Order of Man - NICK FREITAS ｜ Are You Good at Being a Man？

00:00:00.520 You want to be a better man than you currently are.

00:00:03.460 If that wasn't the case,

00:00:04.480 you wouldn't even be listening to this podcast.

00:00:06.520 Regardless of where you are on your path

00:00:08.640 and how you feel about how you show up in life

00:00:11.220 as a father, husband, business owner,

00:00:13.740 and or a community leader,

00:00:15.320 there is room left on the table

00:00:17.020 for all of us to step up even more.

00:00:20.140 My guest today, Nick Freitas,

00:00:21.460 shares with us some insight on how to do just that.

00:00:24.520 Today, we talk about what quote unquote bad guys get right,

00:00:27.460 why the phrase happy wife, happy life is complete garbage,

00:00:31.600 the role of women and men in family and society,

00:00:34.660 harnessing your masculinity for good purposes,

00:00:37.740 addressing and dealing with your own insecurities,

00:00:40.500 and the difference between being a good man

00:00:43.100 and being good at being a man.

00:00:45.960 You're a man of action.

00:00:47.660 You live life to the fullest,

00:00:49.080 embrace your fears,

00:00:50.280 and boldly chart your own path.

00:00:52.040 When life knocks you down,

00:00:53.360 you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:56.120 You are not easily deterred or defeated,

00:00:58.740 rugged, resilient, strong.

00:01:01.560 This is your life.

00:01:02.660 This is who you are.

00:01:04.060 This is who you will become at the end of the day.

00:01:07.020 And after all is said and done,

00:01:08.720 you can call yourself a man.

00:01:12.020 Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast.

00:01:14.380 I am Ryan Michler.

00:01:15.400 I'm your host.

00:01:16.140 I'm also the founder of this movement

00:01:17.460 and this organization.

00:01:18.680 We have been going strong for over nine years now,

00:01:21.900 and I wanna thank you for tuning in.

00:01:23.540 I'm gonna waste less time on the intro of these podcasts

00:01:27.460 because I really do like to get to the conversations

00:01:29.980 as quickly as possible.

00:01:31.400 So if you're new,

00:01:32.340 what I want you to know right now

00:01:33.980 is we interview interesting, unique, successful,

00:01:38.540 ambitious, driven, motivated men.

00:01:40.640 I ask them hopefully interesting, poignant questions,

00:01:44.480 extract that knowledge and that wisdom and that insight

00:01:46.580 so that you and me and everybody else listening

00:01:48.460 can apply this information in our own lives.

00:01:52.100 So I've got Nick Freitas on the podcast today.

00:01:54.080 Very excited about this one.

00:01:55.320 I've been following him for a significant amount of time

00:01:58.080 and we were finally able to pin it down.

00:02:00.320 One other thing before I get into the meat of the conversation

00:02:03.000 is my good friends over at Montana Knife Company.

00:02:06.540 Now, every time you listen to a podcast,

00:02:08.820 you're more than likely gonna be met with

00:02:10.680 a bunch of advertisements,

00:02:13.020 a bunch of nonsense, really.

00:02:14.420 Things that the podcasters host aren't using themselves,

00:02:18.560 things that aren't relevant or interesting to you,

00:02:20.740 and it's just a grab for a dollar.

00:02:22.880 It's a little different than what we do here.

00:02:24.500 It's a lot different than what we do.

00:02:26.240 I only work with companies that I have worked with

00:02:28.940 before having some sort of financial

00:02:32.060 or business arrangement.

00:02:33.300 And Montana Knife Company,

00:02:34.480 these guys have been friends for years,

00:02:36.640 met them years ago.

00:02:37.840 I've broken bread with their family.

00:02:39.880 I've made my own knife with Josh Smith,

00:02:42.360 who's the founder of Montana Knife Company,

00:02:44.200 and I use their knives literally every single day,

00:02:47.400 whether it's on a hunt or just around

00:02:50.100 because every good man needs a knife,

00:02:52.460 or even in the kitchen when I'm preparing meals

00:02:54.700 for my family, I use their knives

00:02:56.580 almost exclusively for those things.

00:02:58.700 So if you're looking for a good knife,

00:03:00.040 they're doing drops.

00:03:01.020 It seems like once, if not twice every week.

00:03:04.080 So go check them out at montananifecompany.com.

00:03:07.640 And then when you end up picking something up,

00:03:10.060 use the code ORDEROFMAN,

00:03:11.480 all one word at checkout,

00:03:13.240 and you'll save some money when you do.

00:03:15.440 The only other thing I'd mention about them,

00:03:17.720 100% made in America.

00:03:19.360 And that's no small feat or uninteresting point.

00:03:23.540 In fact, that's one of the most important things

00:03:26.000 about this organization

00:03:26.960 is they're putting good people in America to work,

00:03:29.040 building good products, montananifecompany.com.

00:03:32.120 All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest again.

00:03:34.280 His name is Nick Freitas.

00:03:35.380 He's a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division

00:03:37.560 and also Green Beret.

00:03:39.640 He also takes a very active role in his own politics

00:03:42.980 in the Virginia House of Delegates.

00:03:44.660 Nick is an extremely outspoken advocate

00:03:48.240 for conservative principles.

00:03:50.060 He reaches millions of people

00:03:51.660 on his various social media channels.

00:03:54.500 And in his videos, which are often very viral,

00:03:57.100 Nick shares his principles with a level of wit

00:04:00.520 and sarcasm and humor that has brought him

00:04:03.480 in these topics an extreme amount of attention,

00:04:06.800 some good, some not so good.

00:04:08.780 Nick is also a Christian.

00:04:10.120 He's a family man.

00:04:10.840 He's a successful businessman.

00:04:13.800 And he has a ton of profound insight

00:04:15.520 into some of the world's most pressing challenges

00:04:18.200 of the day.

00:04:21.760 Nick, what's up, brother?

00:04:22.740 So great to see you.

00:04:23.680 Thanks for joining me on the podcast today.

00:04:25.500 No, it's an honor.

00:04:26.840 Thanks for having me on.

00:04:28.520 I've been a longtime follower.

00:04:29.700 I mentioned to you before we hit the record button,

00:04:32.800 I think what I like most about what you do

00:04:35.220 is you weave the conversations about manliness

00:04:38.980 and masculinity into a bit of a political narrative,

00:04:42.840 but also I think more importantly than that,

00:04:45.280 a cultural narrative.

00:04:46.780 And I think the two are closely aligned,

00:04:49.120 but a lot of men don't seem to be able

00:04:51.360 to differentiate between political and cultural,

00:04:54.600 and they're just not willing to get involved

00:04:56.740 the way it seems like you are.

00:04:59.180 Well, our politics has become so intertwined.

00:05:02.260 You know, there's a saying that politics

00:05:03.960 is downstream from culture, and that's true,

00:05:06.380 but politics can also impact and affect culture as well,

00:05:09.560 especially the larger and more intrusive government gets.

00:05:12.400 And so, yeah, we definitely try to talk about things

00:05:15.100 from a cultural standpoint,

00:05:16.100 because honestly, I don't want people obsessed with politics.

00:05:19.800 You've got to pay attention to it.

00:05:21.240 You've got to be involved on some level.

00:05:22.680 But ultimately, if you want your country to thrive,

00:05:27.920 start with your family, right?

00:05:29.160 Start with the people around you

00:05:30.480 that you can kind of have the greatest impact with.

00:05:33.540 And so a lot of what we discuss is the cultural component,

00:05:37.060 but also kind of explaining how politics is,

00:05:40.600 I would argue, increasingly standing in the way

00:05:43.440 of families thriving,

00:05:46.680 and specifically the role, I would say,

00:05:49.100 of men in society and fathers and husbands.

00:05:52.680 What do you feel like the role of men in society is?

00:05:56.800 I think traditionally and historically,

00:05:59.060 we've always had a pretty good understanding

00:06:01.000 as a society of what that means.

00:06:03.080 It really isn't until the relative ease of modernity

00:06:07.120 where that has even been called into question.

00:06:09.420 So what is your take on our role in society and culture?

00:06:13.860 I think, well, look, I always tell people this,

00:06:16.960 I'm first and foremost a Christian,

00:06:18.120 and so my biblical worldview informs

00:06:20.920 what I believe it is to be a man.

00:06:23.940 And so we are someone that is supposed to,

00:06:26.560 when you look at our role in the physical world,

00:06:28.640 we're supposed to protect, we're supposed to provide,

00:06:31.020 we're supposed to provide an element of security for society

00:06:34.060 so that society can actually thrive.

00:06:35.820 I think genuine masculinity provides an environment

00:06:41.040 where genuine femininity can thrive.

00:06:44.200 And what all of that means is that if you look at

00:06:46.900 kind of the five categories that I always break out,

00:06:49.640 you've got the spiritual, the intellectual,

00:06:51.740 the emotional, the physical, and the professional.

00:06:54.520 So I see my job is I'm supposed to honor God

00:06:58.380 with respect to the way I live my life.

00:07:01.040 Intellectually, I'm supposed to be formidable and capable.

00:07:03.160 I'm supposed to develop my ability to be able to think about things

00:07:06.160 in a way that uses critical thought and analysis

00:07:10.920 in order to come to logical conclusions.

00:07:13.620 When it comes to the emotional,

00:07:15.020 I'm supposed to regulate my emotions in such a way

00:07:17.800 to where that I can fulfill my duties,

00:07:20.280 but that I can also show tenderness and compassion

00:07:22.700 to the people that need it from me.

00:07:24.820 When it comes to the physical,

00:07:26.380 I'm supposed to keep myself in a certain degree of shape

00:07:29.820 so that once again, I can fulfill the proper duties

00:07:32.600 that I need to.

00:07:33.680 And when it comes to the professional,

00:07:35.220 that kind of falls into not only the provision side

00:07:38.160 of providing for a family

00:07:39.400 or providing for myself or people in need,

00:07:43.100 but also I believe that we were designed to create.

00:07:46.580 And challenges shape us.

00:07:50.360 And a lot of times when men don't have a healthy challenge

00:07:54.340 that they can pursue, they look for destructive ones.

00:07:56.640 And so that professional component is about developing

00:08:00.400 the sort of capabilities that are necessary

00:08:02.080 in order to be able to provide,

00:08:03.560 but also to be able to share in creation.

00:08:06.480 Yeah.

00:08:07.180 I mean, that's a powerful framework.

00:08:08.440 I work really well under frameworks

00:08:09.760 and having that system in front of me

00:08:11.720 almost in a way helps me see on a daily basis,

00:08:14.900 am I hitting each of those five?

00:08:16.560 I use four, but the overlap is very similar.

00:08:20.320 Is this something that you've always identified?

00:08:24.300 Is this something that you've had to develop?

00:08:25.880 Like what does your upbringing look like?

00:08:29.080 And the view of healthy masculinity

00:08:31.420 with regards to how your father showed up

00:08:33.600 or lack thereof,

00:08:34.620 and where did this framework derive from?

00:08:38.120 Sure.

00:08:38.520 So I was not planned, right?

00:08:40.780 At least not by my parents.

00:08:43.460 You know, my mom was actually,

00:08:44.920 she was going to a Bible college in Southern California.

00:08:48.040 She was going to Biola for her nursing degree.

00:08:51.140 And she knew my dad from,

00:08:52.780 they had both grown up in Northern California.

00:08:54.480 And she knew my dad from there.

00:08:56.100 And they were dating at the time.

00:08:58.020 And then she ended up pregnant with me

00:08:59.960 at a Bible college in the 70s.

00:09:02.940 Interesting, okay.

00:09:03.800 Yeah.

00:09:04.340 So she had to drop out of school.

00:09:07.280 Her and my dad got married.

00:09:09.360 My dad was a police officer.

00:09:10.900 He was LAPD.

00:09:11.700 My mom was a nurse.

00:09:13.820 They had my brother

00:09:14.840 and then they got divorced shortly after that.

00:09:16.920 So I was about,

00:09:18.480 I was a little over three,

00:09:20.340 I think it was, yeah,

00:09:21.360 three and a half, four when they got divorced.

00:09:23.800 And then my dad lived in Southern California.

00:09:25.720 My mom lived in Northern California.

00:09:27.280 And for the rest of my life growing up,

00:09:29.180 I would spend the school year with my mom

00:09:31.140 and the summers with my dad.

00:09:34.520 And one of the things

00:09:35.700 that was really formative to me growing up

00:09:37.540 was that both sets of grandparents

00:09:39.280 lived in Northern California.

00:09:41.180 So during the school year,

00:09:42.620 you know, I'd go to school.

00:09:43.540 My mom worked very, very hard as a nurse.

00:09:46.460 And she, you know, I would get,

00:09:48.420 I got to spend a lot of time with my grandparents

00:09:49.920 who I just absolutely loved and adored.

00:09:53.100 I also just completely admired my father.

00:09:56.940 You know, he's LAPD.

00:09:58.940 You know, he was the sort of guy

00:10:00.700 that I thought was a good picture of masculinity.

00:10:05.280 My dad got remarried.

00:10:06.620 My mom got remarried.

00:10:07.720 My mom and my stepdad got divorced.

00:10:10.040 My dad and my stepmom

00:10:11.840 ended up also getting divorced later.

00:10:13.280 But after they had seven more kids.

00:10:14.860 So I'm the oldest of nine.

00:10:16.420 Whoa.

00:10:17.320 Yeah.

00:10:17.720 So it was kind of a,

00:10:18.580 it was a weird dynamic.

00:10:21.560 But I can, I can honestly say,

00:10:24.120 you know, I was blessed to have two parents

00:10:27.880 that even though their marriage didn't work out,

00:10:29.880 they didn't try to use us against each other.

00:10:33.560 They always respected that.

00:10:35.100 I always felt that at least in front of us,

00:10:37.400 they had their own problems,

00:10:38.420 but at least in front of us,

00:10:39.520 my mom was always very respectful of my father,

00:10:41.640 my father respectful of my mother.

00:10:44.140 I have a great deal of admiration for my mom,

00:10:47.260 just absolute go-getter.

00:10:49.780 But also someone that showed a great deal of,

00:10:52.320 of, you know, compassion and empathy.

00:10:54.020 So it was, it was interesting

00:10:56.040 because I don't think anybody would look at that

00:10:57.440 and say, oh yeah, that's the ideal picture of,

00:10:59.800 you know, mom and dad in the house,

00:11:01.200 raising the kids.

00:11:02.280 But that stuff happens.

00:11:04.060 And I was always very, very grateful.

00:11:05.520 Pretty common actually.

00:11:06.520 Yeah.

00:11:06.860 Yeah.

00:11:07.280 And I was always very, very grateful of the fact

00:11:09.740 that there was, there was two things that I,

00:11:12.620 three things actually that I thought my parents did

00:11:14.420 under less than ideal circumstances

00:11:15.880 that I, it was very formative to me.

00:11:17.960 Um, one, they never made it out like,

00:11:21.300 um, they never made it out that,

00:11:23.800 well, this is normal.

00:11:24.460 Uh, they both appreciated that the goal

00:11:26.960 was to get married and stay married,

00:11:28.500 but sometimes that doesn't happen.

00:11:30.160 And instead of treating that like,

00:11:31.760 well, it's no big deal.

00:11:32.660 They treated, no, it is a big deal.

00:11:34.440 And, and the ideal is not this,

00:11:36.200 but we're still going to do our best

00:11:37.960 to be a mother and a father.

00:11:40.120 Uh, really appreciate that.

00:11:41.760 The second thing I already said before

00:11:43.040 is they never used, uh,

00:11:44.600 never use the kids against one another

00:11:46.220 to try to score points or, or anything like that.

00:11:49.700 Um, and then the, the third part is,

00:11:52.320 is that they both, they,

00:11:53.800 there was a certain element of their worldview

00:11:55.260 within their Christian faith, um,

00:11:58.580 that they, that they shared,

00:11:59.780 that they could build a consistent

00:12:01.440 moral framework around,

00:12:03.180 even if they weren't always to the,

00:12:05.980 even if they weren't always able to live it out

00:12:07.680 or represented it the way they would want to,

00:12:09.660 they never blamed the framework, right?

00:12:12.200 They, they said, yeah, we screwed up

00:12:14.020 and now we've got to make the best of what happened.

00:12:16.500 But it's not, it's not that the framework is wrong.

00:12:18.620 It's not that the morality is wrong.

00:12:20.680 It's just that sometimes, you know,

00:12:22.680 sometimes it doesn't happen that way.

00:12:24.400 So what, what do you move on from there?

00:12:26.100 And what that also taught me

00:12:26.980 was a certain degree of resiliency

00:12:28.200 that you don't get to sit there and wallow

00:12:30.420 in something when things don't go the way

00:12:32.920 that you want them to,

00:12:33.940 that you might've planned them toward,

00:12:35.780 but you still got to persevere.

00:12:37.220 You still got to, you still got things to do,

00:12:39.120 things to accomplish.

00:12:40.400 And so I, I was very, you know,

00:12:42.840 maybe it's not a, I was very grateful for that.

00:12:45.140 I thought both of them worked very, very hard

00:12:46.580 to be able to model that.

00:12:49.500 I mean, I commend you for extracting those lessons,

00:12:53.180 but also your parents for being in that situation.

00:12:55.320 Cause I know it's difficult.

00:12:56.420 Personally, I've gone through a divorce about a year,

00:12:59.240 a little over a year ago now.

00:13:00.960 And I strive for the, for those things.

00:13:04.260 But even still, when you have this interpersonal communication

00:13:08.960 and stories and baggage that you're framing

00:13:11.380 all your lessons through and your stories through,

00:13:13.180 it's, it's hard to extract the wisdom of being cordial

00:13:17.760 with each other, recognizing reality that this is an ideal,

00:13:21.480 but also not pitting the kids against each other.

00:13:23.940 And so I strive for that.

00:13:25.380 So I can, I can, I can really appreciate

00:13:28.120 how hard that must've been for your parents

00:13:30.340 and then for you to be able to extract those lessons.

00:13:33.180 Yeah. Well, and I, I think one of the things

00:13:35.940 that it's, it's important for, um,

00:13:39.040 I think, I think it's important for kids growing up

00:13:41.920 in those environments to, to have a little bit of,

00:13:43.800 especially as you start to get older,

00:13:44.940 when you know that your parents loved you,

00:13:47.060 when you know that they were really trying,

00:13:48.560 they're really trying, right?

00:13:49.540 And sometimes it doesn't work the way

00:13:51.580 that anybody would like a growth thing for a child.

00:13:56.400 Um, especially as they started to become an adult

00:13:58.040 is cut your parents some slack.

00:14:01.000 Um, they, they were, you know, it,

00:14:03.600 a number of things can happen to,

00:14:05.620 to throw things off kilter

00:14:06.860 and you are going to get so much more

00:14:08.620 out of your relationship with your parents.

00:14:10.260 And it's going to allow you to learn the lessons

00:14:12.100 that you need to.

00:14:13.620 If you can cut your parents some slack

00:14:15.340 and appreciate the effort that they put in,

00:14:17.440 um, to, to a messy situation.

00:14:20.680 Um, and, and I, I, I see,

00:14:23.080 I actually see kids nowadays to where

00:14:25.020 when their parents don't provide them,

00:14:26.840 you know, everything that they thought they should

00:14:28.380 or the ideal environment, it's like,

00:14:30.680 okay, but can you also look at what maybe

00:14:32.460 your parents had to endure before,

00:14:34.020 you know, they got, before you came along,

00:14:36.360 what did, what did they have to overcome?

00:14:38.580 And, and instead of, instead of sitting there

00:14:40.640 and, and, you know, playing the victim

00:14:42.100 because you didn't get everything that you wanted,

00:14:44.000 can you appreciate that?

00:14:45.860 Hey, they, they did their best

00:14:47.060 by you and now you're going to build

00:14:48.560 and you're going to learn from that.

00:14:50.180 And, you know, it's interesting.

00:14:51.340 My wife came from a situation

00:14:52.840 where her parents both got divorced as well.

00:14:55.560 And we got married at 19 and 20.

00:14:57.860 Now she grew up in a divorced home.

00:14:59.800 I grew up in multiple divorced homes.

00:15:02.500 Anybody will tell you getting married

00:15:04.140 at 19 and 20 was a horrible decision for us.

00:15:06.840 Right.

00:15:07.240 But we, we just celebrated 25 years of marriage

00:15:10.080 and that was 25 years of marriage.

00:15:12.280 And I joined the military.

00:15:13.480 So 19 and 20, I go off to the military

00:15:16.740 and, you know, we've been married,

00:15:20.600 you know, we get married about a little less

00:15:23.280 than a year after I'm in the military.

00:15:24.920 I'm at the 82nd Airborne Division.

00:15:26.500 And then we reenlist, we go to Hawaii.

00:15:28.620 We have our first daughter, 9-11 happens.

00:15:31.180 I volunteer for Army Special Forces.

00:15:33.620 And then, you know, I'm, I'm going to Iraq.

00:15:36.120 I'm going to Asia.

00:15:37.180 I'm going to all these other places doing this.

00:15:38.600 And so I always tell people the first 10 years of marriage,

00:15:40.420 I spent half of it away.

00:15:43.540 And she had a, you know,

00:15:44.760 we had three kids while I was in the military.

00:15:47.340 And so again, anybody will tell you that's,

00:15:50.220 that's not ideal.

00:15:51.680 That's not an ideal situation for a marriage.

00:15:53.840 But one of the things I chalk up to

00:15:55.780 is that both her and I experienced things growing up

00:15:58.480 that we didn't want to replicate.

00:16:00.420 And what it did is that it provided an invitation

00:16:02.860 for both of us to ask some really hard questions

00:16:05.800 while we were still very, very young and dating

00:16:08.580 and determining whether or not

00:16:09.460 we wanted to build a life together.

00:16:10.840 And that, that was very helpful for us,

00:16:13.480 you know, moving forward.

00:16:15.540 But I, I always, I always tell,

00:16:17.560 I always tell people that either grew up in divorced homes

00:16:20.280 or are going through a divorce or whatnot,

00:16:22.700 there's still such a huge formative role

00:16:25.040 that you can play to be able to help your kids

00:16:28.000 navigate that.

00:16:29.280 And, and the role of the parents is to persevere through it.

00:16:31.280 And the role of the kids

00:16:32.080 is to cut their parents some slack.

00:16:33.900 Was there, was there any red flags with,

00:16:39.420 with your wife as you were doing the military thing?

00:16:42.340 And I was in the military too.

00:16:43.520 I did a combat tour in 2005 and six in, in Ramadi, Iraq.

00:16:47.180 And I was, I was newly married at the time.

00:16:50.040 So I can relate a little bit with what you're going through.

00:16:53.100 Were there any red flags that you experienced with her?

00:16:56.480 And then also, how did you know that she was committed?

00:17:01.720 Because I'm sure you took on a lot of baggage as a kid

00:17:05.280 with your mom and dad,

00:17:07.160 and then your dad going through another divorce.

00:17:09.740 And so I'm sure there was some baggage that you took on

00:17:12.100 that I don't want to put words in your mouth,

00:17:14.220 but I imagine, hey, is, is love real?

00:17:17.500 Does marriage last, et cetera, et cetera.

00:17:20.560 So when, when Tina, so let me put it this way.

00:17:23.340 Like in, in high school,

00:17:24.640 I went to a very, very small school.

00:17:27.460 We had a graduating class of like 27, right?

00:17:29.480 To give you an idea of how small it was.

00:17:31.820 My wife was way too.

00:17:33.140 I had 41 and I thought I was small.

00:17:34.840 So 27 is almost half that, right?

00:17:36.780 Yeah.

00:17:37.080 But my wife was way too hot for me.

00:17:38.980 We met our freshman year.

00:17:40.020 She dated a different guy.

00:17:41.300 I was, I was, you know, hung up on a different girl

00:17:43.700 for a lot of high school and whatnot.

00:17:45.580 And I was the guy that,

00:17:47.460 the best way I could describe it is

00:17:51.060 I was really searching for,

00:17:54.200 I wanted to be an honorable man.

00:17:56.720 And that probably sounds a little bit weird.

00:17:59.420 The best way I got, again,

00:18:01.720 growing up around my, my grandfather

00:18:03.480 and seeing my dads during the summer,

00:18:05.060 like my grandfather was, you know,

00:18:06.900 joined the Navy in World War II when he was 16,

00:18:10.100 ran it like threatened to run away from home

00:18:12.160 if his dad wouldn't let him sign up and join.

00:18:14.380 And then he was a fire, he was a logger

00:18:16.120 and then he was a firefighter.

00:18:17.460 My, my dad was again, a homicide detective.

00:18:20.340 My, my other grandpa had, had, had served in the Air Force

00:18:24.760 and had always done jobs that he was a surveyor

00:18:27.300 in Alaska for the pipeline.

00:18:28.920 So I grew up around these men that I looked at

00:18:31.600 as being models of strength.

00:18:34.800 Very manly men.

00:18:36.200 Yes.

00:18:37.080 Yeah.

00:18:37.400 Yeah.

00:18:37.620 Very, very manly men.

00:18:39.780 But, but also accessible, right?

00:18:41.620 You could sit down.

00:18:42.440 They would, they would tell you their stories.

00:18:44.100 My, my grandfather was an incredibly likable man.

00:18:46.860 Like everybody loved Bill Freitas, right?

00:18:48.680 Um, so there, there was, there was that aspect.

00:18:52.600 And then I got, I got really into, um, like civil war history

00:18:56.920 when I was like 11 or 12.

00:18:58.780 And I remember watching the Ken Burns documentary.

00:19:01.700 And one of the things that that's just flush with is this idea.

00:19:06.460 And, and John Lovell, who, you know, would call this the warrior poet, right?

00:19:10.140 It was the idea of these, these men that had a mission and a focus

00:19:14.160 and were engaging in a, in a form of combat that was just incredible

00:19:19.840 because the technology had, had surpassed the tactics.

00:19:23.640 And so you're marching in Napoleonic formation

00:19:26.320 and the officers are out in front leading their men.

00:19:29.600 And, and I, and I'm growing up surrounded by these strong men

00:19:33.460 wanting to be like them, um, delving into a historical period,

00:19:38.940 which was really, um, kind of enamored with, with courage and bravery

00:19:43.940 and purpose and chivalry and the way you properly treat a woman

00:19:48.120 and the way you properly, you know, protect a woman.

00:19:50.420 And, um, there was, I mean, it was just,

00:19:54.520 so I was kind of immersed in that and I wanted to be that.

00:19:58.000 Well, I got news for you.

00:19:59.540 If you're, if you're a young man growing up

00:20:01.920 and you want to be all of those things

00:20:03.680 and you're, you're sitting there reading civil war history

00:20:06.720 while all of your peers are not,

00:20:09.160 you're, you're going to be a little bit awkward, right?

00:20:12.380 You're the weirdo.

00:20:13.480 Yeah.

00:20:13.700 And I wasn't so socially awkward that I wasn't like,

00:20:17.220 I had friends and I played sports and the whole deal.

00:20:19.580 And I got along with people just fine.

00:20:21.440 But I had this idea that like, I'm, I'm the teenage boy

00:20:24.200 that's constantly opened the doors for, you know,

00:20:27.080 the girls as they walk in the classroom.

00:20:28.780 And I'm very sincere.

00:20:30.140 Like if I want to date a girl, I'm very sincere

00:20:32.240 about my intentions and boundaries and the whole deal.

00:20:35.560 And, and I'm watching buddies of mine that are just kind of,

00:20:39.800 let's just say that is not their approach.

00:20:42.280 And the girls are all attracted to them.

00:20:44.380 Not me.

00:20:45.100 Right.

00:20:45.380 Like I'm, I'm friend zoned.

00:20:48.080 I'm totally friends.

00:20:49.240 They're the bad guy.

00:20:50.360 They want to spend time with the bad guy.

00:20:51.900 Sure.

00:20:52.080 Forget it.

00:20:52.820 I am the guy they call up to complain about my buddy

00:20:56.120 that they're dating.

00:20:57.520 Right.

00:20:57.960 And I remember thinking, screw this.

00:21:01.140 Like by my senior year, I'm thinking, no, this is bull crap.

00:21:04.440 Like I was, I was honorable.

00:21:06.580 I was polite.

00:21:07.380 I was all these other things and it, it did not pay off.

00:21:10.900 And then there was this, there was this point where Tina,

00:21:14.680 all of a sudden we, we kind of recognized that we were

00:21:17.160 interested in one another.

00:21:18.120 And I'm thinking like, this can't, this can't be like,

00:21:20.860 this has got to be a, a, a dare for her.

00:21:23.320 Right.

00:21:23.440 Like this can't, she can't be truly interested in me.

00:21:28.220 Um, and I remember I'm like, I'm going to play it cool.

00:21:31.000 I am going to play it cool.

00:21:32.060 I promise you, this is all going somewhere.

00:21:34.760 And I remember as we, we started dating, it's our senior year.

00:21:37.400 And I'm like, well, I'm going off to the army.

00:21:39.220 Um, so, you know, Hey, cool.

00:21:40.940 Maybe we can date our senior year and the whole deal,

00:21:42.800 but I don't expect this to, to, you know, last.

00:21:46.200 And, and the longer we're dating, the more I'm just like, man,

00:21:48.660 I really care about this girl.

00:21:50.360 Right.

00:21:50.620 Like I really, I really love this girl, but I'm not saying crap.

00:21:53.300 I'm not going to be sincere.

00:21:54.420 I'm not going to be open with my feelings.

00:21:55.820 Cause you get hurt for doing that.

00:21:58.280 And I remember the day I left for basic training, uh,

00:22:01.340 she shows up and she's there to see me off.

00:22:03.860 And I'm like, well, this is what happens, right?

00:22:05.140 I'm gonna go to basic and there's no way,

00:22:07.480 there's no way this hot girl that a ton of dudes want to date is going to stick

00:22:10.880 with me while I'm going to get a John letter before too long here.

00:22:14.540 I'm going to get a dear John, right?

00:22:16.420 Jody's going to be in force and that's, what's going to happen.

00:22:19.500 And so I tell her the day I'm leaving, I'm like, well, look, um,

00:22:23.440 I'm obviously not going to be dating anybody else in infantry, basic training.

00:22:26.660 Right.

00:22:27.000 But if you want to, you're free to, yeah.

00:22:29.420 Right.

00:22:29.700 But if you want to, you're free to, you're free to, and she was mad.

00:22:33.960 She'll tell you to this day, she was mad that that's what I told her,

00:22:36.200 but that was a defense mechanism.

00:22:38.180 Right.

00:22:38.540 Because like you said, how did I know she was going to stick with me?

00:22:41.560 How did I know that she was going to be, that she was committed to this?

00:22:45.120 Cause I wanted to give her every opportunity,

00:22:46.920 all permission to, to go off and do what she wanted.

00:22:49.680 But she wrote me a letter every single day.

00:22:53.300 I was in infantry, basic training every single day.

00:22:56.840 And, um, and you know, the deal when you first get into basic or whatnot,

00:22:59.400 it's not like all your letters show up regularly.

00:23:01.100 Right.

00:23:01.460 It's like, so like two weeks, three weeks.

00:23:03.560 Yeah.

00:23:03.960 Yeah.

00:23:04.120 Three weeks.

00:23:04.680 I'm still waiting.

00:23:05.280 Like, where's the, I said, Oh, see, I was right.

00:23:06.940 I was right.

00:23:07.560 She, I got to make like one call to her.

00:23:09.700 And in the first month I was down there, I'm like, see, this is it, man.

00:23:12.320 Like the letters aren't coming and all right, this is what it was.

00:23:15.960 And, um, and I was a little bit heartbroken there for a moment.

00:23:18.620 And then all of a sudden I get three weeks of letters in one day.

00:23:21.920 And every day, every time we got mail after that, I always had something.

00:23:25.420 I always had a letter and, um, she showed up to infantry, basic training.

00:23:30.100 And I had to go to airborne school right after that.

00:23:31.840 And we were right there on the Chattahoochee at this restaurant.

00:23:34.260 And that was the day I told her that I loved her.

00:23:37.400 Um, how long was that, that you guys had been together at that point?

00:23:40.840 We had been together at that point, probably eight months.

00:23:45.300 No, no, it was longer than that.

00:23:47.060 Gosh, it was almost 10 months.

00:23:48.340 It was almost a year.

00:23:49.240 Really?

00:23:49.600 Before you said, I love you.

00:23:50.780 Interesting.

00:23:51.260 Oh, I wasn't doing it.

00:23:51.960 Obviously you were gone.

00:23:53.160 Yeah.

00:23:53.380 Yeah.

00:23:53.800 I was, I wasn't doing it.

00:23:55.080 I wasn't going to say I, I, and then when I was in basic, I wasn't going to say, I love

00:23:58.300 you in a letter, right?

00:23:58.940 I was going to say it in person to her.

00:24:01.060 And she had told me, she, and she'll later tell me, she was like, I knew I loved you.

00:24:04.900 She goes, but I was going to make you say it first.

00:24:07.580 Um, so both of us, but what's that?

00:24:10.840 Did you say it first?

00:24:11.960 I said it first.

00:24:12.680 And then, and then she said, are you sure?

00:24:14.200 I said, yes.

00:24:14.840 And she goes, I love you too.

00:24:15.680 As a man should, I think a man should always say at first, I think, look, I think we need

00:24:20.260 to recognize that when it comes to relationships, women are already, women are already going

00:24:24.780 into that from a higher degree of vulnerability than we are.

00:24:28.520 And so showing vulnerability to her, I think is perfectly appropriate if you're serious

00:24:33.740 about it, right?

00:24:34.340 It should never be a manipulative thing.

00:24:36.460 And both of us had grown up in environments where we had seen that, that breakdown.

00:24:40.640 And so we wanted it to be genuine and, um, yeah, but we had also talked, we had talked

00:24:46.560 in depth about marriage without either one of us saying, I love you to the other one.

00:24:51.300 Um, because we also wanted to know that that's what we wanted and that's what we were serious

00:24:55.900 about.

00:24:56.220 But yeah, so that's how, that is how I knew, um, that, that she was going to be, that's

00:25:02.600 how I thought like, okay, that was a good test of loyalty, right?

00:25:04.820 Basic training.

00:25:06.280 And then, um, when we're in the military, um, again, I, I just never, I never had to

00:25:11.420 worry.

00:25:11.600 She never gave me cause to worry.

00:25:13.180 That's one thing too.

00:25:14.020 We talk a lot about the responsibilities that men have to their wives.

00:25:17.420 And I think that's absolutely true.

00:25:18.840 Wives also have responsibilities to their husband.

00:25:21.460 And if your husband's going to be away a lot, making sure that you're conducting yourself

00:25:25.000 in such a way to where, you know, that he's it for you, um, is, is really important.

00:25:30.720 And she always did that.

00:25:31.600 Same thing with my combat tours.

00:25:32.660 I was actually over in Iraq in 06 as well.

00:25:34.500 I was, uh, I was up in, uh, um, bod, uh, Beji in, uh, 2006.

00:25:40.140 So we were over in Iraq at the same time and same thing.

00:25:43.600 She wrote, she wrote regularly.

00:25:45.020 She'd always send pictures.

00:25:46.080 Like we had, um, we had children at the time.

00:25:48.200 She would, you know, make stuff for the kids to wear and, and make sure that they stayed

00:25:51.900 connected with, with daddy.

00:25:52.940 When I came home from my combat, uh, first combat tour, there, there wasn't a lot of, um,

00:25:59.640 you know, there's always that when you come back home and it's, it's reintegrating

00:26:02.800 into the family, she made that so seamless for me because when I was gone, she never complained

00:26:08.920 about me being gone.

00:26:10.260 And, and, and, and, you know, it has to be hard, right?

00:26:13.300 No, it has to be unbelievably hard, harder on women than it is for the guys overseas.

00:26:17.160 I think, I mean, it's, it's, they're, they're dealing with so much uncertainty and so much

00:26:21.280 things that they can't control.

00:26:22.560 And it like, they don't get a rifle to shoot off the things that, that, that are plaguing

00:26:26.580 them.

00:26:26.760 Right.

00:26:27.340 But she always reinforced to my kids for, for, you know, and I, I went back in 08, she always

00:26:32.560 reinforced to my kids like, Hey, daddy would love to be here with us, but daddy's protecting

00:26:35.900 us.

00:26:36.140 Daddy's serving his country and we are so proud of him.

00:26:39.400 So when I came home, my kids were thrilled to see me.

00:26:42.320 They didn't feel abandoned.

00:26:43.180 They didn't feel, um, disconnected from daddy, right?

00:26:46.780 It was, they, they love daddy and they were so happy he was home.

00:26:49.920 And that wasn't me.

00:26:51.460 That was her.

00:26:53.140 Um, and so time after time, she had just demonstrated that, that when she was committed to me and

00:27:00.340 our, when she was also committed to our marriage.

00:27:02.160 And so she embraced the roles that she had to play within that marriage and just consistently

00:27:07.180 reinforced that she was there through thick and thin.

00:27:10.220 And that doesn't mean that every time it was happy too.

00:27:12.420 Like I remember us being on a phone call.

00:27:14.100 I got back from a combat tour, went straight to a J set.

00:27:17.420 I'm on a satellite phone in Bangladesh.

00:27:19.300 I just got an opportunity to go to a Sephardic, which was kind of a high-speed CQB school.

00:27:23.920 And I'm saying, Hey baby, when I get back home from Bangladesh, two weeks later, I gotta leave

00:27:27.300 for, and she was not happy.

00:27:29.260 She's like, this ain't war, babe.

00:27:30.680 You could be home.

00:27:31.620 This ain't war.

00:27:32.280 Right.

00:27:32.600 And, um, but one of the other things that my wife always did for me that was really incredible

00:27:37.340 is, is, and this is rooted in our faith.

00:27:41.220 Um, our, our thing is, is that I am the head of the household.

00:27:44.800 Now, a lot of men get caught up on being in charge without understanding the responsibility

00:27:49.620 that comes with that.

00:27:50.480 Because what that honestly means within a biblical worldview is my life for hers.

00:27:55.560 Um, and there's, there's only been one time, there's only been probably a two or three times

00:28:00.680 in the whole course of our marriage where we could not reach resolution on a course of

00:28:05.560 action.

00:28:07.240 And we, we prayed about it.

00:28:09.400 We debated about it.

00:28:10.200 We talked about it.

00:28:10.860 Sometimes that we had heated discussions about it, the whole deal, right?

00:28:13.280 We're both passionate people.

00:28:14.320 And we finally came to a point where it's like, the decision has to be made.

00:28:17.900 And she goes, well, babe, I will follow your lead.

00:28:21.380 And when she said that she didn't just mean, okay, I will begrudgingly do what you say because

00:28:26.920 you're the head of the household and you have that responsibility.

00:28:29.260 It was, I will now commit myself to this decision to make it work.

00:28:34.880 So she went all in rather than just complied.

00:28:37.260 It was, it was a commitment versus compliance.

00:28:40.980 Yes, it was.

00:28:42.360 I don't agree that this is the hill we should be charging.

00:28:44.560 But we got to charge it.

00:28:46.820 We got to, we got to move.

00:28:48.100 So now I'm going to move and now I'm going to charge it.

00:28:49.920 And again, it's one of those things that have just reinforced over time when, whenever I'm

00:28:54.700 in difficult situations, like, no, I know she's got my back and she knows I have hers.

00:29:00.800 She, she has to also know that if I have to make a decision, um, that I have to make.

00:29:06.860 So with, with her wellbeing and the wellbeing of our, our children and our marriage above my

00:29:11.400 own needs, wants, and desires.

00:29:13.920 Um, and sometimes that can be difficult too, because it's really easy to make your own

00:29:17.120 needs, wants, and desires, what's best for the marriage or best for the family.

00:29:20.380 And it's, it's, and she, she has to trust that I'm not doing that.

00:29:24.560 Um, so I'm, I'm taking notes like fervishly.

00:29:28.220 I don't know if you can hear me punching away on my keyboard.

00:29:29.940 I'm taking notes here, but I have a couple of questions on that.

00:29:32.900 So first question is why, well, I'll say, let me ask this.

00:29:37.940 This is the first question.

00:29:38.840 Do you remember what those scenarios were?

00:29:40.960 Number one, like, what is it that you guys couldn't come to resolution on that?

00:29:44.300 She finally acquiesced to your, your desire, your path.

00:29:48.040 And then second to that is what is it about you that she decided to do it?

00:29:55.900 Like, why would she, for lack of better term, be subservient to your desire or your path?

00:30:03.660 Yeah.

00:30:03.840 To submit.

00:30:04.580 Yeah.

00:30:05.380 Um, right.

00:30:06.360 Yeah.

00:30:06.760 It was a big one.

00:30:07.580 I was leaving the military and, um, our plan had been, Hey, we're going to leave the military.

00:30:12.500 We're going to go back.

00:30:13.400 We're going to go back home.

00:30:14.140 So I got out at 11 years.

00:30:15.120 So it's not like I got a pension or anything like that.

00:30:16.960 I got to immediately find work.

00:30:18.700 Well, I found work, um, working out of Palo Alto for a company that I was doing consulting

00:30:24.760 with on, on their analytical software and things of that nature.

00:30:27.660 It's like, okay, this is kind of ideal, right?

00:30:29.120 We're, we're moving back on that plan.

00:30:30.900 We're going to go back home.

00:30:32.520 And her dad was, um, sick at the time.

00:30:35.340 And so she was very much looking forward to getting back close to family, helping out with

00:30:40.120 her, her father.

00:30:42.400 And, um, I kind of, I called an audible on all that.

00:30:46.020 There was a contract opening up in Virginia.

00:30:47.700 Now I'd always wanted to live in Virginia.

00:30:50.340 Um, but the other thing that was becoming apparent was, is that I wasn't going to be

00:30:54.180 able to do the job I was doing in California.

00:30:55.900 I could do it in Virginia.

00:30:58.120 Arguably I could have done it some other places, but I was not going to be able to do it close

00:31:01.180 to family.

00:31:01.720 But, you know, very convenient, right?

00:31:05.040 Like, oh, you, you want to live in Virginia.

00:31:07.640 And now the only job opportunity you can find is in Virginia, right?

00:31:11.880 Oh, okay.

00:31:12.740 Isn't that convenient, right?

00:31:14.180 Yeah.

00:31:14.540 Yeah.

00:31:15.280 And, and we, we had to just, we had to discuss through that and talk through that.

00:31:19.140 And there was things that I assumed inappropriately where I didn't properly communicate to her

00:31:23.420 or explain what was going on.

00:31:24.900 Um, in part because she had done such a good job of going with the flow, but the difference

00:31:30.260 was, is that was when the military was directing the flow, right?

00:31:33.580 Now it's like, no, babe, we can actually make some of these decisions and, and you can't,

00:31:37.800 you know, don't act unilaterally.

00:31:39.480 Let me in on the decision.

00:31:40.680 And, and that was some growth I had to do on my part as well.

00:31:43.740 But, um, I, she, she was convinced that I wanted to have just arbitrarily done this because

00:31:48.960 I wanted to, um, I made a good argument for why here's the other thing too, her letting

00:31:55.560 me make the decision.

00:31:56.400 Didn't mean there weren't weeks of going back and forth and discussing things.

00:32:01.140 And another thing that I really appreciate about my wife is that I will hear guys sometimes

00:32:06.880 talk about this idea that, well, don't argue with your wife, just happy wife, happy life

00:32:10.880 and go on from there.

00:32:11.660 That's garbage.

00:32:12.580 If I think my wife's wrong, I tell her and we have a discussion about it.

00:32:16.140 And the thing, the agreement that she struck from me is talk to me like I'm the woman that

00:32:21.660 you love, right?

00:32:23.600 We can have discussions, we can have debates, but never talk to me.

00:32:26.580 Like you're trying to beat me in a debate.

00:32:28.420 Talk to me like I'm the woman that you love or like one of your soldiers, right?

00:32:32.440 I know that was a problem for me and a lot of guys.

00:32:34.660 It's like, are you talking to me or one of your guys?

00:32:37.340 That's something I've often heard.

00:32:39.340 Oh, and it's true.

00:32:40.500 Cause it's hard, right?

00:32:41.340 When you're used to, when you're used to commanding, that's very, very different than what

00:32:45.620 the relationship is like in the marriage.

00:32:47.280 So I remember very early on first year of marriage, she's like, baby, you need to talk

00:32:50.960 to me.

00:32:51.120 Like I'm the woman you love.

00:32:51.980 I'm like, okay, that stuck with me.

00:32:53.700 That stuck with me.

00:32:55.220 The thing that I always told her too, is it's like, look, emotions matter, but facts are

00:32:59.660 facts.

00:33:00.740 And regardless of how we feel about them, they're facts.

00:33:03.720 And she respected that.

00:33:05.740 So there are times where she would be willing to come forward and say, look, babe, I know you're

00:33:10.640 right, but I'm just mad.

00:33:12.480 I'm just mad that you're right.

00:33:14.300 Right.

00:33:14.480 I'm mad that this is the reality.

00:33:16.840 And that was fine.

00:33:17.720 I could deal with that.

00:33:18.740 Right.

00:33:18.960 Like, let me know, let me know.

00:33:20.920 And I can deal with the fact that, yeah, you're right.

00:33:22.680 This sucks.

00:33:24.440 And, and so some of like hammering out that method that we would communicate that look

00:33:29.760 facts matter and they're not going to Trump, you know, again, emotions don't Trump reality,

00:33:32.880 but I still need to make sure that I I'm being respectful of, you know, sometimes we've got

00:33:38.480 to make hard decisions.

00:33:40.460 Um, and so that was, that was a key component.

00:33:42.740 That was a key component of being able to make those hard decisions when those times

00:33:45.840 come, but also me understanding that my job, my job was not to try to, um, you know, brow

00:33:54.140 beat her into submission.

00:33:56.220 My job was to try to, for us to convince each other of the best possible course of

00:34:00.340 action for our marriage and for our family.

00:34:03.120 And, and to the extent that we can do, and we, and we've done that before where she's

00:34:06.540 won the argument.

00:34:08.080 I'll never forget one time.

00:34:09.240 I can't even remember exactly what we were arguing about, but we've been arguing for

00:34:12.060 three days about something and we're in the car and she, she presents this, this argument

00:34:17.080 and I'm like, yeah, okay.

00:34:18.260 Yeah, you're right.

00:34:19.080 You're right.

00:34:19.600 I'm wrong.

00:34:20.140 We'll do it that way.

00:34:21.060 And she goes, are you freaking kidding me?

00:34:22.900 Three days of arguing about this.

00:34:24.620 And I said, well, babe, respectfully, all of your other arguments sucked.

00:34:28.400 Like I had an answer for all the other ones, but this one, I don't.

00:34:32.240 And if I don't have an answer for it, then my job is to not be prideful.

00:34:36.220 My job is to acknowledge you got the best argument.

00:34:39.180 That is the best course of action.

00:34:40.700 And so that's the one we're going to take.

00:34:43.120 Um, and, and I, I think that was also demonstrative of, of, for her that, you know, she, she, she

00:34:50.080 would have to, she would hopefully the sort of environment that I've been in,

00:34:54.600 I created for my wife and that I know she created for me was I will have to argue against

00:34:59.740 your, your argument, but I won't have to argue against your pride, right?

00:35:04.260 The pride won't make the decision in the end that the best argument based off of what

00:35:08.540 is best for our family will, will win in the end.

00:35:10.700 I like that.

00:35:14.360 Guys, I'm going to stop the conversation just briefly.

00:35:16.580 I'll get right back to it.

00:35:17.780 Uh, I wanted to talk with you about this concept of battle ready.

00:35:20.540 What does that even mean?

00:35:21.520 What does it mean to be battle ready?

00:35:22.880 Well, I think it's crucial that we first understand that all of life is a battle.

00:35:27.620 It's a battle at times to do the right thing.

00:35:29.980 It's a battle to make a living for yourself and your family.

00:35:33.360 It's a battle to inspire others to lead righteously for the betterment of our society.

00:35:37.840 But unless each of us are the best man that we can possibly become, we will inevitably

00:35:43.180 lose that battle for ourselves, our families, and ultimately for society.

00:35:47.560 And that's why I created the battle ready program.

00:35:49.840 I want to make sure that not only am I equipped with all the tools and resources that I personally

00:35:54.860 need to win.

00:35:55.920 I believe it's my moral obligation to share with others what has worked so well for me.

00:36:00.140 So when you sign up for our free battle ready program, you're going to get an email immediately

00:36:05.180 from me and I'm going to issue you your first challenge.

00:36:09.060 It's easy.

00:36:09.800 It's a simple challenge, but I want to make sure you're all in on your own self-improvement

00:36:14.760 before we start peeling back the layers of setting goals and achieving at the highest

00:36:20.760 levels.

00:36:21.100 So if you want to know what that challenge is, and most importantly, learn what 10 years

00:36:26.020 of working with men has taught me about what separates those who succeed and those who

00:36:30.660 don't, head to orderofman.com slash battle ready.

00:36:34.400 Again, that's orderofman.com slash battle ready.

00:36:36.840 Do that right after our conversation.

00:36:38.640 For now, let's get back to it with Nick.

00:36:42.200 I want to go back to something that you had talked about with this concept of the good guy

00:36:47.660 versus the bad guy and how women tend to chase the bad guy.

00:36:50.640 This conversation has taken a little deviation from what I expected it to be, but I want to

00:36:55.660 continue to go down this rabbit hole.

00:36:57.500 I think there's probably some women who listen to our podcast, about 20% of the listeners

00:37:02.240 are women and the 80% are men.

00:37:05.660 And I think it'd be valuable if we could share a message or if you have a thought as to what

00:37:14.460 you could talk about with the good guy versus the bad guy and who women are pursuing or interested

00:37:20.360 in.

00:37:20.720 I'd love to hear your take on that.

00:37:22.700 Well, I think that, so I think there's a lot of things to unpack with that.

00:37:27.280 You know, one of the, probably one of the most interesting books you can read on something

00:37:30.700 like this that was never intended to be a book on it is a book by Theodore Dalrymple,

00:37:36.300 which is his pen name is his actual name is I think Dr. Anthony Daniels.

00:37:40.160 And, um, and, and he talked, Oh gosh, I'm trying to remember the title now.

00:37:45.860 Um, he wrote a book about all of his time, basically working in, um, I'll look up the

00:37:53.980 title.

00:37:54.320 So we got it for sure.

00:37:55.020 But he wrote a book.

00:37:56.360 I'm going to look while you're doing that.

00:37:57.380 Yeah.

00:37:57.580 Theodore Dalrymple life at the bottom.

00:37:59.440 That's what it's called life at the bottom.

00:38:01.440 And it was the mentality that creates the, like the permanent underclass or whatnot.

00:38:04.780 But one of the things he talked about in there was, um, a lot of the women that he counseled

00:38:09.700 as a, as a, um, as a psychologist were women that had been in incredibly dangerous and,

00:38:16.580 and abusive relationships.

00:38:19.260 And he, he won, he asked this one woman, he goes, if your boyfriend are walking right

00:38:23.480 now, how long would it take me to know that he was a bad guy?

00:38:26.580 And she goes, you'd know instantly.

00:38:28.380 And he goes, okay, well, presumably if I know, I would know instantly as a bad guy, then

00:38:32.080 you knew he was a bad guy.

00:38:33.680 And what he started to talk about was that, um, sometimes in, in an environment where a

00:38:39.420 woman has undergone abuse, she seeks it again because it's familiar.

00:38:43.020 Another time it's because, um, sometimes it's drama.

00:38:46.580 Sometimes it's, it's the quest for drama.

00:38:48.720 If you, if you have a situation where all of the responsibilities that a person has have

00:38:52.920 been removed from them and taken over by the state or the government or whatever else

00:38:56.660 it is, they will seek out drama somewhere else.

00:38:59.260 And a lot of times that's found in relationships.

00:39:00.880 So one of the things I think is we should be very, very careful about when we talk about

00:39:05.320 girls, just chasing after the bad guy is that sometimes there's a lot of pent up abuse and

00:39:10.820 damage that has taken place that has led a woman to that, that position.

00:39:16.300 Other times, I think it is a lot of times, uh, um, who we call the bad guys are guys that

00:39:22.660 are display a certain level of competence and capability.

00:39:26.080 Um, they may display a certain degree of physical prowess.

00:39:31.360 Um, and they display confidence, verbal acumen.

00:39:36.340 Well, we'll think about all of those things are, are positive attributes.

00:39:39.940 They're just being used to a bad purpose.

00:39:43.300 So, because all of us as men want to be, we want to be physically imposing.

00:39:49.000 We want to be intellectually and emotionally capable, right?

00:39:52.140 We want to be articulate, uh, and we want to be confident.

00:39:56.600 And again, sometimes those, a lot of times those things manifest themselves through adversity.

00:40:01.700 So again, sometimes the, the, the bad boy is also, you know, maybe they've gone through

00:40:06.620 various adversities or whatnot and develop certain traits.

00:40:09.260 So I think it's important to understand that if a woman is looking for someone that's confident,

00:40:15.060 capable, and that can protect her and that will make her feel, you know, both excited

00:40:19.680 and safe at the same time, well, then guys that are demonstrating those attributes are

00:40:24.560 going to get women, whether they're good or bad.

00:40:28.040 Now, a lot of times what ends up happening is, as you know, men and women mature, women

00:40:33.260 also understand that, okay, I'm attracted to the attributes, but they have to be used and

00:40:39.060 they have to be, they have to manifest themselves in a positive way.

00:40:43.220 And so again, there, there's women also have a, just like men have a desire for a certain

00:40:49.480 degree of excitement.

00:40:50.760 So do women.

00:40:52.680 And so if you, if you, again, I think it's, I think we should learn something from the bad

00:40:57.500 boys, but we should develop those capabilities and, and, and attributes in such a way as to

00:41:03.080 use them for a noble purpose, but understand that, Hey, look, she still wants to be swept

00:41:07.160 off her feet.

00:41:07.780 She still wants to feel protected.

00:41:09.120 She wants, still wants to feel an element of excitement.

00:41:11.500 So how do we manifest those things in positive ways, as opposed to negative ways?

00:41:16.440 This is so good.

00:41:18.020 Like I said, you probably hear me punching away on my keyboard.

00:41:20.680 There's, I don't know if you've read it, but there's a good book called manhood of the

00:41:23.440 making by David Gilmore.

00:41:24.860 Does that ring a bell?

00:41:25.980 I don't know that one.

00:41:27.340 You should check that out.

00:41:28.300 It's, it's very academic.

00:41:29.400 It almost reads like a, um, like some sort of, uh, you know, college type literature that

00:41:35.980 you, that you would read, read as you're going through a program.

00:41:38.120 But he talks about the difference between being a good man and being good at being a

00:41:43.180 man.

00:41:43.500 And I think that's the differentiation that you're making right now is that we can take

00:41:49.000 what the quote unquote bad boy has capability, competence, physical prowess, like you said,

00:41:54.340 but apply those towards virtuous outcomes, as opposed to taking advantage of the opposite

00:42:00.340 sex or anybody else for that matter.

00:42:03.160 Yeah.

00:42:03.620 Oh no, absolutely.

00:42:04.660 I, yeah.

00:42:05.080 The, the differentiation I've heard made sometimes that I like is a good man versus a nice, a nice

00:42:09.920 man, um, is like my, my job is not to be a nice man.

00:42:14.780 That doesn't mean there's, there's not times where I develop or, or that I, uh, display

00:42:19.380 attributes or characteristics that would be considered nice.

00:42:22.140 But my job is to be a good man, but that means a capable man.

00:42:25.860 That also means a dangerous man.

00:42:28.160 Um, I, I was doing an interview with, uh, Lila Rose a while back and, um, we were talking

00:42:34.820 about raising kids and, and, you know, how I was with my daughters versus how I was with

00:42:39.000 my son.

00:42:40.240 And, and I, one of the things I told Lila is I said, well, a good man has to be capable

00:42:44.580 of violence.

00:42:45.860 And that's one of the things I have to instill into my son.

00:42:48.600 And, and, and she understood that, but she wanted me to elaborate a little bit more.

00:42:53.020 And I said, well, look, I said, there, there is a, there is a side of me that has been seen

00:42:58.420 by a relatively small group of people, um, in Iraq.

00:43:02.760 Right.

00:43:03.160 And, and that side of me will never come out toward my wife or my children because that

00:43:08.280 side of me is for them, never toward them.

00:43:11.220 Right.

00:43:12.460 But it also has to exist because ultimately it's, it's what helps them feel safe around

00:43:18.180 me that I have this capability, which will only be used in service toward them never

00:43:22.820 as a threat toward them.

00:43:25.120 Um, but the other side of that is okay.

00:43:27.560 Then how do I, how do I turn that off to also be able to show them the tenderness and

00:43:32.000 the compassion and the love.

00:43:33.500 And even sometimes, and I, I emphasize the silliness sometimes, right.

00:43:36.860 With your kids, how do I, how do I turn that off in order to be able to do that?

00:43:41.320 And, and that's the emotional maturity that has to develop.

00:43:44.100 It's like, I'm not going to be a lot of times.

00:43:47.020 I think sometimes society speaking on behalf of women will try to articulate something for

00:43:52.620 men that doesn't make any sense to us.

00:43:54.160 Like, well, I want a man in touch with those feminine side.

00:43:56.720 And then a man will translate that into, okay, then I'm going to display what I perceive

00:44:00.500 to be feminine qualities.

00:44:01.520 And you're going to like that.

00:44:02.580 Right.

00:44:02.940 The answer is no, they don't like it.

00:44:04.620 All of a sudden you make them, you come off as weak.

00:44:07.380 You make them feel unsecured or unsafe, or you're so emotionally available that you don't

00:44:12.740 got your crap together and you're supposed to be the calm in the storm, right?

00:44:16.860 How are you the calm in the storm?

00:44:18.160 If you're breaking down, crying alongside everybody else, it's like, so no, our job is

00:44:23.540 not to be the blubbering male.

00:44:24.860 That's so in touch with his feelings that he can't keep it together.

00:44:27.700 We are supposed to be emotionally mature enough to where, when it is appropriate and only

00:44:35.340 to people who are worthy of it, do they get to see that tenderness and that vulnerability.

00:44:41.240 That's not something I show to everybody, right?

00:44:43.920 That's reserved for them because they're worthy and because they're special to me.

00:44:48.140 They get to see that, that side of me that nobody else gets to see, but they still get

00:44:53.180 to also see it with a controlled environment that never makes them feel unsafe, right?

00:44:59.320 And so that's, and I said, Lila, one of the things people need to understand about men

00:45:03.000 is that's a, that's a difficult thing to develop, right?

00:45:07.560 That's a, that's a difficult thing to develop.

00:45:09.860 And, and so, you know, be, be patient with your, with your man as they're developing it,

00:45:15.420 they're doing it and encourage it in the appropriate ways.

00:45:17.700 But understand that we, we have to, we have to navigate this, this difficult, um, this

00:45:23.220 difficult spectrum where on one side, where the sort of guy that can literally drag someone

00:45:28.140 out of the, you know, out of the house and, and, you know, like drag a threat out of the

00:45:32.720 house and, and beat them in defense of our family.

00:45:35.280 And at the same time, wear the little tiara and have tea with our little girl, right?

00:45:39.720 Like we've got to navigate both of those.

00:45:41.800 And sometimes we don't always get it right, but when we're trying and when we're properly

00:45:45.260 encouraged by the women in our lives to do it, that emotional maturity develops in the

00:45:50.280 way it's supposed to.

00:45:52.540 Yeah.

00:45:52.920 I had a good conversation with a friend of mine, Connor Beaton.

00:45:55.760 Uh, he's with man talks and he wrote a book called men's work.

00:45:58.360 And we were talking about this concept of vulnerability.

00:46:00.880 This is something we often hear as men.

00:46:03.240 And, uh, one thing that he had said that really stuck out to me is that a lot of the times

00:46:08.780 to your point, women will ask for a man who's you said in touch with his feminine side.

00:46:13.500 A lot of women will ask for a man who's vulnerable.

00:46:15.760 Yeah.

00:46:16.360 And sometimes we translate that as the blubbering idiot who cries and, you know, puts his head

00:46:21.940 on his wife's shoulder, et cetera, et cetera.

00:46:23.600 And then when a guy does that, of course, his wife is turned off by that, of course, obviously.

00:46:29.100 But what he had said is that vulnerability to women isn't what we translate it to be.

00:46:34.160 What they want us to know or want to acknowledge is that we recognize our deficiencies and we have

00:46:41.460 a plan for dealing with it.

00:46:43.100 So we recognize maybe it's insecurities, maybe it's past trauma or baggage, not to offload

00:46:49.960 it onto our spouse, but to take it upon our own shoulders and then come up with an appropriate

00:46:54.640 plan for dealing with it.

00:46:56.100 That is what vulnerability means to women.

00:46:59.500 It was a really interesting concept to me and something that I hadn't really heard the

00:47:02.800 differentiating factor between.

00:47:05.040 No, I, I think that, I think that makes sense.

00:47:07.920 I also think that, um, like I, I can say, let me give a, let me give an example of this.

00:47:13.940 Um, so I'm about to, I'm about to walk my daughter down the aisle, right.

00:47:18.860 In about a month.

00:47:20.440 And, um, and I just, thank you.

00:47:22.960 Thank you.

00:47:23.300 And a great guy.

00:47:24.040 Uh, we're very happy for both of them.

00:47:25.820 Um, and, and we'll go through this, we'll go through this process where, you know, um,

00:47:31.660 there's been, there's been a lot of moments where it's like, I have gotten a little

00:47:34.420 choked up, right.

00:47:35.220 I've, I've kept my crap together, but I've gotten a little choked up.

00:47:38.520 That'll happen at daddy daughter dance though.

00:47:40.360 I'm sure.

00:47:40.800 Oh yeah.

00:47:41.220 That's it.

00:47:41.820 Yeah.

00:47:42.660 Um, but, and that's the part that, so if my wife were to explain like, what, what do

00:47:47.120 I, what do I mean when I want to see that?

00:47:49.580 She would say, I want to see that tenderness.

00:47:52.480 Um, I, I, I want to, and, and, and part of that is because she's like, I, I know the,

00:47:59.300 um, I know the soldier.

00:48:01.540 Um, I know the husband, I know the man, like I know the father, like I know all of

00:48:05.360 that, um, that, that tenderness that only she gets and that, or, and that different tenderness

00:48:11.100 that only my children get, or only my, like my daughters get seeing that shows, shows the

00:48:16.780 heart, uh, behind it.

00:48:18.960 And that's the sort of softness or tenderness.

00:48:21.740 I don't even like to, I don't even like to refer to it as vulnerability.

00:48:24.520 Um, it's because it's, it's, you know, again, I w I would snap out of it in a heartbeat

00:48:32.060 to protect them.

00:48:32.760 And they know that, but when they get to see that element of tenderness that is uniquely

00:48:36.460 for them, um, it's another way of showing them that, Hey, you know, nobody can crack

00:48:42.720 daddy's armor except his little girl.

00:48:45.140 Right.

00:48:45.700 And, and that's, and that's, that's important.

00:48:49.200 Yeah.

00:48:50.180 Powerful stuff.

00:48:51.060 What do you say about, and this is going back to something you said a bit ago, you had

00:48:55.640 talked about this idea just briefly, you mentioned it casually and in passing, you said, uh, the

00:49:01.380 roles that we play.

00:49:02.740 Yeah.

00:49:03.220 And I think in culture and society today, that concept of traditional gender roles is, is

00:49:10.280 something that's looked at as, as wrong, as wrong thinking is patriarchal, et cetera, et

00:49:16.100 cetera.

00:49:16.640 What is your thought as to the roles that men and women play in society?

00:49:21.660 Yeah.

00:49:21.860 Yeah.

00:49:22.020 I think society is wrong.

00:49:24.080 Um, and I agree.

00:49:25.720 I have become, I've become far more, uh, adamant about openly expressing that is that, yeah,

00:49:31.300 the modern culture is wrong.

00:49:33.660 Um, and, and I, and I don't care what studies you throw at me and it's not because I can't

00:49:39.080 be convinced through scientific research of a particular topic.

00:49:42.040 It's because I think that this is so written into us and so demonstrable throughout human

00:49:46.260 history and our own interactions that anytime someone is asking us to completely just abandon

00:49:51.900 this concept there, they just want us to suspend all disbelief and, and suggest that, well, an

00:49:57.380 expert at a sociology department at Cal Berkeley did a study.

00:49:59.740 I don't care.

00:50:00.760 Experts say, right.

00:50:02.040 We know we're going to be fed a line for sure.

00:50:04.260 Now, now what I will say is this, um, I do think that there's, uh, there, there's a strict

00:50:11.400 version of this, uh, and a, and a little bit more open version.

00:50:14.600 So I always put it this way.

00:50:16.900 Um, no one is ever going to convince me that a man's responsibility for his family is not

00:50:22.740 to protect and provide, right.

00:50:25.060 That is, that is, that is two of the fundamental responsibilities of your role as a husband.

00:50:31.140 Um, I think you have a responsibility to lead.

00:50:33.380 I think you have a responsibility to, um, to also be, to be present for, for your children

00:50:39.800 on an emotional level, not just a provisional level, right?

00:50:43.460 So we can extrapolate from that, but again, men have to be once again, you know, if from

00:50:49.140 the spiritual side, it provides a, a, a philosophical and moral underpinning for everything that you

00:50:53.720 do, you emotionally means you have to be available physically means you have to be capable of doing

00:50:59.100 stuff professionally means you got to be able to provide right.

00:51:01.940 And intellectual means you got to be able to effectively communicate.

00:51:04.200 So there's all those categories are covered within those responsibilities.

00:51:07.860 And I don't think that ever goes, I, I, nothing's going to convince me that isn't real.

00:51:12.580 Does that mean that the only role for a woman in a marriage is to be, you know, barefoot

00:51:18.520 and pregnant and in the kitchen making dinner every night?

00:51:20.540 No, of course not.

00:51:21.820 But does it mean that there are unique roles, especially when you start having children

00:51:27.240 with respect to the ways that a father and a mother can impact the family and make the

00:51:31.980 family as successful as possible?

00:51:35.100 Absolutely.

00:51:36.380 Do, do I think for, do I think for instance, that, that women are more emotionally in tune

00:51:41.820 to a situation than men a lot of the times on average?

00:51:45.040 Yes.

00:51:45.340 I think that's obvious.

00:51:47.100 Does that mean that a woman is going to be more, um, aware of vulnerabilities or dangerous

00:51:52.540 things that could affect your children, especially when they're very, very young and infants?

00:51:55.960 Absolutely.

00:51:56.700 Is it beneficial for a woman to have that sort of connection with their children when it

00:52:00.900 comes to nourishing them and caring for them and building that connection with them?

00:52:04.580 Absolutely.

00:52:05.300 Is it also important for the, for the father to be able to foster that relationship young?

00:52:09.700 Yes.

00:52:10.620 Okay.

00:52:11.840 So now we're going to run into some limitations, right?

00:52:14.740 Because why does the father have to protect and provide?

00:52:17.320 Well, because if the woman is going to work at that same time, that means she's going to

00:52:20.720 have to take her child and she's going to have to hand them off to somebody else to be able

00:52:24.400 to nurture them, to educate them and to be able to form those bonds with them at a very,

00:52:28.960 very early age, right?

00:52:29.880 They're going, they're off to daycare, right?

00:52:31.740 So she can go back and okay, so what's the trade-off?

00:52:34.960 Well, the trade-off is, is the child is not going to pair or bond with the mother or the

00:52:39.720 father as well as they would have if the mother was there for the child during those very,

00:52:44.400 very formative years up front, right?

00:52:46.600 So that leads me to conclude that, gosh, maybe God designed this in such a way to where

00:52:53.940 the woman plays an incredibly, the mother plays an incredibly impactful role.

00:52:58.240 And so the reason why the, the, the husband and the father must be dedicated and must

00:53:03.680 be capable is because you need her to be able to provide and to be able to protect your

00:53:09.060 children at those very, very early formative stages, which means she's not going to be

00:53:12.980 able to go out and provide for herself.

00:53:16.200 You're going to have to do it.

00:53:17.420 And if you do it well, she's going to feel very, very secure in playing that role with,

00:53:23.400 with your guys' children.

00:53:25.060 And that's going to have incredible benefits for the kids and for the family and for you two

00:53:29.240 together, right?

00:53:31.040 So I think these roles exist.

00:53:33.840 And I think as you have children, they become even more apparent.

00:53:37.060 Now, does, does that mean at a, at a different time that a woman can still, you know, pursue

00:53:41.960 things outside of just being a mother and a wife, of course, right?

00:53:47.400 And, and of course she can even do that during those times.

00:53:49.320 But I think that when women embrace that role and when men embrace their roles, what you find

00:53:55.360 is collaboration, not competition.

00:53:58.220 And increasingly, I think women have increasingly been told by society that no, no, no, your job

00:54:03.200 is to compete with men because you can do anything a man can do.

00:54:06.740 Well, no, you can't.

00:54:08.360 And guess what?

00:54:09.260 Men can't do everything women can do.

00:54:11.960 I tell people this repeatedly when I, early on in my marriage, I was, um, I learned the

00:54:19.080 hard way that when my wife said, I don't have a good feeling about this, I needed to listen

00:54:25.200 regardless of whether or not she could fully articulate and explain what was wrong.

00:54:29.700 Sometimes it was just the fact that emotionally she was far more in tune with what was going

00:54:34.380 on in that environment than I was.

00:54:36.620 I'm looking around facts, evidence, the whole deal.

00:54:38.880 And she is picking up on stuff that she might not have been able to fully articulate to my

00:54:43.040 satisfaction, but she was right.

00:54:45.760 Yeah.

00:54:46.620 And so again, I think what I would tell people is that if you want to believe what the culture

00:54:52.500 and what the experts are telling you right now, fine, go ahead.

00:54:56.020 But here's what I'm also going to tell you.

00:54:57.400 When we look at feminism, especially this, this gets people mad at me all the time, but

00:55:03.500 like, don't shoot me.

00:55:04.240 I'm just the messenger.

00:55:05.660 We are living in the most feminist time in all of human history, which is to say that

00:55:12.500 feminist doctrines with respect to ideas about traditional roles between men and women are

00:55:19.220 at a low point, right?

00:55:21.180 They've been, they've been almost completely supplanted in our culture with this idea that

00:55:25.040 there is no fundamental difference.

00:55:26.720 And this is all about just pursuing individual aims, regardless of one's sex or the roles that

00:55:31.740 might've been traditionally associated with them.

00:55:33.540 We're living in the height of that ideology, the height of it right now.

00:55:39.160 You could say all day long, maybe it hasn't gone as far as you would like, but you certainly

00:55:42.800 can't say that it's worse now than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago.

00:55:47.720 Okay.

00:55:48.200 And the very women, the very women who have embraced this model, which would be considered

00:55:52.700 liberal women, young liberal women between the ages of 18 and 29 are experiencing the highest

00:55:58.860 degree of mental illness in recorded human history.

00:56:03.260 And it is, and liberal women specifically are at over 50%.

00:56:07.480 So over 50% of liberal women polled are experienced the highest degree of mental illness and, and

00:56:14.460 unhealth or, um, um, distress than at any point in recorded history.

00:56:21.700 Um, it's, it's actually, it's actually half for conservative women, which typically tend to fall

00:56:26.960 into the role of, you know, the, the traditional view of the role of a wife, a mother, et cetera.

00:56:31.700 Right.

00:56:33.040 So what that tells me is, is by your, by your own standards, pursuing your own, you know,

00:56:39.100 ideology, you're not happy.

00:56:41.900 And you can't tell me it's because, well, it's because society hasn't properly embraced

00:56:45.840 it.

00:56:46.140 What are you talking about?

00:56:48.360 Every, every single culturally shaping institution from education to media, to arts and entertainment,

00:56:53.400 politics have reinforced the narrative that, that the feminists have offered us with respect

00:57:00.640 to traditional, happiness and satisfaction would increase as that exposure continues

00:57:05.600 to increase.

00:57:06.380 And the women who have embraced that the most are the least happy.

00:57:10.480 So I'm just saying you, you, if, if you want to continue to go along with this narrative

00:57:14.660 and suggest that it's, it's men's fault or it's somebody else's fault, or we just haven't

00:57:18.640 properly embraced it yet again, maybe you could make that argument 40 years ago.

00:57:23.960 I don't think you can effectively make that argument today.

00:57:27.420 And, and so what I would say is, is that as someone that is more of what you would,

00:57:31.360 a traditionally masculine man, does that mean I have my wife buttoned up in the kid?

00:57:35.860 I was telling you before we came on, my wife built this entire studio, like the, the table

00:57:40.680 I'm sitting, which is this massive, what a table that why, because traditional gender roles

00:57:45.640 doesn't mean she can't do woodworking or she can't fix stuff.

00:57:49.180 My wife is far more handy around the house than I am.

00:57:52.560 She, she has a knack for it.

00:57:53.880 She grew up with her stepfather teaching her how to fix stuff all the time.

00:57:57.100 And she took to it and she's phenomenal at it.

00:57:59.240 And my job as her husband is not to say, that's not your role.

00:58:02.660 My job is to say, that's awesome.

00:58:04.420 This is an incredible way that you contribute to the family.

00:58:07.420 And I want to reinforce that.

00:58:09.100 And I want to, I want to heap praise on you for it, but that doesn't take away my responsibility.

00:58:15.060 My fundamental responsibility is to protect and provide.

00:58:18.080 And so I think it's important to understand that when we say traditional gender roles,

00:58:21.820 it's because we understand that there are things that are intrinsic or inherent within

00:58:26.680 male and female roles.

00:58:27.880 And that doesn't mean that women can't also pursue other things that are not traditionally

00:58:32.760 associated with that.

00:58:34.180 But when we embrace, when we embrace both our roles and our, our God-given talents, and we

00:58:41.040 respect that within a, within a marital environment, then again, we're constantly cooperating with

00:58:46.740 one another to get the best possible result, not competing with one another based off of

00:58:51.260 what the culture has told us we should want.

00:58:53.760 Yeah.

00:58:54.820 Well, you know, the, the concept of your studio is, is something that resonates with me.

00:59:00.100 I once heard that, and I'm paraphrasing here, that a man's job is to provide the, the resources,

00:59:06.560 right?

00:59:06.760 The raw resources.

00:59:07.900 And then a woman's job is to take those raw resources and beautify them or turn them into

00:59:12.760 something productive and useful.

00:59:14.120 So you think about your studio, for example, in, in our case, in modern times, it's, I go

00:59:20.400 out, provide the income, we buy the materials, and then you take it and you beautify it.

00:59:24.600 You make it into something useful, uh, or turning a house into a home, uh, or at the very

00:59:30.920 base level, I provide you my seed and you take that and cultivate this, this human being

00:59:40.500 inside of your womb for nine months.

00:59:42.600 That's nothing I can do.

00:59:43.780 I'm going to provide the raw resources, but you as a woman can beautify that and make it

00:59:47.820 better.

00:59:48.340 I think this speaks right into what you're talking about, this collaboration versus competition.

00:59:54.600 Yeah.

00:59:55.060 One, and if people are looking for an academic study to prove what I'm saying is true, you're

00:59:58.880 probably not going to find it, but I will point to, I don't know, thousands of years

01:00:02.880 of human history and, and, and point out that, well, it's not always manifested perfectly.

01:00:07.360 I think that's important to understand.

01:00:08.940 A lot of times when they look at traditional roles, they will essentially say that because

01:00:12.700 it was not perfectly executed, therefore it's bad.

01:00:15.680 Well, yeah, if you're going to hold up any standard to utopia or perfection, then every

01:00:20.700 standard is going to fall short.

01:00:22.000 But the question is, is which one has actually done, which one, no kidding, has actually done

01:00:26.920 the best job at providing stability and happiness and, and love and growth.

01:00:32.280 And, and I think it's the traditional family.

01:00:34.800 I don't think there's, I don't think there's any question that, that that's the case.

01:00:39.040 Again, what I think is important is that when a man and a woman come together in marriage

01:00:43.800 and they respect their, their roles, it, it also allows, it also allows for, for more

01:00:51.320 freedom to, to be able to find your respective places within the marriage.

01:00:56.600 Because one, one of the things that's, that's so important, I think in relationships between

01:00:59.960 men and women is, you know, it's not just the, you know, I love you and I'm passionate

01:01:04.700 about you.

01:01:05.480 You are, when we say building a marriage, it's what we mean, right?

01:01:09.080 There's, there's going to be challenges.

01:01:10.080 There's going to be struggles and here's two people that have committed to stick with

01:01:13.280 one another and, and finding out as you go through those struggles and those challenges

01:01:18.020 where, where your talents and your, your tools are best used and where they're not.

01:01:23.440 And then respecting where somebody else covers down where, where you couldn't do it as well.

01:01:29.000 And you do the same for them.

01:01:30.260 That actually strengthens the bond between you two.

01:01:33.880 Um, because there, there's a transaction taking place there.

01:01:37.260 That's not a transaction in the sense of an economic transaction, but it's a transaction

01:01:41.340 in the sense where both of you are getting value from the relationship, not just because

01:01:46.160 of what you consume, but because of what you contribute.

01:01:49.540 And that's really important.

01:01:52.380 I, uh, I had an experience with my ex-wife and it vividly underscores what you're talking

01:01:58.760 about.

01:01:59.580 Uh, there was somebody I was considering going into business with and she had met this individual

01:02:04.600 and she said, don't do business with that person.

01:02:07.880 Don't, don't get into business with that person.

01:02:10.120 And I said, why?

01:02:11.660 She couldn't explain it.

01:02:13.600 Logically made sense to me, but she couldn't articulate why I shouldn't get into business

01:02:17.840 with that person.

01:02:18.560 So naturally I went ahead and did it anyways.

01:02:20.560 I lost tens of thousands of dollars doing it.

01:02:23.640 And she never rubbed it in my face to her credit, but there was a moment of reckoning,

01:02:29.740 which is, Hey, maybe you ought to take into consideration some of the things that I can

01:02:34.080 see that you can.

01:02:35.080 And that was a very vivid reminder of her contribution among others to the relationship.

01:02:40.640 Yeah, no, it's, I, I had a, uh, I had a moment when I was in the military and it had

01:02:44.780 to do with, it had to do with somebody I was serving with and she just had a bad feeling

01:02:49.520 about him.

01:02:49.960 And it's like, this is just not a good guy.

01:02:52.160 And then later on that became revealed.

01:02:54.080 And thankfully it wasn't in a situation where like my life depended on it.

01:02:57.940 But I remember that.

01:02:59.600 I remember two things from that moment.

01:03:01.660 One was how right she was and how wrong I was and how arrogant I was about it at the

01:03:07.700 time.

01:03:08.880 And, um, and I, I don't like being wrong.

01:03:13.480 And, uh, and, uh, and I remember having to go to her like, babe, you were right.

01:03:18.000 You were right.

01:03:18.820 And I was, I was wrong.

01:03:20.760 And, um, and, and now what's interesting is that I don't see it at that time.

01:03:25.020 I saw it as frustrating as frustrating.

01:03:26.720 Like I've got to do something.

01:03:27.820 I got to make decisions.

01:03:28.880 This, this logically matches up and you're asking me to defy logic because you got a

01:03:33.240 feeling.

01:03:34.740 And now, and that was frustrating to me.

01:03:37.580 It's not frustrating to me anymore.

01:03:39.240 I look at it as a huge advantage that I take into any situation.

01:03:43.580 Whereas if, if Tina tells me, babe, something's off, I'm like, cool, like I'm not going to

01:03:48.540 waste time.

01:03:49.240 I'm not going to cool.

01:03:50.540 Um, yeah, that's powerful.

01:03:54.900 Well, Nick, this conversation has taken a completely different turn.

01:03:58.220 I had notes on things I wanted to talk with you about, and we didn't hit any of them really,

01:04:01.660 uh, because I really, I really want to dive down this.

01:04:06.080 No, it's good.

01:04:07.240 Um, I, I just, I'm, I'm grateful.

01:04:09.320 We talked about this because it's something that I, frankly, we don't talk a whole lot

01:04:12.680 about on the podcast.

01:04:13.420 And I think it's good for both men and women to hear some of this messaging and some of

01:04:17.440 what you shared today.

01:04:18.180 And maybe at some point we can do a round two and, uh, talk about some other topics and

01:04:22.540 issues because the information that you share resonates with me.

01:04:25.880 I know it resonates with a lot of the guys listening, uh, before we wind things up today,

01:04:29.940 if you would just let the men know where to connect with you, uh, where to reach out,

01:04:33.940 where to learn more about the work you're doing.

01:04:35.560 I gotta say, I love connecting with you and following you on Instagram because you bring

01:04:41.120 up really good points in a comedic, interesting, fun way that maybe isn't so threatening to

01:04:47.440 people who are just hearing these concepts for the first time, but I do appreciate that.

01:04:51.800 So let the guys know where to connect is what I'm saying.

01:04:54.180 No, no, I really appreciate it when, yeah, I would love to come on again.

01:04:56.520 We'll have to come.

01:04:57.040 I have to have you on our show as well.

01:04:58.800 So we have a show called making the argument.

01:05:00.720 Yeah.

01:05:01.080 We have a show called making the argument on YouTube.

01:05:02.620 Uh, we tried to make it simple.

01:05:04.420 So Nick J Freitas, uh, if you're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nick J Freitas

01:05:10.860 always gets you to, to where I'm at.

01:05:13.120 Um, but yeah, we, we talk a lot about the, some of the issues that we've talked about

01:05:16.940 today on there.

01:05:17.600 And, and, uh, I appreciate that we, we do try to add, I know I wasn't very, uh, wasn't

01:05:21.940 very comedic today.

01:05:22.780 We do try to add kind of, uh, some, some levity to some of these discussions because they,

01:05:27.440 they are, they are difficult.

01:05:29.320 Uh, they can be trying, um, but again, I, I never want to come off as the, the angry

01:05:35.100 guy.

01:05:35.540 I can certainly be passionate about what I believe, but, um, uh, honestly, um, I, I think

01:05:41.400 when it, when it comes to talking about masculinity, when it comes to talking about being a husband

01:05:45.500 or a father, um, these are things that bring me just an incredible amount of joy.

01:05:50.740 Uh, and so I always want to make sure that's reflected when I'm talking about it.

01:05:54.120 Well, you do a phenomenal job and I appreciate you.

01:05:57.960 I know the guys will love this podcast and this conversation.

01:06:00.500 We'll make round two happen.

01:06:01.680 And I would love to accept that invitation to be on your podcast at some point.

01:06:05.260 Uh, we'll sync everything up, Nick.

01:06:07.040 Appreciate you, brother.

01:06:07.700 Thanks for joining us today.

01:06:09.080 Thanks, Ryan.

01:06:11.840 Man, Nick Freitas.

01:06:12.920 I hope you enjoyed that one.

01:06:14.180 As I said earlier in the intro, I have been looking forward to this conversation for some

01:06:18.260 time.

01:06:18.800 I've reached out several times over the past several years and haven't had any luck, but we finally

01:06:23.300 made it work and I'm grateful that we did, uh, go follow Nick, his videos and his commentary.

01:06:28.700 Not, not only are they hilarious, uh, they're, they're on point, almost every single one of

01:06:34.060 them.

01:06:34.720 And, uh, I think we need more guys with, uh, an outspoken, interesting voice to turn the

01:06:42.960 tide of culture into, from this degenerate loser victim culture mentality to one of empowerment,

01:06:49.880 one of honoring men and women and really stepping up for ourselves and everybody that we have

01:06:56.000 a responsibility and obligation for.

01:06:58.080 So connect with Nick, connect with me on the gram, on Twitter, on Facebook, YouTube, wherever

01:07:03.880 you're doing your social media thing.

01:07:05.060 We are really growing over on YouTube.

01:07:07.040 It flatlines and then it grows, flatlines and then it grows.

01:07:09.240 So I appreciate that.

01:07:10.740 Also going to be a lot more active over on Twitter and Instagram.

01:07:13.280 So if you're there or somewhere else, let me know and we'll, uh, we'll make those videos

01:07:18.480 and content available for you because I want to make sure we get this out to the masses

01:07:22.100 and you're a big help.

01:07:23.440 So just take a screenshot right now, tag people, let them know what you're listening to, leave

01:07:27.600 a rating and review.

01:07:28.380 If you listen on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever, and continue to share this movement

01:07:33.120 again, go connect with Nick, check out the free battle ready program.

01:07:36.640 And then my good friends over at Montana knife company using the code order of man guys,

01:07:42.220 we'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything until then go out there, take action and become

01:07:48.120 the man you are meant to be.

01:07:53.380 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast.

01:07:56.260 You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.

01:08:00.080 We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

01:08:06.640 We'll be right back.

Order of Man - May 14, 2024

NICK FREITAS ｜ Are You Good at Being a Man？

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript