Every one that goes through a traumatic event, some sort of big life change, divorce would obviously be on that list. Every single person I've seen go through an event like that comes to a tee in the road and there's only two paths for them to take.

And the path over here is the path of health. That's the path of, I don't know what it is. Let's not even necessarily talk about what that looks like because it could be different for different people.

It could be therapy. It could be coaching. It could be 12 step. It could be a church group. It could be a support group. I don't know what it is, but it's some sort of path of health.

In other words, I am now realizing my, what I brought unhealthy to the marriage, not just blame the other person, but what did I bring unhealthy? What can I take responsibility for?

Who do I need to give amends and apologies to? How do I need to make things right? Okay. So there's that path. The other path is the path of destruction.

And that is the path of I'm going to dig in and I'm gonna medicate on anything that helps me not feel the difficult feelings that I have to process and go through.

I just don't wanna do that. So where I see the difference, I don't see more men or women choosing one or two of those paths at all. I don't think that there's any sort of evidence to say that more men go this way, more women go this way, or more women go this way, more men go this way.

I don't think so. I think that's a farce. I think maybe based on our own perceptions and filters, we might feel that way, but I don't think there's more one way or the other.

However, what I have noticed is I've noticed patterns And men and women tend to do this diff- Introducing a powerful new update from the Fuzhan app. Now with flexible subscription plans to fit your journey monthly, quarterly or yearly.

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Empower your inner voice with Fuzhan. Download today. Welcome to the Inner Voice, a heartfelt chat podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Fuzhan Zayn. I'm a psychotherapist.

I'm an author and the founder of the International Awareness Integration Institute. Today, I will be talking to Josh Tomeoni. He's a founder of ex derelict and the author of the gospel of an ex derelict fight fail rebuilt, a 19 year fiduciary financial planner turned men's coach.

He helped successful men rebuild their wealth their masculinity, and a legacy after a divorce or major life transition. Through private coaching, brotherhood groups, and real world experiences, Josh guides high performing men beyond survival into purposeful, driven, living, integrating finances, clarity, masculine identity, and authentic connection.

His mission is very simple to help men thrive in their second act with power presence and legacy. We had a great conversation, sometimes a good debate, and I really enjoy conversing with him.

And he comes through with his own experience and the experience of a numerous amount of men have worked with throughout the year. So I hope that you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I have.

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You're supported in parenting infants to adolescents using the latest evidence-based scientific research on parenting. Order your copy on Amazon now. Well, welcome, Joshua Tomeoni.

It's nice to see you. Thank you. It's a pleasure being here. Thank you for joining for having me on the show. Well, of course, you've got two books out, one that you experienced going toward divorce and what men go through divorce and then The next one is the next phase.

I'm really excited to kind of hear about the process. As you know, and you know, my audience know, I've been a therapist, a marriage and family and divorce therapist for almost 32 years, been through a divorce myself.

So I have a personal experience and a professional experience. But obviously personal experience is from a female perspective. I have a lot of clients that I hear from a male's perspective, but I do really think these perspectives are different.

You know, what a female might go through with the male would go through. And you've concentrated really on the male's perspective as they go through this process.

So first of all, why? How come you have chosen this topic to really explore? Uh, yeah, good question. So similar to you, I've been through a divorce myself.

I was married for a very long time. I went through a divorce. It was definitely one of those huge spiritual awakenings in my life to try to figure out where am I going to go from here?

And, you know, very short story. I met my wife when I was very young, right? When I was going into college, we got married right after college. I was married to her for basically ever.

I mean, she was basically the only person that I was with in any sort of romantic capacity my entire adult life. And then things happen, which led to the divorce as they do.

And it was not what I wanted, but it was what she wanted. And there was nothing I could do to stop that. Some people probably relate to that, right? You either have to decide for yourself or you just have to let the other person decide.

There's not much you can do when they've made up their mind. So went through the divorce and then I would say right after the divorce is the time where, you know, I was in my mid thirties.

I was making good money and I was single really for the first time in my adult life besides very beginning of college and end of high school. So that can be a bad combination.

That can be a bad combination, especially because I really hadn't worked through the stuff I needed to work through. So I just decided, okay, I'm gonna have fun now.

And then I basically lived out all my teenage fantasies that I never lived out until my mid thirties. That didn't end well because it never does. Whenever you're trying to medicate pain, whenever you're trying to just disregard what's actually going on in your life, whenever you're trying to ignore what God or the universe is trying to show you, it just doesn't end well, right?

It just usually gets a lot more intense when you do that. So that happened to me. And then I would say I had a couple years into that, I had another what I would call spiritual awakening when I literally can remember the day still where I was very out of it on different substances and everything else.

I just had this moment where I just talked to myself and I was like, who are you? What are you doing? Is this the legacy you want to leave after going through such a painful traumatic experience that you're just going to dig into medicating and ignoring what's actually happening?

And that was really the first time in my life where I was like, yeah, no. And it was the first time that I was doing the work for myself. I'm sure you've seen this before, right?

Where somebody comes in and like the husband's there because the wife wants him to be there or vice versa. And how well does that work? If like, if the husband's in there because the wife wants to be there and because he's trying to save the marriage, but he's not doing it for himself.

Let me just ask you, how well does that work long-term? Not at all. So that was me. When I was going through this process, I did all the things. I joined a bunch of different therapy group.

I joined individual therapy. We were doing marriage therapy. I joined a 12 step program. I got very involved in my church at the time and all these different things.

I did literally everything to try to, what I thought was repair myself, but what I realized afterwards was actually just trying to repair the marriage.

It is true, Joshua, that I get that a lot of times when women talk to each other a lot, they come together in a support. When they are in English, they go share.

Even through the marriage, if they're going through English, they share with their girlfriends. Men do that seldom, very much. Even if they have one best friend, and depending on where the best friend is and how they are in their life, they could give them gear them toward health and all of that.

But if the best friend is also not in their healthy place, they might not be able to support. So men feel much more lonelier in this process than women do.

100%. I can just tell you through my experience and now coaching hundreds of guys, but I can tell you first, starting with my experience, I can't even count probably how many friends have told me over the last however many years of my life that I was the person they could talk to the most about things.

So they felt closest to me. And those were not like best friends. Those were just guys that I knew that were friends. And what it really opened my eyes with, this is not a compliment to myself.

What it is more of is it made me realize how little these men actually have other people to talk to and to actually go through these processes with, especially divorce.

guys get very tunnel focused, especially when it's a big decision like divorce. Well, I got the attorney and I got all the stuff, so now I'm good. No, that's the worst.

I wrote a whole book about it. I wrote a whole book about the traps to avoid when you're going through divorce and men are the worst at it, generally speaking, because We often suck at asking for help.

And we often suck at asking other people to be a part of our tribe, a part of our community, because that's not how we communicate, generally speaking.

I know this is gonna sound sexist, but it's just true. Women communicate better with each other. They just generally do. They know what's going on in each other's lives.

They give details, right? Now there's insecurities and hurt and pain and everything else that can pause that, that makes it so the women don't do that.

But in general, guys literally don't know how to do it. I will go play golf or watch a game or do whatever. And we don't know how to have that conversation.

What what I've experienced with my clients have been more than men. Right after divorce, they turn into like their 13, 14 year old suddenly and they become a teenager again.

Although my you know what I've noticed is that marriage makes you grow up, just makes you grow up. Divorce makes you the next level of growing up, you know, it forces you to grow up.

And I've watched women mostly, and I'm not saying, you know, general a hundred percent, but a higher level of women when they've gone through a divorce, They've taken the next level of growing up.

They've constructed their life, whether they needed to be individuated, whether they needed to financially build themselves again, whether they needed to, you know, understand how to be a single mother, whatever it is that they needed to do.

They've, they flourish after the divorce. And with many men, I've watched them destroy themselves and they go exactly to what you say within a phase of time until they kind of hit bottom at some place, or they go into another relationship, which another nurturing person pulls them right back up.

Or they go and hit bottom and then they, you know, they have to get back up. But I do agree with you that this is a phase that happens mostly with men which they revert back like I I rarely see a woman revert back to their teenage years right after divorce and you know unless there are some people who get just sexually activated, and that usually happens when they're a little bit older because of the dynamic of their biology.

But the point in which you said where the women come together and support each other in a way where they can process feelings. Men sometimes come together and support each other by numbing the feelings, not necessarily processing the feelings.

And that's sometimes what it's to the detriment of them coming back and really healing themselves. So I'm so glad that you've taken on this path to support men to be able to start processing their feelings really quickly, right, right into the separation and the divorce process.

I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, and I think that's an interesting perspective. I will tell you that that is not my perspective, so I don't agree with you.

Tell me, tell me. That's been my experience. Here's what I do agree with. I do agree with your statement that a lot of men, similar to me, revert back to teenage years and they live out whatever, like I said earlier, teenage fantasies that they didn't live out before.

I do agree with you. But I don't agree with you that women don't do that. I just think that men and women generally do it in a different way. So here's been my experience of how both genders do this to try to remove this from the gender conversation for a moment.

Here's what I've seen. I've seen that everyone that goes through a traumatic event, some sort of big life change, divorce would obviously be on that list.

Every single person I've seen go through an event like that comes to a tee in the road and there's only two paths for them to take. And the path over here is the path of health.

That's the path of, I don't know what it is. Let's not even necessarily talk about what that looks like because it could be different for different people.

It could be therapy. It could be coaching. It could be 12 step. It could be a church group. It could be a support group. I don't know what it is, but it's some sort of path of health.

In other words, I am now realizing my what I brought unhealthy to the marriage, not just blame the other person, but what did I bring unhealthy? What can I take responsibility for?

Who do I need to give amends and apologies to? How do I need to make things right? Okay, so there's that path. The other path is the path of destruction.

And that is the path of I'm going to dig in and I'm going to medicate on anything that helps me not feel the difficult feelings that I have to process and go through.

I just don't want to do that. So where I see the difference, I don't see more men or women choosing one or two of those paths at all. I don't think that there's any sort of evidence to say that more men go this way, more women go this way, or more women go this way, more men go this way.

I don't think so. I think that's a farce. I think maybe based on our own perceptions and filters, we might feel that way, but I don't think there's more one way or the other.

However, what I have noticed is I've noticed patterns and men and women tend to do this differently. So let's just take the unhealthy path for a second, because this is the one that I think is a little bit more insidious, where it might seem like somebody's really on the health path, but they're not.

So let's talk about that for a moment. Let's talk about the very first thing, but maybe we'll see if we agree on this or not. I think my general experience is that more women are more likely to go into therapy when something like this occurs than men.

Would you agree with that statement? Very much, yes. I think more women are just more open to it. Cause again, more women are just naturally open to communicating and talking about their feelings and what's going on with their friends and everything else versus us guys in general, not always in general.

However, I'm sure you've seen this just as much as any other therapist or doctor I've ever seen. Isn't there a point where they could actually be getting just as much medicated behavior from that therapy than not going to that therapy?

In other words, set a different way. Couldn't then therapy become their medication to where they're not actually getting better, but they're just relying on the support group or the therapy or anything else to try to like make them feel better, even though they're not dealing with their stuff.

Isn't that a possibility? possibility for a certain, yes. And I see a lot of, so I see a lot of women when they're going this path. I think it's a little easier to see guys on this path because the guy path is relatively obvious.

It's either drugs and alcohol or it's sex or some sort of sexual behavior or it's work. There's those three things almost always. There could be something else, but those three I would say are the majority of what guys decide to do.

So of course, if they're consuming a lot of drugs and alcohol, it's easy for us to say, well, yeah, obviously they're on the path. The ones that are more insidious, I would say, are things like work, as an example.

Instead of me actually getting to a point where I'm trying to process who I am, what the vision of my life is, where I want to go next, how I actually improve myself, I just put my head down and I become a workaholic and I'm still not dealing with the stuff that I need to deal with.

again, works not bad. I work very hard myself. But anything that we use, you know, in religious terms, they often call them idols. In non-religious terms, they usually call them addictions.

But anything that we use to not deal with our own issues, our own emotions, our own faults, our own things that we have to look at, goes on that path.

So I think the biggest difference I see is just men and women choose it differently. So am I saying that women don't become workaholics? No, of course they can.

I just see more men do it versus women from my experience. And again, this could be wrong. This is just my experience with the hundreds of people I've worked with.

From my experience, what I see more from women on that side is relational, some sort of relational addiction. So maybe they just jump from relationship to relationship to relationship to relationship.

to rebound to the next one, to just not actually sitting with themselves, dealing with their stuff, but just moving from relationship to relationship.

Now, do men do that? Of course. I just see more women do it than men. And I also see more women use therapy as a crutch than men, generally speaking. Going to the same therapist, talking about the same thing 20 years later and still not having any sort of results.

So again, huge fan of therapy. Went through years of therapy myself. Therapy is invaluable to deal with past traumas, to get us to the present moment.

I'm a huge fan of therapy. I'm not against it. But when it becomes, I'm still talking about the same thing 30 years later and I haven't actually moved on and dealt with what I need to deal with.

that's just as bad of a crutch in my mind as the alcohol or the drugs or the sex. Does that make sense? So for me, I don't think there's a difference between how many people go on the healthy path versus how many people go on the unhealthy path.

I've just noticed patterns that men tend to do something different on this path than women. Not always, but often. I don't have data. I don't have research data right now in front of me to share with you.

So I'm going to share from also an experiential and from that perspective. Are all psychotherapies effective? No. their model. That's why I created certain models because I don't think that just, you know, all the psychotherapies of, you know, somebody, a therapist was just passively, whatever you say, they say, yes, yes, yes, you're right.

Oh, that works. Yes. That'll keep somebody 25 years in the therapy. Of course. And I mean, this is speaking as a coach. I could say the same thing about coaches.

Right, like 80% of coaches aren't effective in helping you get to where you want to go, just like I would say like 80% of therapists aren't effective in helping you move past your to present to be able to move forward.

So yeah, absolutely. Yes, but part of what you were saying is a person goes into therapy as a crutch and I'm like, that's just not effective therapy that has nothing to do with therapy.

That's just a non-effective therapy because if someone is is really taking the time to go to therapy. The whole point is for them to be able to move forward with their goals and really get to know themselves on all of it.

So if 20 years later they're still having the same conversation, I would say that they have to change their therapist because that's not effective. So besides- And Fuzhan, I agree with you.

The reason I'm bringing it up is because I can't tell you how many hundreds of women have come to me and they're like, well, it's okay, because I'm in therapy.

Okay, but is the therapy effective? That would be like saying, it's okay, because I went to see the doctor. Well, are you doing what the doctor is telling you to do in order to make sure that you maintain a healthy presence?

Or are you not doing it and your therapist is just kind of allowing you to continue to come and pay for things? Like I just, 80% of what I see with women, they're like, I'm in therapy, I'm okay.

They're not because they're not actually dealing with the root cause. And again, I'm not blaming therapy. I'm not saying all therapists are bad. You know, you're hearing me, right?

It's the 80-20 rule with any other industry. I'm the same. I'm even worse because I'm a coach and coaches don't have to have any sort of designations or licenses or anything.

So it's even worse in my space. Trust me. Hold on. I'm just trying to distinguish a couple of things you said. One of them is whether a coach you're going to or a therapist is effective or not.

So I'm just going to put that on another shelf because I think we established that already. Then it becomes that from a brain perspective, it has shown many of the neuroscience brain mapping has shown that when females talk about their emotion, they get a release.

And that's why you see a lot more females coming to talk to each other. They bond through sharing, trauma sharing with each other and that bonding, it creates a release for them.

So hopefully they're released and then they'll move to the next levels. The same thing does not happen in the brain of a man. By trauma sharing, they don't get a release.

They actually have a higher level of anxiety when they trauma share. So on, you know, on that level, a lot of times you'll see the bonding that happens with men is around sports, is around activities.

Yes, they do share in the middle, but it's around other stuff where they go in and, you know, sometimes they'll bond through activities, but they're not necessarily sharing what's happening inside of them.

So internally, they're trying to process stuff. without necessarily having it externally and then coming back and, you know, saying it externally and coming back.

So that's definitely the scientific difference between men and women in how they process. There's also another factor, which I've noticed, which Women are trained a lot more as they're growing up culturally, possibly, and, you know, Western women a little bit less than Eastern, Middle Eastern and, you know, other patriarchal system women, that they are a lot more trained into um into an attachment conversation that they need to you know be married they need to raise children their role is different so a lot of times when there is a divorce of course men's role have been They've had to work.

They've had to be the breadwinner. They've had to do all of that. So they're a lot more of them. They still have the stability of their job and they'll go into their work and become more work oriented because that's a safe place for them to be.

That's where they're powerful. They're safe. They're all of that. And women, a lot of times, They've had to, if their, if their finances were not, you know, as well, they've had to handle things in a different way.

After a divorce, they've dealt with, you know, their child rearing in a different and attachment concepts where if they identified themselves through you know, a person who had to be married, they've identified themselves, you know, in that realm of attachment to another man, then they go through that process too.

So I do get that culturally, I think where, you know, again, Western or other cultures come together, where there's a role of a man and a woman after a divorce, a lot of these roles kind of start changing for women, specifically.

So I also see because I see multicultural women, you know, in my practice, and I see how different that is. And I also see the role of, you know, in some cultures, men have to be The ones who take custody and they won't even give it up to the woman so it's a whole different concept where men because they have the children and they have the custody they have to immediately marry or they bring their sisters and mothers to take care in other cultures such as Western cultures, the women become more of the.

you know, taking care of the children and the responsible person for the children overall. So you could see all of these differences that happens within the divorce.

And I've seen men become resentful. And there's a lot more of what happens about the resentment of now I have to pay alimony. And now I have to sometimes they go through a destruction of I'm going to ruin my own financial stuff because I'm pissed that I have to do all of these.

And so there's an emotional factor. There's all of these rage and bargaining and fight that goes on years after the divorce, especially if they have children.

When there's no children, sometimes it's a break. We'll go through our processes and be done. But when there is children, we have another 20 years of almost constant battle with a lot of the divorce processes versus, you know, then how can we become co-parent and, and, you know, live amicably as family members now going forward?

And that's part of what I really also see, which the financial or the responsibility of having children and now changing the roles from a husband and wife or, you know, if they're not heterosexual, you know, in gay marriages, you know, husband and husband or wife and wife, then to turn into two amicable, great citizens, family members for the rest of your life, now taking care of your children, you know.

So these are all so different of where people go through. Agreed. Yeah, I agree. And you said a couple of really important things there, which I completely agree with.

And one of the things that you said a bit ago is you're talking about where people are finding safety. And I would also add to the word of comfort, like what's the comfort zone?

And I think you said it really well, because What you essentially said, I don't know your exact words, but what you essentially said is more guys find that safety or that comfort zone within work and more women find that safety or comfort zone within relationships, right?

And I think that that's really key. And I think there's something we should unpack about that a little bit. So women communicate for connection. Men communicate to solve a problem.

If you just look back, I mean, there's plenty of research, plenty of books written on this. I happen to actually really like the book, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, which is a very old one.

But I remember when it was first coming out, I was anti. I was like, I'm never going to read this book. This is stupid. I don't like this guy. I was so anti it.

And I didn't even read it until a few years ago. But when I read it, I was like, okay, now I understand why this is so popular because that his whole purpose, whether you like the guy or dislike the guy, there's plenty of things I don't agree with in the book.

But the main overall theme is Men communicate this way, women communicate this way. Let's figure out how each other communicate so that we can actually have conversations.

Plenty of other people write about that as well. However, let's go back to what you were saying earlier, which is what I think the point is. If women are communicating for connection and men are communicating to get problem solving done, that's also where their comfort zone is.

So, let's go back to my previous analogy of if somebody's going down the unhealthy path. Well, again, either one of those could be healthy or unhealthy, right?

Any relationship can be healthy or unhealthy. Any work situation can be healthy or unhealthy. And most of them are a combination of both because nothing is black and white.

Just 100% one way or the other. So, Does it make sense then that we would see if a woman is on a healthy path, it's probably going to be more about connection.

And if a man is on a healthy path, it's probably going to be more about problem solving. And both of those can be healthy paths for those people. If a woman's gonna be on an unhealthy path, it's usually that connection.

So previous examples, relationship to relationship to relationship to relationship. Maybe having then girlfriends as codependent relationships for themselves, because they were codependent in their marriage and now they need to be codependent with another person.

Maybe it's a victim support group where everybody just gets around and cries the entire time and nothing is ever accomplished. Again, not against victim support groups, I'm only against people not getting better.

So, there's a lot of situations where I've found usually more women this way. They connect in a way. They're like, oh, now I'm so connected and it's great because I have therapy and I have this victim support group and everything else, but they're not actually getting better.

They're not actually moving to the next level of themselves. Men do the same thing. And again, oftentimes they do it with work or differently through relationships and they think, well, it's really healthy.

I'm just going to dig into my business. I'm going to work. I'm going to do the thing. That's great. As long as you're not ignoring all the other stuff that you need to get past in order to become that next best version of yourself.

Right. So let's go back to your two books. Yeah. You know, about five or six minutes. I want to go to your books. Thank you. I want people to know. So the first book was about the tips of what men go through in the first phases of their divorce, right?

Yeah, so the only thing I'll mention on the first book is I'll make it really, really simple. If any of your listeners or viewers right now are going through a divorce, whether you're a man or a woman, it's written specifically for men, but it's honestly universal.

You could read it as a woman and get justice. I've had plenty of women read it and they're like, oh my gosh, this thing changed my life. If you are on the precipice of going through a divorce or going through a divorce or just recently got one done.

reach out. I'm happy to actually send you a copy of the ebook for free. It's just the five traps people face when going through divorce. And I'm telling you, just by reading the book, you will save years of time of just struggle and issues and everything else.

And again, I'm offering it for free because you had me on the show. So there's no monetary gain for me whatsoever. It's just that I am so passionate about this that I really want people to see like, Look, don't just stick your head down on divorce.

I know it's easy to do because it's so incredibly overwhelming. You've been through one. You understand this as well, right, Fijian? But if you can just peek up a little bit and just look at some of these things, it's going to save you time, money, more time with your kids, et cetera.

So that's all I have to say about that book, but I'm happy to send it to anybody that wants it. Say the name first. It's the five traps men face when going through divorce and how to triumph over them.

Okay, great. And again, even though it has the word men, don't worry about it, women, it applies to you just as much. All right, now let's talk about your latest book.

Yeah, so this one, I'm really excited about it because it's just coming out right now. So, it's called the gospel of an ex derelict. I have kind of a fake copy of it here because it hasn't been printed yet as of the time of this recording.

By the time this recording comes out, it'll be done. As you can see, the gospel of an ex derelict, fight, fail, rebuild, if you can read that. And essentially, here's what it is.

When I, again, when I went through my divorce, I realized after I went through my kind of immature years that I needed to grow up and it needed to become the next best version of myself.

So what I did is I wrote a lot, it's basically a personal memoir mixed with a self-help book from the hundreds of men that I've now coached to help go through this process.

And really what it's all about is helping successful men thrive in life and legacy after divorce. Now, one thing I haven't mentioned yet, I've been a financial planner also for almost 20 years now.

That's been my main occupation. Finances are very aligned with this as well. So now my whole passion is helping men in their finances and their life and be able to make that the best next version of themselves.

Why is my passion so much about this? Well, A, I went through my divorce in my mid thirties, so I relate to guys there. B, the highest suicide rate in the United States is 35 to 50 year old men.

Why? At the peak of their life. The reason is, is because something like this occurs, whether it's divorce or a business collapse or a relationship change or whatever it is.

And then as you so succinctly said earlier, we lose our identity. And we're like, I don't know who I am anymore. I was like a husband and a dad and a business owner and everything else, but then everything just fell to crap and I don't know who I am.

So this book is really me getting vulnerable first, sharing some pretty interesting stories. People love reading it, but then also bringing it back. So every single chapter has some questions.

So I consider to think, okay, what do I want me to be? What is my next 2.0 version of myself? And I did everything that I could not to make it about money and health, because that's all guys are ever talked to at all, always.

The solution is always make more money and get a six pack abs if you look online anywhere. That's always the solution presented to guys. That's not the answer.

The answer is, how do you get the mental, the emotional, the spiritual all working together in a way? And the questions are really easy too for John. It's not like it's a difficult homework book.

It's just a little prompting. And the idea is read a chapter, prompt a little bit, go for a walk, try to figure out what this process looks like for you.

So it's really to guide successful men who've been through divorce, life change, business transition, reclaim their wealth, their masculinity, especially in a world where we sometimes forget what masculinity even is or that it's healthy.

their purpose, so they can move beyond kind of this survival mode to really thriving in the next stage of their life. So yeah, I'm really excited about it.

And I think it's so important about men owning their masculinity and having their emotions allowing themselves to be vulnerable, to express who they are, express all of their emotions while they hold their beautiful concept of masculinity.

Because I've also seen a lot more than when you hold your role, the way that it's intended for you and you want to, whatever it is that you want to be, then you also allow your mate to be who they are.

And when the biggest, I would agree with you for John. I think the biggest thing that I'm concerned with in society right now is not that we all agree on what these are.

I don't think we need to agree on what roles are or what masculinity is or what feminine. I don't think we need to agree on that. What I think, though, is that individuals need to agree on that for themselves and then with their partner.

Because the issue is that there's no lines being drawn and no one understands what any of it means. So we're all just kind of up in the air being like, oh, OK, well, I guess if we communicate and talk to each other, everything's going to be OK.

No, no, that doesn't work in relationships. So I think my biggest concern, maybe yours is too, is for men to define that for themselves and then define that with their partner and make sure that they're aligned.

That's it. My experience has been that when both partners align themselves with a balance of all of their sides, because I think we all have feminine masculine sides within us.

We do, it's proven. It doesn't matter whether you're a female or male or in the spectrum of all. There are concepts within us that hold to both. And when each one of us experiences the balance within us and we come together, and I think that when we come together, we can also balance each other because when I'm willing to balance myself, then we can also balance each other because when I'm on one side, you can balance me on the other.

And then when I switch to the other, you can balance. And this is how I think the healthy relationship moves forward. Agreed. And I think if each person, just like you said, not only defines where they are, but they don't get stuck into one side of themselves and they're fluent enough within to see what each part of them is needed at the moment.

and what works best. Sometimes I need, as a female, to hold my feminine side so that my husband can hold his masculine side. Sometimes he needs to experience his feminine side and know that I'm here with my masculine side moving forward and doing whatever it is.

And that, I think, is the beauty of a couplehood. And it has nothing to do with gender. It has nothing to do with gender. No, it does. Let's be clear about this.

You said this very well. Every man has masculine and feminine traits. Every woman has masculine and feminine traits. However, the majority of men have majority masculine traits.

The majority of women have majority feminine traits. We're not talking about outliers right here. There are outliers. But if you are a majority masculine man with a majority feminine woman, and you're living in those authentic traits, you're going to have an amazing relationship.

If you're not, and you're a majority masculine man that's showing up primarily feminine to your primarily feminine wife, you're not going to have a good relationship.

By the way, this is the same in same sex couples. This has nothing to do with gender. I agree. Two lesbians, one woman is going to have primarily masculine traits, one's going to have primarily feminine.

And if they show up in those traits, they're going to have a really healthy relationship. If they don't, and they both show up masculine or they both show up feminine, it doesn't work.

That's the balance that we were talking about. Absolutely. And you're absolutely right. Like I have a son and I have two daughters. I need to be very careful when I'm showing up because I'm primarily, I'm a very masculine man and I need to be very careful when I show up to my daughters that I bring some of that feminine energy into the room because otherwise I can overly masculine them if that makes sense, right?

And the same thing with my son. Like it just can't be all like there are times where I need to bring some of this out dependent on the situation. Yeah.

Is this a more like nurturing and caring and loving situation? Or is this a more like take control power type of situation? That's how I know. And I know that I when I feel safe in my life, I tend to be in my safety is just to remain in my feminine side.

And when I don't feel safe, I tend to go into my masculine side, you know, to take power, to take all that I need to do across the world. So I know that, you know, and I think each person, when they know how to balance this and when it's needed, then it helps.

Now, Josh. Can I just make one small comment on that real quick? So what you said, I think is really, really key. And I think in general for women, they need to feel safe to live out their feminine energy.

It's not the same for men though. Men don't need to feel safe to live out their masculine energy. They need to feel powerful. So if a man is feeling like he's being himself and he's powerful, then he can live out his masculine energy.

One minute close. What is it we have not said that you really want everybody to know? The only way to get to the next level of your life that you wanna get to is to go through the pain.

It's to go through the difficult times. I wish life wasn't like this, but it is. Here's one thing that I can promise you and everybody else that's listening to this.

If you don't allow those times to come through, if you don't, if you're not willing to go through that difficult, painful stuff that you have to go through, I promise you the next time it comes around, it's 10 times worse.

Thank you. So when it comes up, deal with it. I promise you it's going to make you stronger. It's going to make you healthier. It'll help you get to that next level faster.

And then the next time it comes around, it won't be as big of a deal. Very true. Where can people find you? I mean, all over the internet, but if they wanna send me a direct message, I often send people to Instagram because Instagram is a really good place where I'm messaging people all day long.

So as an example, if you want that free divorce book, all you have to do is go follow me on Instagram and then shoot me a message. If you just wanna talk to me about anything that we talked about today, go ahead, shoot me a message.

My Instagram handle is joshthederelict. Okay, any website that they can get to the book? Uh, yeah, you can just go to the derelict.com. That's the best place to go.

It'll take you to the, to the book from there. Beautiful. Josh, tell me only everyone. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. Absolutely.

Thanks for having me. And for everyone out there, create an amazing life for yourself and everyone. And if you liked what we talked about, please share it with other people.

Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. I love to hear from all of you. And until next week, take good care of yourself. Bye-bye. Are you a psychotherapist looking to enhance your practice?

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Why Men Break After Divorce—and How to Rebuild Stronger

Foojan Zeine, PsyD, LMFT

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