fulfilling my purpose in life.

[00:19:54] Eric: Those kinds of shifts from don't do this thing to do this thing can be very powerful for a lot of men in maintaining sexual health.

[00:20:04] Hector: Yeah. So now I'm curious, you know, after you've gone all the sorts of routes, right, there's the nofap community on Reddit, which is a very big community that a lot of people say great things about. And everybody has their sort of opinions on it, but there's something, I think the outgoing sort of perspective is that we can't let it run rampant. we can't let it run us in the sense that I think a lot of young men, they come out of high school or, wherever it is with this normalcy of, Oh, let me just, Pull up the hub, once a day or twice, like, this very normal thing that very quickly becomes an addiction and a crutch and, you know, perhaps, a distortion of reality.

[00:20:45] Hector: And maybe it's not perhaps, but all these things kind of happen without being noticed.

[00:20:50] Eric: Yeah, I mean, I, do think that there is a lack of awareness that can commonly emerge, and I would talk about a lot of the things that you've brought up in just slightly different ways. So, whether we're talking about masturbation, pornography, or sexual behavior in general, I don't usually talk about addiction in relation to those.

[00:21:13] Eric: Partly because we are always sexual beings, but we are not always substance addicted beings. And so the models of what works to overcome addiction don't seem to apply in the same way to our recovery from problematic sexual behavior if we have it. Can it feel out of control? Yes. And that's the model that I use as a treatment model called out of control sexual behavior treatment for problematic sexual behavior.

[00:21:42] Eric: And in addition to that, a lot of what I see, in particular in young men, when it comes to whether it's masturbation or pornography, problems arise not because of the viewing process. I work with men often to move towards sexual health, and their sexual health plans continue to include regular masturbation, maybe even daily, maybe even with porn, also daily.

[00:22:05] Eric: In my experience, the problems with pornography And, or masturbation often come up when the man doesn't understand the difference between the fantasies in his mind or the fantasies as portrayed in pornography and what he expects to show up in his bed or his life in real sexuality. So to me, I would point less to porn as the problem and more to the lack of adequate full Training and education among young men to understand, for example, as a critical consumer of pornography, that all of the lubrication, all of the warm up, all of the consent conversations and all of the oopsies end up on the cutting room floor or never.

[00:22:51] Eric: recorded at all. And therefore, what you see, for example, for anal sex on porn, is that the first moment of contact between genitals is full, direct anal penetration, which you don't see all of the preparation for that. That creates a false idea of what is going to end up happening with a partner. And that's where the negative feedback loop and the potential for shame about pornography begins.

[00:23:17] Eric: Because now, I didn't have good sexual education. The sexual education that I had came from pornography that did make me an unskillful lover. And I got negative feedback from them about how that process hurt them physically or emotionally. Now I feel inadequate and I can easily begin targeting my pornography viewing instead of focusing again, right?

[00:23:39] Eric: I focus on the negative stopping porn instead of adding the sex education. That's actually going to make me a more skillful lover.

[00:23:48] Hector: Yeah. So this is great. I'd love for you to expand on what else you feel. If there are any other sort of mindsets or perspectives that guys should have, don't have, the things that are helpful because I feel like there's, from really a foundational sort of level, they don't even know what that operating system looks like because they've never seen it or been exposed to

[00:24:13] Eric: let me offer a couple. So one of those that's really interesting from research, for example, is that people who have problem with their pornography use of it's not about the frequency, there are high frequency porn viewers that report no problems in their life, no nervousness about that and no damaging effects on their relationships.

[00:24:37] Eric: And there are high pornography viewers who view at the same amount for the same number of hours per week, for example, but do experience problems about that. And what we know about them is that those people tend to be more anxious, and it's their anxiety that focuses on the pornography as opposed to not focusing on it that seems to be a part of where the shame comes in.

[00:24:59] Eric: The same could be true of masturbation. I've had clients come in reporting, quote unquote, sex addiction, who want help to control their out of control masturbation, and they're masturbating once every two months. When we have cultural, religious, or other scripts about sexual purity that don't account for the lived anthropological reality of human sexuality, we can often end up in shame, and it becomes difficult to discern what exactly is the problem here.

[00:25:29] Eric: Is it the behavior, or is it the shame I have about the behavior? And then, I guess there's, one other lens that I guess I want to emphasize. of men come to the idea of consent conversations with the idea of trying to get a green light. You are a kind, ethical, loving man who doesn't want to hurt your partner, and you also want to express your desire.

[00:25:53] Eric: So you look for the green light, the point at which you can take your foot off the brake and push on the gas pedal. And what I like to do is invite men to consider kind of shifting their orientation to that process. Consent is here for two reasons. It's here to protect your partner, and it's also here to protect you.

[00:26:12] Eric: Instead of looking to get the green light, look at your own. Value your own offers at around what you want to give and what you would like to receive, whether that's physically or emotionally. And if you're oriented to that, then you're also going to be curious in the consent conversation, like, How do I want to feel?

[00:26:34] Eric: What are you going to do to help me feel that way? That could include orienting to, I'd really like to orgasm. And if I don't get to orgasm, that won't feel really good to me. Even if we end up stopping, is there an option, do you think, for us to plan that We could end up kissing. I could masturbate with you, you know, still being present.

[00:26:54] Eric: Or is it going to be okay if I just get up and release the physiological tension that i'm experiencing by masturbating in the bathroom? But just preserving that space for self regulating my own desire. Now we reorient the conversation entirely. Now we're an active participant in creating the emotions for our partner.

[00:27:14] Eric: And in creating the emotions for ourself. And I think a lot of men aren't oriented to the idea that consent is there to protect us, too.

[00:27:22] Hector: I don't like to use this term lightly, but it's, it's the only thing that came to mind. Is there any gateway drugs into this in the sense of easy ways in, at least in my experience, even having the conversation or, or when you say statements like that, I'm, I'm like, that's so far. from the conversations that seem normal from, from the partners that I've had.

[00:27:44] Hector: so it's like, how do we baby step our way there?

[00:27:47] Eric: So, I guess I want to identify, I'm so glad that you pointed out that what I'm talking about is a destination. There are a lot of steps. And, that developmental arc is what I lay out in my book, kind of step by step process to help men get there. The first steps are emotional self regulation.

[00:28:08] Eric: How can I attune to my own emotions? What am I hoping to get out of attending this party with my friend? What am I hoping to get out of my walk when I go out by myself? When I'm getting together with a buddy, like, Hey, what's going to make this an awesome hike for you? Is it that you want to go fast? Is it that you want to go for X number of miles?

[00:28:32] Eric: Is it that you have to be back by one o'clock on the dots to the car? Is it that you want to get some stuff on off your chest while we're walking? And it doesn't matter how far we go or how fast we walk, like just reorienting to consent as a conversation that we could have. All the time about all sorts of things can help you prepare and build the muscle for having deeper consent conversations when your desire is high.

[00:28:58] Eric: You know, one of the things that I could give an example on my son just recently had his birthday. I knew that I was going to be making the cake just because of the parenting process. So I said, what do you want for a cake? And he told me he wanted this ship from Star Wars. And I engaged in what I think of as a consent conversation about Like, okay, show me the ship, okay, that's the ship, okay. And I started narrating to him, here's what I think I can do to make a cake that looks like that, and here's what I think I can't do. So I said, not going to be frosted, we're going to build it more as an architectural process that's going to be built in a similar shape, but it's not going to be decorated, it's not going to look exactly that way, these colors aren't going to be there.

[00:29:45] Eric: Is that okay? He said, yes. And then on the day I had that consent conversation again, just want to make sure this is what I can do. This is what I can do. Does that work for you? Yes. Then I started building it. Hey, how does this look? Can you see what's taking shape? How does this feel for you? It's awesome.

[00:30:02] Eric: Great. So I'm continuing to get consent and to monitor it. And it's about a kid's birthday cake. This isn't sexual conversation at all. But I'm aware that the idea in my mind, and the idea and the experience in his mind and his heart, might be different from mine.

[00:30:20] Hector: yeah, I think the conversation of consent is, I think it's great because you hear it a lot. And I don't want to say it's like a buzzword, but the challenge you hear it so often is that it starts to lose, at least people start to ask, well, what does it actually mean? what are you actually talking about?

[00:30:37] Hector: And so it brings some, clarity to how someone, might, enact some of those things

[00:30:42] Eric: Yeah. With partners, I recommend that people start consent conversations before you ever get to a bedroom, before you get to a front door that's closed. Have a consent conversation in the car, like, hey, we're headed up to your place, I don't know what you're thinking that means, you could say, whether you're the man or not, like, I don't know that I'm ready to have sex, but I'd be ready to fool around if you're open to that.

[00:31:09] Eric: Great. We could talk more about that. But I just don't want to give you a false impression. we're having the conversation ahead of time. To prepare for where we're headed, what we're aligning expectations from the beginning. And I like to talk about three phases of that consent process. There's the pre negotiation, the monitoring consent and the followup after.

[00:31:28] Eric: How was that? How did that feel? Did I monitor and maintain your consent through the process? Do you have any feedback for me that would make it feel better if we ever fool around again?

[00:31:37] Hector: just for partly devil's advocate and partly like how do we Prevent from sounding like an like an HR associate

[00:31:46] Eric: Yeah, well, look, the risk of consent conversations is always that it's going to drain passion. And it's going to feel like you're going into some kind of legalese or like you're, pre scripting the dance before you get on the dance floor. And what I always say is, would you rather drain some of the passion, or would you rather that you make a mistake and cause your partner to feel violated? So I really want to emphasize that risk is there, and especially if you're learning how to have better consent conversations, you're almost certainly going to bump into that risk, and it's probably more skillful to bump into that risk than not. Once you get more proficient with a particular partner or just in general with consent conversations, you get to the point where you can make consent sexy.

[00:32:35] Eric: So let's go back to this idea of like you've been with this partner for a while, you've had a number of different sexual encounters, you have a little bit of a repertoire, you can get really explicit and clear. Hey, I'm gay. I want to go upstairs and I want to tear your clothes off with my teeth.

[00:32:52] Eric: I will lay on the bed. I want to go down on you until you orgasm and your toes are curling. And then I want to enter you hot and ready. How does that sound to you? that could get pretty spicy. If you're putting it out like that, like you can have all of that tension building in your voice. You can be listening and your partner can keep it sexy.

[00:33:13] Eric: Even if they give you a no, like Oh, I love the idea of you tearing your, my clothes off. With your teeth, but then I want to get in the shower and lather you up and I'm going to stroke you with soap until, we get into, you know, a really clean state and then we can go into the bedroom and you can go down on me that way.

[00:33:32] Eric: there's an ongoing way that you can build the mental map of where we're headed and how we're going to get there, but it's hot and sexy at the same time.

[00:33:41] Hector: yeah, that's a really great point and I think the conclusion that i'm taking away is that like it's a necessary skill That guys are going to have to add into their repertoire,

[00:33:50] Eric: there's some emerging research that for heterosexual cis males, their consent scripts are somewhat inadequate right now, and that leaves them feeling behind in creating sexual relationships that are satisfying for their partners.

[00:34:05] Hector: so it seems like they, they just don't have the models, right? Like you said, the scripts And I'd imagine that this is a baseline skill when we get into the one oh twos or the two oh ones or what are some of that advanced tree look like?

[00:34:20] Hector: Because, you know, you, talked about some advanced stuff. And I think about. Handling, handling is not the right word, and I don't know what the right verb is here, but being in relationship with one person is a lot, and I think a lot of guys might think, oh, yeah, having, two partners is, great.

[00:34:36] Hector: they have these, fantasy Ideas. However, I would imagine it's the same change and going from one kid to two kids, like amount of expectations and the amount of skillfulness that you've got to have. So what are some of those advanced skills that you've had to develop in order to sort of maintain, some of these new Paths that, you've, pioneered.

[00:34:58] Eric: So the first advanced skill that I think I'd like to identify is the ability to receive negative feedback from a partner, including their vulnerable pain emotional state, without believing, assuming that what they are describing in their experience is an accusation, without believing that I am at fault for this pain, and Then super advanced, not being reactive to that process to be able to sit with a partner and to differentiate you are hurting.

[00:35:36] Eric: But I didn't hurt you, and I also, as your loving partner, still have a responsibility to stay attuned to, help you heal and resolve and prevent this pain in the future. That's, those are the enhanced skills. That's the stuff of like, yeah, I'll talk about it. With some kind of sharp language of like being stabbed and not stabbing back and then you get to disarm your partner and heal it.

[00:36:00] Hector: Yeah. It seems like a lot of the work that's to be done in there's so much talk about, the sexual, let's call it this health of men, Whether it's, premature ejaculation. erectile dysfunction, all these sorts of things. And I know the first place that a lot of guys look is they look at the sort of physical sort of knobs to turn, right?

[00:36:26] Hector: Let me do Kegel exercise. Let me take pills. but it seems like that's just a treatment of the symptom and not really addressing sort of what you've been hinting at, which is probably more of the underlying problem.

[00:36:37] Eric: exactly. You talked about how men come in without these skills, but I also really want to emphasize men That's not your fault a part of our socialization as boys and men. We were not just harmed with the kind of violent socialization, a hypermasculinity, but we have also been neglected in the life skills that we need in order to be proficient.

[00:37:01] Eric: At maintaining a relationship with our friends, communities, partners, and children. And a big part of what my mission is, to come back and say, Hey, no fault on you that you weren't given that training. But it is your responsibility to attend to that. And I'd like to help. I'd like to help you fill in those skills gaps, those educational gaps, so that you are empowered to actually be there for your partners the way that you want to be.

[00:37:29] Eric: And to learn that the feedback from your partners about how they would like to be loved even better by you is not a fundamentally a criticism of your nature. It's a corrective nudge to steer the ship in the right direction.

[00:37:46] Hector: Yeah, hopefully you guys can take that perspective from it. the book is out there and we're going to drop the link to the book. At the end as well. And it was a show notes. I'll give you a chance to share a little bit more about that. But I'm, curious if

[00:37:57] Hector: you want to send them out with, something else that maybe hasn't been hit on today. What would you leave them with that we haven't quite touched on?

[00:38:04] Eric: There are three different lenses that are really valuable. What is my nature? And, in other words, if I'm an apple tree, I just need to be an apple tree. If I'm attracted to people like this, and I'm turned on by sex like this, I need to accept that. We have to accept our nature. That's the only way that we will ever be able to create relationships that are consistent with who we are.

[00:38:28] Eric: The second question is, we have a lot of aspirations for how we want to show up, but we have to acknowledge whether we have the capacity. So yeah, I want to be there and be non reactive and be non judgmental, but what's actually happening? And then between nature and capacity is skills, and skills can be trained.

[00:38:48] Eric: And so it's really valuable for us to attune to that third lens of maybe I don't have the capacity now, but what are the skills that I could have that would give me that capacity and how can I build it? Where will I learn it? That's what empowers men to become the men we want to be.

[00:39:06] Hector: this is awesome. and I'm glad that we get to have these conversations here on, on modern masculinity because they haven't been happening. And I think that not only are they important, but would move them into critical phase because otherwise, how do we get there? So appreciate you coming on

[00:39:22] Eric: agree. I appreciate you having me.

[00:39:23] Hector: if people want to get deeper in your work, find out more about you.

[00:39:26] Hector: Where's the best place to go?

[00:39:28] Eric: You can find my website, drericfits. com. That's d r e r i c f i t z dot com. You can find me on social media at drericfits, and you can also find my book, The Better Man, A Guide to Consent, Stronger Relationships and Hotter Sex, wherever books are sold.

[00:39:46] Hector: Yeah, we'll link that up in the Shannon's fellows. So we appreciate you being here with us. We would be forever grateful for a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, a guy, a gal, a cat, a dog, I don't know who it may be, hit that share button and send them the link.

[00:40:04] Hector: we'll see on the next one, fellas. Later, y'all.