Psychologist & author, Dr Ron Johnson, is back with the final part of our four-part series on his book 'Balls: Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine, and Women', and we are tackling the last 'W' of Women.

This episode covers:

• How men can find "the right woman" (& what it means to be "the right man")
• A framework for communicating thoughts & feelings with women
• The importance of the concept of hurt & the emotion of sadness in a man's maturation
• Why sadness/sorrow is our most important emotion

If you haven’t already listened to the 3 previous episodes with Dr Ron, be sure to check those out and his book 'Balls' with the links below.

Find Dr Ron Johnson Here:

Website: MidlandsPsychological.com

Facebook: @MidlandsPsychological

Instagram: @MidlandsPsychological

YouTube: @MidlandsPsychological

Book: 'Balls: Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine, and Women': 🔗 pages.midlandspsychological.com/balls

Find The Akkeri Here:

Website: TheAkkeri.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/theakkeri

Instagram: Instagram.com/the.akkeri

YouTube: YouTube.com/theakkeri

When I'm dealing with a woman, I'm dealing with a phenomenon that's substantially different for me. Yes, we share 99.9% of the same DNA. On the other hand, we have some very significant differences. Women grow up with emotional words.

We men don't grow up with any value on fear and sadness. As a result of that, most of the men that I see struggle with some kind of anxiety.

Finding the right woman is finding a woman who knows who she is, values who she is and can express who she is. That's the right man and the right woman. I know who I am.

You are listening to the Akkeri Podcast, a show about men and masculinities, the challenges that modern men face, and how to chart a better way forward. I'm your host, Matt Howlett, mental health coach and founder of the Akkeri. This episode is the final part of a four part series with Dr.

Ron Johnson on his book Balls Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine and Women. And we are tackling that last W, what he calls the big W of women.

We talk about how to find the right woman and what it means to be the right man, a framework for communicating thoughts and feelings with women, and the importance of the concept of hurt and the emotion of sadness when it comes to male maturity. If you haven't already listened to the three previous episodes with Dr.

Ron, be sure to download those for later and check out his book Balls with the links in the show notes. But for now, here's my conversation with Dr. Ron Johnson. All right, Dr. Ron Johnson, welcome back to the OCRI podcast. We are on episode four of four.

This is, I think episode 16 or 17 by the time it's, it's published. But we've been doing a four part series here on your book Balls. Men Finding Courage with Work. Words, Work. I knew there was going to be.

I knew I was going to get it wrong at some point. Words, Work, Wine and women. We have done the first three. We are jumping into what you call the big W of women.

So maybe you can tell me why is that the big W?

Most of the men that come to see me have come to see me because they're in a challenged relationship.

Either they have known in their life or they have someone in their life that doesn't like them or they don't like that person or they're not relating to some degree or another. That's probably 75 to 80% of men that come in. So they present with women challenges in their life. So, so that's why? It's the big W.

It's not the only thing. It's not the most important thing. But to get to this, we have to do the other sort of three W's that we've talked about in previous times.

So what does that look like then? Like, what is it about those other areas or what is it about women that make that the main part? Like, and. And we have to tick those other boxes.

First of words, work and wine, which obviously means addictions.

Yes. Okay, so let's start with words. I have written in this, a couple of chapters on men here, that we men are not words based.

We are first words and women are first words. Now, that's a bit of an extreme statement. It can sound misogynistic.

Interestingly, actually, men use more words, talk more, but they are not as efficient and not as efficient, particularly in the realm of emotions. So to be able to deal with a woman, you have to have a capacity to translate your emotions, your feelings, your thoughts into words.

So that's why it's so important to have these other three. And if you're not happy in your work, you will not be happy with the woman that you're living with. You will not be happy person.

And if you find yourself falling into addictions, you will not be successful. So those three things lead to this big W, which is, how do I deal with women?

And roughly, when I'm dealing with a woman, I'm dealing with a commodity. Dare I use that word? A phenomenon that's substantially different. For me, yes. We share 99.9% of the same DNA.

On the other hand, we have some very significant differences. So some of those are cultural, some of those are neurological, and some of those are just individual to the person.

What do you see as the main differences?

A couple of things. The main differences, I think are on the surface are words. Women grow up with emotional words.

We men, by and large, don't grow up with emotional words. In fact, the emotion that we grow up with would be anger or joy. We don't grow up with any value on fear and sadness.

As a result of that, most of the men, 95% of the men that I see, struggle with some kind of anxiety. They have lived with it for such a long time that they just think that that's just natural.

And more important than that, the most important emotion we have is sadness. That is not an emotion that has been allowed with us men, especially in the Western culture.

So to deal with a woman, you're dealing with a woman who is much better at being sad, much better at being afraid out loud. And we men are not good at that. So when I hear from a woman, you hurt me for the most part, I have no idea what that means.

Because I've never had a man say that to me in my life. You hurt me. And that's a very important phenomenon. Hurt is extremely important phenomenon. But it's not part of our culture.

It's not part of our natural element. So that's the cultural part. The neurological part is at least as significant, roughly speaking, here.

And I'm not an accomplished neuropsychologist like some people are. But roughly speaking, I feel in the right side of my brain. I think in the left side of my brain. And by the way, the thinking also is where I speak.

And so I gather information in the right side. I see, I hear, I feel, I have emotion. And then I translate that to the other side. Now, this happens in a split second.

There's a transfer point between the right brain and the left brain called the corpus callosum. Interestingly, we talked about this in the book. Yep. In women, it's 40% larger. Now, that doesn't seem like a huge amount.

But if you consider that women are able to feel and then speak their feelings far faster than we men. So those two elements are pretty important, the whole words thing. And then how can I actually put my feelings into words?

It, frankly takes men minutes, where it takes women seconds, to be able to translate that.

Right. I think men would probably be mostly aware, naturally. Of the physiological neurological differences between, you know, us and women.

But I think it's helpful to point out, maybe speak a little bit more to the cultural differences and the upbringing aspect of that.

Because I don't think a lot of us men realize that we haven't had as much verbal experience as women have, Especially when it comes to emotional words. But also what you talk about in the book, of the concept of failure and just how important that is and how we don't experience that in the same way.

Or criticism, I believe, is mainly the thing that you talk about. Can you speak to that briefly? Because that's a big thing for us to be aware of, to recognize these differences.

You use the two words that I think are very important. And that is digesting criticism and digesting failure. Those two things we, by and large, have not been taught how to do. We ignore them, we push away.

We find that addiction, we just go on, we move forward. But we don't give credence to the fact that when I'm criticized I am always hurt, for one thing.

That H word that I call it is not part of our vocabulary. So we don't even recognize what's happening. Usually what happens is I recognize something in my. My stomach, in my body, in some way or another.

Then I have this something that's happening to me emotionally. But I don't have words for this. And the best words are quite simply hurt.

Now, to use that word, I'm using a word that does not lend itself to exact definition. We know what it is when I'm hurt physically, but by and large, we men do not know what it is when I'm hurt emotionally.

And I translate that emotion almost immediately from hurt to anger to avoidance.

So that's why men would often react quickly with anger, something physical. That's why a lot of men's or a man's conflict ends with physical aggression.

It does. It ends with physical aggression or verbal aggression or simply walking away. It's. It's really the fight or flight phenomenon in men that we see.

So men don't have a capacity to be in a discussion to hear something that was critical. Now, maybe the critic was right and maybe he or she was wrong. It doesn't matter. Right or wrong, I'm going to be hurt.

And so extremely important is for a man to mature in understanding that he is hurt. He may not say that out loud, but eventually he needs to learn how to do that as well. But he needs to realize whether this person is right or wrong.

What he or she said to me hurts me. Then he can move forward to, do I say something? Do I not say something? But I don't argue. I don't get mad. I don't defend myself.

I just recognize how I feel.

Right? So it's not that women have been hurt more than men have. I mean, it depends on the individual, I'm sure.

But we're not used to that process of recognizing the hurt for what it is.

Exactly. We. We don't recognize that. And you said, well, men are not hurt any less than women. The same, maybe sometimes more, but by and large about the same.

But we don't have that vocabulary. We don't have the recognition. Because when I feel hurt, you see, in that moment, I'm helpless. I can't unhurt myself.

So what I do then is I compensate for it by avoiding or getting angry instead of allowing it to run its course. If I'm hurt, that hurt will not last forever. And it will lead me to the emotion of sorrow, and it will lead me to self Reflection.

If I am able to do that now, maybe my challenger here who hurt me, intended to hurt me most of the time, let's just say she did not intend to hurt me. She's just trying to help me. But I felt hurt. That's not a capacity that most of us men have and we haven't been taught how to do that.

Women have been.

Yeah. What do you say to the men who calls that being soft?

Because I've seen that type of rhetoric a fair bit about, well around content like this, and I even seen it on one of your videos on Facebook or Instagram. I can't remember which platform it was.

But the, the language or the thought that for a man to be like that, to actually experience that hurt, to be able to feel that experience that put that in the words, that's actually soft. Men don't need to feel that. What do you say to that?

I would say they're not familiar with it. Soft is not such a bad word. And nor is weak a bad word. The better word is helpless.

If you think about that, Matt, if you just hear that word, helpless, you as a normal man, I as a normal man, have a knee jerk reaction. I'm not going to be helpless. I am not helpless. I will do something. What will I do?

I will move forward with aggression or I will move backwards with avoidance. So to be able to learn to just be hurt, and in this moment, I am helpless.

I can't unhurt myself is a task of emotional and personal maturity that most men have not been taught how to do.

And that plays into this conversation of women because of the fear of female criticism. Female disapproval.

Yes.

Can you paint a picture of that? What does that actually look like? Like, I don't think all men experience this in the same way, but we do all experience it.

We do experience it. And the difficulty is not that we're being criticized more than other people, we're just not familiar with how to deal with it the way a woman deals.

Deals with it. See, the H word, hurt, unfortunately, has become a female word. Women then exaggerate it to some degree.

They say something like, well, I'm just so hurt. Well, I add the adverb, so hurt. I mean, how does that help, right? Well, it really doesn't help, but it makes a man really feel uncomfortable.

So what am I doing here? I didn't mean to hurt you. What's going on? Why are you hurt? I was just challenging what you thought about this particular thing.

So she's familiar with it and she uses it sometimes to a fault, then that does not help us men learn how to use it, because then that feels soft, as you said earlier. Or weak.

Right.

Weak is actually closer than to the truth. The truth is I'm helpless.

Right.

To get helpless in the moment in a man's psyche is really important in the moment. I'm helpless. I can't unhurt myself. I can't change what's being said. I have to just allow this to be there and see where it leads me.

I want to get into that little bit more the female criticism, disapproval.

But back to that point about softness or being soft as a man, obviously you pointed out the right word or the more appropriate correct word would be feeling helpless in that moment. It's not necessarily soft. You feel helpless, you've been hurt. You can't undo that. You can't, you know, prevent that from even happening.

But that doesn't make a man less of a man to feel that.

Exactly. And for most men, it makes them feel less of a man.

Yeah, and I think that's why I mentioned. Sorry. That's why I mentioned it, because I. I think there is this. This group.

I mean, I don't know how many men think that way, but it feels like there are a lot that push back against even content like this, you know, this conversation. There will be men that listen to this podcast and think that's silly. That's soft, that's feminine, that's not masculine. That's not me.

I don't want to do that. I don't need to do that. But the truth is, we will not be healthy if we ignore these thoughts, these feelings, if we ignore the concept of hurt.

We will not be healthy in several ways. We will not be healthy psychologically. We. We will not be healthy healthy relationally.

And by the way, we will not be healthy physically because do not allow this emotion to run its natural course. What happens is my body is going to react to it and I will stiffen in some way or another or reactor, or compensate. So it's.

It's not healthy in the very larger sense of it. But to get this, to help a man become familiar with this, feeling helpless in the moment, in the moment is not soft. It's really not weak.

It is helpless. I can't change the past. And so that's actually very manly.

It's interesting that we dared to call this book with this outrageous title of Balls, because you think of balls. It's like, okay, aggressive and challenging. And I'm going to say what I mean I'm going to be angry.

That's not what balls means at all, that maybe there's a time for that. But by and large, balls means do I know who I am, do I value who I am, do I express who I am?

And then as a result, do I know and express and hear how other people feel? So I think this being helpless in the moment is very manly, very ballsy. It's like, I have to be courageous. That's a part of the subtitle of the book.

Many men finding courage in these areas, to be courageously hurt, to be courageously helpful in the moment. That means I can't be worried about what I look like, what I sound like, what somebody else thinks about me.

I have to, in the moment, realize in this moment I'm helpless. And that's where men get lost because they want to push back, get angry, defend themselves, and explain something, right?

So we all need to realize that we, like you just said, can't change the past. We will be hurt. We are human. It is an aspect of being human, and we are better for it. Not necessarily being hurt, but better for the process of.

I recognize I was hurt. I recognize how I feel. I'm able to put how I feel into words. How does that type of courageous honesty help men when it comes to facing that?

Fear of female criticism, disapproval.

The underlying factor in all emotions is love. When I'm happy, I love something that I have. When I'm sad, I have loved something that I lost.

When I'm angry, I love something that I lost in the past. When I'm afraid, I love something that I might lose in the future. So the whole of this is not to just. Men make men soft or even be aware of hurt.

The whole of it is for them to be more loving in the larger sense of what that means. To actually feel helpless and hurt is to love myself. I have loved myself and I have been attacked.

Doesn't matter if the attack is right or wrong, but I have been attacked and I feel hurt in that moment. That is actually the result of the fact that I do naturally love myself, as we all do.

So if I expand that, then I can get better at loving other things and other people. If I really realize that I've been hurt in this situation because I'm a human being and I'm a valuable person.

I know many men don't always feel that, but ultimately they do incite, then I can realize, oh, this can make me more diligent in how I communicate myself, particularly to avoid the danger of being angry, particularly at women, but more importantly, to avoid the danger of being afraid that I might be hurt, that he or she might hurt me.

So it's not just a matter of becoming more familiar with failure, of trying and failing and trying again, but it's mainly an issue of understanding yourself.

It is. And in this situation, I do something, I spill my coffee. What would happen?

Normally, I just get angry or I threaten or, you know, I throw the coffee cup or whatever, and if I precede that I was enjoying my coffee, I spilled it. I am hurt. I am helpless. I can't get the coffee off the floor here in that moment, I'm helpless.

If I let that run its course, it runs a course for seconds and then it's over, right? Oh, I learned to be a little bit more careful or whatever, or this is just too bad.

Just to make that as clear as possible, can you give me an example or something practical, a way of thinking, something that the man can do in that moment. So you. You spill your coffee. Maybe you don't just simply spill it, but it goes on. You.

You're going to a meeting, it ruins your pants or whatever that is.

What.

What do you do? How. How do you process that? What does it actually look like?

Eventually, this process can be seconds, but to start with, it's going to take minutes because you have to override the tendency to be angry or to avoid it. So if we say in the long run what we want to do, as I spill my coffee, I'm disappointed, which is probably the best word.

I'm going to this meeting, I'm ready for it, and all of a sudden I'm damaged. I have damaged myself. And to be disappointed lasts for seconds. And then I'm through that. And then I can make a decision. What do I do here?

Do I decide to postpone my meeting? Do I go home and get a different shirt? Do I go to the bathroom and wash the shirt out? Do I do nothing? Do I just explain? Do I laugh at myself?

Then I can think clearly about what I might do afterwards. But I can't think clearly if I'm trying to avoid this fact. And I'm angry. So that actually leads me into what I should do in the long run.

And what leads me here is acknowledging that I've been hurt, happen to be hurt myself. But it's the same thing. If somebody else says something to me, if they said something to me, that's critical. Again, maybe they're right or wrong.

It doesn't matter. I'm going to be hurt. And if I give that seconds, I will be disappointed. That's the hardest task.

That is the key task for emotional maturity in a man, to know what he's feeling. Not at all times, but especially at the times of disappointment, which means being criticized or making a mistake.

And that helps the man with the woman because of emotional maturity, because of understanding yourself, being able to present yourself better. Is that an accurate summary?

Yeah, that is exactly. And there's some delicacy here. I'm reminded when.

When you say that of a recommendation I gave to a man who was with a woman at the time, happened to be his wife, and she was frequently critical of him. And I said, now, Jim, I want you to then accept you do. I want you to say, you know, Jan, that really hurt me.

Well, he took that advice and he did that. And so she said something, which she does, and he said, well, that really hurt me. And she said this.

Well, isn't that too bad, Jim, that you were hurt? Well, poor you. Now, is that because she's some kind of terrible person? No. She had never heard the H word from Jim. Never heard it.

She didn't know how to process it. She had heard anger. She had heard avoidance. She'd heard explanation, but she'd never heard hurt. So I was really unfamiliar for her.

She used it all the time, and he had never used it. So there's some danger here in what you say and to whom you say something. You can't just blurt something out like that.

In most situations where you're hurt, you don't say it, you recognize it. And if you recognize it, then you might say it. Likely you won't say it, and the hurt will move beyond that to something that maybe you should do.

Right. So first step, understanding yourself. Working through this process of maturity in general.

But emotional maturity is the main thing that we're kind of hitting on here. Understanding how you feel, how you think, being able to put that into words. How do you then bring yourself to a woman and present yourself?

How do you speak to a woman? One of the things you pointed out in your book, you present this, like, conceptual framework of what you call staging.

Yes. Staging really needs to be carefully understood because it. It can sound, and it.

It may sound to any of our listeners now, particularly women like this is control. It's. It's not control, but it is controlling oneself. It's not controlling somebody else.

Staging is, I have something that I want to say, and I need to be able to present that in a way that communicates who I am. I say this to people, particularly with men and women. If she sees you, she will love you. The more she sees you, the more she will love you.

So the task is for her to see you.

So staging is, how can I present myself so the woman in front of me sees me better, But I can't present myself the way a woman presents herself to another woman because of this corpus callosum that connects feelings and thinking. With women, we don't have as much, and it's not as active, and we're not familiar with it.

So the interaction between two women is very fast and furious when it comes to emotion. Very often women can, and this is clearly neurological, they can speak and listen at the same time. We men certainly cannot do that. We cannot do that.

You're listening to me now. If you have thoughts, frankly, you hold them because it's like, okay, I don't want to interrupt Ron here. So staging means.

Okay, if I'm going to present this, I have to have to present this in what I call a male way, which means I'm going to speak, you're going to listen, and then you're going to speak, and I'm going to listen. And women hate that. It's like, no, no, no, no, let's do this. Working and listening at the same time. No, we can't do that. Sorry, my dear, I. I can't.

Yeah, speak and listen at the same time. So that's. That's. That's the key of this whole staging thing. It's like, okay, I'm going to say something important to the woman in my life.

Yeah.

And to stage, it means I have to sort of think through how can I present this.

Yeah. When I read that, that didn't sound or come across as controlling. To me. It. It's.

Well, I suppose it's controlled because you do want a controlled environment. I think this will resonate with any man listening.

When you present how you feel or even sometimes what you think to a woman, especially if it's on a more sensitive topic or something that you have maybe disagreed on in the past, the energy changes, like the energy in the space, the energy between the two of you, you know, something is heightened. And because it's a sensitive topic or you're talking about something that's very personal. So to me, that makes perfect sense. You say more about that.

There's a, like, three steps. Setting the stage, entering the stage, and exiting the stage.

So this back and forth just a little bit more to make this as clear to men as we can, because it's not just simply about them. And as you just mentioned a minute ago, you don't simply tell, you know someone or you're, you know, a woman exactly what you feel.

And you don't do it all the time. You have to be specific. You have to choose your moments. Right. And you're not going to do it, say, in public. You're going to probably hold that.

You know, if you are hurt, maybe in public by her, you think about that. You feel that you can probably process it to an extent in that moment, but you choose your space. Right.

So setting the stage, entering the stage, exiting the stage, I think is the. Roughly the language that you used.

Yes. So setting the stage really means. I'm thinking here, okay?

So I feel something, and this seems to be an important thought that I have or a feeling that I have or an experience that I have. And I'm thinking, this is an important part of me. Roughly, I want her to see me. I want to be seen. If I'm going to be seen, I'm going to be loved.

So setting the stage here is being prepared myself. Then the second part of setting the stage is actually saying something to the woman. And it's. I would suggest something like this.

Jane, I really want to tell you something about myself, which is quite important.

I've been musing about this for a while, and if you can give me some liberty here, I want to kind of speak out loud, speak a little freely, and this is going to be tough for you because you would want to question and ask. But what I want to do here is kind of do it in my way. Jane, I want to just say, this is important.

And if I'm to say something that's really important, I'm not going to be really good at this. And, you know, I'm still learning about this whole emotional thing. So I'm asking, give me a little liberty.

And so that's setting the stage and then climbing the stage is roughly. Jane. Okay, let me tell you what's going on with me. I just haven't felt right physically for a while.

I think this is a kind of a physical, emotional thing. Once in a while, I feel myself thinking about work.

Sometimes I think about us, think about the kids, think about money, but I just haven't felt right. And. And here is very likely where the woman is going to say, well, tell me more what's going on? And I. I've seen that. And I think.

And you say, well, thank you very much, my dear, but I.

I'm struggling with this, and I know this might be hard for you, but I'm asking to just listen because I'm going to be here and there, half true and not true, and I'm not sure. So just let me muddle through this. So I'm taking the stage and taking control not of her, but of me.

Right.

And I'm not saying you're always interrupting me or whatever. You know, I don't say that. And when you're finished, when you're doing your best, you say something like this.

I really appreciate what you've done here. You just listen to me. And Jane, I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts and you have your feelings, and I want to hear them.

But right now, frankly, I'm emotionally exhausted. I need to kind of back up and. And just go outside and throw a football or, you know, have a glass of water or something.

So I'm asking a lot of you here. So all of this, I think, is revealing of my inadequacy in regards to saying how I feel.

Yeah.

That's setting the stage, entering the stage, and then exiting the stage. With very few exceptions, women will not understand that and will not like it.

There's nothing wrong with women that they don't like it because they have done this back and forth thing that we men can't do. So if you do that kindly, instead of demanding, you. You're saying this is about me, Jane. This is not about you.

It's not about something you're doing wrong.

Yeah. And you mentioned the concept of overwhelm, which I think is important.

And there's likely a couple of other maybe risks or potentials in there for what the man's gonna run into, like, challenges, because that's a complicated process. I. I know personally, it's. It's been a while since I really got into this type of work. Right.

Just personal growth work, being aware of my own feelings, accepting the fact that they're there, and then forcing myself to deal with them. It's been a number, but that process of talking to a woman has been a challenge from. From day one. And it still is.

There are still moments when, like you said a moment ago, I might feel emotionally exhausted. And it's not necessarily that the day has been overly emotional. It's just that maybe, you know, brain power from work is pretty much done.

Like, it was a hard day at work, and I don't have a whole lot left in the tank, we'll say. So we get into a conversation about something that's a Little bit emotionally charged or it's sensitive. I could run into that.

I could have to stop and be like, you know what? I want to hear what you have to say. You know, don't cut the woman off. You know what I mean?

You can validate what she's saying, what she's feeling, but just be like, you know, baby, I need to. I need to take a moment. What else. What other challenges do you see in that process? Because there are more than one.

Well, what I really like, what you just said, is the pronoun. And the pronoun is I. It's not you. You know, I feel. I'm hurt. I'm uncertain, I'm. I'm confused. You know, I'm exhausted. The pron is who I am here.

That sounds selfish. It's not selfish. It is a way the man starts, ideally, says something about himself. And to be able to do that, to say, I might be. I feel overwhelmed.

And then to be able to have a few words. That's why the words are so important to say, I feel overwhelmed. And, you know, I'd like to talk about it, but I just don't have the right words now.

I don't think I would be very articulate, very careful. And so I want to ask you, just give me a few minutes, maybe an hour or so, and I'll come back to this.

The whole thing starts with I, and it's not about, you're not listening. You didn't do this, you didn't do that. So if I could start with that pronoun, which is not where most people start. They usually start with you.

I think both men and women start with you instead of I. Yeah, and.

The concept of hurt comes back in over and over again in that process.

Sometimes not every time, but there could be something said that is unintentionally hurtful, or you could hear something, or they might do something or respond to you in a way, even, like, physically. Just body language that is perceived as hurtful. Not the intent, you know, of the. Of the woman, but because I. I know I. I've experienced that.

I've been, you know, mainly when I'm tired. I. I remember this acronym from ministry years. Jeannie. Jeannie Mayo was the pastor's name.

We were at a conference down the States, and she was, you know, talking to. To leaders specifically, and she threw out this acronym of halt.

And I've held on to it ever since because there's a ton of things from that time period that were very helpful from. From those years in Ministry. But halt is hungry, angry, lonely, tired. So whenever.

Whenever you are one of those, you are generally a little bit more susceptible to. To, you know, reacting in a way that you might not want to.

To not being overly mindful, overly present, not being who you want to be and reacting the way that you want to react in the moment. But if you are two of those, obviously it goes up. If you're three, if you're four, you know, your. Your risk increases.

And it's really about wanting to be who you want to be of. Of reacting in the way that you want to react, responding appropriately, not just not hurting someone else, but being who you are in that moment.

And that has always been helpful to me. And it's something that I can point out, like right now to Dana and just be like, you know, baby, I'm. I'm starving.

I can't even have this conversation until we eat dinner, you know, whatever that might be for you. But yeah, halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Hunger is the. Probably the main one for me. I'm not good when I'm tired.

But if I'm hungry and tired, I'm toast. I'm probably going to hurt her. I'll speak, you know, inappropriately. I'll say something I didn't mean to say, or I like the acronym.

Never heard it before, but I'm going to remember it. Thank you very much.

That's.

That's really very helpful. I'd like to, you know, just augment what you said here a little bit, because I'm asking.

We are asking a lot of women to not respond immediately to us. We're asking them to, in a way, go against their nature. And they're certainly their cultural experience, which is I speak, you speak.

We speak at the same time. We challenge each other. We go back and forth. We men can't do that.

So I always think it's important to realize when I'm asking a woman to be silent and let me just speak, I'm asking her to go against her nature. Whether that's biological or cultural, it is against her nature. And Deb has learned over time to be able to do that. And she has admitted.

And she said once, because I asked her, I said, how much do you actually tell me about what you feel? She says, about 20%. Now, we've been together for 50 years. We're really good at this.

We wrote the book on feelings, and we wrote this book together on balls. So we do a lot of communicating.

But I have to realize, and she has to realize that she has Far more access to her emotions that turn into words than I do.

Right.

So, in fact, it makes me think about the other day. I said, honey, I just really feel overwhelmed. And I said, I can't say if this is physical or emotional.

Several things in our life, you know, my sister died. Some other kinds of things we had to kind of tackle. And. And she said, well, I'm sorry to hear that, Ron. I'm looking forward to hearing more of that.

That is not your typical woman, your difficult woman is why are you overwhelmed? What's going on? How can I help? What's. What's going on? Maybe it has your father that you never resolved. It's like, whoa.

And so she has learned that if I'm to speak, it has to be on my stage, on my time, and then I can ramble, and then she will get it, and then she will see me better. She won't see me better if she interrupts and she asks questions. But I'm asking a huge amount of a woman to be quiet when I'm saying how I feel.

Yeah. I think it's important to communicate that we probably will ramble. I know I do, because I'm sometimes struggling to find the right words.

And obviously that takes practice or gets better with practice. You might ramble less, but it is difficult in the moment because there's so many feelings, so many emotions involved.

When you even go to present yourself and try to tell her, you know, create the stage and enter the stage, as you put it, and tell her how you feel, it's not always easy. Even if you have processed those feelings and given time to think about it ahead of time.

Can you talk to me for a few minutes about the concept of the right woman?

You talk about that in your book, and I believe you say that it's not so much about the right woman in quotes, it's being the right man and finding the right woman for you. I don't think you believe in this concept of soul mate, per se.

Yeah, no. Right. Although I think you would use. And I would use that terminology, but it isn't natural for me to use that terminology.

Sure.

To find the right woman. Let me speak briefly about that.

Sounds like, again, could be misogynistic, but women and men don't have any more psychological problems than the other gender. We both have challenges. All right. The right woman roughly knows who she is, values who she is, and. And can express who she is.

That's essentially what the right man is. He knows who he is. He expresses who he is. He Values who he is. That expression may be imperfect, but that's the right man and the right woman.

I know who I am. If I know who I am, I will love myself. I may not like myself. I may not like what I say or what I do, but I will love myself.

I will realize that I have this inner natural ability to love me. When Jesus said, you need to love God and others as you already love yourself, he was really saying, you don't have to try to love yourself.

It's just natural. So finding the right woman here is finding a woman who knows who she is.

So Deb can not respond to me the way she would like to when I say I'm overwhelmed, because she knows I am doing the best that I can. And that is part of being the right woman. She knows who she is, she knows who I am, and she's learning who I am.

Being the right man is really dealing with these first three W's, which is getting words, especially emotional words in my vocabulary. Being in a profession, in a job, that is valuable for me, and I'm making a contribution to the world.

Whether I'm a neuroscientist or whether I'm a garbage collector, I'm doing something valuable. And then thirdly, of course, to avoid the danger of addiction. So you talked about last time. So the right man is not a perfect man.

The right man knows that he's imperfect. And when he stumbles like, like. Like you said, I'm stumbling. I think you just say that out loud, you know. You know what I find very interesting?

The current terminology, well, for a number of years is my bad. Where does my bad come? Where do we hear my bad? So that's terrible English, right? I know people. I just hate that.

Well, that came from the athletic field. And on the athletic field, my bad. Okay? My bad. I did that. I did this tackle, or I did this shot, or I didn't do it. My bad.

Why is it so easy to do that on the athletic field and so hard to do it interpersonally? Well, I think it needs to be in the vocabulary, roughly, my bad, my dear. Let me try again. That's not right. I didn't do very well. I want to try again.

It's that self esteem. I know who I am. I'm not a bad person. I love myself. And the words that are coming out are approximate because they're not perfectly.

My feelings are spiritual inside. And then they turn to emotion, then they come into words. So I think that's an evidence of self esteem.

And frankly, self esteem really is a combination of generosity and humility. And humility means I am imperfect and the words that I say are imperfect.

Yeah, I think that concept of being able to love yourself is so important for a man, especially in that context, because you're going to struggle and you need to be able to admit that you screwed up. Right. You need to be able to say my bad, my fault, you know, I did this, or I didn't do this, I said this or I didn't say that.

And it's not, not allowing it to go into self criticism. Right. Because that, you know, because that's basically anger at yourself. Right. Like, you know, I, I up, I'm sorry. Not being able to say you're sorry.

Right. And just realizing that you did something wrong, but not that you are wrong.

Exactly. I did something wrong, but not you are wrong. By the way. That's the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is I did something wrong, I feel sad.

Shame is I'm a bad person, I. I'm stupid or something.

Yeah.

And then a hide, shame hides and guilt is admits to itself.

That's a conversation. Yeah, that's a conversation we need to have, especially when it comes to the religious context. So I really want to get into that one.

So lack of self awareness is definitely the. I think you said the primary thing that you would say is the wrong woman and dependency versus independence. You want to find a woman.

The right woman is independent. What does that mean?

The right woman is independent and they're dangerous. I was just started seeing a couple and she and he, they're both very independent people. That's not something wrong.

But they were quite unfamiliar with how to develop a relationship because they were so independent. More often than not, we have people who are dependent. A man is dependent on alcohol or dependent on something and the woman is dependent on the man.

There's a natural dependence that we develop over time.

So this whole dependent thing, whether it's a man dependent on alcohol or playing or whatever he's doing, or the woman who is dependent on something else might be food or might be the man himself, that's the wrong woman, that's the wrong man. And so appropriate dependence is first, I know who I am, secondly, I know my strengths, thirdly, I know my weaknesses.

And fourthly, I began to speak about both of those. And then I really need you to understand me. When I said to Deb, I feel overwhelmed, she understood who I was.

And that meant I was dependent on her listening to me and then eventually being able to come and then a couple days after that, I said, let me unpack what I said the other day.

What about for the man who feels like he is going through this process of maturation and is in a relationship with a woman that he loves or. And committed to?

You know, maybe they're going through some problems, but how does he start a conversation with the woman if he's noticing there's some issues there? Right. Because obviously I. I would let me backtrack a little bit. What I'm thinking is, if you've got a man who hasn't been mature and he.

And he finds later in life that he is maturing, he's coming to understand his feelings a whole lot more, come and understand who he really is. But he's already in this relationship. Relationship, and he does love the woman and he does want to keep this relationship.

What if that woman that he's with has some of these, like, wrong woman characteristics and probably has the potential for. For considerable growth? Otherwise the man wouldn't love her in the first place. But how does he bring up that conversation?

Like, how do you do that in a way that is loving, caring, I want to help you. I want to support you. Like, how do you even start that conversation and do that together? What does that look like?

It looks like you use the first person pronoun. You use I instead of you. It's real easy to slip from. I feel that you should. That's not an I statement.

I feel that you should as a statement about you. So to. To state I statement, if, if. If you're in this situation and you're a maturing man and you realize the woman that I'm with here is roughly.

Is not mature, it's evidence in how she behaves or what she speaks, or she's too quiet or she's too loud or too critical or too. Whatever she might be, he realizes I'm not happy here. That's basically what the man has to say.

And, and that can sound critical, but it's essentially, I'm affirming how I feel so very carefully here. And this is a whole staging thing.

A man that has matured in some way and he's in a relationship with a woman who we might say is less mature or is not maturing at that level, he needs to say something like, jane, I need to tell you something really important to me. And what's that? I'm just really not happy. I'm not quite happy with what we're doing here. And there we slip into the second person pronoun.

Which is we, but we're not talking about her. I'm not happy with how things are unfolding. And all I can say is, I want to be happy, not perfect. I want to be better. I want us to be better.

But I don't know what that means. All I can say here is, this is good. And however crude it sounds, it's not good enough. And that, of course, naturally, will sound like criticism.

But what the man is really saying is something about himself. He's not saying anything about her. He's saying, I'm not happy. Now, how she receives that is delicate, because she will feel criticized.

Well, what should I do? What do you think I should do? And the man, if he's still doing this staging, says, I don't know what you should do.

This is just the start of a conversation. Jane, I just want to tell you where I am right now. You know I love you dearly. I.

I just found myself liking less of what we're doing together, liking being together. There's something that's just not quite right. And so that hints at. Jane, maybe I'd like you to look at yourself. But you don't say that.

You don't say that to them. In fact, interestingly, this morning, I was having a conversation with a man who is what we call a lover. Temperament by nature.

It means he's connecting. He's very good at that. He's very, very outgoing, very engaging. His wife is what we call an analyst. She's looking to solve the world. So the world.

Problems make the world a better place. Well, the way analysts tend to do that is tell everybody what they should do and what's wrong with them. So, you know, she's inclined to do that.

Well, I think you're too flirtatious. He's not flirtatious. He looks flirtatious to. To him. And he says, I have no interest in any other woman. I just like to engage people.

I engage the cashier.

Are you talking about me, or are you. Because I'm that analyst. I am that person. I. I have not really gotten in trouble for that, but, man, have I ever. Oh, geez. I've got myself into.

I got to say it now. I have definitely had women think that I was interested in them in the past, but I just. I generally love people. I really do. I don't like everybody.

I'm definitely particular. I'm not going to be close with everybody, but I love being able to just get a hi, how are you? Eye contact, whatever.

It's going to Be out of just about everybody.

Well, it's interesting, Matt, because what you just said is you have these two elements that we could say are temperament elements. You have this analyst temperament, looking to make the world a better place.

And you have this lover temperament, wanting to be with people and be generous with people. That's wonderful.

But that also says that you've worked pretty diligently on yourself and you realize that the analytical part of you can be critical and looking at what's wrong. And the lover part of you can give in, which is what lovers tend to do. They give in. That's not giving, that's not loving.

Yeah.

So if we come back to what we were talking about here. How does a man communicate when he's not happy? He has to really first look at how he feels.

Like I very often hear from men, you know, if I'm really honest, I shouldn't have ever been married.

Right.

30 years ago. Oh, so that means I should get divorced? No, maybe, maybe not. But it means that you have to admit to this marriage was not well founded.

I didn't know who I was. I didn't know who you were then. So we ended up not knowing who we were.

And here we are in this situation now we're married, we have kids and we have the house or whatever. So it's realizing and admitting to myself. But that wouldn't be something that a man should say.

You don't say out loud, I wish we'd never been married. Even though he might say that to himself, but he knows how he feels. And so to say, Jane, I'm not happy. Something's not right.

I'm just looking for something to be improved. But I don't know what that might be. I just wanted to tell you about it.

Yeah, that sounds a little scary.

A little scary.

And it's going to bring up potential loss, at least the anxiety over the potential change and loss of relationship. But that only highlights.

I think it's become so clear through all the conversations that we've had now that most of what we talk about highlight the importance of joy and sorrow. That sadness, like you say, is the most important emotion that we have.

It is indeed joy and sorrow. Joy and sorrow in the present is I have something, have it, I lost it, or I'm losing it. I'm sad. By the way. Joy and sorrow in the past is nostalgia.

Another man that I talked to this morning lost a child some years ago and he says, I'm a little worried about myself because I don't kind of still Bemoan about Ryan having died. This was five, six years ago. I said you're nostalgic. You love Ryan, present tense.

You love him and, and you're sad and to some degree that you lost him, but you're happy that you had these years. So you can do joy and sorrow in the past if you go to nostalgia. You can do joy and sorrow in the future if you go to hope.

Because hope is not that I'll have everything I want. Hope is I will have something. I will have it and then I will lose it.

So the reason I say sadness is the most important of those four emotions is that I lose everything. And that's not a bad thing. Because I lose something, I gain something else.

Yeah. Well, Ron, I hope that this conversation and the others that we've had have been helpful to those that have listened to it.

More than that, I hope that they pick up a copy of your book, follow you guys on social. Either way, get the content that you guys are putting out there into their heads and just consider that, think about it for a while.

Because I, I meant what I said in that testimonial video that I did for you guys.

The book wasn't released, obviously when I met you guys, when I started to learn more about myself and dig into this concept of emotional maturity, I didn't even probably know the term back then. I, I was self aware, I was mature to an extent, but emotions, definitely not something that I was comfortable talking about.

Didn't have the words for it, didn't have experience. But yeah, I, I hope that men specifically get this book, get the content and get it into them, because it was life changing.

I didn't have the book, I just had, you know, the authors. Right. And now the book's out, so it's a little bit more, I suppose, easily attained. But I appreciate your time once again.

The book is called Balls Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine and Women. It's available on Amazon, it's available on Barnes Noble.

You can get it through Ron's website, through their practice website, Midlands psychological.com and you can find them on social media as well at Midlands Psychological. Thank you again, Ron, for your time.

My pleasure.

All right, good to see you. Yeah, we'll see you again. Thank you for listening. I hope you found some value in this episode.

If you have, be sure to share the Akkeri podcast with a friend and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can find the Akkeri on socials at the Akkeri and on the web at TheAkkeri dot com.