Connor Beaton - Modern Masculinity Is Under Attack: Here’s How To Fight Back

Full transcript: Connor Beaton on London Real

2:46 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Connor Beaton, the entrepreneur, best-selling author, and keynote speaker. You are the founder of Mantox, an international organization focusing on improving the lives and relationships of men, with the goal to better understand the challenges men face in today’s world. Your book, Men’s Work, is a practical guide to confront one’s inner darkness, overcome self-sabotage, and gain a sense of freedom and purpose. Here, you’ve developed an innovative approach to healing the shadow, a concept that addresses the hidden parts of ourselves that contribute to our struggles. You said there is an epidemic of man-shaming within society, as well as a lack of authentic support, leading many men to feel isolated, purposeless, and disconnected.

3:34 Your mission is to help men reclaim their inner strength, confront their shadow, and live with greater purpose, clarity, and connection. Connor, welcome back to London Real.

3:44 Connor Beaton: Thanks for having me back.

3:46 Brian Rose: Look, it’s great to have you. I think we spoke eight, nine months ago, and we went pretty deep on all sorts of things. I think I was telling you about a lot of my life, and you were kind of breaking down, and honestly, Connor, you helped me see some things in a different way that I hadn’t really looked at before, from drinking drug abuse to, like, my experiences hazing as a fraternity, and we really covered a lot of amazing ground, but we didn’t get even into some of the more interesting things that define us as men or even reflect to us who we are as men, like relationships and mothers and all these other things. So, I can’t wait to dive a little bit deeper today.

4:26 Connor Beaton: Beauty. Beauty, I’m ready.

4:28 Brian Rose: When you bump into someone, like, on the street or on the bus, and they say, what do you do? What do you tell them?

4:37 Connor Beaton: It depends on my mood, but essentially, I just say that I run a men’s mental health company, and our slogan is, it’s not therapy, it’s training. And so, essentially, it’s helping men grow deeper into themselves. Not grow up, but actually grow deeper into who they are and who they actually want to be. So, that’s usually what I say.

5:01 If I’m just messing around, I’ll say, I make men cry. I’ll just joke around, stuff like that, but for the most part, it’s that. It’s helping men grow deeper into themselves, giving them the tools, the resources that oftentimes modern therapy is actually not giving them.

5:18 Brian Rose: Powerful. For me, I think about this a lot because my two boys are now eight and nine.

5:24 I really am looking straight at it. First of all, I’ve got a direct reflection of how I’m doing as a father and introducing concepts of masculinity. And also, I’m watching in real time, two young men develop into men. So, I’ve got that going on. I’ve also still have relationships with my father and all sorts of other people. So, it’s pretty interesting how it’s all kind of happening in real time, and it gives me a lot to think about and focus on for sure.

5:53 Connor Beaton: Yeah. Well, I mean, eight to nine is a very interesting time, especially for a lot of young boys, where it’s like the prepubescent time. And I mean, this is maybe an interesting fact, but maybe something for all the parents to think about. Eight to 11 is what the research shows is the general age that young boys are now finding porn. And so, if you have an eight and nine-year-old boy, it’s probably close to that time, if not that time already, to have that conversation of what pornography is, because a lot of young boys are finding it so early, you know, it’s so accessible. And it’s a big struggle for a lot of parents, of like, when do I talk to my boys about this? How do I talk to my boys about this?

6:36 Do I talk to my boys about this? And so, yeah, just throw that out there for you.

6:42 Brian Rose: Good point. Let’s drill right into that. How do you talk to your boys about that?

6:47 Connor Beaton: I mean, I think a couple of things, you know, depending on the relationship that you have with your boys, you know, one of them is to talk about the ease of acquisition, you know, and I probably wouldn’t use the word acquisition. I’d probably say something along the lines of, you know, you can find some things on a phone or an iPad or a computer that maybe you’re not ready for. And to open the door for conversation. So, what I would probably say to my son when he turns eight or nine, number one, I would say, I’m always here to talk to. If you get hit with something, or if you find something, or you come across something that, you know, just you don’t even know how to deal with, or it just feels like it’s too much for you. Or if it feels like it’s something that you want to hide, you know, like, that’s probably a good time to come and talk to me about those types of things.

7:27 So that’s number one. Number two, I would have some type of a conversation with them, or how you would have that conversation with your kids, have some type of conversation with them about sex and what it actually means, whatever your family system makes it mean, you know, every family system is a little bit different, but have a conversation with them about what sex is, the role that it plays, the sanctity of it, into some degree, and then to be able to have a conversation of, you know, you can go and watch porn, but it’s going to skew, it’s going to mess up your perspective of sex. And the analogy, because I’m from Canada, so I’m going to give you a Canadian analogy, is you can watch hockey, but it’s very different to go play hockey. And so having a basic analogy for kids can be very, very helpful to get them to just understand, like, you could go and watch this, and it’ll be enticing, and you can get hooked on it. And it’ll be something that, you know, you struggle with, or just deal with in silence. And it’s not to shame them, of course, but you know, the real thing’s better, and encouraging them to just go down that path safely.

8:36 Brian Rose: So it’s a tricky conversation to have, because like you said, you kind of have to talk about a lot of things that maybe they’re not even mentally ready to talk about. It’s almost like, because it’s so accessible, and like most parents, they live in oblivion, right? Oh, no, my kids haven’t seen that.

8:54 But like, if we’re really honest with ourselves, they’re seeing it two or three years before you think they will, maybe more, right? So if I’m really honest with myself, they probably have already seen something, right?

9:06 Connor Beaton: 100%. Right. I spoke at an all boys school, because I do a lot of public speaking, and I spoke at an all boys school, there’s 600 kids, right? And it’s middle school and high school. And so, you know, pretty, not like grade one, but I think about four or five, grade four or five, all the way up to grade 12. And they had these, they had all the boys on the lower levels, there’s 600 boys, and I’m on stage in front of the boys. And then the rafters are some of the parents and all of the teachers. And you know, I was talking about being a man, and you know, masculinity, and these types of pieces.

9:40 And I had a slide that I turned to in the slide, and I, I had passed this with, you know, the parents and the teachers first, like I’d put I’d given them my slide deck, I was like, I’m going to talk about this. And so it just turned to a slide that said porn. And of course, all of the boys like, oh, you know, all erupts. And I was like, okay, I’m going to get all the parents and all the teachers to turn their backs. And so all the parents that are up in the second floor and all the teachers, they turn their backs.

10:07 And I said to the boys, okay, real talk, how many of you have actually watched porn? And I kid you not 95% of the boys put their hands up out of 600 kids, right from grade four or five up to, you know, grade 12. So the majority of those kids, you know, if you think your boys haven’t seen it, they probably have. It’s, it’s really one of those things where, and the interesting thing is that the research shows that it’s, it’s oftentimes it’s not them searching for it.

10:33 You know, either they stumble across something, they’re at a, they’re at a friend’s house and, you know, friends, older sibling has shown it to them or whatever it is. But oftentimes, somebody else is showing them the pornography. And so it’s, it is good to get a sense of, you know, having some dialogue with your kids about it.

10:52 Brian Rose: It’s just crazy. Like you said, then you’re talking about sex, which is probably still maybe a good time to talk about that. But then you’re talking about the sanctity of it. I mean, that gets really deep into relationships and all that, which is, I mean, stuff that maybe that cortex isn’t necessarily ready to grasp.

11:10 So it puts you in a difficult situation these days, right? Because of these, I guess, digital files and digital devices where you have to have that conversation with people maybe before they’re really ready.

11:23 Connor Beaton: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, anytime you’re talking to kids, it’s best to just use super simple language, you know, it’s like, this is special. And, and, you know, this is easy to access.

11:35 And I think the more that you can make it very simple and very straightforward. And I think the challenge is that for most parents, it’s uncomfortable for them, you know, maybe it’s uncomfortable for the kid. But if the kid, you know, is sort of doesn’t really know a lot, it’s not going to be super uncomfortable for them. It might be a little strange, like, oh, you know, mom and dad had to talk with me. But use super simple language.

11:57 And you’re right. Try and keep it within the context of what do I think my kid understands? And sometimes the best thing to do is to ask, to inquire, like, what do you know about? Have you ever heard of this word before? Have any of your friends ever used the word pornography? Have they ever talked about sex before? And sometimes that type of just opening the door for you and your child to have a conversation about what they already know might surprise you.

12:24 Brian Rose: Yeah. Okay. That’ll be happening on Sunday. Thanks for that. I still remember one of my first experiences with porn. I mean, you know, look, I just turned 54. So there was obviously no internet back then. And it would have had to have been a videotape. And I, I remember I saw something I was 14 or 15 was the first time I thought saw like video porn. And I really shocked. I wasn’t ready for it. I was like, what the hell is that? It was really like, whoa. And you know, then back then you really would struggle to get access to like video stuff.

12:59 And then when I got the attorney house, it was there. But you know, we kind of moved, we kind of moved on at that point. But so I really don’t have context to how much of a issue it is, you know, today. And I know quite a few people that speak about this as well, including Sadia Khan, she’s a friend of mine, she speaks on this kind of from her perspective, and she thinks it’s it’s one of the biggest problems out there, you know?

13:25 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I’ve been working with men for a decade, over a decade now. And you know, my organization has worked with tens of thousands of guys. And I can tell you that it’s a huge issue for a lot of men. And it’s not every single man doesn’t mean that every single man has a problem with porn. But the majority of people are watching it. Women are now watching it more as well. And, you know, I think for a lot of guys, because they find it so early, it does skew their perspective of what sex should look like, how they should perform in sex.

13:59 And it kind of takes out the how do I want to operate, you know, during sex part of it and the exploration. And so, you know, if you think about it, if a kid, if a boy finds born at, you know, eight, nine, 10 years old, he hasn’t even hit puberty yet, you know, he can’t even really do those things. So it really alters their perspective of, oh, this is what sex should be. This is how sex should look. And for for some people, you know, depending on when they find it, it can really replace real intimacy and sex in a relationship. I see a lot of couples struggling and when they struggle, the man, sometimes the woman, but oftentimes the man will just turn to porn. And so sex will start to decrease in the relationship because the guy’s not really trying to initiate, he kind of falls into this pattern of like, what’s the point anyways, why should I bother? And then there’s this, you know, this thing that he can turn to that never rejects him, never turns him down, is always available. And so it’s very easy access. And when you think about it, you know, the average man, I mean, even a young guy can sit down and watch pornography for however long and see more naked women than pretty much any man throughout the course of the entire human history, right? The greatest kings in the past, you can watch pornography for an hour or two and see more women naked than any single man will have seen throughout his lifetime

15:30 Throughout human history. And so I think it definitely, you know, skews your sense because it just inundates your brain, it inundates your mind and it alters your perspective of what sex should be.

15:42 Brian Rose: I do struggle to see how it’s a replacement for intimacy, you know, digital files. I can see that there’s a lot going on there with the brain and that it could be and then also maybe if you started early, there could be some weird things going on. But again, maybe there’s a correlation with relationships going south-wise with physical intimacy, but I personally don’t see the causation or replacement. But then again, you see a lot more of this than me.

16:10 Connor Beaton: Well, can I speak to that just really? Please. I think that’s probably important, which is, you know, we’re attachment-based creatures. I think we touched on this last time. Like we are relationship social creatures. And so we are literally designed and built to be in relationship with people. And we have very specific needs that we desire from relationships. And when we get into an intimate relationship, and there’s a part of that attachment that’s not working, it’s, you know, we as men are kind of very linear and logical, right? And so it’s like, well, the rest of this relationship is okay, but the sex part really isn’t there. And so I’ll just go get that from over here.

16:52 And so, you know, one, it kind of solves a problem that we think that we have. And number two is porn kind of creates a pseudo attachment and it mimics and sort of mirrors. And what you’ll see in certain men’s pornography usage behavior is that who they’re talking to and the type of porn that they’re watching is mirroring some type of connection that they’re wanting in their relationship. It’s some type of expression that they’re wanting in their relationship.

17:21 It’s a part of them that they’re wanting their wife or their girlfriend to know, but they’re afraid to bring it in. They don’t know how to bring it in. They feel like they’re going to get rejected for bringing it up in their relationship, but they can go and do that in porn or they can pay an OnlyFans girl to, you know, shoot a video for them and do exactly what they want. So porn creates this pseudo attachment with zero, almost zero risk and zero rejection, right? You can ask for and do and say whatever you want. And for the most part, you’re going to quote unquote, get your needs met. So I think that’s why for a lot of people, it’s very enticing. And you know, then there’s the neurochemical side of it, which is it creates a dependency. So the more that you watch it, the more you get a dopamine hit that basically incentivizes you to return to it. And what ends up happening for a lot of men is that porn turns into, I call it the great reset button, right? It’s just like this beautiful reset button for your brain and your body. You feel like crap. You’re angry.

18:27 You’re frustrated. You had a shitty day. You’re stressed out. Uh, you feel alone, bored, depleted, whatever it is that you feel, you feel something internally and you’re like, I don’t like this. I don’t like feeling like this. You can go watch porn, get off.

18:40 And what happens in your brain is a whole, uh, slew of neurochemicals like dopamine, like prolactin will flow out through your brain, relax your body, make you feel good, wipe away the, that sort of, you know, angry tension, frustration that was there before. And you feel good for a brief period of time. Now, eventually that state will likely come back in because, you know, your life hasn’t actually changed. You’ve just watched some porn and got off, but it tricks your body into thinking, Oh, this is a great way for me to feel better.

19:12 And so for a lot of men, what ends up happening is this very subtle addiction starts to creep in where anytime they feel something internally that they do not like porn is there to help them feel better and they turn to it. And so for a lot of guys, um, what you’ll see is, you know, some men literally watch porn every single day. Some men watch porn in order to wake up in the morning and get out of bed. Some men watch porn in order to go to bed at night. Uh, and, and oftentimes in these, in these, what I’m talking about is a little bit more extreme cases, but often

20:24 I’m in these more extreme cases. Guys have built a dependency on pornography to help them deal with some type of internal state that they don’t like. And that is no different than weed or, you know, alcohol or cocaine or whatever it is, right? You do that substance, um, to help you feel better internally and to feel like there’s some type of connection. So we trade human attachments. We trade human relationships for these substances, objects, and behaviors. That’s basically what addiction is, right? We trade relationship with another person with a substance, an object or a behavior, and that becomes what we’re attached to. So instead of becoming, being attached to you or, you know, my wife or whatever, you know, addiction means I’m attached to this substance object or behavior instead of being in right relationship with somebody else.

21:20 Brian Rose: Very interesting. I mean, coming from a former addict, or I guess you could say I’m always an addict, depending on how you look at it or what meetings you go to, um, then I can see that because that’s why I used to drink and that’s why I used to do drugs. Um, but also I would say one thing you didn’t mention is that after you’re dabbling with the porn there, if you’re honest with yourself, you feel even worse after that than you did when you started. Now, of course, same with alcohol, same with heroin, same with all these other things.

21:56 And if you’re smart enough to see that, because I’ve seen it because I’ve gotten all of those things, then I can see it and it’d be like, but you’re going to do that thing that you think is going to make you feel better, but it’s going to make you feel worse. So maybe don’t do that thing. But the only reason I can maybe have that conversation with myself is because I went down that wrong road for decades with the substances. So now I can kind of look at it and be like, you know what? You’re playing yourself. Um, or as one of my famous guests said, you’re trying to find happiness in the exact place where you lost it. That’s what he says. I love that quote. Love that quote. And so you go back to do this and that’s where you lost it and you’re trying to find happiness again. And of course it doesn’t work, but I can see how that could happen. I guess that could happen about a lot of behaviors. Um, yeah.

22:43 Connor Beaton: Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, I always say we don’t sabotage to get out of control. We sabotage to regain a sense of control. It’s a very big misconception about sabotage. We think, Oh, I sabotaged, I text that girl, I watched the porn, I do the drugs in order to feel out of control again. Now you know that whole pattern of sabotage, the whole thing is baked into your brain from what’s going to happen before you do the drug or, you know, text that personally, you know, you shouldn’t text to when you go through with it to right after, to the morning

23:12 After, you know, the whole cycle is played out in your head. And so sabotage is a way for us to move back into patterns that we recognize, right? Your brain is a pattern recognition machine and it will always choose the patterns that it knows over the patterns that are foreign. So if what your brain knows is dysfunction, it will choose that dysfunction. Even though you’re like, I know this isn’t good for me. I know I’m going to feel like crap tomorrow.

23:39 I know this is going to take me down a peg and I’m going to resent the fact that I texted this person or, you know, had that extra drink or whatever it is, but it will move you towards that pattern because that’s known. So we have to work towards, we actually have to work kind of against our, uh, our wiring, which wants to move us back towards patterns that are known, which are oftentimes, you know, addictive behaviors, sabotaging behaviors that are not good for us, that we don’t actually want. Um, and, and in doing that, and I think one of the parts of AA that is really beneficial that sort of ties into what we’re talking about and that, you know, it’s about addiction. My good friend and mentor Dewey Freeman says, you know, we’re, we’re wounded in relationship. We have to heal in relationship. And the big challenge with any type of addiction is that you get hooked on something and you build this really strong bond with that subject or object or behavior. You build a relationship with the drug or the porn or the, you know, the alcohol or the gambling. And then there’s a community usually around that behavior, not always, right? With the porn, maybe there’s not a community, but there’s other women, right? There’s other people that are involved in it.

24:58 And so you, you kind of have this relationality that plays out within this addiction. And part of what needs to happen is that you, in order to let go of the addiction, you have to, part of, part of replacing addiction is by reintroducing healthy relationship. And so if you look at AA, what you’ll find is a huge part of it is you, you know, you’ve got the person that you call, you know, you talk to them every single day and you go to meetings. And so what they’ve done is they are just replacing this behavioral pattern of using a drug or using a substance or, you know, alcohol or whatever it is with genuine relationship where when that experience internally that you dislike starts to come up, I want to blow things up. I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m alone. I don’t like how my life looks. Instead of turning to the substance, you turn to an actual person.

25:52 You turn to a relationship. So in many ways, healthy, secure relationships are the antidote to, we could say the poison of addiction. I think that might be a little bit too harsh, but it’s the antidote to addictive behaviors.

26:04 Brian Rose: Yeah. Powerful. Again, you’re, you’re knocking me off. You’re knocking me out here, Connor, because I always say that without London Real, I wouldn’t have my sobriety without London Real. I wouldn’t have my children without London Real. I wouldn’t have so many things in my life. And so I kind of reverse engineered that somehow because with London Real, I was kind of forced to create all these human relationships that I had avoided in the past. And in the past, I would just go to the drink because, you know, that was just convenient and I knew that pattern. But London Real, I started developing all these amazing relationships and I was connected. Also, a lot of alcoholics will tell you they feel disconnected from the world and that pain, maybe they’re just trying to get over in that day. A lot of times they feel really separated from the world. And then when they’re in their alcoholic stupor, it doesn’t hurt as much.

26:55 So for me, it was like building all of those relationships over many, many years that I think allowed me to just walk away from it at the end. And I think that’s the only reason there’s no way I could have done it without the show, which forced me to have so many relationships from the team, to my guests, to the fans, to just everything that I just evolved out of it. And that’s why I didn’t go to AA or any of these other things. It just kind of got to a point where it just fell away. And I made a conscious effort, but then I could do it. But it was only because of those relationships, Connor.

27:29 Connor Beaton: I hadn’t really thought about the details of that.

27:32 But yeah, I’d say that’s very accurate. I’m with you, man. Powerful. Right there with you. I struggled with a bunch of different addictive behaviors. Booze was never really the big one for me. But I think really letting myself… When I started Mantox, it was an in-person event where we brought people together to share their stories. And men would come up and share their stories.

27:59 It just evolved from there. And so I think a part of it was that I always struggled to bring all of me into any relationship. I didn’t have very good attachment. I keep coming back to that word, but I do think it’s important. I had pretty avoidant attachment tendencies, meaning that I avoided expressing what I wanted, what I needed, who I was in relationship. I would lie a lot. I would hide in my relationships. And then I would just venture outside of the relationship and get what I wanted met outside of that. So infidelity was huge for me. It was a big, big, big struggle. And pornography was as well. But it wasn’t until I started to bring myself more fully into relationships and build a community where I was like, oh, I do belong here. I can belong. I can show up. And people rely on me. I’m responsible for things. All of that really started to shift and change. And so again, relationship is the antidote to addiction.

28:58 It’s not the only antidote. We do need other pieces. We need to have some type of omission, some type of purpose. We have to make the choice to get clean. All of those things, all the 12 steps that you can go through. But relationship certainly is one of the most integral parts. And what I’ve seen with a lot of men is because, and this is where porn is insidious. It is the most socially acceptable addiction there is, maybe even outside of drinking. Drinking is pretty socially acceptable. But when you start to get off the rails, everybody’s like, oh, I don’t know. You’re making a mess of yourself. You’re showing up at work, drunk. Nobody knows if you’re sitting at home watching porn for three hours by yourself.

29:40 Nobody really knows that. And so it’s so easy to hide. It’s so easy to hide. If you have a heroin addiction, you’re going to struggle with your work. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard.

29:52 Porn addiction, it’s kind of unseen. So it’s really this ghost in the background for a lot of men’s lives. And again, for some guys, it’s not that big of a deal. They watch it once in a while. Maybe they watch it once a week or once a month, and it’s not really that big of a thing. But for many men, it is a much bigger problem than that.

30:14 Brian Rose: Yeah. It reminds me of the people I used to see that could have a glass of wine at dinner once a week. And I’d be like, I don’t understand that. I want to have 40 of those right now. And so as Brad Pitt once said, he got his drinking privileges revoked, and so did I.

30:32 And thank God. It’s interesting. You talked recently a lot about anxious attachment, disorganized attachment. And I guess we might as well jump in on that now, because I’m curious if you could tell us more about that. You know, it’s interesting.

30:44 I was talking to a friend many years ago, and he was struggling to find, I guess, that the love and intimacy in his relationship, and he was going elsewhere. And at one point, he said, you know, do you feel love? Do you feel enough love? Or do you have to go find it too? And I immediately thought of my community. And I was like, man, I feel so much love.

31:04 It’s not actually, it’s not, you know, this, this man-woman love that it was just so much love from all these different members, and the relationships I had with the guests, and my community. And I was just like, I feel like I have tons of love, even if, you know, it wasn’t relationship-based. And it was just something interesting to note that we were, that he was struggling with one thing, and I was seemingly to replace that with something that wasn’t even obvious that it could work for him. And I don’t know if that has anything to do with the attachment things that you talk about, but just came to my mind.

31:36 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I mean, we all have some, I mean, this attachment work, I think, is one of the best things that’s come out of the therapeutic industry, or the psychological industry. Outside of maybe Carl Jung, I think, the OG Carl Jung is still, I think, some of the stuff that he created was phenomenal. But, you know, there was a ton of work that was done by John Bulby, and the like, and what they found was that in the first few years of your life, predominantly in the first three years of life, it can be interrupted and changed as you grow and develop, but mostly in the first sort of three to five years of your life, your attachment style is going to start to form to your caregivers, right, to mom, dad, whoever your caregivers are. And ideally, what we want is a secure attachment. And that secure attachment is based off of a few different things. Number one is the trust and the understanding that our needs matter, and our needs can be met by somebody else, right? So your needs matter, your needs can be met by somebody else. The second thing is that you can go through a tough time in relationship with somebody else and come out the other side, okay? All right, so we can go through hardship, we can disagree, you know, I can try and express that I need something, and maybe I’m not doing it right. And so you kind of misinterpret it, it leads to a conflict, but we come out the other side, okay, even if that doesn’t happen, right? And we can circle

33:03 Back and we’ll try again. So these are some of the basic building blocks of what creates attachment, healthy, secure attachment. And my good friend Dewey Freeman has a great attachment cycle that kind of explains the whole thing. But, you know, essentially, when we’re young, we have needs, right? We’re very, we need to be taken care of other people. And we express those needs when you’re a baby, like my daughter, who’s 10 months old, she kicks, she screams, she cries, she acts adorable, you know, she does all these things, it gets my attention, gets her attention. And we try and figure out what does she need. And as a kid, it’s pretty simple because, you know, she either needs food, she needs a diaper change, she needs to be held and loved, that’s, that’s kind of it. And when those needs are met, what happens is a child will learn, oh, my needs matter, I can communicate my needs effectively. And the world’s okay, the world’s a safe place to be, people care about me. That cycle for infants plays out something like 30, 40 times an hour, right? So if you’re around an infant, around a baby, they’re just doing that constantly, right? They’re trying to get your attention, etc. So as we get older, these, this attachment cycle just evolves, but essentially evolves around the same thing.

34:14 I need food, I need interaction, I need communication, I need expression, I need to be able to express myself in relationship and have it be received. I need to be able to ask for what I need in relationship and have it be received. And so as we get older, this same cycle still plays out and that forms secure attachment. Now, if we have interruptions, it will create and, you know, there’s, there’s different labels, right? Anxious attachment, avoidant, disorganized, fearful, those types of pieces. So as we have interruptions, it will create these behaviors. And I can give you sort of like high level pieces for each of the, you know, different attachment styles to kind of give some insight, like anxious avoidant is, I need you to be okay in order for me to be okay. So you’ll see an anxious person constantly like checking in, are you all right? You seem a little off today. And what’s really going on is that their internal state is disrupted. They need to know, are you actually all right? Is everything okay with you before they can be all right? So there’s a lot of externalization.

35:23 There’s a lot of oftentimes love bombing, like let me give you a whole bunch of love that you will hopefully give to me in return, right? And so Dr. Robert Glover calls those covert contracts. I’m going to give you something with the unspoken expectation that I get something back in return. Anxious people do this all the time. I’m going to try and do everything for you, make everything good for you so that hopefully you ease my internal state, you ease my anxiety and help me feel better. Avoidants are the flip side of that. It’s I don’t need you in order for me to be okay. I’m better on my own. And so avoidance tend to, as soon as things start to get more close and intimate, they will start to pull away from the relationship because in their past intimacy, closeness, that was the threat. Relationship was the threat. Whereas for the anxious, not having relationship was the threat. So you can think about a baby being left for too long, you know, maybe mom’s kind of tuned out quite a bit and she’s kind of spaced out or she’s super busy and the baby’s left by itself a lot. That’ll create anxiety within a baby right over time. Or on the flip side of the spectrum, it’ll induce a kind of shutdown.

36:41 Like screw it, relationship’s not safe. I’m not dealing with this. I don’t want to be involved in a relationship. So avoidance, it’s I’m better off on my own. I’m better off on my own. I’m safer on my own. There’s not really anybody else I can trust but me. It’s not safe for me to express who I am in the relationship fully. And so what you usually find with avoidance is that the relationship will kind of reach this peak, this place where all of a sudden there’s some closeness and some intimacy starting to happen and they’ll start to pull away.

37:13 Or if things have gone too well, you know, the things have gone well for too long, they’ll kind of throw a grenade in, you know, they’ll pick a fight, pick an argument. And you know what? I’m not talking to you for two days, right? And that’s just peace out. And then the last one that I’ll give you and there’s sort of variations on this, but the last one is disorganized. And the disorganized is basically a variant on both avoidant and anxious combined. So the way that I like to look at it is that the disorganized just does not have a strategy to do relationship or to make and maintain connection. So the anxious is I’m anxious around connection and relationship. The avoidant is I’m hesitant and mistrustful of relationship and the disorganized is I just don’t know how to do this.

38:03 I don’t have a strategy to make or maintain continuous connection. So I just said a bunch. So maybe I’ll just pause there.

38:10 Brian Rose: And so should everybody when they’re in a relationship be looking around thinking which one are you and then I’m going to deal with you accordingly or should they be aware of that? You said it was one of the most powerful theories that you’re aware of.

38:25 Is that important? Because I wouldn’t necessarily have looked at relationships through that lens.

38:31 Connor Beaton: Friends or intimate relationships? I don’t think that we need lots of people in the therapeutic space go down the path of like, I’m an anxious attached. I’m a fearful disorganized. Those types of labels are more for the clinician. It’s more for the person that’s working with a client or a patient than it is for the actual individual. I think one of the challenges of modern day social media is therapy speak is everywhere and people are self-diagnosing and diagnosing everybody else around them. You see a video on the internet and you’re like, that person’s a narcissist.

39:08 This isn’t about pathologizing yourself or your partner. This is more about understanding the behaviors and the decisions that lead to security and trust and intimacy in a relationship and the behaviors that don’t. Then maybe if you start to notice like, actually, I really eject from a relationship a lot. Or every time I get into a relationship, I’m an anxious, complete mess and disaster. I text bomb the crap out of the other person.

39:38 Then maybe you might want to go and understand those topics. But otherwise, what’s helpful is understanding what actually builds security in a relationship. That’s the important piece.

39:49 Brian Rose: I’m avoiding for sure. My parents got divorced. I was like, these relationships are dangerous. They’re going to hurt you. I was like that. I figured that out real early. Now I just try to catch myself when I see myself about to blow something up or running away. Having kids helps because now you have a relationship that it’s not going anywhere and it can cause you pain. If you take the extreme scenarios of something bad happening that cause you a lot of pain, but they’re not going anywhere because I have to take care of them.

40:21 I would say that’s a nice way to get yourself used to a relationship that you can be like, okay, I can do this. I don’t have to avoid this. I don’t have to sabotage this and maybe it works elsewhere or maybe not. What is the mother wound and mommy issues? Something you talk about and I feel like it’s important to talk about because I don’t know if men really talk about this that much.

40:44 Connor Beaton: Yeah. I mean, there’s, again, there’s sort of like different variants or iterations of the mother wound, but a couple of different things. Essentially, a mother wound is the pain that a man will have experienced at not having the love or nurturing that he needed from his mom. So his mom may have been invasive, the sort of stage five cleaner mom that was constantly all over him, checking on everything as, you know, as soon as he’s hurt. Oh my God.

42:07 Gosh, my baby, you know, and he’s like 15 years old, kind of smothering him and all over him. That type of invasiveness actually sort of penetrates through our boundaries as a person. So that can feel like, oh, women aren’t really safe because they’re going to try and make their way in, in a way that I actually don’t really like and appreciate. So that’s kind of the smother mother or the stage five cleaner. Another version of it is the ghost mom. And so that’s the mom that’s kind of checked out. You know, she’s not really super present.

42:47 Maybe she’s around, but, you know, she’s kind of occupied with her career. You know, she’s kind of maybe a workaholic and you don’t really have a sense of who she is. She’s not super loving, warm, nurturing, or kind. And then there’s the tyrant mom, the mom that just like, she runs the house. You know who the boss is. She makes it clear that she’s the boss.

43:10 And it creates this very interesting kind of imbalance in the household where she runs the show. Dad doesn’t really have much of a spine, doesn’t stand up for himself. And so the boy has to start to kind of cater to whatever mom wants. And that can create this, this dichotomy of either that boy continuing to be a man who then sort of kowtows to women and never actually stands up for himself and is truly deeply afraid of women, or a man who has an extreme level of anger and distrust towards women. And it can be very hard for that type of man to be in relationship with somebody because his animosity and resentment for his mom will oftentimes start to show up in his relationship. So those are just some versions, but a mother wound is essentially the pain that you experienced from having a mom that wasn’t able to maybe meet your needs. A ghost mom can also be an addict, right? If you had a mom who had an addiction, my mom struggled from addiction. And so sometimes she was very loving and kind, and sometimes she just really wasn’t there at all. She wasn’t available to actually be loving and nurturing and in relationship because she was going through her addiction.

44:25 So those are some of the pieces. There’s a couple other ones, but maybe I’ll just stop with that.

44:31 Brian Rose: Does everyone have a mother wound or not necessarily?

44:34 Connor Beaton: Not necessarily. No. I mean, I think that there are some moms that are very loving and kind, and there are a lot of great moms and a lot of great dads out there that I think are doing a phenomenal job, honestly. If you read the works of, there’s a great book called Iron John, and it’s written by a guy named Robert Bly, and it’s basically a myth about the coming of age of a young boy, like the maturation of a boy. And there’s this part in the book, and I won’t give too much away, but I’ll talk about this one part, which I think is important and relates to this.

45:06 There’s this one part where the boy, he’s got this golden ball and he loses it into the cage of this wild man, this like big hairy wild man. And he goes to get the ball back from the wild man. The wild man says, if you want the golden ball back, which could represent innocence and a whole bunch of things. And the wild man kind of represents the masculine essence within us as men, right? This sort of like unfiltered, powerful, hairy man locked up in a cage.

45:38 And he says, if you want your golden ball back, you have to go and steal the key from your mother. We have to go get the key from your mother. And in the book, the boy cannot ask mom for the key. He can’t let her know that he needs the key. He actually has to go steal the key from underneath her pillow. And so it’s kind of this symbolic piece that the maturation of a young boy into adulthood, into manhood, requires that he removes something of himself from his mom, that he actually ventures into adulthood without her sort of quote unquote permission.

46:17 He’s not asking her, can I let the wild men out of the cage? Can I let this adult version of who I could become out of the cage? It’s something that he actually has to go and take for himself. So I think a lot of men have a mother wound because they’ve never done that. They’re still looking for mom’s approval. You know, they’re 30, 40, 50 years old, 60 years old, and they’re still desperate for mom to tell them, you’re a good boy, you’re a good, so you’re doing a good job. And they need that. They need that from them. And so, and I’m not saying that that’s not nice. I’m not saying that every once in a while, it’s not nice to hear your parents say, like, I’m proud of you. That’s not what I’m saying, but it’s a different quality. It’s like a necessity for those men who don’t steal the key from under their mom’s pillow because they’ve never truly matured into a self-sustaining man that they’re able to recognize, validate, and appreciate themselves in a deep way.

47:16 And so they still need it from the feminine. And maybe it shifted from, I need this from mom to I need this from women. You know, I need women’s attention. I need women’s validation. This is the classic nice guy thing. And it’s very, very prominent within our culture.

47:31 Brian Rose: It’s also goddamn complicated, isn’t it, Connor? Jesus, right? Moms and dads and girls and man. I had a question for you. Last time we spoke, we had a different president in the United States.

47:47 And now we have a new president. I was about to say who’s much more masculine. You might not, you might disagree with that, but he’s definitely a different type. And he’s rolling back, it seems, a lot of the, some of the anti-masculine things going on. And I’m just kind of curious. Do you think that has changed the tone of masculinity, the tone of the country?

48:11 Do you think there’s good things about it, bad things about it? I’m just curious.

48:21 Connor Beaton: Put me in a tricky spot because I normally don’t talk anything about politics. Oh yeah. Here’s what I will say. I do think that we have a real crisis. Like men are in decline. Statistically, if you look at the research, young boys are in decline, men are in decline. We have less men going to college, less men in the workforce, more men living at home, less men dating, you know, fewer young men are even sexually active, far fewer than young women because young women are either sort of going towards sort of like five percent of men or they’re going towards older men. So you can see that men in general are being affected. I don’t know if the things that Trump has done are necessarily the things that are going to reinforce masculinity or actually teach manhood. I think it’s, you know, I think it really is the baseball coaches and the fathers that are at home and the men that are raising the boys in our future. I really do think that it comes down to us. You know, the man sitting in the big office in the White House, I like to think has less impact on my son than I do. And I think that I need to take the responsibility for raising the next generation of men to be men. And I think the narrative has shifted a hundred percent.

49:52 I think it’s just a back and forth. It’s like a volley, you know, it’s like anti men and then kind of like very pro men. And I saw Scott Galloway talking about how like the election was won and lost because of young men. And I think that’s true to some degree. I do think that the left, I do think that the left really does not know how to talk to young men at all, at all.

50:17 It’s insane and does not have a place for them there. You know, I think about myself when I was 18 or 19 was super liberal, you know, and I cannot imagine being 18 or 19 and feeling like I have a home in today’s Democratic Party. And so, you know, I think that the level of ostracization towards young men and just men within our culture is extremely problematic. And I think if anything, you know, what the administration has done is kind of maybe tried to make a statement or a sentiment around, you know, being a man is good and we respect men and we value men. And there’s other things that they have done besides that. But I think that’s maybe part of the message that they’re trying to send. And I do think that that’s, you know, largely up to us as men in terms of how we want to work and operate within our society and our families and those types of pieces. But I think it’s a tough time, man, to be a young guy. It’s hard. Like I was saying something the other day, like I get why 18 year olds and 19 year olds like Tate. I think if I was 18 and 19 year olds, I’d probably be watching Andrew Tate as well, because I would feel like, and I think it was maybe Richard Reeves or maybe George from the Tin Men who I was talking to on my show. And they said something along the lines of in our modern culture, men don’t have problems.

51:46 Men are the problem. And I think what’s happened is that there’s this divide that’s happened in the political party where one party has held that frame. Men are the problem. And the other party has held the opposing poll. They said, actually, no, men aren’t the problem. And, you know, of course, what am I going to choose? They’re going to go to the side that’s like, yes, not everything is my fault. And some of us are struggling and have real issues that maybe as a society we should look at and begin to. I don’t know if this administration has done maybe what they could to support men and to actually help men. I’m not familiar enough. I’m going to play the Canadian card here and just say like, I’m not really too like 100. I try and keep abreast of it, but I’m not as immersed in it as maybe I should be to really know the policies that are being implemented. But I think that I do think that young men are really struggling. And I absolutely think that we really need to support them. And we need to do that sooner than later, because we are turning out a lot of young men who they’re just, I mean, I get messages from them all the time, man. It’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking. I can’t tell you like every week, you know, sometimes I get messages from men being like, please help me not take my life. I’m like, man, you know, why should I live in this society? I don’t want to live in this world right now. Why

53:17 Do you know, it seems like everybody hates me. It seems like everybody hates men, you know, and they’re just really struggling. And so I think we need to do a much better job of supporting them that much. I will say.

53:29 Brian Rose: Yeah, definitely true. Well, I can’t talk about politics. I think it’s a massive net positive just because I think we have someone who is unabashedly male, an alpha male who’s running that country. And I also think that if you watch him long enough, and Trump has his flaws, and I think his latest spat with Musk is actually not very good alpha male behavior. And it’s not what I was taught through all of my men interactions of how to deal with something through a spat on Twitter. I think it’s actually not very good male behavior, but that’s a separate issue. But overall, I think it’s a net positive. I think we see a guy who can be tough, but who can also be compassionate, and who can also be gracious, and to, you know, employs all these really powerful strong women in his cabinet. And I just think there’s a lot of really great examples there that I think young men are seeing. And I can see why they won that vote. And I think there’s a lot of subconscious messages going on there that are like you can do this. And then of course, they’re trying to roll back a lot of the gender blending stuff too, which I think helps. Now, are they going to take it to the next level and help everybody

54:36 On a granular level? Yeah, that’s yet to be seen. So I’ll agree with you on that. And the baseball coaches and the fathers, they have they have to do the work. But there’s a lot of leadership from the top. And there’s a lot of setting the tone that I think can come from a place like the White House, even to the whole world.

54:52 And when I was in Dubai, and I want to tell you about three incidents that happen to me in Dubai and get your take on them. But they couldn’t even believe that there was a question that we wouldn’t have Trump because they don’t really understand how wacky and wild the leftists have taken things. And I’d say that’s most countries in the world that just don’t understand how far America went off that. And so for them, they tend to that more conservative frame point. But maybe that’s also Dubai and that culture, which I quite like.

55:22 So anyways, that’s kind of my my thoughts and call on that. But I don’t want to miss talking about relationships, because otherwise, we’re gonna have to do this again, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But let’s talk about relationships. And then I want to get your thoughts on three things that happened to me in Dubai from a perspective of a male. Relationships is a huge, huge topic, which I bet we can’t even scratch the surface on. But we didn’t really talk about it last time.

55:48 And, you know, maybe we really need to talk about it. Also, if you look at the statistics, it’s shocking what’s going on. I don’t think there’s a very few countries on this planet that are actually reproducing enough to sustain their growth. The numbers from South Korea are shocking, as in like, there will be no great grandkids ever again type of thing. I know they had a little uptick this year, I think with some government incentives, but it’s, it’s down to like point six or point seven reproduction rate, which just quickly compounds to where like you never have any grandkids anymore kind of thing. So it’s kind of scary there as well. And then I also get to know a lot of men and women who seem to opt out of relationships these days. And whether you or maybe Saudi other people say that the men replace it with porn, and then the women are waiting for the right one, because they’re all looking to the top percentage, I don’t know what it is. But they all seem to be opting out of that, which I guess is dangerous. I don’t know, maybe some transhumanists would say it’s not.

56:50 So look, it’s very open there. I’m just curious where you want to dive in.

56:55 Connor Beaton: Oh, man, there’s so many different entry points there. I mean, I think AI is going to disrupt all of that in a big way. It’s going to be wild. I mean, my wife was speaking at a conference recently. She’s a family, a marriage therapist, marriage and family therapist. And she was speaking at a conference with Esther Perel, who talks a lot about intimacy and sex. And there was a company there that had, they had like an AI platform. And it was it was for everybody, but it was very clearly for women. And what it was was that you could basically go in and put in some details about the type of man that you like and want. And then that AI platform would create a fantasy based story, where the character in the story was speaking to you, you know, and you were the love interest in the story. And so the story was playing out as if you the woman was, you know, part of this AI, you know, fantasy story. And I think that’s where it’s going to get a lot of women. I don’t think that it’s going to be porn. I think it’s going to be pretend highly emotionally intelligent AI agents that are specifically created to be this like male companion, you know, with a deep voice, it’s kind of sexy.

58:17 That’s always available that can talk with her about all of her emotions that can also, you know, understands female arousal and desire and can, you know, play with that. I think a lot of women are, I think we’re going to see as many women fall prey to that as men have fallen prey to porn.

58:35 Brian Rose: Scary. Well, I mean, porn, you know, AI is going to end up eliminating us all anyways. So you’re just talking about the one subset that’s going to use that for women. But it’s scary when you describe that, because most men are oblivious to a bunch of those things that you just talked about, the arousal and the emotional and the fantasy and all that. I mean, most of us are pretty clueless to that every now and then we get it right. Maybe we’re sometimes aware, but in AI, they could push all those buttons, even if they didn’t physically exist, could easily out out could be the man in person.

59:13 Connor Beaton: Yeah, it’s interesting. I recorded this video, I think last year, I think it was called women are women are disillusioned and men are disenfranchised, something like that. But it was it was basically that women’s expectations of what they should get or entitled to from a man have for some women, not all women, I got to prophesy otherwise, I was going to get launched at. But you know, for some women have become so unrealistic that the only version of the man that exists is the one in her head that can actually meet her needs.

59:46 There’s no man in the world that he doesn’t, not a real person, right? So for some women, their expectations have just ballooned into, I want a man to be everything for me. I want him to be my therapist and my friend and my cheerleader and my business partner and my lover and my this and my, you know, the husband to make the father to my kids. And, and there’s just this expectation burden. And so what ends up happening is that women are chronically disappointed by men.

1:00:13 And you can see this in the comments online, it’s like, well, men need to step up and men need to do this and many to do that. And I’m not disagreeing that some some men aren’t bad options. You know, they’re just not mating and dating material. I get that. I understand that.

1:01:26 But there are a ton of caliber men out there. And what’s partially happened is that women’s preferences have become so centralized to dating and relationship that, for the most part, and I think in the last sort of like 10 years, and it’s starting to shift now, men were trying to figure out constantly, well, how do I just meet a woman’s needs and figure out what she wants and do what she needs, especially in more metropolitan areas. And so women’s expectations have risen and risen and risen and risen. And you can kind of see this in the dating apps as well, where it was something like on Bumble, this is just one example, but a poll on Bumble showed that only 15% of women said that they would be willing to date somebody under five foot eight, 15%. So that’s the average height of a man is five foot eight, but only 15% of women are willing to date somebody underneath that.

1:02:33 So, you know, I think that dating apps have made it so that you can kind of go on there and, and try and create some, you know, perfect artifact of a human being that you want to date. And you just, you’re like, I’m not going to, I’m not going to settle. I’m not going to settle. Why should I settle? And there’s a lot of rhetoric I think that is being told to women of like never settle and never do that. And then on the other side for men, I think it’s, it’s challenging because for a lot of guys, a couple of things have happened. Number one is the rise of anger towards women online and, and the frustration with dating apps. You know, I know a lot of guys, and this again, when you look at the, the, the data from the dating apps, it’s like the bottom 50%, 55, 0% of men on Tinder get almost zero interaction and responses, right? Like that’s insane. Imagine being a 19, 25 year old boy, man, and you’re trying to date and you’re using these dating apps and you’ve got a buddy who’s six foot two, six foot three, and he’s taking somebody home two, three times a week, different women, two, three times a week.

1:03:46 And he’s just having a great time. And there you are on a dating app, constantly swiping through, getting zero responses, very few conversations, almost no dates whatsoever. And you’re like, well, what the hell’s going on? So this perspective of well, women only want the super high status, very tall, in good shape guy really starts to set in. And it becomes easy to be like all women are the same. And you know, anger and frustration sets in. So I think there’s this big gender war that’s happening where men and women are really angry with each other.

1:04:21 And it makes dating very, very challenging. I also think that everybody’s turned into their own personal therapist, that’s diagnosing the people that they’re dating. And I do think that women are more, they, they have a larger predilection towards this, you know, women generally tend to pathologize their partners more than men do, just having worked with men for a long time and couples. So I don’t envy being out in the dating pool right now, I think, I think it’s very, very challenging. And I think that people are having a hard time value matching, you know, they’re having a hard time matching values, like I value x and you value the same thing, I value integrity and honesty and loyalty, I value these things, do you value the same thing, I value respect in a relationship. And I think part of what’s happened is that, this is on the other side of the equation is, is that for a lot of men, they either haven’t known what it is that they want in a relationship.

1:05:21 And so they’re just trying to, you know, fit into what they think women want. Or what they what they want is to just have a whole bunch of fun and not really settle down. And they’re in that sort of like top 5%, where they don’t have to, and they can just have a rotation. And I think this has created a bit of attention and an issue in relationships where you see other people’s relationships online all the time. And so there’s this chronic comparison of, you know, Instagram influencers, and their relationship looks a certain way, and it’s actually not. So you never see the fight, you never see the conflict. So I think there’s a whole wack load of things that are playing into the sort of chaos that’s unfolding in relationships, not to just dump that huge pile at the doorstep.

1:06:15 Brian Rose: Well, I mean, like with social media, again, like, you know, I mean, back in the day, obviously, if you grew up in a small town, you know, that there would, you know, you could never find someone that was, you know, 10 times or 100 times richer than you or better looking than you or whatever. Now you can see literally the whole world, and the algo is going to push the stuff that people are watching. And now you can see all these crazy things. And depending on whatever field you’re in, if you’re an entrepreneur, there’s always going to be someone better than you.

1:06:42 There’s always someone better looking than you. There’s always something to do something physically better than you. Now on Instagram, some of that can be really helpful and motivational, and it can maybe help us with sports and all those things when you see it. But like with relationships, like you said, it can be really bad. And you don’t see the other side of it.

1:06:58 And so I guess when people see that, they basically hold off for something better that just doesn’t come. And so everyone is in this kind of stagnant state of actually not having relationships. Is that why we’re seeing the birth rate go down as well, you think? Or is that maybe a corollary to that where people say, it’s just not worth it. And I’d rather have my own time.

1:07:22 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I think the reasons for not having kids has gone up.

1:07:26 I think, one, life is just much more expensive. So I think for the average person, if you look at your parents’ generation or grandparents, yes, times were tough. But how much you earned versus how much your house costed was much, much cheaper. So I do think that there’s an affordability issue where a lot of people are looking at having children and they’re like, I won’t be able to live this lifestyle. I won’t be able to maybe support my kids in the way that I want or in the way that I’ve felt pressured by social media to do.

1:08:01 So I think that’s contributed to it. I think that there’s some people that have convinced themselves that I think there’s all kinds of strange reasons. I was going to give you a strange one. Can I just give me one?

1:08:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, give me one.

1:08:17 Connor Beaton: I heard this the other day that the most ethical and carbon neutral thing that they could do was to not have kids. And I was like, I was like, man, you’re missing out on one of the greatest joys in life because you think that you’re not going to increase the carbon footprint on the earth. I was like, I can’t even comprehend that. But I think there’s more reasons. That’s just to say there are more reasons to not have kids than ever before. And I think that our level of neuroticism and narcissism as a culture and as a species has just gone up. There’s a lot of people who do not want to make the sacrifice and the compromises that are legitimately necessary for healthy human relationship to function. And what’s happened is that both men and women, and we’re both at fault for this, have basically said, well, I’m not willing to sacrifice my time. I’m not willing to sacrifice what I need. I’m not willing to compromise in any way, shape, or form.

1:09:21 And so we’ve become very, very rigid and it’s like this old Texas standoff that’s basically happening between a lot of men and women. And part of it, rightfully so, that men are saying, which is like, what we want in a relationship actually does need to matter. And it’s kind of funny because when you see some of these videos online and you see women asking guys, what do you want in a relationship or what’s really important to you? What do you really prioritize? What do you really want in a relationship? And a guy says something like, I just want peace and ease. I want a woman that brings some peace and ease into my life.

1:10:02 And then you see the comments of, that’s misogynistic and he just, all that kind of stuff. And it’s like, well, yeah. So there’s just this standoff where it’s almost as though one side is expected to cater to the other side’s values and expectations in relationships and the other side’s not supposed to do that. And so there’s just this stuckness and we have to find a way back to what you need in a relationship matters, what I need in a relationship matters, and we have to find a win-win solution. And we’ve gotten out of that.

1:10:40 When you look at a lot of modern day discourse, people will use disagreement now more than ever before to sever a relationship. I mean, you look at the polls and the studies, I think it was like 65 or 66% of people say that they won’t date or marry somebody with an opposing political perspective. It’s like, so that’s just changed from religion. It used to be you’re not allowed to date somebody that’s not in your religion and now you’re not allowed to date anybody that’s not in your political affiliation because it’s the new religion.

1:11:12 So I think in many ways, there’s just all of these areas where people have become so fixed and so rigid that they won’t be willing to compromise. And as you know, great relationship, business or otherwise requires some compromise. It requires negotiation. It requires some sacrifice from all parties involved. And you have to decide as an individual, am I in this relationship for a win-win or am I in this relationship just to win? And too many people are in relationships just to win. They’re not interested in creating win-win dynamics. And that really is what I think we need to move back towards.

1:11:50 Brian Rose: Is watching porn the ultimate non-win-win dynamic as well? Is that something you don’t really earn with sacrifice and with all of that?

1:11:59 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I mean, again, it’s low risk, right? It’s the low-hanging fruits. I don’t have to work for that. You don’t have to face any type of rejection. You don’t have to get turned down by a woman. You don’t have to tell her what you really want or need. And if you do, you’re paying her to do what you’ve told her to do. That’s really it. And I think there’s a lot of paradoxes and sort of like hypocrisies within our modern culture. It’s like the only fan’s woman that’s making millions of dollars off of a man is praised for being sexually liberated, but then the man who’s paying the money to watch and use the only fan’s woman is a disgusting pig.

1:12:45 That’s what I mean by a win-lose situation. It’s like on the one side, somebody is not good and the other side, they’re phenomenal and should be celebrated. That’s the type of stuff that’s entered into the dating world. It’s like what I want and need should be celebrated and revered, but what you want and need is archaic or gross or whatever it is. So I think we have to come back to this place of seeing things as win-win.

1:13:09 Brian Rose: Yeah, we’re definitely in different eco-chambers as well because I don’t hear that much. But I understand what you’re talking about. I can see how that is the narrative out there. I was always wondering, are people not having kids because maybe 20, 30, 40 years ago, they would get married and then they would be at home and if they wanted to be social, they would have to probably get in the car and drive somewhere. They had three channels on the TV and maybe they were left with a lot of time and they were thinking, okay, what am I going to do with my life here and making a family made sense? Whereas maybe today, and I’m just throwing this out there, you have all these digital options that then simulate relationships and activities and all these ways to occupy your time to where you can really probably not get around to it or make an argument that I’m busy doing all these other things.

1:14:00 I have all these fulfilling relationships and projects and social pieces that I can do in a way that maybe I don’t need that kid. Whereas before maybe the kid in the family was such a big part of my identity and maybe one of the only forms of my identity that if I didn’t pursue it, I really felt like there was a hole in my life. Whereas maybe now you could try to fill that. Do you think that’s also an issue?

1:14:30 Connor Beaton: I believe so. It’s interesting to see that having a family has become a more conservative value. I saw this article, it was last year, the year before, and it was about how men working out was right-wing, which is absolutely insane.

1:14:47 It’s like prioritizing your health is right-wing. But I think when you look at the dataset and the research around different political leanings between conservative and liberal, what you see is the identity of the conservative is more tightly wound around the family, which is at the core. And then for the liberal, the identity is more tightly wound around the outside and the community and the culture. And so there’s less precedence, I would say, for the more left-leaning Democrat maybe to want to start a family. Whereas for conservatives, that’s actually a part of the ethos. It’s part of the value set that they hold within maybe the religion or within the culture of the conservative values.

1:15:37 Again, I think there’s this kind of divide. I would say that one, it’s much more expensive, but two, people have found that their lives are just much more chaotic and busy. And I think a lot of people live in a fear of like, well, what if I have a kid and I can’t take care of them? I’m not going to have enough money. The world’s going to end anyways. Those kinds of sentiments, I think, are very, very common in certain circles.

1:16:11 And I really try and immerse myself into both sides. I get heat sometimes for following people that are far left or far right, because I’m like, what are people saying? Because the men that I work with, they fall into all those categories. It’s one of the reasons why I try not to talk about politics is because I just want to support men. I don’t care who you vote for, I don’t care who you pray to. But I do think that on average, people are much busier, much more immersed in their own perceived needs, wants, and desires. And that’s taking them out of having kids because it’s like, well, that might interfere with me building this business or doing this.

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1:17:50 Connor Beaton: You know, my time just seems so occupied because I’m spending four hours a day on social media. And so it seems like I’m busy when actually I’m just spending a ton of time online.

1:17:59 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s almost like your brain convinces you not to do it. But deep down inside, maybe you will regret that one day. It’s hard to say. And I think it’s really good that you’re in both camps and listening to both sides because I really do if you believe if you get everybody in a room, you can actually talk through and find common ground with almost anybody.

1:18:17 But online and everything that sometimes these other people seem like a different alien species that you just don’t get. So I think it’s good you’re talking to both sides. And by the way, I was the guy that was never going to have kids. I was the guy that thought a dog was too much of a commitment. And and thank God, you know, their mother made me do it and really pushed me into doing it. And thank God because I almost missed one of the greatest rides of a human being. I mean, it’s it’s it’s I don’t think the human experience is complete without having a child.

1:18:49 I just don’t. And I almost missed it. And I just would have been an idiot or more of an idiot if I hadn’t done that. So I want to ask you about three things that happened to me in Dubai and just get your take on it. And this kind of came up when I was prepping for you.

1:19:05 The first one is that I interviewed a guy on the show. His name is Jules Sullivan, also known as the sartorial shooter. And he’s a he’s a pretty masculine guy, but a very interesting guy, Australian guy who now lives in Dubai. He actually reverted to Islam as well. And so, you know, you don’t always see a six foot six, you know, white dude who’s former, you know, military security, who’s also in Islam and and is very devout in that.

1:19:34 And I really enjoyed meeting him. And he invited me one night to a gathering of men. And he just said, look, we’re having this thing on Thursday. You know, there’s some pretty interesting guys, some high level guys. You should really stop by. And I had I had something already booked and I broke it to go to this because some part of me told me I really needed to show up.

1:19:55 And I’m telling you, Connery, it was one of the more special evenings that I had last this year. I was surrounded by like 20, like really high level men. And when these guys came to this event, we were just kind of hanging out in like a place. And they came and each one of them like walked around and introduced themselves to everybody. But like these weren’t these were high level guys. Like they had charisma and presence and yet they all treated everyone with respect. And it just felt the energy was just amazing to be there. And there were no women there and there were no women invited. And that was OK. It was a time for us to hang out with each other. And I just ping Julie Jewel a few more times. I mean, Ramadan happened and there was a few issues. But I was like, when are you doing that Thursday again? Because I really want to go.

1:20:44 And I hadn’t felt that feeling a long time. I’ve hung out with one or two guys maybe that I know. I’ve hung out with very amazing males on the set of London Real. And I think I told you last time, you know, 14 years of London Real is just my search for the perfect alpha male to show me what to do with my life. But this was something kind of special. It was like a wolf pack or a group of men that it was just powerful to be around. And I wanted to be around it again.

1:21:11 And Jewel believes that, you know, as men, we’re meant to go out and do things with our brothers. We’re meant to go out and conquer worlds and all these things. We’re not meant to, you know, I’ll say it, like take the kids to the soccer game or analyze our wives problems that night. You know, he’s like, look, you know, I want to treat them with respect and do that. But let’s not forget this need for us to do cool, maybe dangerous things with our brothers.

1:21:39 And let’s not forget that because otherwise we can’t be a good husband as well or a good father or good father. And I’m just curious what your thoughts are on that. But that was an interesting experience that I noted I wasn’t having. Also I had it in Dubai and not in the West. That’s another interesting thing.

1:21:58 Connor Beaton: What was so like what was present in that gathering that you think is missing from your other male friendships?

1:22:05 Brian Rose: Maybe it was just the scale, you know, like there was like 15, 20 of us. And yeah, it was and maybe because they were new, you know, and I felt but I felt like I just felt like there was something there like, yeah, I don’t know. It was it felt like it was kind of a special group to be around in a special, I don’t know, kind of like a like a brotherhood thing going on there that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to access. And then that’s just kind of what I felt. And I just felt like it was something I really was drawn to. And I really want to make sure I make an effort to do that and exercise that part in my life, not just hang out with a buddy for the weekend and have dinner, and not just do that. But to go do things with like a group of, of like kind of brothers that you trust, that are pushing you to be the best version of yourself, that all have their games elevated really high, which makes you want to elevate your own game. And you’re around them, you’re like, Whoa, like I get this one on one in here, but I’m rarely around 10 of those people.

1:23:10 And I really noticed it. And it just came up when I was kind of thinking about you tonight, and I’m just curious, because you talk about that you say that, as men, we really don’t have these these groups of men that we can always be around, you know, to learn from or feel secure in or even to make friendships like that. So I’m curious what you think. And even for someone like me, who has a lot of access to this, I still found it unique.

1:23:39 Connor Beaton: I mean, I think that all men, if, if they are really honest with themselves, want male friendship, or male brotherhood, that is aspirational, where they know they’re going to be challenged, tested, and they’re going to be asked to rise in some way, you know, you’re going to be asked to how we want to phrase that be better than you are right now. Like that is at the core of masculine relationship, I’m going to ask you to be better than you are right now.

1:24:10 And in our group, so we have something called the Alliance, with about 1000 members from around the world. And that’s part of our ethos is like, we call each other forward, I call you forward, you say you want to do this, I’m going to call you forward into doing it, you say you want to stop drinking. And yet you show up onto a call or you know, you text me and you say that you’re, you know, you’re a beer deep or something like that, whatever it is. The point is that there is this spark that comes alive in us, where we get to venture out into the world with men that we know and can sense, not only have our backs, it’s kind of cliche, but that that will kind of like go to war with us, maybe not actual war, but like the war of building a business, the war of, you know, building an exceptional marriage, because it’s not easy. And I actually think to tie back into that dating piece, that’s why so many people aren’t getting into relationships, because they don’t want to do hard shit. They are they are so hard shit averse, you know, our culture has made it just so easy for people to be complacent and soft. And, you know, while relationships really are about love and connection, all those types of things, it still takes effort. It still takes a lot of, you know, hard conversations and dedication and sacrifice. And I think the majority, not the majority, I think that some people just do not want to do that. They’re not willing to do that. So but that brotherhood gives you that you get

1:25:43 To practice, it’s like a training ground for you as a man, to sharpen and hone that part of you that wants to go out into the world and build something meaningful and do something meaningful and become an exceptional or even better father or husband, you know, and to have other examples of that. And this is something that I’ve talked about within Western culture and society and maybe globally, I don’t know enough about other cultures, but certainly within our culture, we’ve strip mined out male role models. So there’s just this vacancy that there is no aspirational view of masculinity. We define masculinity today, first off, maybe for the first time in human history, women are largely defining what masculinity is within our culture.

1:26:30 And secondly, how we define masculinity is by saying everything that you shouldn’t do or be as a man. That’s not aspirational. That doesn’t give me any direction to move towards. And as men, we want a direction to move towards. For the majority of us, that’s baked into our DNA. It’s like part of our body and our psyche. It’s like, I want a direction to move towards.

1:26:54 And so when you get around other men that really are living exceptional lives, and they’re showing up in exceptional ways, and you appreciate them and maybe you admire them, or, you know, they’re asking you very direct, hard questions, and they’re kind of getting into the weeds with you. It gives you something aspirational to move towards. And that is at the heart and soul of our masculine core, in my belief, is that we need other men that we want to move towards a bigger version of ourselves alongside.

1:27:27 Brian Rose: Yeah. And it has to be a group of only men. And that’s what bothers me. Even in London now, one of these all men’s clubs, they just had to start admitting women because of the times. But, you know, there’s a distinct time where you need to not have women around, because men can’t be men when there’s a single woman in the room. It just can’t happen. And you can’t get that, I need you to be better than you are now, a hundred percent energy.

1:27:54 You’re only going to get that, I think, with men in the room. And that’s why it’s really, really important. And like you said, we need it. We probably even need it for the women, right? Because again, yeah, and that’s something I guess women need to know is that we need that time because that dynamic changes massively when one of them is in the room. And then without it, it just, yeah, I feel like that’s how we, it’s in our DNA.

1:28:21 Connor Beaton: Definitely. We’re honed in to be a part of that pack and to make us all sharper on the back of it.

1:28:27 Brian Rose: But it’s something that’s very, very hard to find.

1:28:30 Connor Beaton: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, I really think it’s unfortunate that we are dismantling those things in our culture. Like I really fundamentally believe that we should absolutely have spaces for men and spaces for women, you know, and I’m not talking about bathrooms, but I’m talking about like actual spaces. I mean, yes, bathrooms, but I’m also talking about spaces where we as men can gather and support one another, serve one another, you know, call each other forward and be able to see other iterations, other versions of men who create some type of aspirational desire within us. Like, man, that guy is an exceptional businessman. Whoa, he’s an amazing father. I really appreciate that. I hadn’t thought about talking to my kids about that or talking to, you know, to them in that way or, you know, setting that routine in place. And it’s those types of things that, that I think we as men really need. And without it, we suffer, we struggle.

1:29:26 Brian Rose: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s why I connected to that so much.

1:29:30 Also, I didn’t know what everyone did at that gathering, but I knew they were all at the top of their game, you know? And that’s interesting as well because I didn’t know like a specific thing about that. Sorry about that. I didn’t know a specific thing about that, but I knew they were all at the top of their game. And I knew that being around them would force me to step up my game and that, and I wanted to be around them. That’s all I knew. It’s kind of wild how that works. And I hadn’t felt that in a while. Second thing I wanted to talk to you about was something else happened when I was in Dubai. And I just spoke about this once already, but I’m going to talk about it again with you because I think it’s really important.

1:30:09 I met a group of people a couple of years ago when I went to Dubai that ended up becoming a group of friends that I hung out with. And it was a really amazing experience. A lot of people say that Dubai is full of superficial people with superficial things, but I met this group of people that were quite opposite of that. And I originally met them E-foiling, which is you take these kind of foil boards out there and you kind of can go out in the remote control. And I met this girl I knew took me to meet these two guys. They had their own boards. They had their own pickup trucks. They were like jacked and they get me on their board and they got me up and we ended up hanging out in the boat together. And we ended up doing the dune buggy thing together.

1:30:49 And it was actually a group of men and women that were just really cool, really into kind of pushing themselves athletically. And it was just really a great group of people to be around, really generous. And it really was an amazing introduction to me to a town that some people say is this or that. But there were two guys there that I really got attached with. And again, they were up at four thirty in the morning and lifting and then, you know, all these things they had. But they were quite on top of their game. And they reminded me a little bit because they were kind of surfing as well of the movie Point Break. So I used to joke the next thing we’re going to do is rob a bank together. And then one day I said we got a skydive because that’s what the point break people do. So I booked it up for all of us and we all went skydiving. And of course, they started skydiving solo on the back of that too. So it was this whole crew. And I got back a few months ago and about a month after I’d been there, Connor, I got the word that one of the guys who committed suicide and I just couldn’t compute. I mean, this guy was the last guy, right? This is the guy that was like on top of it, super alpha, like I said, jacked. Not that has anything to do with your mental state, you know, had the truck, has the this, has the that. Everything just seemed to be going. And I just none of us could compute. And and it just was really hard for us to take.

1:32:15 And I felt like it was important to talk about one because I wanted to honor him because he was just the most incredible guy, such a generous person, and such a big part of that click, but also really hard because I think it was probably one of the first close people I’ve had or relatively close that did that. And, you know, I had to ask a lot of questions. And I guess we’ll never know what really happened. But I think I think he started to feel like he just didn’t have kind of enough to provide and didn’t have enough to kind of be that guy that maybe he was expecting himself to be. And I think it started eating away at him that we’ll never know.

1:32:53 But I think it was something like that. And again, I just didn’t think it would happen to someone like that. And it was hard. And it’s something I’m sure we’re all still processing. But it was something I also wanted to talk about because I’m sure there’s people out there that either experienced that or are thinking about that. And I don’t know, I just wanted to get your thoughts, Connor.

1:33:20 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I mean, first off, that’s brutal, man. And I’m sorry that you went through that. And it’s it’s rough. You know, I think it’s like 660 plus thousand men every year going to take their lives. And I think it’s it’s not only a huge challenge, but it’s also one of the most unrecognizable things. Sometimes when a man takes his life, it’s like a parent, you know, but more often than not, it’s how you describe. It’s like, we didn’t know. I didn’t know. We’re in shock. And there was this research that was done by Richard Reeves from the American Institute of Boys and Men. And there’s two pieces of research actually I want to share with you. Maybe I’ll share the one in the UK first, which is really interesting, also tragic. And what it showed was that 92% of men who took their life in the UK had sought out help. So they had gotten a counselor, a therapist, and they had sought out therapeutic help. Of those 92%, 80% of them were labeled as no risk or low risk for suicidal ideation. So the majority of men that seek out therapeutic

1:34:31 And psychological help, our framework doesn’t even does a terrible job of identifying whether or not that man is actually at risk for suicide. And it’s interesting because sometimes when you look at that, people will say, well, men just need to open up more. And men, you know, they’ll go back to like, well, if men just talk more, and you know, this type of rhetoric. And so again, it’s men don’t have problems, men are the problem, right? And that doesn’t actually help us support men’s problems. What I think transpires often is a couple of things. Number one, is that a lot of men feel as though their ability to provide is very, very, very important to their sense of self and their sense of identity. And if that gets threatened, or when that gets threatened, it can be extremely damaging to that man’s sense of self, his ego, his identity, and it can really destroy him. Because he’s built a life where people rely on him. And he’s responsible for, you know, paying paychecks and supporting people and doing those types of things.

1:35:40 And so if that falls apart, he’s going to suffer, because who he is, and what he takes pride in, is actually being of service to other people. And that gets missed out on a lot. The other piece of research that I think plays into this, it’s very important, is Richard Reeves from the American Institute of Boys and Men. They studied notes that men left behind when they took their own lives. And what they found, and they were looking for commonalities, like, what’s the thread? And what they found was that one of the highest words that was used was useless.

1:36:14 That when a man starts to feel useless, that he can’t contribute in his marriage or his relationship. He can’t provide financially. That that uselessness is so damaging to him, not just because as a society we value that within men, but because as men, that’s something that actually matters to us. It’s something that we genuinely desire to do. It’s important to us. And so when that gets infringed on, is when a man’s sense of self and sense of identity starts to collapse. So when men feel useless, that’s a pretty big red flag.

1:36:51 And so I always say to men, you know, talk to your buddies, talk to the guys that are in your life. And if they’re talking about how useless they feel, or how useless they think they are, whether it’s a joke or an aside, like dig into it, you know, get into it. Like, well, what do you mean by that? And are you actually struggling financially? And, you know, where can you contribute? You’d be surprised at how often a man just wants to be of service and contribute something of value to the people that are around him and to know that he actually can be useful and he can be of service and he can support other people. So those are the two things that come up for me. Um, you know, who knows what that, I don’t, I don’t know the guy or what he was dealing with who knows what he was going through, but generally speaking, those, those are the things like one, it’s just most men have thought about it and never talked about it.

1:37:48 And most people don’t know when a man’s actually in that space. And I think that that’s, I think that’s brutal. You know, I think that we should change that we need to have a better system where men who are really struggling can get support and that the depth of their struggle can actually be identified and then worked with.

1:38:06 Brian Rose: Yeah. I spoke to another guest about this in Dubai and he had, he had come close in his past to, uh, to committing suicide. And he said, Brian, it’s not the, it’s not the mopey when depressed ones you have to worry about.

1:38:19 He said, cause once I decided, he said, it was not even a big deal to me. I just made the decision. I was like, yep, I’m going to do this next week and I’m just going to do it. And it was the useless. Uh, if I wasn’t here, it wouldn’t matter. The kids can do this. They can raise them. They can do that. It was the useless thing for him. And, um, and he just, his advice was to just, you know, just check in on people, just kind of check in. Doesn’t mean you have to go over and knock their door down, but yeah, checking on people.

1:38:48 And I like your idea with that language. And the crazy thing is, is that with my friend Sam, who took his life, I, the crazy thing is, is that I think a couple people that maybe got a whiff of it, they, they’re like, Oh, I can help, but like, that’s not the problem. And I, and I, that’s the problem is, is that he doesn’t want the help. He wants to feel useful. And in some ways, if you keep offering that help, he’s actually not going to want to talk to you anymore and it could get worse. And that’s what I think it’s important for men and women to understand maybe about men is that that provide instinct. It’s so powerful, drives so much of what I do. And when you take that away, man, it can’t get much worse, I think, for a man than to take that away. It’s one of the, I think, one of the more humiliating things. And I think if people understand that, it’s easier to talk about a lot of these issues, you know? So yeah, appreciate, appreciate perspective. Look, last one is this. Um, I have my first boxing match on May 1st in Dubai at the age of 53. And it was quite the experience.

1:39:55 And a lot of it was what I expected and a lot of it wasn’t what I expected. And I’ve been training martial arts for 20 some years, but I never had the balls to go into the ring. And when you train martial arts, it’s, it’s kind of funny because you’re hitting the pads and you do all these things, but you’re not actually fighting. And I noticed when I booked this a couple of years ago, I got an opportunity to fight and I kind of was drawn to it, even though I was terrified of it. Um, and I ended up, it ended up not happening three years ago and it was always bothering me that I wanted to do this. And I just always wanted to put myself in there. And like I said, when you’re training martial arts and not fighting, if you’re really honest with yourself, you know, you’re not doing the thing that you’re training for and yet most people don’t. And that’s okay. It’s still an amazing way to do all sorts of things with your life. But for me, it was something I really wanted to do.

1:40:50 And so, uh, I kind of finally made it happen. I got the fight. They put me up with this 28 year old punk kid. They flew in from London. Um, and it started getting really spicy at the way ends. He like shoved me across the room and got in my face and it really hit me about 24 hours out of what I was doing and everything got real primal Connor. And actually I was close to fighting about three years ago and I was going through sparring partners and it was getting, like I said, pretty primal. Like before I would go into spar, I was just like, oh my God, like this is, this guy is, is trying to take away my livelihood and my kids and my right to, uh, to, to, um, to reproduce. And it would like really think that I was thinking about it all the time and it was just really like, wow, this is, this is no joke. And, um, 24 hours before it really hit me and I was just like, what am I doing? Like this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Like I’m going to wake up tomorrow in a hospital. Uh, my kids aren’t going to have their father anymore and it’s of course, live streamed, of course, of course.

1:41:54 And so everyone gets to watch it and my kids knew about it. And, um, it was this wild experience and, um, luckily I had some good people around me. And, um, uh, but what I’ve, I found myself doing Connor is I was, I wrote the initials of my, my two boys names on my arms. Like I don’t have any tattoos. I never had any interest, but like when I found myself doing was writing them on my arms and part of me was thinking about them a lot that day. And part of it was maybe that this guy might be literally taking them from me. And, um, maybe part of it was that they’re going to be watching me and learning from me. And part of the reason I wanted to do this maybe was so they would see it, but man, it was just wild that the real back to basics amygdala, you know, hunter gatherer or whatever savage animal vibes I was going through. Um, and the fear and the fear and walking into that fear of someone that wants to knock your block off. And it’s very different than the sparring in the gym. All the sparring in the gym can be very scary too. It’s very different than hitting the pads. Um, as Bruce Lee famously said, uh, bored, don’t hit back. And, uh, and then when I got in there, it was very tense. Um, that of course he was talking all this crazy shit and starting fights everywhere.

1:43:08 But then once the bell rang, we were in it and then from there it was just all good. And, um, I actually put my hands up in victory after the first round because I had accomplished, I had, I had, um, beaten all my demons at that point. And I, from there I was like, this is, I got this. And it was a, it was a transformative experience in my life. I really, um, I walked out of there and, um, now I’m a fighter and they, no one will ever take that away from me. And, um, I’m just curious, uh, what, what’d you think about all of that? Because there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of maleness going on in that type of, of, uh, ritual and even, um, a rite of passage that it took me 53 years to get to.

1:43:50 Connor Beaton: Yeah. I mean, there’s value in knowing that you can protect yourself and your family, you know, and it sounds like that move from being a question mark in your head to something that was an answer, you know, and like having an answer of like, Oh yeah, actually I can hold my own. I can protect myself. I can protect my family.

1:44:10 And I, you know, if there’s a great saying of it’s better to be a warrior in the garden than to be a gardener in the war. Right. And so when push comes to shove, it’s like, do you want to be the man that questions whether or not he can protect his family, God forbid, or do you want to be the man that knows that he can do that? And it’s really up to you, but I would say that the majority of men know the answer to that, which is that it’s the latter, you know, for me, I know I can protect my family. Well, if push came to shove, I know that, you know, I train Muay Thai done boxing. I was the hockey brawler. Like, I know I can hold my own.

1:44:48 No problem there. And so I do think it’s just one of those things. And I bring my son, you know, my son comes and watches me with kickboxing and Muay Thai and because I want him to see that and he’s very physical, you know, he’s four years old. He’s very, very physical. And I think as men, it’s a shame for us to not push our edge to see what our body is capable of. And you don’t have to do that. You can do that at any age, you know, like part of my, when I got to 40, I was like, I want to get in the best shape of my life, you know, completely natural, no steroids, no TRTs, no peptides, no nothing. I just want to work out and get an extraordinary shape and eat really healthy food and see what happens, you know, phenomenal. So I think that that lives within, within the majority of us as men is that we, we crave and desire to, to see what is our body capable of? And can I answer the question of, can I protect myself? And, you know, I think sometimes we, when we meet other men, there is that kind of like natural sizing up that happens, or even with friends, it’s like, kind of take that guy, you know, like, like, like, what would happen if me and my buddy, like, you know, threw down? And I think that’s just part of, of nature within boys, you know, this, there’s like this competitiveness, and there’s this curiosity, and there’s this physicality that I think has been so demonized because it’s seen as violence. But you know,

1:46:16 It doesn’t have to necessarily be violence. It’s like, my friend, Trevor has this great saying of, be dangerous, but not a danger. You know, this notion of like, I know I have that capacity within me. But because I’ve done the work to temper it, there’s a certain level of mastery and self respect that I now have. And for a lot of men, we’ve just been told, you know, neglect your anger, reject any type of aggressiveness or hostility that lives inside of you. And the commentary has just been, suppress the living shit out of those emotions within you as a man.

1:46:54 That doesn’t teach you anything about how to deal with them. And so that just comes out sideways. And every man knows that. And so it’s better to be masterful in it, as you’ve, you know, moved towards of like, Oh, I want to move my body and use my body in this way, than it is to just completely neglect and suppress that part. So, but kudos to you, man. Good job.

1:47:13 That’s, that sounds like such a blast.

1:47:15 Brian Rose: It was wild ride, man. A wild ride. And in retrospect, thank God he shoved me at the weigh ins because it made, it made the whole experience so much bigger and then ultimately better. And now I think we got the rematch in three months. So I’ve caught the bug because it’s just like, I kind of like the person I am when I’m training.

1:47:33 And also my, my really good buddy who’s trained me in martial arts from 23 years, I flew him into Dubai and we spent the week together and it was just an incredible time for the both of us. And without him that last 24 hours, it would have been challenging. And another great time to spend with, with, with male friends, you know, that was really powerful in this pursuit, you know, yeah, it was incredible. And yeah, again, I’ve conquered some fears and now I’m actually a better man to be around. I’m a better leader. I’m a better father. I’m a better everything because now I don’t have all these, you know, doubts inside of me and I’m definitely, you know, calmer. And yeah, I know I can be dangerous, but I’m not a danger now. Now that I also know that I’ve done that. So it’s wild. I used to always, always remark is that the fighters I used to meet when I trained throughout my career, they always had the gentlest handshakes. And I used to tell people this little anecdote and you know, now you know why, you know, it’s just because they’ve, they’ve sorted all those demons out and they don’t, and you don’t feel that vibe when they meet you because they don’t have that insecurity, even if it’s on a subliminal level, they’re just, that, that thing is ticked off for them and you get this kind of a good vibe with them. So yeah, it was powerful, man. And it made me wonder, yeah, how important that is and how even those rituals are kind of missing from, from us. And then how we’re all deprived because

1:49:04 Of that, you know, as usual, Connor, we’re blowing through all of our time. How can people connect with you and your groups? Because it sounds like a great place for people to talk. And what I really like about you, Connor, is that you, I really like your vibe, you know, where, what did you say where you said it’s not, it’s not therapy. It’s practice. Is that what you say? What are you training? Yeah, you’re big into practicality and not into the theory. And I think that’s really important. And then like trying to also, you even mentioned, they’re holding people accountable to change. And it’s like, these groups are really, really important. And so yeah, if this has piqued the interest of some people, where should they start with your book, with groups? What would you say? And also have some women are watching. Well, what’s some things they should explore?

1:49:52 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I mean, you just go to man talks.com. It’s just M A N T A L K S man talks.com. The Alliance is the group. My book is called men’s work. It’s probably a great place to start whether you’re a man or a woman. If you’re a woman wanting to get to know men a little bit better, it’ll probably give you some good context. And if you’re a man, there’s a ton of work in there. I really do like practicality. You know, I like getting getting down to the work. I have a saying with my son, which is hard work is good work. And the joy is in the practice. And so

1:50:22 I’ve tried to put that into my work. So yeah, man talks.com. And then I’m on YouTube, man talks. I’m on Instagram, man talks. It’s just not talks everywhere. It’s super, super easy. I like very direct marketing.

1:50:39 Brian Rose: Are we getting better or worse?

1:50:42 As men as a, as a culture? Yeah, just as the state of, of masculinity and as a, as a, as a culture right now, I mean, it seems like it’s, it’s not necessarily going in a positive direction. And it seems like we really need to be aware because it doesn’t seem like it’s naturally coming back to correct itself or going back in healthy ways. And I’m not trying to be a pessimist, but would you say that this needs a lot of attention? And would you say that’s probably true?

1:51:12 Connor Beaton: I think that our very young generation needs a lot of attention. You know, I do think that the needle shifting quite a bit. I think that there is a pretty substantial, maybe not movement is the right word, but I do think that a lot of men are finding their way, much like you and I have, you know, they’re, this is a bit of a longer conversation, but I think that we’re waking up from the kind of generational trauma of being raised by the men that came back from World War II, you know, and just came back completely obliterated and, you know, had to raise families from that place after what they saw.

1:51:51 And I think a lot of men that are your age, my age, a little bit younger than, than us, they’re really asking these questions because there’s been this vacancy of male role models and there’s been this vacancy of masculinity that feels rooted and mature and grounded. And so I think a lot of men are on that quest. What I do think needs support are the younger men who, you know, are going into school too early, who the school system is not set up to serve and support them. You know, they’re, they’re not benefiting from this education. And, and then, you know, they’re going to go out into a world that their education has not really set them up for. I mean, you’re going to have an, you know, an AI philosopher, university prof in your pocket at all times. And that’s going to disrupt some stuff. And so I think the more that we can teach young boys, here’s how you think, here’s how you critical think, here’s how you learn, right?

1:52:49 Teaching young boys how to learn, I think is so important and then creating more opportunities for that physicality. So I do think it’s getting better. I’m, I usually am a, I’m a pretty relentless optimist. And I do think that it’s, there is a big shift, especially from when I started it a decade ago, when I started man talks a decade ago, it’s like, man, we are in trouble because I got so much hate for even starting it, you know, so much hate. And now, you know, it’s much more socially accepted. Men doing their own sort of personal work is much more socially accepted. More men are doing that. They’re trying to find their way into what does it look like for them personally to be a good father or husband or businessman, instead of having, you know, other people tell them what that should look like. So I, I’m, I’m, I’m optimistic.

1:53:41 Brian Rose: Yeah. No, I think you’re right. I think we are now seeing all sorts of different types of male role models. Again, you know, some suit others more than others. I think that’s really positive. But also we’ve got all these other technology creeping up on us. And, you know, you mentioned the how the AI can really be dangerous tool for women, like with the that scenario, which I hadn’t heard of before, which is interesting. But obviously the AI replacement of men is also a really scary possibility. And through the physicality and even the protection and all that, it’s I guess it’s scary for both sides. So we have some new problems. We have a

1:54:20 Little bit of a lights there. I guess we got to keep having these conversations.

1:54:24 Connor Beaton: I love it, man. I really enjoy our time together. I really enjoy our conversation, like very thoughtful questions. I do a lot of interviews and you are well prepared and I love the, like the personal side of this, you know, and just getting to talk about boxing is and fighting. That’s cool. I, yeah, I knew you had a little bit of scrap in you and some stories there. So that’s really cool to hear your perspective.

1:54:46 Brian Rose: Yeah. Connor, really enjoy this time. I really appreciate you. And let’s definitely have another one of these in the future.

1:54:53 Connor Beaton: Likewise.

1:54:53 Brian Rose: All right. Great. Thanks, everybody. Follow this man.

1:54:56 Check him out and we’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care.