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The Revolutionary Man Podcast
The Revolutionary Man Podcast is for high-performing husbands and fathers ready to lead with purpose. Hosted by Alain Dumonceaux, this show equips men with the tools to reclaim their masculine identity, master work-life balance, and strengthen mental health. Featuring expert interviews and raw solo episodes, each week brings insights to help men lead their families, grow their businesses, and build a lasting legacy. It’s time to stop settling and start rising.
The Revolutionary Man Podcast
Breaking the Silence: The Power of Vulnerability in Men's Leadership and Relationships
Let me know your thoughts on the show and what topic you would like me to discuss next.
Do you want to create stronger relationships and improve your family dynamics through open communication and vulnerability? Are you searching for a solution to lead your family through difficult conversations and embrace your role as a man in doing so? Join us as our guest, Beth Rowles shares valuable insights on how men can navigate vulnerability and foster meaningful connections within their families. Discover the key to achieving the desired outcome of enhanced family dynamics and more profound relationships through her expert guidance.
Beth Rowles is a seasoned relationship expert with a passion for helping couples manage their marriage dynamics more effectively. She views the home as the building block for a harmonious society and firmly believes that the power to create a happy home lies in open communication between family members, particularly between spouses. Beth’s insightful approach to the challenges facing contemporary marriages spotlights men, urging them to connect on a deeper level with their wives and children through fostering vulnerability and cultivating open conversations.
- Realize the significance of individual growth and self-discipline in maintaining meaningful and beneficial relationships.
- Discover the crucial role men play in guiding their families, particularly through open-heartedness and challenging discussions.
- Uncover the essential need of empathy and comprehension within a marital bond for achieving balance and harmony.
- Learn about how experiences from childhood can echo in adult relationships and how to manage them effectively.
- Contemplate the transformative power of mindful parenting and conscious relationships to ensure a well-rounded personality development.
- Unveil the importance of self-development and personal regulation in fostering robust and intimate connections.
- Understand the influential role men adopt in leading their families, especially by showing weakness and managing difficult conversations.
- Recognize the inherent necessity of compassion and insight within the marital relationship as a pillar of contentment.
- Illuminate the way early childhood experiences influence one's adult relationships and the strategies to mitigate negative impacts.
- Explore the potential of intentional parenting and conscious relationships in moulding an emotionally healthy and strong individual.
To Reach Beth:
Web: https://www.bethrowles.com/
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IG: https://instagram.com/familybeing
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethrowles/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/beth_rowles
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which brought up another question, which was which relationship do you, as a man, prioritize? The relationship with your wife or the relationship with your kids? And so I asked a bunch of people that question and they said well, with my wife, of course, with my wife. If you just take that face value, it sounds great, but your wife actually wants you to prioritize your kids because that is her world. So I believe that a lot of people confuse care with love, and to me, love is just an energy that we all align to it's. It's like it, like source god. Whatever our most wonderful selves is, that's love, and we get to share that with other people by just being in that energy. Care is something that you do for people who need you to care for them, especially for yourselves first, but then if somebody is burdened and overwhelmed, then you take care of them right.
Speaker 2:You know, I want you to take a moment and think about your wife. What comes to mind? You know, for me it's those times when we connect deeply, when she looks at me like it's the last time she will ever see me. But you know, it's not always that way. No, don't get me wrong. We've both been overheard saying you know, I love you dearly, but I don't always like you.
Speaker 2:You know this happens because our relationships have been have fallen into patterns that have put us put a small wedge between us, and it's not the same way as it used to be. So what do we do about that? How do we get our marriages back on track? Well, today, I guess I'm going to give us some insight into the hearts of our wives and to help us better understand our part in this thing called marriage. But before we get into that, I just want to remind you if you're interested in raising your standards as a father, a husband and entrepreneur, then I encourage you to start your hero's quest in this program. You're going to accomplish more, develop more and become more in the next 90 days, and you have all of last year. Now you can get more information about this program at the awakened man training academy at memberstheawakenmannet.
Speaker 3:And with that let's get on with today's episode the average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man.
Speaker 2:Stay strong, my brother welcome everyone to the revolutionary man podcast. I'm the founder of the awakened man movement and your host, alan Devoncel. Let me ask you a couple of questions. How do you feel your marriage is failing and and do you know that your wife loves you or doesn't want you anymore? You know we're aware of this in some way, shape or form. We can feel it in our bones. So you show me a couple that has been married for more than three years and I'm going to show you a couple that has likely gone through a few challenges and fun seasons, and for many of us, these seasons seem to come around as often as the weather. It doesn't have to be that way if we're willing to take a moment to look in the mirror and see how we as men are contributing to that season.
Speaker 2:Today, my guest is going to share with us a few things that we can be aware of to rebuild our marriages. So allow me to introduce my guest. Beth Rawls is the is the only conscious parenting and marriage coach who helps the overextended and entrepreneurial mom who feels like she's doing everything by herself to create partnership. She wants her husband without losing her marriage or her business in the process. That's powerful work. She's also the author of the authentic wife and caging yourself through marriage and love him again. Welcome to show, beth, how are things today hi, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to be here yeah, I am too.
Speaker 2:As we were talking before we got on to the podcast today, I think it's really important for men, as we're doing our men's work here, that we understand we get a perspective from our wives position and hoping today that we're going to be able to do that. And before we dive into that work, I just want to ask you our I ask all my guests on the show is that we all, we believe we're here at the waking man, that we're all on a hero's quest, our own journey in life. So tell us about more, about what inspired you to pursue the life you live today and how that experience has shaped you into the woman you are and the work that you're doing yeah, I love that question.
Speaker 1:So where to begin? What really led me directly to this work was having my daughter when she was little. I was learning about conscious parenting from dr Shafali Sabari, who was on Oprah at the time, and so it really set me on a path of personal growth and figuring out. You know, because I knew at that point that while my parents did a lovely job, they didn't give me everything that I needed, and I knew that I wanted to parent differently than they had, and most of that just means I wanted to really see my children and help them feel loved and connected to me, and so I realized that conscious parenting was the way to do that. You know, the idea is that you are awake and aware of your own stuff, so you don't put it on your children.
Speaker 1:So when she was really little, I started to become a conscious parent, but at the same time my marriage was falling apart. My husband wasn't helping out. I realized that up until she came along, I had basically been mothering him, like taking care of everything, so he just kind of disappeared. It felt like, even though I never asked him to do anything before she came. But suddenly I needed his help and I was getting very frustrated. But my parents had divorced when I was little and I did not want to do the same thing to my kids. I was absolutely determined not to put them through that and very passionate about giving them both of their parents in the same house.
Speaker 1:So I went to a therapist and was like help me figure out my expectations. And she's like well, your husband has ADHD, that's why he's not helping. This is just the way he is. He's got kind of like a wind-track mind, he's got hyper focus. He gets very into what he's doing. He doesn't even realize that you need help.
Speaker 1:So I was like, well, that's great, but what do I do in the meantime? Because it's super annoying. And so I kept doing the work, learning about conscious parenting, and I still wasn't getting all the answers and I kind of ended up making my own six-step method after all the work that I've done, because I realized it was a combination of not just my own inner work, which was fantastic and helped me be a great parent, but I also had to take that work out into the relationship with new skills empathy, communication, those things. But one of the biggest things I had to learn was boundaries asking for help, receiving help, knowing how to convey what I need from him instead of like command and demand and and all that good stuff. So, anyway, that work saved my marriage and now I help other women do the same thing.
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's outstanding, and I just does you know. We're making a few notes here and I just think of some of the work we're doing here at the awakened man and next, next, next, next a month, we're actually diving into the impact of the relationship that men have with their mothers.
Speaker 2:And how we bring that forward in our into our adulthood and to our current, into our current relationships, be that marriage or or with significant others. And and I really appreciate of you talking about from your perspective and not wanting to be a child of divorce, not wanting to have that be that place. And and I and I wonder you know, and the other thing I noticed, you know, when you talk to a therapist, well, he's got ADHD and it gives and maybe he does, but I kind of feel that that's would have been just the easy way out, right, and it doesn't allow, didn't allow him to grow. And so tell us a little bit about, about how you, as you were working through things, through things, how is it that you were leading because we talk a lot, also you're a lot about men and men circles that we need to lead our families. But tell us about, from the, from the wife's perspective, how you were able to lead your husband towards being more active and more engaged in the, in the marriage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by the way, I love the comment about Mothers and sons because I think that that relationship is causing a lot of Damage in the future just because it's so hard. If I find personally that it can be hard to hold the same Limits with my son that I do with my daughter, it's very tempting to just let him get away with stuff and then realize that I'm raising somebody else's future husband and I have to have that same healthy relationship with him and hold him to the same standard. So I love to hear what you're doing with that. So, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 1:So ADHD is really just to very, very over generalize and simplify it, it's like a.
Speaker 1:Instead of fully developing all the way in emotional maturity, they get kind of stuck at a younger age. So that's why they have like time blindness and they don't know how to control their emotions and those kinds of things. So, really, because I believe that we generally attract somebody who's a pretty good mirror of who we are, I probably have some ADHD characteristics too, and so as I kept growing and healing from my past, I became more emotionally regulated, more self-regulated, and me being that self-regulated Adult is both what my kids need and what my husband needed, because that allowed him to continue to mature and grow. So just because you know our relationships are reflexive and we're working off each other, the healthier I'm, both in my energy, in the way I respond and the way I Work with my emotions and the way I communicate and everything she's got to like. Step up and match that, instead of us both being at like this dysfunctional Level where we blame each other, the egos working at play, you know kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and one of the things that we're focusing on this month with the, with our band of brothers, our group mentorship program, is we're focusing on On the archetype or archetypal work, which is really understanding a boy psychology and how it manifests into man psychology, and in the first half of the month here we've been focusing on the boy psychology and a lot of that is is derived because we get stuck in these, in this hero complex, and we think about One of the archetypes and and then we may think that the hero is, is, is Pause, event.
Speaker 2:It actually is, but it's really the in order for men to truly raise our standards, it's really the. The hero must, must come to the point of dying and so we can turn into and become the warrior, and that requires us, for men is to be to learn, to become vulnerable, and I give us opportunities to step up and have the challenging conversations that we would, we were afraid of doing. I know, you know, there was a time in my marriage when we were going through the same thing. There was a time in my marriage when we were going through our seasons that I would have rather eaten broken glass Then have a conversation with my wife.
Speaker 1:That's funny that you say that, because I just I, you know, I teach women Towards. I work with them for six months and not until month five Did we talk about empathy, because they just are not even willing to do it. But then when I noticed and I was just talking to a client about this today is then they're they're meant, and my husband did this too React. So like, what are you doing? Why are you repeating what I'm saying? What? Why are you telling me what I'm feeling? Like it's so foreign to them to be held in a, in a way that allows them to process whatever their, their feeling.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, because we're we've been taught as boys to not show feelings, to to control that right to, to control, not get too rambunctious. Kids are in my generation. Kids are to be seen and not heard, and and a lot of my work is with the, with the men in that, from this, my generation, and so it's a challenge for us and and so it takes it's a skill to develop and it takes time. Is it to do that? And being able to be in an environment where we can learn that? Learn that those habits Helps us to be, helps us to show up better for our families. But one of the things I saw, I noticed in getting prepared for doing our work today is you talk about how man are putting strain on our wives. So what are we doing to putting it to put all this strain on our wives? And is it just? Is it just that we're not showing up to help around the house, or is it much more than that?
Speaker 1:So one of the top complaints that I had and that my clients have is that our husbands would come in. They'd either because they're not processing anything and they are just ignoring all those emotions, they're just sees, like balls of you know, they're like a ticking time bomb and and ready to go off and they think nobody knows because they're being these nice stoic hero men. But we feel your energy and so when? And basically it's fear. You know, the root of it is some kind of fear, and it's really hard for women because we're conditioned to give everything and take care of everybody, and so we have terrible boundaries. We don't know where we end, we don't know where you begin.
Speaker 1:We sense the energy or the frequency of that fear and we match it, so it brings us down into a bad mood with you, and so then we have to create a story to match this fear, energy, and we say he's terrible, he's never going to be a good dad, this marriage is never going to work, I need to leave. And so it's this constant cycling of you come in, really struggling, in some kind of really low energy, and then we match it and we don't like that and we think you're a threat to our children or to us, and so then we think we have to go and then all these like divorce stories start to spiral, and that makes sense. But that's the number one visit to my website right now is because of a man coming in. I used to describe it as I would feel so happy and like I'm a balloon floating in the sky and he would walk in the door and like yank the cord and pull me down to earth with him and just feel really low and miserable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes complete sense, I think, because a lot of the times that as men we sleep, walk through life and we're very singular minded, focused, right, like when it's we're task oriented. So when we're in work mode we tend to be able to just get things done. We're in a do do, do state all day long, every day, and the challenge for us is to be able to recognize that. Whatever that commute time is to come home, can we shift that into a being mode? What does that look like? How would? In? The questions we ask our men is how would you want your wife to show up if the roles were reversed? And how can you show up and be a leader for the home?
Speaker 2:And I think once men start to think about that, it totally is true that we get lulled into this idea of how things are. And again it goes back to a lot of times, into the, to the work that happened with us as children. You know we had fathers that had to work hard and spent a lot of time, were very stoic, didn't necessarily share. I can tell you. Well, my father's no longer with us. I don't remember him saying that he loved me. I just knew that he did, because he was home every day and he worked really hard and there were other ways that that he showed. But as children growing up, you know, are we, and we come and become into boys, and boys to men. Then we become fathers. What is the experience that we want to provide our, our children? And I think we don't, as men, we don't necessarily think about it that way. I think we're so locked into doing mode. I don't know if you're finding that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now we posted on social media the other day who do you know that has a good relationship with their father? What son do you know that has a good relationship with their father? We can only think of one out of all the people I know. And which brought up another question was, for which was who, like which relationship do you as a man, prioritize? The relationship with your wife or the relationship with your kids?
Speaker 1:And so I asked a bunch of people that question and they said well, with my wife, of course, with my wife, and I think that, like, if you just take that face value, it sounds great. But your wife actually wants you to prioritize your kids because that is her world and they are the ones who are actually dependent and needy and need the adults in their life to take care of them and for their happiness, for their success in life, they're going to function best and they have a healthy relationship with the father and with their mother. Like we, this the period that your kids are young and in your home is so short in the grand scheme of things, I think, as wise we're like you know I love you and let's have dates and stuff, but can we focus on them for 18 years and then like we've got all this time at the back end that we're going to like get sick of each other. So just take care of them first. Help me take care of them as well, and that will improve our relationship.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and while I'm not surprised to hear because I would have said the same thing that the priority would have been on my spouse, but we forget that, that doesn't mean we do. We just focus on our wives and, you know, helping men understand that making her a priority means stepping into her world. What are the things that are important for her, and when we can look at that and become more conscious fathers and more and more conscious of the home, the household, and be able to participate in that, then we truly are quitting her first, because we're doing the things that mean the most and provide that provides the most value for lack of a better term to the marriage and to the family unit.
Speaker 1:Because otherwise the weight of all of your children's needs are solely on her and she's exhausted and has no time to sleep with you. And I'm like from experience, that's every man's complaints Give me more in the bedroom. Well, like, if we're exhausted, we can't. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I don't have to be sorry.
Speaker 2:We totally get it, and and that's the work on our end to do is to help understand that the dynamic needs to change. The dynamic for for how we show up as men needs to change, and that's why it's important and grateful that you're doing the work that you're doing and and on our end, we're looking to change men's lives, in their perspective about what's truly important in the, in the greater, in the greater scheme of times.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for doing that work, because it's so so needed right now.
Speaker 2:You know, like I said earlier, there's always sees.
Speaker 2:All great relationships and marriages go through different seasons and I can tell you, during the darker times of of my relationship and my marriage, that the one thing that we realize is we realize we really didn't know how to fight, let alone even fighting at all.
Speaker 2:We were that couple that would you know we would never, we would never fight at all, we would just push it into the rug or my my tendency was that I would ask the question Is this going to matter in a year from now, or is this the hill I'm going to die on? And while that's great to take a moment and take the, the steam and the energy out of it so you can come back and show up more empowered, it doesn't serve us when, when we use that as a, as a as a catch all and never be able to engage. So tell me a little bit about the advice that you would give wives and potentially the husbands, about how we can consciously be awake of when, how we can step in and have that conversation regardless, even if that turns into a fight, and how do we show up without pushing all over our wife's buttons?
Speaker 1:Good luck and you don't push her buttons. Her buttons get pushed and that's for her to heal. I'm really big on personal responsibility and being differentiated healthy adults and taking ownership over our own pains and upsets. But I do teach that once you are feeling good and healthy, then you can help the other person feel good and healthy by helping them process to the biggest thing for communication. So I believe that a lot of people confuse care with love, and to me, love is just an energy that we all align to. It's like source God. Whatever our most wonderful selves is, that's love, and we get to share that with other people by just being in that energy. Care is something that you do for people who need you to care for them, especially for yourselves first, but then if somebody is burdened and overwhelmed, then you take care of them right. The way that I feel that love is actually expressed is through being a mirror for somebody else to see themselves. When you can show somebody who they are and see in them what they may not even see in themselves, then they feel the most loved because they are finally being recognized. People love to see themselves and learn more about themselves, and so the biggest communication thing that I teach that I think is valuable is to, number one, be able to fully see yourself. And then, number two, be able to do that for your family, for your kids, for your husband. Show them who they are and when they are blind to who you are, you need to communicate that. You need to vulnerably share what you're worried.
Speaker 1:I teach a way of communication I called sharing your love, w-o-v. I tell women communicate your worry, whatever you're worried about you're not necessarily in this order your observation, what's going on? Like the trash is full, the kids are dirty, whatever it is, just actually state what's happening and then share your vision, because you can't control another human, but you can motivate and inspire them by sharing what you would like to happen, the way you'd like to live, the way you'd like this talk to go, the way you'd like this night to go, and he gets to decide if he wants to step into that and help you with it or not. And when you share your worry, he gets to decide if he can help fix that problem, because I think men have really wonderful brains and women do too, but men love to use those brains and go oh a problem. Let me fix it for you because I feel like you all naturally just really want to serve your woman and make her happy.
Speaker 1:But a lot of women today just kind of skip that step and they solve the problem in their head and then they say, okay, I need you to do this, this and this. And the man's like why, I don't know why, what's in it for me to do that? And they take the fun out of it because they don't get to solve it themselves. And then they feel controlled and stuff. So that is the short answer, what I think about communication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. That's an amazing answer, for sure. One of the things we talked about in February talked about how the masculine shows up in relationship, and one of the things that what I'm just to my takeaway from hearing you tell that story was that we also talked about how men can lead by using invitation, and that's exactly what you just said demonstrated there was an invitation. It's just, it's more open, it's just more accepting when you're being invited to hear a vision or participate, versus being told, and I think that's just a. That's just a human thing. That's not a man or a woman thing, that's just a human thing.
Speaker 2:We prefer the invitation versus the order and I think when we learn to do that, you know things start to shift and change. And yes, in the beginning it's going to be messy and it's not going to come off great, and that's part of the, you know, of those of us that are perfectionists have to have to overcome and to just step in and do that and allow it to be messy, and maybe that's the, that's the precursor to it that you announced. This might be messy and because it's still an invite, it gives them, gives our spouses, an opportunity to okay, he's trying and to be more open to hear what's going to be said.
Speaker 1:Well, that reminds me of like the, when you share that like the dishwasher is full or like the dishes are dirty or something, and then you say, well, you can't load the dishwasher that way or you had to put it away this way. And we tend to be such control free, excess women, that we want to talk to them Like you have to let it be his way for a while. You have to let him learn the best way to do it. That's normally your domain. Like he's going to change a diaper wrong. He's going to feed the kids wrong. He's going to not do what you would have done, but that's because he's got to learn to like what's the best way to do this? What are the kids prefer? What works best for me when I do this?
Speaker 1:So you can't micromanage the the job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the work of the men.
Speaker 2:They know that's the work on on the men side, you know, on our side, to be able to take those opportunities to as a learning experience for both right and so, because you know, and I'm really looking forward to getting diving into this work next month with our guys on this I go back, you know, to understanding the relationship between mothers and sons, and we've truly haven't many of us men have truly never detached from her, and so we have this capital M mother, goddess image, and we tend to fall into this pattern and that's what happens in our relationships.
Speaker 2:And so, as you were saying earlier, you felt, you felt that you need that, you needed to mother him, and that's because we need to do some more work has meant to step out of that, that space and be more present and be, and for us too, to learn how to, to set effective boundaries that allows, allows the relationship to grow and change, and and we're going to make mistakes, and that's okay and that's part of what. That's the part about growing as a couple and learning more through each other, through each other's actions.
Speaker 1:I love that. I'm so excited for you doing that work.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that I was going to say. You know, in my conversation with men, one of the things we find out, we find is that there are three things we need, and you may agree or disagree, and this will be an interesting conversation. The three things that men need is we need to feel that we're respected. The next thing that we need to feel is that we need to feel that we're validated somehow and finally, as men, we need to feel that we're wanted. So it's pretty common for them to think for us and you know, thinking about the work that you're doing, it's in the work that I'm doing I think it's pretty common for for men to think that, you know, if he's failing in his marriage because he believes that maybe his wife no longer loves him or he no longer wants him, what can we do as men? What would you recommend? What's happening, what are we doing that's causing this and what can we do to help change that situation?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So from my perspective, those are inner child needs, more than what you need right now in the present. It feels like you need them in the present. I mean, of course, everybody should be respected. If somebody's, if your wife, is talking down to you, you need to walk away from that and say that's unacceptable. You can't talk to me like that, just like I would go to a woman to do if her husband was doing that.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that we have to know is that whatever we needed from our parents, we can give to ourselves, and that longing, that need underneath whatever it is we're feeling, is always something that we're being asked to do for ourselves, because we are no longer dependent on another adult to take care of us in that way. And it's terrible that we didn't get what we needed when we were little. It's a shame, but we can do something called reparenting, where you meet that little child in you with empathy and give them what they needed then and continue to give it to them now. So for a lot of women they want to feel worthy. That would be like one of those top three things for us and so they're always hustling for their worth. They're always doing everything Making the right dinner, taking care of the kids right, feeling like they need to bring in money or whatever.
Speaker 1:But that is an inside job. You have to know that you are worthy from the inside, because if you don't know it with every fiber of your being, then you're not going to ever feel satisfied from somebody telling you that from the outside, because they aren't gonna be able to give it to you. Most people are not at that level where they've healed enough, or they could even know that about themselves. So for men I'd say do you respect yourself, do you validate yourself? And then I forgot what your last one was already.
Speaker 2:You wanted.
Speaker 1:Wanted. Do you want yourself? What do you need? The external telling you that you're wanted. And I get it. I know that you want.
Speaker 1:Everybody wants to feel significance. Women want validation and appreciation as well, and there's just not a lot of people in the world who can do that for you, who are already awakened and conscious, who can see your contribution or how awesome you are without feeling threatened. There are so few people who can actually be at that place of love where they can do that for you, so you have to be able to do it inside first. I would say Don't depend on your wife to do those things for you, because all of it will just naturally occur as you heal yourself and you share that with her. And if she does the work, she's already gonna feel that way. So she's gonna just naturally show you that you are. And the other thing I will say is if your wife is still in the house, she wants you. We are very clear when we don't want somebody that we will leave. So if she's still around, especially after you put her through hell, she wants you. She's not like jumping all over your body, but that's because you're in a different season of life.
Speaker 2:You're still wanted, if she's still there 100%, and I appreciate that response because that would be the exact same thing we would teach our men. As well as that, do you want these things? Are you want yourself? How are you showing up and taking personal responsibility for your life? Because when we be the man we want to be, you know, I always say our men are ready to.
Speaker 2:I know men are ready to make massive change in their life when they're ready to take responsibility for three things. The first one is where they are in life, because every decision they've made, reaction they've taken, is landed exactly where they are. So you gotta take responsibility for where you are. Second thing we need to take responsibility as men. It's for who we are. Again goes back to all those decisions and actions. And the third one is who do we aspire to become? And that's the one that we tend to forget a lot is that that requires us to change the way we show up. Every day we show up with purposeful intention, and when we can do that, things start to change and open for us, and so this work that you're doing and helping women is very similar to what we're doing for men, so I'm truly grateful for you doing that.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited.
Speaker 2:You know one of the things, one of the very first things that I was learning about and helping fix some of the challenges that were in my marriage, and I read Gary Chapman's book, the Five Love Languages, and we ran out quickly and we got the book and I did the test and, oh, my wife loves receiving gifts, is her love's language, but that, while in a way it can be effective, it can also be a trap for men and for us to fall into. So what are your thoughts about Gary's work? I know it's been around for a long time, but what are your thoughts about the work and what do we need to be conscious about this?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, you should know that his work has been debunked. It was a great idea, but it's not been proven as improving relationships. They actually found in a study that the woman in the relationship's own self-regulation which is what we've been talking about was more impactful to the health of the relationship than anything else. And this goes back to what I said earlier about how we confuse care with love.
Speaker 1:Those are all acts of care and most people aren't even taking care of themselves. So there's like, if you think of, like the gas tank, there's nothing in the tank to go take care of you too, usually because we're never refilling it ourselves. So if you think that you need all those things, do them for yourself first. If you were actually because we're in a relationship, so if you were actually overwhelmed, if you were actually burdened beyond your ability, like you're sick or you've like lost a job or something, you're disabled or something, then your wife is there or your husband is there to care for you, but we're adults and we care for ourselves and we then have a full energy tank and we have all this love and energy to share with others. If you keep looking outside for somebody, if you keep depending on somebody to fill your tank. You're gonna be let down and disappointed every time.
Speaker 2:Absolutely 100%. So true, so true. You know the work we've been talking about all day and you know this entire podcast here and interview is really about leaving legacy. And so I ask you, is all this work, if you were to fast forward 20 years from now and looking back to what you're doing, what would legacy look like for you?
Speaker 1:That gave me chills. I love that question. For me, it would be that children no longer have to recover from their childhood, and I feel like this is just a piece of that, but it's a huge piece. This is what's creating a lot of the trauma and disconnect, and I feel like it's the root cause of almost every big problem we have out. There is that we don't go home and love our own families. We don't take care of, we don't love ourselves, so we don't love our families. We get concerned with external things and try to fix the world out there and inside our homes. Everything's just falling apart and our children paid the price and it's a shame.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they sure do. They sure do. That was powerful. I love that. So, closing question for you If there was, of everything that we spoke about today and maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on what would be the one takeaway you'd want our listeners to have?
Speaker 1:I would want, I would desperately want for some of my clients' husbands right now to go work with you and do the inner work, because it's not her that's the problem, it's not him that's the problem, it's always something inside.
Speaker 2:Ah, that's outstanding and for sure. We're doing our best, both of us, in both our spheres, to help create that strong family unit, and I just know that, as the word this work continues on, that's exactly what's gonna happen. So I just wanna say thank you so much, beth, for spending time with me today.
Speaker 2:We've been able to I think we've been able to help men understand how we show up in marriages really can make a huge difference, not just in our wives' life but also in the family units. And when we can change the family unit, we start to change our communities, and we change our communities and we start to change the world. And so if men or women are interested in getting ahold of you participating in your programs, what would be the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. They can find me at theauthenticwifeandmomcom. I have a program called Happily Ever After. I take them through for six months and then I have some smaller programs that they can purchase as well. But it's a lot of work. I've been told it's deep work but it's amazing for everybody, like you said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I really appreciate you being on the show and thank you so much for all the work you're doing and keep up the great work.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you as well, thank you for having me.
