Episode 4: Men in Love, Part 1

Confession
[00:00:00] Degan: I went into the forest and put my hand out to the birds for a perch. I had no peanuts or seed. Not even bread, but one landed. I have often warned myself loudly to the city. Walked through streets like an accomplishment. I want to give you nothing, but my hand. And for you to take it. 
Welcome to Episode 4: Men in Love
[00:00:23] Chris: Hello, and welcome back to What Kind of Man Are You? I am Chris Garbutt. 
[00:00:29] Degan: And I'm Degan Davis. 
And this is the podcast about men, masculinity, and who really loves you more, listeners, me or Degan? Maybe that will be revealed. 
We had that fight at the end of the last episode. S
Exploring the Layers of Love
[00:00:45] Degan: o this podcast is about men and love. And I've been turning this over in my head for the last four or five days. And it's so big. And I've got pages and pages of ideas. And I'm not going to read them all out. 
[00:01:01] Chris: I think there's a lot of angles to it. A lot of ways we can come at it. And there are different layers of love, different kinds of love. There's, being in, a partner relationship, there's dating, there's, how you feel about your family and your friends and children. We bring love to all of those things. And, I would guess you agree with this, but I think the reason this is such a big topic is because it's really what we are here for in a sense. It's the closest thing I would get to the meaning of life. 
[00:01:35] Degan: Love for others and 
[00:01:37] Chris: Love for others being loved, giving love and having it for people.
[00:01:42] Degan: You have this very wide sense of love and I realized for the past four days, I have been thinking very much about romantic love. 
[00:01:50] Chris: Okay. 
[00:01:51] Degan: Not that we can't go outside of that, but that's been my Almost obsession has just been with being, not just in love, but yeah, being in partnership, what that looks like, what gets in the way of it.
[00:02:03] Chris: And this is what this episode is going to be about. 
The Essence of Unconditional Love
[00:02:06] Chris: Let's talk about that poem first that you started with. What was the title of it?
[00:02:10] Degan: It was called Confession. And, I remember very much when I wrote this I, the poem is, the narrator, me, out in a forest, and I remember seeing these chickadees around and I didn't have any food.
Sometimes people bring little bits of bread or seed and I just held my hand out. There was nothing on, I didn't have anything. And to my surprise, one very quickly just landed and I happened to be in that moment, falling in love with the woman I lived with for 13 years and married and have a daughter with, and where I'm still good friends with her.
And. Here is this bird accepting nothing but my empty hand and settling, alighting. And I thought, I want to be accepted this way. I want to offer my hand. And I say earlier in the poem, I've walked through streets like an accomplishment, and it's not that it's wrong to walk through streets with all the positive things that you give to the world your love your physique, your accomplishments, your job. And there was something I think in that moment underneath that was, I want you to love the essence of me.
[00:03:30] Chris: When you say that this bird gave you a kind of unconditional love? 
[00:03:36] Degan: I wasn't offering anything in particular except myself. And, it wasn't to get something. Except, my hand It's a bit mysterious, these things, right?
This idea of being valued for you. 
Yeah. There's a couple of central ideas. It's islands of thought that I'll bring forth that we can move around.
 
Flying Without an Instrument Panel: Understanding Emotions
[00:04:01] Degan: And one is that I think many men liveif you, we look at the metaphor of the airplane that many men, I think live, many people, but particularly men live as if they're flying without an instrument panel.
And what I mean by that is the inner world of sensations and emotions is not always accessible. It's not always revealed. And so this first idea is this idea of flying in the dark. And just before you came in and we set up the podcasting studio and everything, I was sitting on the couch and just saying, okay, let's put my money where my mouth is here.
What's happening in me? And I did what I call a body scan. And I do this with clients all the time just to say, what's happening in my own body? And even though I've done this for many years, it's always a surprise. But I think for the longest time, I had no idea what was going on.
 There's a quote by the originator of emotionally focused therapy named Sue Johnston. And she says, if we don't know what we feel, we don't know what we want. And so that's that idea of, okay, if we know what we feel, suddenly the instrument panel is clear. I'm not going to hit this mountain.
I am going to steer. And I think when we know what we want, for our partnerships, we can say to someone. This is important to me. I need this. You might not always get it, but you can articulate it. And I think also when we don't know what's happening internally, a lot of partnerships, we have a lot of dishes to wash, right?
 We have a lot of dailiness as well as the erotic and the beautiful. And sometimes, of course, we all know what it's like to get on each other's nerves. But I think sometimes a partner does something and we don't even know why that particular word phrase absolutely triggers us. And either the response is anger or distance or something else.
And I think the more we can say, all right, what's happening in here, the more we're not caught off guard. 
[00:06:13] Chris: Yeah. I, was having this conversation with someone a while back and this, idea of feelings and intellect, and they're both parts of us, but we tend to fall into the trap that things we do are thought through and that most decisions are made rationally.
But the truth is, most of what we do is our feelings and we make decisions on how we feel. It's often instinct. And the intellect is how we explain it to ourselves afterwards. And it goes very well with what you're saying in that if you don't know what you feel, you don't know what you want because we act on our feelings.
 So to understand where we are and this idea of a body scanis a way tofind that mysterious want, through our physical sensations, through our feelings, and this idea, I always find it funny because people use terms like fluffy feelings and that feelings aren't.
And if you look around at the world, anger is a feeling and it is not fluffy. It is a very hard edge thing.As I read in a quote from Bob Dylan once, it's all feelings, man. Everything is feelings. 
They're not trivial. Sometimes they can be fluffy. Sure. Sure. Cats are cute. 
[00:07:34] Degan: I'm thinking of a couple of examples here about how truly not fluffy they can be I'm going to say two examples here that come up. There was a football player and I can't recall his name who had grown up in a very rough home, had been at least part of gangs for a time, got a football scholarship did well.
And at some point, I think after a number of years was dealing with addiction and went to a two day silent retreat, meditation retreat. And the quote from him was something like, sitting with my own thoughts was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And part of that was. There's nothing else to distract and so sensations and emotions come up and related to that is a a soldier who had fought in the Iraq war and Someone had asked him about feelings and he said I would rather crawl through a field of landmines than I would express how I feel to someone I loved. 
[00:08:44] Chris: Wow 
[00:08:45] Degan: It's I've said this before, it's a heroic act to sit still. 
[00:08:51] Chris: Yes, absolutely. I agree with that 100%. There's a guy named Tom Peters who, he's most famous for his book In Search of Excellence, and he talks about work.
I like him a lot better now than I did back then. And his whole thing is employees matter, how employees feel matters. And, so he talks a lot about how the most powerful words you can use are, thank you. And the other thing he talks about is that we talk about hard skills and soft skills.
And my favourite quote of his is that soft skills are the hard skills,.In the sense that it's hard to do soft skills, you can learn the skills to do the job, you have to develop soft skills. You have to develop people, interactions emotional, I don't really like the term emotional intelligence, but it is a catch all. Work is dealing with people and to bring it back to love. about everybody in this world wants love and most people, not everybody, but most people wouldn't even deny that they want love. And so that is the ultimate emotion. And yet we feel like we can get it by skirting around our feelings.
[00:10:13] Degan: So something gets in the way. 
The Heroic Journey Inward: Body Scan Exercise
[00:10:14] Degan: What I'm going to offer is a brief body scan, okay, and I will lead you through this.
If you can't do it now, please know what number this is on the podcast and come back to it. And I invite you to do this because I'm always amazed at what emerges. So we're being practical here. We're being really practical about this idea of a heroic journey inward. So Chris, are you willing to go into this?
[00:10:44] Chris: Sure. Yeah I like doing this kind of stuff, 
[00:10:46] Degan: Okay. Again what I'd like you to do is find a quiet space. And if it's a bedroom and you can lie down on your bed, that's great. If it's a couch or a chair. I'd like you to be alone. Turn off the devices around you. In this moment, you've chosen this moment to take this inward journey.
 I want you to sit and let your body be how it wants. We spend so much of our time in vigilance, in a posture of vigilance. Work, children, relationships. Walking down the street, doing so many things. In this moment, there's nothing being asked of you. If your body wants to lie down on the floor, on the bed, if you want to just lean back, do whatever it wants.
Take a deep breath, fill your lungs, and blow it out like a balloon I'll say it again. No one is asking anything of you in this moment. Come to the top of your head. And notice anything, any sensation, any lightness, heaviness ache. or numbness, there might not be anything. And just notice what you feel.
And if you want, you could pause this. All I'm going to say is to go down the body right to your toes, but take your time.
So you're moving down to your eyes. I want you to try something as well as I'm saying this. We spend our lives clenched. I want you to imagine your body as a fist, unclenching.
Your hands, your arms, your stomach, your jaw. There's nothing to be vigilant about. See what's happening. Your eyes, your upper chest. 
Chris. Anything emerging for you at all in this?
 
[00:13:24] Chris: I'm aware of how vigilant I feel constantly. Now, part of it is because I'm monitoring the computer and the sound, but even just doing this part of the exercise. feels like trying to slow down or even just
 remove myself from that constant thinking, right? 
Thinking about the next thing, thinking about the next thing.
[00:13:58] Degan: Yeah. I, I've been doing these kinds of body scans for a long time, and I think there's something in the zeitgeist right now, in this era where we are so busy. I've noticed that with my clients, with friends, we are just that the pace, the velocity that we live at is so fast. When I began this, I used to, 10 years ago or more, I used to just say what's happening in your body.
And I always invite this slowing You don't have to do anything. And half the time, that's the work, even just to say, what's you know, you may have a large emotion come up in this. You may just realize, oh, I've got to go to the bathroom. 
But it's amazing how we live in our heads. And, I worked with someone, their confidence went very low after around two o'clock most days. And this person was working really hard. They'd come back around six or six or seven o'clock in the night and they felt better. And we did a diary of this and it turned out simply that he wasn't eating lunch. But he was also so in his mind in his action, that, he'd never stopped for a moment or rarely did When he started to notice that it was sometimes so simple you know coming back to love here These kinds of exercises are the beginning, right?
The beginning of saying, what's actually happening to me? It feels so important that all of us, but particularly men, do this. Because. We really do fly blind. And the dangers of that can be legion. 
Navigating Love and Relationships
[00:15:39] Degan: And, I think you said at the beginning, you were just talking about love, all the expressions of love, all the places.
 We have a lot of difficulty with it, particularly in relationship, but also with children, also with family and any sense of saying, Here's what I need whether that means time away for myself. Whether that means talking to your partner and saying I miss you. I really want to have sex what's happening with us or whether it's I need you to listen to me and, when we talked about the person saying, I don't, I would rather crawl through a minefield than share that.
It's a very vulnerable thing to say, if you're not used to it, I actually have some stuff I want to talk about if you're not used to it. 
[00:16:25] Chris: And, hey this guy made that first step, right? Like he actually saw how hard it really was to express your feelings for someone. And, just to talk about this exercise, amongst some people, there's a real attraction to that kind of, mindfulness and it's a whole movement.
And others will dismiss it because it's, flaky and, not of our culture, but I would disagree with that part because, the labyrinth that you can walk in, it's usually in church yards or, a lot of places have put them in. But it is one of the most meditative experiences you can have.
And that's got roots in the Catholic church. So I really think that body brings you to those feelings, right? As opposed to trying to think something through. And I know I've done that where you try to think something through and then you go blank or you get overwhelmed or you get frustrated the other thing that's interesting is this guy was working through his lunch and missing lunch.
If he was doing it because of anxiety or a sense of deadline that, having to do this for other people it's really good for him to go in and say Hey, I, what is this, what is this feeling that I have to skip lunch and then I can't work after 2 PM.
But if he's in a state of flow. And it's still valuable to look inward and say, how do I feel about that? Can I wait till two o'clock to eat? 
[00:18:03] Degan: I think it's true. It's not saying, Oh, I'm not going to, I'm going to stop what I'm doing even. It's just to take a moment and say, Oh, actually I'm hungry.
Okay. Maybe I'll just grab a cookie or something. when you talk about the labyrinth there are, I have walked the labyrinth many times. There's one at the Eaton Centre, right? Yes. Downtown Toronto. There are some in churches.
Sometimes people will just scratch them in chalk on a sidewalk . 
And just to say, it's not a maze. It's not about getting lost.. You walk to the centre and you walk out and sometimes you pose a question.
What should I do about my job? Or you just walk it and it's amazing. Every time you turn Something in your body you have a response to this labyrinth and it's remarkable. There are so many ways to go in. Yes, You can just meet with a friend and share a little more than you normally do like we talked about in the friendship podcast. You can meditate in this way.
Of course, there's therapy. There's martial arts which have a very contemplative centre, and that's a community also. These are all places where you're pausing in a way and going and looking inward and seeing what happens to be there. And I think what, why we're talking about love with this is that this clarifies your sense of being.
Yeah. 
[00:19:22] Chris: Yeah. And think about how many times have we thought we were in love and really we were just like, wanting someone in our life or we were really attracted physically to that person, or we felt something was missing in our life. So that's what's going to help us.
 We're talking about men who are not sure what's happening with them. A
The Role of Men in Parenthood
[00:19:42] Degan: nd there are particular times of life that I think are very difficult for men. And recently, I've been working with some who have young children, particularly between the ages of one and two, or, birth and two.
And there is a sense with these men. That they don't have a role. All of the ideas they may have had of what it was to be a father, right? I'd be active in this way. Do this. This is this beautiful lump, which you're not going to play baseball with or what have you and you don't have an assigned role.
And and some I've been seeing in some of these cases, men drinking a lot more using a lot more porn, seeking other partners, or just being very volatile all to say, that's just one of the examples of times that are very challenging. And to be able to go in and say, what am I actually feeling here?
I'm feeling, I don't have a role. I'm feeling worthless. And if that touches something that's past, then it becomes very intense. And so we're talking about love here. We're talking about what gets in the way of love. And this is a time where that child and that partner absolutely needs you. And to be able to have some support in that way, to be able to express to friends, to a therapist, to someone you trust what it was actually like, can at least relieve some of that.
And perhaps, move you away from just these behaviours that try and give you a hint of something. 
[00:21:14] Chris: We talk about love. We talk about marriage. We talk about having kids. We talk about graduating from university or high school or all these kinds of big moments. And we talk about them as purely joyous occasions. 
You're supposed to be feeling joy about this. But, you're talking about having a child and this is supposed to be the greatest joy of your life,and some people say they never knew love before they saw their child. Yeah. And but at the same time, it's a major change in your life and it's a major change in your role as a human being.
[00:21:51] Degan: And that could bring out feelings that are not what you're used to. What you expected or what you think you should be feeling and again we're gonna suggest you go inward to explore that. I think most of us in this world really just simply want to do our best.
We fall in love with someone. We have a child in this instance, we really want to show up and yet these forces, these unknown forces inside us really get in the way or can, this is about love in that sense of what can block it. And it's real. One of the clients I work withwas a couples therapy and the mother was saying, I feel like you leave us.
Meaning her and the child. I feel like you leave us. And he admitted it. I do. I distance. I don't know what my role is here. But you can see also how much he loves this child and his wife. It's not the love is there. What's getting in the way of it. 
 
[00:22:49] Chris: They want to be their best selves and the resistance to that is unclear unless you actually explore that. 
[00:22:56] Degan: Absolutely. The second kind of island of thought here is, have you been hearing about or listening to Esther Perel? 
[00:23:07] Chris: No.
[00:23:07] Degan: No. This is a New York based psychotherapist couples therapist who has written a number of books and has podcast and a lot of presence.
 And she writes a lot about couples. 
But she has a book that I'm listening to right now called Mating in Captivity. She has this idea that with the sort of breakdown of traditional society in many ways, couples, like whether the church, some kind of organized religion, whether that be certain roles, partners in a couple, have become everything to each other.
So we look to them for stability and Solidity and we look to them for the erotic and the unknown and probably in a sense for a spiritual connection, for everything. 
 I think the danger becomes that each partner gets stuck in a role. So this is the second idea. that we become everything to each other.
 We're going to take a break and after the pause. We're going to be talking about love. And lobsters and ducks. All will be much clearer in a few minutes. 
[00:24:15] Chris: So curious. 
 
[00:24:17] Chris: And we're back. Degan, you wanted to talk about. Ducks and lobsters. Yes. Sounds delicious. 
[00:24:25] Degan: Lobsters
 first. 
Jordan Peterson's Lobster Theory
[00:24:27] Degan: I'm going to quote from. Jordan Peterson's book, Twelve Rules for Life. Now, Jordan Peterson, was a former academic at U of T, andas a podcaster and an author controversial in many ways and a voice out there on the subject of men masculinity relationships. And one of his ideas, he brings in the lobster, and this will be familiar to some of you out there.
And he has this idea, well, I'll let him speak for himself. "There is an unspeakably primordial calculator deep within you, at the very foundation of your brain, far below your thoughts and feelings. It monitors exactly where you are positioned in society, on a scale of one to ten, for the sake of argument.
If you're number one, the highest level of status, you are an overwhelming success. If you're male, you have preferential access to the best places to live and the highest quality food. People compete to do you favours. You have unlimited opportunity for romantic and sexual contact. You are a successful lobster and the most desirable females line up and vie for your attention." So he uses this idea of the lobster, the lobster that is the biggest, is the most aggressive, and somewhere earlier he says, gets the choicest or the most tender meat. This is one idea of attraction, right? This the sense of being the toughest, the alpha male, the alpha male, the quarterback who gets the the head of the cheerleading squad, you know, and we certainly see it societally. And just to say when, when I was wrestling with this
 I asked a friend what does attract you to men? And she said the duck with the shiniest back, which really is the biggest lobster. 
[00:26:13] Chris: Right. 
So this is what, what did she mean by that? Like I'm hearing it in two different ways. One is the prettiest back or the one who lets things roll off their back more easily.
[00:26:31] Degan: I took it very much as the most dazzling, the most attractive, the most dominant, the most alpha male, the biggest lobster. 
 I think there's something to wrestle with in these ideas. What do you make of that, Chris? 
[00:26:50] Chris: I tend to find this alpha male, biggest lobsters, shiniest duck thing a bit reductive in the sense that, yeah, we're animals, but we're not lobsters. And Why did he go to lobsters and not some other animal where they behave completely differently? Like we're choosing, we're choosing the animal kingdom as some sort of model for how we should organize society. It's outrageous. It's difficult to even imagine.
[00:27:22] Degan: You know, Peterson,he's difficult to sum up because I think he touches some truths.
[00:27:28] Chris: Yeah. 
[00:27:28] Degan: And he, he's a very well read, quite very thoughtful individual and, and, and interested in a lot of areas and stuffs them all together. And I think in the midst of that, you have some really strong ideas. I mean, the ideas of this 12 rules for life, and relating this to love.
You know, this is about being the best you can be, right? And, and the chapters are simple, like make your bed, you know put your shoulders back and stand up straight these, these kinds of ideas. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. I think that the danger becomes perhaps how concretized some of these ideas are entrenched entrenched
 the idea that they become concretized, that there are roles we have then this we're so much more complicated than, than these roles. 
In the poem, I say, I've walked through streets like an accomplishment. And in a way, the accomplishment is also the lobster and the duck. And there's nothing wrong with that. We do put forth our colors and particularly in mating rituals, right?
You know, I, I am dating at the moment. I want to wear my good shirt and I shave and I want to look good. And in the poem there's that sense also of some kind of mystery and in a sense, essential nature and nakedness. Here's my hand. Would you take it outside of that?
And so I do think sometimes it's reductive, this idea that, this is the way that maybe it's the way we mate, right? It's a lot to do at the beginning, but I think it doesn't help us necessarily hold a relationship over time. 
[00:29:17] Chris: Well, look, let's go back to you know, what we were talking about before with the, with the with feelings and, and, you know, Jordan Peterson is very popular amongst the facts don't care about your feelings crowd.
Right. And, and it seems, it always seems to me with that crowd, their feelings of rage matter a lot more than our feelings of anything else. But 
[00:29:41] Degan: certainly from his Twitter account, you know. 
[00:29:43] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Look, I've, I've watched his videos, which leads to a whole lot of bad YouTube suggestions, by the way.
 I haven't read any of his books. I'm not going to spend any money on them. I have seen some of his videos. I don't follow him on Twitter, but I've seen, you know, you just can't avoid him. The best way to misinform someone is to give a little nugget of truth and then take that and go with it.
And this is why the lobster thing bugs me because I don't know anything about lobsters, he's probably right about, you know, the biggest lobster getting the best woman lobster. But, and I know a couple of these rules like clean your room, right? Of course, clean your room. That's a good thing to do.
It probably helps you organize your thoughts. I still don't even think with cleaning your room, it's that simple though, right? And this is what drives me crazy is that it is that kind of, Simplification. And, you know, there's a strong desire.
It's, it's the reptilian brain. And I feel like all of this talk never gets us beyond the reptilian brain, right? We have other parts. Yeah, we have, we, you know, there's the reptilian brain we have from, from our earliest existence, yeah. And then we, you know, then we have. I don't know what the other parts of the brain, I know there's a hippocampus and it sounds like hippopotamus, but I don't, I don't know a lot about the brain, but I do know there's more to it than, alpha versus beta.
And I know there's more to it than than like the strongest survives. We contain multitudes, not just 12 rules.
 
[00:31:22] Degan: When you said that the lobster idea is reductive or simplistic, I think that's true in a number of ways. And what's coming to mind is, we're in my therapy office at the moment, I'm thinking of people who've sat on this couch, who in many ways could be construed as lobsters in a simplistic way.
Mm hmm. Ripped confident employed well with partners who love them. And they are coming because, so in that sense, they should have everything. They are coming because there are things not working in their lives. And they're particularly coming, when we think about love over the long term, because certainly they were able to get partners, meet partners, that would, in a sense, meet that status, right?
[00:32:19] Chris: But they're having difficulty continuing the relationship. And that becomes interesting for them to say, I have this, I know I have it. And it's not working. It's not working over the long term. From that, I'd like to say a couple of pieces around thoughts for strong relationships, perhaps past the initial stages. Do you have 12 rules for relationships? 
[00:32:44] Degan: I have 13. 
[00:32:46] Chris: You win. You're the alpha. 
[00:32:48] Degan: There we go. So, and there's a paradox, I think, at the heart of solid relationships, and this is for anyone, that the first piece, and I think it really, at the beginning of the podcast, we talked about this emotional awareness and knowledge, and I think that's an absolute sort of foundation that we can all attempt to do.
But I think what I've seen allow couples to grow together, to have longer, more fruitful relationships. There's two main pieces. One is that the partners make clear demands on each other. And I think that does take an inner knowledge, right? Because to say, here's what I want. And I'll often say that to couples, the importance of demands.
And you're not going to have them all met, but to know what they are and to put them out. 
The Importance of Being Heard
[00:33:43] Degan: And sometimes I'll have couples even this is a brief exercise which I found really helpful, where you turn off all your phones, you set an alarm for 10 minutes, and one partner speaks for 10 minutes about anything they want.
Oh, what they think of their partner's parents that are not doing enough with childcare, how they're feeling at work, how they're feeling not heard by their partner, whatever it is, they just speak for 10 minutes. The other the, the listener reflects back and just says, I heard you say A, B, C, D.
They do not come in and say, yeah, but my mother, we, your parents don't do anything either, right? They don't do that. They just reflect back. Mm-Hmm, . So basically partner A, the speaker is being heard. You can do this at home, folks. This is, I, I've done it for years. I've given this exercise to people.
I find it, I've got too, mark, you've done it too. It's, it's remarkably helpful and simple. And then you switch, right? Mm-Hmm. , who had been the listener, becomes the speaker and they may respond to what's been said or they may talk about something else and the listener there the switched partner reflects back 2 times 10 minutes 20 minutes of this is so clarifying There are I think two things that come out of this one is the act of being heard is so fundamental because In partnerships so often, we are not hearing each other because of all the things we were talking about earlier. We are busy. We are hypervigilant to so many things. And so there's not a lot of time certainly not, not ritualized time to sit and talk and work this through.
And so the act of even being heard is often enough for one of those partners to say, yeahI find it really frustrating when your mom doesn't help out with the kids or what have you. And just to have that said is often enough. 
[00:35:36] Chris: And to have, I think the part about being heard is to have it reflected back to you without judgment, right?
Yeah. Where the person just says. I heard you say this, that's right, and if, if I am correct, you ask if they, if you got it right, that's it, 
[00:35:56] Degan: ask clarifying question, right, right. Yeah. Did you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. After the listener kind of sums up what they heard. So the one piece is just being heard and the importance of that.
Right. The second is that this is a good venue for making demands. 
Making Demands in Relationships
[00:36:12] Degan: It doesn't have to be there, but to say what's really important to me is I need one day a month to go away on my own.
So the first, we can make these demands in this kind of format, or we just make them when it's quiet, so we can actually hear each other when the kids are asleep or when, you know, you have time after work. Another piece that I think I really believe about the sort of longevity of relationships is that, if we think about what Esther Perel was saying, that relationships, But we look to the other partner to fulfill all of our needs.
Right. 
Living Your Own Life in a Partnership
[00:36:54] Degan: I think one of the ways to shake that up and to bring air into that kind of claustrophobic stuffy space is to stand on your own two feet, is to live your own life, is to feed your own life. And I think what happens is when we get in partnership, we become enmeshed, and we get used to these patterns 
And there's safety in it, And I think one of the ways to shake this up is to come back to yourself. And the ways to do that it takes some creative thinking, particularly if you have young kids or you don't have a lot of money.
But I think I just want to suggest a couple becauseI've found this to be very helpful for couples. That if they can have some space and enter into something that is the unknown. Something outside of this pattern for themselves. That might be a hobby. That might be meeting with friends.
It doesn't have to be extravagant. For me, for a long time, and this is going back about eight, ten years, I would take, maybe every six weeks, at least 24 hours to myself. And I would when Airbnbs weren't so ridiculously expensive I would It's those cleaning fees. Yes. I would I would spend, 24 hours, and I would just sometimes sit, lie on my bed, you know.
 I have three kids, I have, I work as a counselor, I'm a writer, It's a lot of work. And I just sit and sometimes I would think about some of my clients and I sometimes I would even have tears some of them were in dire straits. But I needed a place to let whatever could come out come out. Or I'd watch TV or go for a run or read a book work on writing it didn't matter but there was something about being on my own and I've noticed this in clients, that they come back outside of their regular pattern with more energy.
 This is a lot easier said than done. Because sometimes we have a partner that feels threatened, right? The other partner feels threatened by, oh, you're taking this space, don't you love me? Right. So, we get really caught in each other. And I think that gets in the way of love, gets in the way of spontaneity and all the things that Esther Perel talks about.
 
[00:39:23] Chris: Demand sounds like such a harsh word to me, right? These are my demands, right? You know, it's like you're going to go on strike otherwise, right?
And hey, maybe that's the way to go. I don't know. But it's true because otherwise you have expectations that you don't voice. Yeah. And that's when, that's where fights come from. Most of the time, right? It's like you expect someone, I mean, sometimes it's like, we've talked about this, why are you doing it?
Blah, blah, blah. But a lot of the time it's like, you come with certain expectations of what your partner is supposed to do. And you kind of assume that that person is going to fulfill those expectations somehow. Yeah. Some of them are completely unrealistic. Some of them are totally realistic, and all you have to do is ask for them.
 But if you don't voice them, then they're like fight content, right? And, and if you don't, if you aren't aware of that need, then how are you going to get out of that, that perpetual fighting? 
The Role of Appreciation in Conflict Resolution
[00:40:25] Chris: The thing that happens in couples counseling, as well as what you described, is At the beginning, you say what you appreciate about the other person so that you put yourself on a level of reminding yourself that you're here because you like the person, right?
 The love isn't the challenge in that moment when you're angry, right? If you don't like them. You're going to have your back up, right? And you're going to have that reptilian brain, you know, the defensive posture. I'm even like holding up my fists. But if you just say, even I appreciate that you took out the garbage last week when I, when Ididn't get home till late.
Yeah. And, and that just takes all the edge off. Yeah. You still have to go through the work of listening and reflecting back And,the importance that's so important to be heard in there. There are times, when if my wife and I are having a disagreement. The best way out of it is to remind myself, my wife's better than me at this, is to remind myself that the goal here is to get out of the disagreement. Right? And not to, not to shut it off, but to figure out what the solution is. So if you step back like that, it's like, okay, I'm in this because, you know, this is my partner.
I want to, I want to be with her. I like her. She's annoying me right now. But if I throw an accusation at her, then she's going to be defensive and, it can escalate. Right. Yeah. But if I say something like I just need you to hear me. Yeah. And if, if she responds accordingly, then 
[00:42:15] Degan: you slowed things down at that.
Yeah. Right. I just need you to hear me.
[00:42:19] Chris: We talk about de- escalation when we're talking about like crime situations. It's also true on a personal level I mean, I'm not going to pretend that nobody should ever fight, ever.
Yeah. But, if you come into it trying to remind yourself that you're on the same side, there's a lot of value to that. It's, it's actually hard, but there are ways to do that. 
[00:42:43] Degan: When you talk about, slowing things down and the work it takes to do that, to actually come into contact without it being like a sword fight. Right. You know, and I'm just thinking about Kind of ask yourself. What do you really want from your partner? And sometimes they've come up with they're very small things often that make a huge difference. One of them I need I need more time to myself, which we mentioned I I want to have sex more. Again,
you're not necessarily going to get all of this, right? But at least you're voicing it one of them was I need you to put down your phone and look at me when we're talking about something. So I can just feel you're there. Another one was I need eye contact in the morning, but they were so busy with kids and with getting out the door that all the husband in this case needed was his wife to look at him when he came downstairs, as opposed to we've got to get the lunches and this.
 He knew she loved him and but needed that. And it was grounding for him as such a small thing. And it really made a difference in the midst of that. I think the idea is that we're recharging, right? We need to, I think, find out what recharges us outside of the marriage.
And, it really can feel like a betrayal. These ideas sound so simple, but to shift a pattern is big, it's really big. It feels like a betrayal. You don't love me anymore. And I will say,the thirteenth rule, let's say, is two part.
Make demands on your partners and live your own life.
 Carl Jung has a quote it's very similar to this. The worst thing you can do to your children is not live your own life. And I think that's true of partnership also.
The worst thing you can do in a partnership is not live your own life. And live it vibrantly. Live it however you need to, and that energy restores and reverberates through your partnership. And that impacts connection, emotional connection, sex closenessvibrancy.
[00:44:51] Chris: to me, especially that second part, I'm hearing if you're too intermeshed, if you're too, like to use a 80s, 90s word, codependent, right?
That's what you need. Like you need to live your own life, but there are also situations where you're off kind of doing your own thing and you're never around. And that's also a source of yes, source of tension. So what is, what is happening there? You got a rule 13c on that one?
[00:45:21] Degan: Yeah. just to, to step back from that question and give some context, what I like to do in couples therapy is, is have the couple look at each other. In fact, I often now have the couple look at each other instead of me, right? Because they, they look toward the therapist.
This is a, it's a rare thing for a couple to look at each other for an hour. So I'll have them in that shape. And just to do that, you learn so much because sometimes there's discomfort. Sometimes there's anger. let's say one partner is off, as you said.
And back in the room, she is having difficulty looking at,her partner and
whatever emerges from that is, is what you work with.
 
[00:46:13] Chris: When you tell me that you have couples look at each other first of all, I see that as it's hard because you have a certain idea of what this person is in this moment and it's usually some sort of obstacle to your well being or happiness or whatever in this moment.
And when you look at each other, you actually have to see this person as a real live whole person. That's a big challenge at the best of times for anybody about anybody.You aren't quite at the point where you're saying they have a point, but you're seeing that they are feeling something and what they're feeling is real.
And some time after that, if you go through the steps, you know you can get to a point where you can hear a demand and perhaps this time the demand is, I need you at home more often. That kind of thing. I need you to help out with the kids. I miss you.
[00:47:16] Degan: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. 
[00:47:21] Chris: So have we solved relationships now? 
[00:47:23] Degan: 
Welcome back. This has been a long episode, Degan, and I think we may have to make this a two parter because there's a lot more to talk about. So let's finish expansive. Love is big. Love is big. Like I said in the beginning, it's everything. It's what we're all about. So let's 
Wrapping Up
[00:47:46] Degan: I've got a joke that'll suit, I think here.
[00:47:48] Chris: Is it a love joke? 
[00:47:49] Degan: Actually, no. I'm gonna, now I'm gonna, I've got a couple of short jokes. 
I'm gonna have to find a lovejoke. 
[00:47:53] Chris: Yeah, it could be a joke you love. Yes. Yes. 
[00:47:57] Degan: All right these are short, so I might even get you two. Okay. Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. All right, I got one more. 
[00:48:10] Chris: I just heard that one last week. 
[00:48:12] Degan: Did you? Yeah. Okay. What did, maybe you've heard all these.
What did the bald man exclaim when he received a comb for a present? Thank you, I'll never part with it. 
[00:48:25] Chris: That's good. I have not heard that one. 
[00:48:28] Degan: Last one, it's only a sentence.
[00:48:29] Chris: Oh, you've got another. 
[00:48:30] Degan: Not even a full joke. Rest in peace, boiling water. You will be missed. That's it. M. I. S. T. Yeah. 
[00:48:42] Chris: Oh,
 They're very good dad jokes. That other one feels visual to me somehow. I think we've added it up plenty. Degan, do you want to ask me a question or should I ask you first? 
[00:48:56] Degan: I think you should ask me first. 
[00:48:57] Chris: So this is a lighter question and than I've been throwing at you good lately. It's been a heavy episode. I've been thinking about, how back to our sports episode and you grew up in Mattawa, which is closer to Ottawa, Montreal kind of area. And yet you were a Leafs fan now.
 Has that always been true or what changed if it hasn't? 
[00:49:23] Degan: I said this in that earlier podcast that there was no, Hockey game watched in my house in Mattawa ever except, you know if it was something went into overtime a game went into overtime and muscled its way through a movie that the family wanted to watch or something like that or with my family like opera or who knows what?
So I did not have allegiance to a team there, but certainly in Mattawa, Montreal it was about a third French that, and it was absolutely the team of rightMattawa in that area, Ottawa Valley. So what happened when, I think I mentioned this a little bit when I moved to Toronto in about 1992.
In 93, around the time I met you, my friend Carl and I began busking on the street and he said, Hey, let's play in front of Maple Leaf Gardens. And so my love of the game began because I was literally trumpeting or saxophone songs to Leaf fans, and then I got into it, and learned the rules and was I wouldn't say obsessed, but what, we watched a game once a week, and followed them through the seasons when they were doing pretty well, making it into the playoffs. But after that, it's like, when I thought about Montreal.
Then, I had this ghost nostalgia, right? It wasn't my own nostalgia for Montreal, but it was the nostalgia of the town that I had not been a part of. So I've always had a fondness for Montreal, and certainly when they made it to the finals, what, three, four years ago?
[00:50:57] Chris: Yeah,
it was fairly recently. They did 
[00:51:01] Degan: well. And I remember absolutely cheering for them. So I'm a total fair weather fan, I I'm at a a writing conference, but we're talking about all kinds of things.
And one of the ideas that came up was epigenetics, 
[00:51:11] Chris: Right. 
Yeah. And so I feel almost like some people have the Canadiens or the Leafs as this epigenic center in their body, right? And I just I've got this like adult. Oh, yeah. I like hockey is fine. So you're a late convert, but not a fully indoctrinated convert.
[00:51:30] Degan: That's right. Yeah. I drank, I sipped the Kool Aid. Yeah. 
[00:51:33] Chris: It's funny because ,we're typical Leafs fans because we both like the Canadiens and it's, most other Leaf fans I know hate the Canadiens. Oh, yeah. But I have too much energy spent hating the Bruins, 
[00:51:47] Degan: and everyone hates the Leafs.
I 
mean, everyone outside of Toronto.
Okay, Chris, I got a question for you. 
Exploring Gender and Sexuality
[00:51:52] Degan: Now you're a straight guy, and this is an episode about love. So I'm gonna send you a twist here. 
[00:51:58] Chris: Okay. 
[00:51:59] Degan: I'm going to send you a twist. We talk about gender all the time, right? We talk about gender and actually I'm going to read it. 
This is going to be one of my longer questions. I'm going to put 
[00:52:09] Chris: a 
[00:52:10] Degan: quote. Yeah. I know. I know. I'm going to read a quote from Judith Butler that she put in this, and then this is so this is preparing the question here.
Okay. The quote is, 
[00:52:24] Chris: Degan's always got a book handy. 
[00:52:27] Degan: Right now, it's my phone handy. Okay, this is Judith Butler in Imitation and Gender Insubordination. She asks, quote, if a sexuality is to be disclosed, right? I just said to you, you're straight, right? If a sexuality is to be disclosed, what will be taken as the true determinant of its meaning?
The fantasy structure, the act, the orifice. The gender, the anatomy. I read that only in this sense that we make such a big deal about gender, but we often don't really talk about it, break it down, right? It's way more fluid than we think it is. So anyway, the question is much simpler than all this. If you had to fall in love with a man, who would it be? 
[00:53:19] Chris: Uh, wow. So I ask you, what, why do you like the Leafs? And you ask me this question. Fair enough. So I feel like I need to talk my way through the answer because I don't actually know for sure.
And I want to say also, we are going to address this very question in an upcoming episode. I know,
[00:53:46] Degan: I thought I'd give them 
a sneak preview. 
[00:53:48] Chris: A little teaser it's, what kind of man are you? What's a man anyway? What kind of gender are you? And okay.
First of all, it's makes a lot of wheels turn in my head because then I have to ask myself, why do I call myself straight? There's the obvious that I am attracted to women. But, if we're gonna get all Judith Butler here, what is a woman? Is it merely anatomy?
Is it the way they act? Because I'm not attracted to every single woman in the world. 
The other part of this is. I've talked to a lot of people about this, mostly you, obviously, but even going way back to university, I remember was a lot of vandalism of the LGBTQ office on our campus when I was at university and I worked for the student newspaper.
So I was interviewing. Someone and it was the first time this was the 80s. It was the first time I heard the term homophobia and it's going to be a really long answer. And I really, I was really interested in the term at the time, because it was the first time I heard of a word referring to hatred as a phobia.
And I think the idea behind that was that it's a fear based reaction and it's a word I agree with, and think is inadequate at the same time because, I usually think of, if you think of agoraphobia, being afraid of open spaces, that is an irrational fear.
So if homophobia is an irrational fear, it's almost a medical condition and I'm not fully sure that it's the same thing 
anyway. 
[00:55:34] Degan: That's a great, that's a great point, because I've never, someone who just said we're going to, your question is now expanding outwards, because I work with phobias all the time, and I've had phobias and panic, just writing a book about it, and I've never thought of that construction, and I totally agree. Yeah, so who do you have a crush on? Who might you have a crush on? 
[00:55:55] Chris: Anyway, the point of all of this is I interviewed this guy and he talked, he was the person who introduced me to the idea of sexuality as a spectrum, rather than a duality, andhe was basically saying, we're all a little bit gay and I've thought about that, 
 that has formed my understanding of sexual preference, sexual orientation ever since now, I I think that in a less homophobic world, maybe I could have been attracted to a man. I think, if if one is like purely heterosexual and 10 is purely homosexual. Is that a word we use anymore? Anyway. If one end is super gay and one end is super straight I'm probably one is super straight, I'm probably like a three to four.
That's, I don't know. There's no. Okay. 
[00:56:57] Degan: And maybe this is the I'm looking for a name a face. 
[00:56:59] Chris: I know. I know. And I try to think of someone. So again, it's a long answer, but perhaps Denzel Washington, mainly because of the movie Mississippi Masala, which is an early 90s film about a Black man and first generation Indian woman who fall in loveAnd it's a very sexy film between the 2 of them.
It's a bit of a Romeo and Juliet story because neither of their families want them to be together. I can't remember if it's all that explicit, but there's a lot of sexy scenes between them. And there's a moment where where Denzel Washington looks at the camera and it's holy moly.
I guess that's my first thought is just and it's funny because I admire him as an actor I don't know a lot about him otherwise I don't think anyone would deny. He's a good looking guy. 
[00:57:55] Degan: Gravelly voice also, right?
[00:57:57] Chris: Yeah, if I extend that out, would I fall in love with them? I don't know, maybe, and I, this is a really, it's a much more complicated, you 
[00:58:08] Degan: can think about this for the for the podcast on sexuality, whether or not you could fall in love with them, or whether it's just a momentary crush.
[00:58:15] Chris: I think you're secretly trying to set me up. I'm taken. Sorry.
You had to ask a complicated question. You got a complicated answer. 
[00:58:22] Degan: So I asked you in the past about, what's a favorite book? What's a favorite song? So I, we gotta mix it up. 
[00:58:27] Chris: What's a favorite man. 
Considering I can barely say I love you to a man, it would be very difficult for me. 
[00:58:34] Degan: This show is going to be renamed, Let's Make Chris Uncomfortable. 
[00:58:36] Chris: I'm not uncomfortable. 
I 
just it's a lot of thinking. 
It's a lot of thinking. Yeah. 
[00:58:42] Degan: And then you get to sit there at night and go, what am I going to ask Degan next time?
[00:58:48] Chris: Yeah. What can I make him turn about in his head? 
[00:58:52] Degan: Exactly. 
[00:58:53] Chris: Thank you for that question, Degan. 
Concluding Thoughts and Next Episode Teaser
[00:58:54] Chris: And thank you for the three jokes that you brought to the table. We're going to pick up where we left off on love in our next episode. So please join us for the next episode of What Kind of Man Are You?
[00:59:10] Degan: Wonderful. See you then.
[00:59:11] Chris: What Kind of Man Are You is hosted by Chris Garbutt and Degan Davis. Produced by Chris Garbutt at VQC Media. You can support us at buymeacoffee.com slash Chris Garbutt. Music composed and performed by Degan Davis. You can buy Degan's book at brickbooks.ca. 
Thank you to all our supporters and listeners.