You can find Avrum online at:

website: https://avrumweissphd.com
email: agweissphd@gmail.com
twitter: @avrum_weiss

Transcript:

[Jon Dabach] 00:00
Today on the relationship Revival Show, I’m joined by Dr. Avrum Weiss. Dr. Weiss is a psycho therapist and award winning author and a speaker. His decade long work on understanding the internal lives of men culminated with his recently published best seller hidden in plain sight, how men’s fears of women shape their intimate relationships. Dr. Weiss is a regular contributor to The Psychology Today website and offers workshops nationally about psychotherapy with men and helping men and women understand each other.

[Jon Dabach] 00:31
He practices psychotherapy online from his home on an island in Midcoast, Maine specializing in psychotherapy groups for men and psychotherapy consultation, I’m really excited to have him on the show, talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, which is the role of men and relationships today in marriage, which is often very confused and charged for a lot of my own clients.

[Jon Dabach] 00:55
So selfishly, this is a session I’ve been looking forward to just for my own education and exploration of a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, you’re listening to the relationship revival podcast with Jon Dabach, also known as Mr. Spirituality.

[Jon Dabach] 01:08
That’s me. I’m your host giving you insights and guidance from over 10 years in the field of this amazing journey we call romance on this show, I go over everything you need to know about how to get into a relationship, how to get the most out of a relationship, and sometimes even how to gracefully end a relationship without pulling your hair out and going crazy.

[Jon Dabach] 01:30
And occasionally, I’m even joined by new and old friends who are also relationship experts to bring you guidance and wisdom with new perspectives. Thanks for stopping by. Otherwise, Dr. Weiss, thank you so much for being on the program. I’m excited to talk to you about a topic that comes up in my own practice quite often. And that is kind of the status of men and the way men are viewed in the world today. I mean, would you say that’s a fair assessment? Yeah,

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 01:57
Yeah. Especially Absolutely. One of the quotes in my book, which I really was sort of stunned to come across is the quote a man Okay, exactly. But we have to talk about men, we have to talk about why they’re so afraid of women. And it’s by Meryl Streep, which I just thought was fascinating.

 

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 02:14
You know, I mean, like she’s, quote, offhand, that was it. We have to talk about men, we have to talk about why they’re so afraid of women. And I thought, if Meryl Streep understands that, why don’t my colleagues understand it?

[Jon Dabach] 02:26
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so interesting. Yeah, it’s so interesting. And I hold the view. And I tell this to all my kind of heteronormative couples that come to the door, which is the vast, vast majority of my practice, I’d say over 90% are just your traditional man, woman kind of married couple with kids, or, you know, on their way to it, is that I think it’s the hardest time that men have ever had to be a man, because the expectations of what people expect from us both in and out of a relationship are confusing at this point.

[Jon Dabach] 02:58
And men are kind of, I never used the word afraid or have a fear of women. But I’m curious to see how you use it. But I it’s like, well, what do you really want? And then the answer is never so clear. So but you took it a step further. And it’s like men’s fears of women’s so how to? How do you define it? And what have you found in writing this book and doing this work for so many years?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 03:27
So let me let me start by addressing the word I have. I’ve been told dozens of times by people that I shouldn’t use the word scared or afraid that it’ll put men off. And I should use more sensitive words like men are intimidated by women or men or anxious or anyone, but in my experience, afraid and fear and scared are the right words.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 03:54
And the fact that they make so many people uncomfortable, is why I wrote the book, it’s sort of like they’re proving my point, by their reaction. So when you say to a man, you know, I’m listening to you, and I’m thinking that you’re kind of afraid of your wife, you get a defensive reaction that lasts never more than 60 seconds. And within 60 seconds, every man I’ve ever talked to looks at me and says, that makes a lot of sense.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 04:22
So man, get it. It’s not far below the surface. So if you say things like, you know, you’re he’s telling me a story about his friends asked him to go out to work for a drink after work. And the first thing is he gets anxious about asking his partner for permission. That’s if you were a child. Now, realize his partner has never asked him to do that. That’s not you can’t put that on her.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 04:44
That’s his stuff about pleasing her, and conflict and also things and most men in that situation. Their first thought is not whether or not they would enjoy themselves with their friends. But is this going to be a problem with my wife?

[Jon Dabach] 04:57
Right, Jackie, Mason’s kind of old joke. Because, you know, if you’re at a comedy concert, the man says He’s funny. He’s funny. And the wife says that fun that man says, oh, yeah, he’s right. He’s not funny. He’s not. Yeah. Like, it’s like this approval seeking. But you’re right at the end of the day, that’s a version of fear. And

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 05:13
Who do you seek approval from? Right? People you’re worried about disapproving of you people, you’re scared, that you feel at risk and vulnerable, that if they didn’t approve of you,

[Jon Dabach] 05:25
So what is the core fear? Is it that the wife will leave? Is it abandonment? Is it disapproval? What’s what the root of it is?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 05:34
I think abandonment so in the book, I suggest there are seven fears that men have of women and their hierarchical and I moved from the most surface easily recognizable, like men are afraid of being controlled by women most comfortable acknowledge that shoe, down to Your exactly right. I think abandonment is one of the core fears.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 05:54
And one of the interesting pieces of evidence for that is that there’s an old social psych experiment called the still face experiment. Are you familiar with it? I’m not know. So it’s split screen research with a mother and infant. So you just watch

[Jon Dabach] 06:11
Interacting with

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 06:13
Each other. And you can see the conversation, although the infant doesn’t speak, you can see they’re communicating. And they’re each trying on little things. And if the other one smiles, then okay, that work, and they’re doing their thing, the mothers are instructed to turn away and turn back with a still face, not angry, not critical, and just not responsive.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 06:32
And within minutes, every single one of the babies loses it right, to the point of even losing bowel control and one of the infants, so they are completely entirely dependent on that connection with their mother. And when it is broken for even a moment it’s so interestingly, in that study, the boy babies for whatever reason, we don’t know got more upset and stayed upset longer than the girl babies.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 07:01
Then we go to heterosexual adults, and we studied them while they’re in conflict. And an interesting thing happens physiologically, men get more upset and conflict and it takes them longer to re stabilize. And for men, nothing has changed. It’s just the same as when they were in the crib with their mommies. Because in most families, fathers are not an active emotional part of childbearing. So all the eggs are in mommy’s basket.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 07:29
And in heterosexual marriages, most men don’t have friendships and relationships out their marriage. So once again, all the eggs are in wife’s basket. And it’s the same experience from it.

[Jon Dabach] 07:42
It’s so it’s so fascinating. You know, I that comes up a lot. I use the I’m an I leaned very heavily on Gottman on the government practice and theories and everything. And one of the things in the book that they talk about, and I don’t know if it’s true, because I don’t know how much of you know, our ancestral DNA kind of gets passed down.

[Jon Dabach] 08:00
There’s no way to really prove or disprove it, but I liked and it does resonate with a lot of clients like the reason men take longer to recover from when they feel flooded and overwhelmed, is because they used to hunt and they used to have to like bottle in the hunting. Whether it’s true or not. I know a lot of men go oh, that sounds right. Because it plays into the masculinity.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 08:21
Explanation, see which one you like better. It’s that men don’t learn as much about emotions during their lives as women do. And so they are not as comfortable with emotion. So if you and I go to Italy together, and you speak Italian, and I don’t, you’re going to be a hell of a lot more comfortable in Italy than I am. That’s what it’s like for heterosexual men in an argument with their spouse. She understands the language of emotions and relationships.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 08:47
He doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. So where he normally feels empowered and powerful. In an argument with his wife, he feels disempowered, and like he’s playing on a home field away field.

[Jon Dabach] 08:59
And it’s what’s interesting to me is I do see a shift happening in the younger generation though, especially if they’re multi American generational, where I call it the I Love You generation where they grew up with a very emotive father, and they grew up with a very supportive mother. And yet I still find, even though they have kind of been able to connect with their emotions, and they are articulate of what’s going on, they still have the fear of women. It’s not like that goes away

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 09:29
Anytime soon. I think things are changing, but not as much as we think they are. So one of the interesting pieces of data is that, you know, everybody now a lot most couples want to have any egalitarian relationship, not a hierarchical, they want to do the housework together to the childcare together. Take turns staying home when the kids sick. Couples in their 60s do a better job of that than couple in their 30s 20s and 30s.

[Jon Dabach] 09:56
They do a better job of becoming

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 09:58
An egalitarian level. Better than so I’m sure that young,

[Jon Dabach] 10:02
There’s also less responsibility. There’s no job absolutely. Out of the house. Yeah,

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 10:07
Yeah. But just also in terms of things like how decisions are made, whether both people have an equal voice. So I think that young people are well intentioned and really want to make it different. Just like, we want it to make it different when we were their age, and my parents probably wanted to make it, it’s harder to do than you think it is. Because the whole tides going the other way.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 10:29
You know, we all live in the culture. And chances are just by the data that the man and relationships can earn more than woman. And so when your kid gets sick and has to stay home, do you send, who stays home? Which income hit do you take? Right? You

[Jon Dabach] 10:46
Don’t have sick leave the one that earns less stay at home? Generally, it’s

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 10:49
Hard not to the hill slopes that way. Right. And a lot of people find themselves even though they didn’t want to go that way they ended up there.

[Jon Dabach] 10:57
Yeah. To me, the biggest drawback of this, that’s, that’s so palpable, is that in the fear, and in the kind of modified behavior, men are becoming much less desirable. Yes. To the woman. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s this downward, downward spiral of she’s withdrawing because she’s not attracted to me.

[Jon Dabach] 11:24
And now I have even more fear. And that’s usually when they end up on my couch is like, I don’t know how they can connect. Do you find that? That’s a big drawback. But is there another one that I’m not seeing?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 11:36
Well, I think there are, yes, there are many other but absolutely, what you’re talking about is an issue and it and it has to do with the relationship becoming essentially more like a parent child relationship, than like a husband wife relationship. And that’s even talked about in the literature, it’s so common.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 11:55
And so you have often a woman who is more in tune with the relationship, at least with the emotional parts of it. And so she’s the one who’s going to bring up things first. So she begins to sound like the dissatisfied one, like the complainer. But it’s not because she’s harder to please, it’s because she’s paying more attention.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 12:16
So she’s more likely to say, you know, we haven’t had any spending intimate time together recently, or we never talked about that disagreement, she’s more likely to bring that up. Unfortunately, for men, who are trained to believe that they are responsible for everything? Anytime their partner is unhappy, they don’t hear it as a request for connection. They hear it as criticism, and inadequacy.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 12:44
You’re telling me you’re not doing it? Right. I’m not good enough. I’m not man enough. And so of course, they react the way anyone does when they think that’s what’s happening. They withdraw. Yeah, the woman who’s been pursuing contact, instead gets a response of withdrawal. And what most people do when they feel like they’re not being listened to they get louder. And off you go.

[Jon Dabach] 13:08
Yeah. Or they withdraw to it depends on the personality type. But either one is completely destructive. I totally see that.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 13:15
Yeah. And so what I found misunderstanding.

[Jon Dabach] 13:19
So is your book designed for men? Or is it designed for both men and women to read to understand what’s going on in in a relationship? And is it isn’t exclusive to marriage? I think it’s a book that men should read before they’re married.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 13:38
Well, that would be great actually won’t be great as if they would read it with the woman they’re dating would be even better. Okay. It’s a book for men and women it is it is more of the book is addressed to men than women because the topic is men. But women obviously have a big interest in what goes on with men if they’re heterosexual. And so the last section of the book is sort of how to, and there are three chapters, one for men, one for women, one for couples.

[Jon Dabach] 14:07
Great. What do you feel like is the biggest impetus for change is or the driver? Is it really about men kind of coming into and owning their position and understanding it? Or are there things that kind of that we’re fighting against society? Or is it a mixture of both?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 14:31
It’s all the above. I wrote an art I write for Psychology Today. And I wrote one article on men and psychotherapy, what’s in it for you? Because I think part of the problem is we suggest to men that they go get help, but we push through it in a shaming horrible way. You know, we basically say you’re deficient.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 14:52
You need to go over there and work on that. It’s not it, and then we pathologize men for not taking them up. Pointed, you know, like, it’s not an it’s not an alluring invitation. But if we would say to men, listen, if you give me a list of the top five things that annoy you about your wife that you have never been able to move the needle on, get into therapy for yourself, and three of the five will change, then I think you’d have men lining up for psychotherapy if you actually told them, what was in it for them.

 

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 15:22
So for example, I was taught, and it’s always been true for me that 90 something percent of people who have a good therapy experience make more money. Why don’t we tell people that? Why don’t we say, hey, you could double your business if you get yourself into therapy, because it’s you that standing in the way of growing it? So there are a lot of benefits there a lot of reasons that I think we could make it more attractive to men.

[Jon Dabach] 15:47
Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn’t, it also doesn’t help that most therapists are female,

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 15:56
Or female there. And there’s an old saying, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. So we react as if men are paranoid and defensive about going to therapy. But the fact of the matter is, in the teaching, I’ve been doing the therapists I’m using the phrase gender sensitive therapy.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 16:16
Okay, most therapists will adopt a sense a series of values that include and emphasize things like emotional vulnerability and emotional openness. Well, the average man walking into a therapy office may not endorse those values. That may not be what he wants out of therapy. And so if the therapist unthinkingly, and insensitively sort of assumes that that’s what the clients interested in, that’s whether it’s a male or female therapist, that’s a problem. That’s bad therapy.

[Jon Dabach] 16:49
Yeah. Yeah, that’s I was my wife’s a therapist. And when she kind of trained me, she’s like, the first thing you should ask is, what are they looking to get out of the session?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 16:59
Just sort of basic respect. Carl Jung said that you should approach every patient as if you had never seen a patient before in your life and didn’t know anything, which is brilliant. Imagine, yeah. If every person you met, you could do that, like, block all of your assumptions, and just take the person on with no judgments. Yeah,

[Jon Dabach] 17:21
That’s my approach to interviewing, I try to come in with a blank slate. And it’s, you know what, when you have that kind of openness, you learn a lot more, you grow a lot more. And that’s it’s been an amazing, and it’s so easy. It’s just let go of everything come in

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 17:35
Fresh. Well, I don’t agree with everything you said. Except it’s easy. I don’t think it is easy. I think it may be easy for you, but Lucky you. Most people struggle with that quite a bit. And because they’re the judgments about yourself and other people are so insidious.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 17:50
They’re so you don’t even notice that you’re doing it. And which is the whole movement. Now, the whole woke movement, whatever your politics are, is basically saying that people, there are ways in which you are making judgments you don’t even know you’re making. Yeah, for sure. At bottom line, that’s what that’s about.

[Jon Dabach] 18:11
And we talked before the interview a little bit since you brought up the woke movement, there’s this, you know, this phrase that’s kind of permeated the social culture toxic Max masculinity, right. And, listen, were two white guys talking about masculinity. Just the fact that we’re having a conversation, some people might be upset about it. I don’t take that stance.

[Jon Dabach] 18:35
I’m like, Look, I’m going to talk about it. I never shy away from difficult subjects. But what do you feel about this kind of, you know, thing that’s going on where it feels to a lot of men like an attack on men?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 18:50
Well, they’re not wrong. I think there is a lot of that woven into what’s going on. And so as I mentioned to you, researchers, people who are studying men’s dynamics and therapy with men are moving away from the term toxic masculinity, because it is taken in a pejorative way, whether or not it was meant that way, which it wasn’t. That’s what it’s come to mean to people.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 19:20
And again, if you were selling soap, would you call it toxic soap? I mean, it’s not it’s not a great pitch, if you’re reaching out to men and wanting to engage them, call it toxic, doesn’t make any sense.

[Jon Dabach] 19:31
Yeah, I find that a lot of things get appropriated like that. I mean, I remember being a kid people used to use the word schizophrenic to just mean wack, you know, and it’s like, people didn’t really understand what schizophrenia was. And now a lot of my clients casually throw out words like emotional abuse or financial abuse when it’s really not appropriate. And I have to kind of say, like, look, let’s examine that. Because there are some legal implications if you’re going to start throwing those words around and it doesn’t work out between

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 19:59
The two of you are there legal implications? And there are clinical implications? Because once, so the decision about whether or not to use those words to describe what you’ve been through, it’s not one to take lightly. And you really want to think about if I’m calling that abuse, then what is where I am? What is what?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 20:24
What will I be saying about myself in that? And I’m not saying don’t use the word, I hope I wouldn’t be hurt. No. Are you using the word? It’s a powerful word that should be used with a great deal of care and thought, not toss? Yeah.

[Jon Dabach] 20:38
Yeah, that’s what upsets me is when it gets tossed around flippantly, but I’m like, that I don’t think that’s what you really mean. Because you’re not, you know, and they, and then when we examine it, they go, yeah, maybe not.

 

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 20:50
I’ll tell you a marvelous book on the subject by a woman by the name of Sarah Schulman from my think Harvard wrote a book called conflict is not abuse. And it’s she’s an academician. And it’s a brilliant series of experiences of hers, where she gets into a conflict with someone, usually a younger person, who then immediately screams some version of this is abuse.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 21:14
And what she points out is that when that word is used, the conversation is now over. Whereas if you say, hey, that really offended me what you just said, then perhaps I would respond, really, I had no idea. Tell me what, now we’re having an exchange. Whereas when we quickly just call it abuse that’s like, you leave and I leave, and I don’t know what the hell happened.

[Jon Dabach] 21:37
Yeah, that’s curtains right there. Right? If you say that you said the magic word that basically forces me to detach, because I don’t want, I don’t want to be accused of more harm.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 21:46
And thing if someone says, you know, that was abusive? And you say, Well, I don’t understand, can you help me see that, and they don’t want to talk to you, you have to wonder where they’re coming from.

[Jon Dabach] 21:56
Right? Right. I’m going to check out that book, I think I have I have a couple clients that might be to use it very good. What is the first step, so in addition to reading this book, or maybe it’s talked about in the book, but for people listening, so they can kind of get a taste of your, of your style of approaching this, if you find that you know what, I do have some fears, and they’re manifesting in my relationship in ways that I don’t like, and I want to change things, what’s one small step they can take to start changing or seeing change?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 22:27
Counter intuitively, what I’ve learned is that the first step that’s most helpful is finding a way to find other men to talk to about this. I run online therapy groups for men. And when I first started, I thought, this is going to be awful. They’re not going to talk, they’re going to talk about work, or they’re going to talk about politics, but they’re not going to really dig 180 degrees wrong.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 22:52
Now, what I’ve learned over the last decade, is that when you put men in a room together, and give them permission to talk, and there are no women in the room, they’re dying to talk to each other. And they talk in great depth and intimacy with each other in ways, I often in those groups feel like, almost like a privileged observer. Like I can’t believe I got to watch this happen between these men.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 23:15
So I think that’s the easiest place to start. And the book has suggestions for how to find other guys. Like basically started as a book group. Let’s read the book together, and come together and talk about and then hopefully, that would then be easily slide over into well, let’s just keep getting together once a month and hanging out.

[Jon Dabach] 23:35
Well, I’d love to observe one of those if that’s possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, amazing. Well, I mean, I commend you on the great work you’re doing it’s, it’s definitely something that’s very close to me. And I see it. I mean, it’s, and it’s interesting to watch it over time. You’ve been at this longer than me, but I mean, even within the 10 years, I’ve seen just a frustration.

[Jon Dabach] 23:57
It’s almost like a knee jerk reaction to some things that are going on in the world where men are getting even more aggressive, and then some of them just fall apart. But it’s hard to deny that something’s going on. And you need to you need to wrestle with it as a reality.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 24:12
A colleague of mine, jet diamond is working on a project to try to address men’s health, physical health. There’s a lot of reasons that men don’t live as long as women, largely because men don’t get health care as frequently as women do. So he told me that the single largest factor if you if you made a pie, and which slice that is the biggest slice of early mortality and human beings being masculine, it’s the biggest slice of the pie. It’s the biggest risk factor for early death.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 24:45
And if you took the number of years gained if men lived as long as women, and you multiply the number of years by the man and came up with a total number of years live, it’s would save more lives than curing cancer. So this is not deleted. Answers subject that, you know, to sit around this is life and death that we’re talking about. And men are doing worse and worse. Yeah. And it’s there’s some urgency about it about finding effective ways to reach out to men.

[Jon Dabach] 25:14
There’s, there’s a joke a friend of mine says, probably every time we hang out, where he says, why do Why do men die before their wives? Have you heard this? I think seven I don’t remember the punch line is because they want to. And it shows like there’s some pain. I mean, it’s so interestingly, a friend of telling me that joke, has some struggles in his relationships. So that’s his way of bringing up the fact that I don’t know how to deal with this pain.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 25:41
That’s exactly how I started on this book is that I’ve men would come to my office and tell me all the things they were unhappy about in their marriage. And I would say, well, have you talked to your wife about entities? And they would look at me like, are you nuts? Like it was clearly they were terrified to tell her what they weren’t happy about.

[Jon Dabach] 26:01
And that’s when so what your process is when you realize that they’re terrified? Do you go do you try and figure out which one of the seven fears they have?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 26:10
No, or my, what’s your,

[Jon Dabach] 26:11
What’s your glance around this?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 26:13
Because I’m pretty direct. I use the word scared or afraid. And like I say, they get a little put back, but then now we’re in it. Because once a man is admitted out loud, that he’s afraid. We’re through the preliminaries. Now, we’re really talking about what’s going on.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 26:30
And so it’s, it’s a little risky to use that word, because you could push them away. But it hadn’t happened yet. Mostly, it’s so helpful to men to realize that that’s, it’s like the, you know, the key in the lock. It’s like, I’ve been running around, run, run, run, run, run, understand what the hell I’m doing. Oh, wait a minute. Now, I suppose now I’m starting to get it can be that experience.

[Jon Dabach] 26:53
Yeah. I, the first therapist I ever had kind of pointed it out even to my own life, because I was hesitant to bring up certain things in my own marriage very, very early on. And one of the things he taught me that was so helpful, and I still pass it on to my clients today is there’s going to be discomfort. When you when you bring up things are scared of, yeah. Can you sit with the discomfort? Right? You have to learn to sit there and not cave and actually see where things go

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 27:25
With the other. You’re absolutely spot on. And the other part of it is that when you don’t say something, the other person knows something’s going on, unless you just like are not connected at all. And usually what they fill in because you’re not saying what they imagine and fill in its 10 times worse than what you’re thinking. Yeah. See, there’s no free pass. You’re not you’re not getting off. Yeah,

[Jon Dabach] 27:51
You might as well talk about. Yeah, it’s actually so much for being here. This is great. I absolutely loved this conversation we had where can people find this book? What’s the best way for them to get it on your website directly?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 28:07
You can you can get it directly from my website, which is Avraham Weiss phd.com.

[Jon Dabach] 28:13
It’s a v r, u m. And Weiss is W E. I SS. I’ll put all the links in the show notes for everybody. But, but I thought I’d just spell it out on. Appreciate and, and are you still doing groups for people who are interested?

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 28:29
I had to two men’s groups online a week, and that the project I’m working on now, so I’m excited about which if any of your listeners are interested, just email me is I’m developing a workshop for couples to help men and women understand each other better using some of these ideas. And what I mostly end up feeling is like we’re not that far from understanding each other. There’s a lot of crap in the way but once you start to peel away some of the crap, it’s so it feels so good. To understand better.

[Jon Dabach] 29:03
I agree. And you know, the funniest thing to me is, I also find that women are afraid to ask men to be the kind of man they want them to be. Because they’ve been and they’ve been taught they think they’re

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 29:22
Confused. If you if you go if you go to the grocery you know, you go to the grocery store and you get in the checkout line. Sometimes they have women’s fiction. Their pickup one of the books, the genre of those books is called bodice rippers. bodice rippers women’s erotica are called bodice rippers, meaning there’s a large element of being taken not quite against their will but not quite consenting it that’s a very erotically charged area. Right. Fuses the hell out of men and women.

[Jon Dabach] 29:58
Yeah, and I find You know, it’s like when I, when I rephrase it when I’m talking to a couple, as opposed to you have to be the leader. I tell the woman, wouldn’t it be nice if at the end of the day when you’re filled with all these choices and things that you have to do throughout the day as a woman, because you’re emotionally sensitive to not have to think for a minute, and let your husband leads, and they and you see their heads, even if I’m on a zoom kickback, like that’s exactly what I want.

[Jon Dabach] 30:24
But the word leader has a charge or the word control has a charge that they don’t like. So it’s, it’s just a reframing that needs to be right.

[Dr. Avrum Weiss] 30:31
And that’s where those parent child dynamics come in place. The woman who’s stuck in the role of the critical parent wants a partner. She doesn’t want a child to be telling what to do and supervising she wants a partner who says, Oh, I was thinking on the way home that we’re not having for dinner. So I stopped and picked up not the not the partner who says Oh, do you want me to go get something for dinner? You know, right a partner.

[Jon Dabach] 30:54
Right? Absolutely. Well, thanks again. Thank you for being here. Very welcome. If you’re interested in learning how to get the absolute most out of your romantic relationships, then you’re in luck because I have put together a free workshop or masterclass if you will, about three secrets that people in happy relationships have discovered.

[Jon Dabach] 31:15
You can view the workshop and mrspirituality.com/three secrets again, it’s completely free. Just go there and watch it. It’ll help you on your journey give you some wisdoms and things to think about. The website again is mrspirituality.com/three secrets. That’s mrspirituality.com/the Number three, the word secrets. It’s all yours. Enjoy.