Hey, I'm Mike Joseph and thank you for listening to Detoxicity, a show by men, about men, but for everyone. I hope you enjoy the content of this podcast and I want to let you know about a few things you can do to support us and our mission to challenge traditional notions of masculinity and create a more communicative, positive and loving environment for all. You can subscribe to Detoxicity on any podcast platform that you use to listen. We are available just about everywhere. Also, don't hesitate to rate and comment as these help us move up in the podcast rankings. I'm on social media or at least I'm on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok as DetoxPodguy. Feel free to drop me a follow. Now I have a Patreon page, yay! And Patreon gives you the opportunity to get cool merch and exclusive episodes of this podcast in exchange for subscribing. Go to patreon.com/detoxicitypod to find out more. Finally, I'd love to hear from you. If you've found an episode of the podcast particularly enjoyable or enlightening or you know someone who'd be a great guest or you'd like to offer constructive criticism or if you yourself would like to be on the podcast, hit me up. Reach out to me at one of the aforementioned social media channels or if you're old school like I am, drop me an email,
[email protected]. Thank you for listening and take care. So if you've been listening to this show regularly for a while now, you're aware that I try to bring in people from all different walks of life, whether it's people who are sort of discussing their own lives and the things that they've gone through, people who specialize in helping others with that. And in this case, we're kind of mixing it up and doing a little bit of both. Actually, even when I do have mental health professionals on this show, I try to get them to talk a little bit about their own life experience and life story, which is usually what brought them to mental health work in the first place. Certainly the case with my guest today. I would like you all to give a warm welcome to Tommy Matera. Tommy is a counselor and a coach based in California. He specializes in anxiety, depression, unfill, filling, that is a hard word to say, relationships and fatherhood. So he definitely is deep in the men's work game and we talk about a lot of that stuff in the context of this podcast. We talk about what drove him into the work and like most people, it comes from his own personal experience. We talk about his ability to maintain and cultivate relationships, which is something that he's working on. And we talk about what brings men into work with him. And that's a variety of different things, lots of which we've covered before and some of which we're covering for the first time here. So without any further ado, here's Tommy. Okay, well, my name is Tommy Matera. I am a licensed marriage family therapist over here in California. My practice is geared around working with men, helping men work through a variety of mental health issues. Probably my most common stated symptoms are going to be anxiety, depression, that sort of thing. I certainly find a lot of commonality in the stories that I hear. And so that kind of got me started on this idea of really specializing of working with men because I think that, like I said, there's a common thread. And I think that me getting a sense of what's really going on helps me get to the bottom of things that faster. So that's really what I love to do. Most of my content generation that I'm working on is geared towards men. And I'm actually coming out with some courses and things like that on helping men develop resilience. We're doing some mental health work there. And yeah, it's a really cool process. I hope you Google men's mental health expert. Believe it or not, the top pages are mostly women, which I find a little bit strange. Yeah. And so I'd like to bring a male voice to male mental health. I found that this podcast here reached out to Mike and the rest is history. And here we are. We made it happen. We made it happen. Whenever I speak to somebody who is a mental health professional, I always ask them how they came into this work. And I've heard different responses. Some people went to school to study something else and then they just kind of had a brain wave. And we're like, maybe this is the direction I need to go in. Some people had family members who were in the mental health field and decided to kind of work forward from having a little bit of childhood back on the topic. Some people went to therapy and then decided I'm going to study this as a vocation. How did you get into this work? I've been asked this question before and the answer. Most of the same, but it seems to change as I understand my own story and kind of getting farther into it. I'm like, Oh, that was a really important moment. So I remember in high school just talking with friends, one of my friends, Laura, we were sitting in front of her fireplace and she was really going through some stuff. And I've just talked about it. And that really stuck out. I like these kind of conversations. There's something meaningful about it. And then my own journey of struggling with depression, especially in my early 20s, my therapist Ashley during that time was unbelievably impactful on me. And I think that really started my mind going of like, I think I'm kind of wired by personality to go in this direction a little bit. I find a lot of interest there, but then also having those positive influences. So I've had a couple of therapists that have just played a huge role in me becoming a therapist myself. And yeah, I would love to say that I knew right away or something like that, but going through grad school and all that, there was definitely some moments of like, am I in the right field? That was actually the next question I was going to ask you. Was there ever any point during your studies when you were like, maybe I should become a computer programmer? Certainly not computer programmer as we had detailed. Yeah, there were some times, believe it or not, just right after graduating from grad school, the process of becoming a licensed therapist is pretty grueling. There's about 3,000 hours you have to accrue before you can even test. Wow. So if you're doing some quick math at 40 hours a week, that's about a year and a half if I'm on my math right. And the page not great. You typically don't have a ton of say over your case load. So you're kind of working with anyone, everyone, which is a great learning curve, but burnout is a huge problem in the, they're called associates in California when you're post grad school, but pre-licensed, you're an associate. Hmm, man, it's rough because you're not getting paid very much. You're working huge hours. Your student debt payments certainly don't stop during that time. Right. And you have an advanced degree so that can add up. I think that was the point when I was most skeptical of my decisions. And what kept you going? What kept me going? Well, I got married during that time and we needed to make ends meet. So I kind of found a deeper gear of really setting some goals towards private practice and opening my own business and finding some financial stability through that. I took my licensing exam. I believe it was July 1st and August 9th. So a little over a month, I had my first client and my private practice. So I was on it. Wow. I was about knowing too much about how that works. That sounds like a pretty fast turnaround. I was moving. Yeah, I was ready to roll. Like I said, that desperation really kind of set a fire. Sure. So you said that in some small way, your own experiences led you towards doing this as a job. Well, I guess the first part of that question really is when you are going through things and you're not really sure what it is you're feeling. Did you have the toolkit already to figure out like, hey, this might be depression. I should maybe call it therapist or did you kind of flail for a while like what the hell is going on? Mental health has been a struggle, especially in my biological dad's side of the family for a long, long time, well before he came around and wasn't before I came around. So I think there was already a little bit of looking out, especially in my mom's part of kind of noticing symptoms and things like that and having some vocabulary around it. Sure. So I'm really thankful there wasn't a lot of stigma of going to therapy. My parents were both encouraging of it and even financially made it a possibility, especially when I was young. So I'm really thankful for that. But there certainly was some floundering because experientially I didn't have really any friends who were going through that and I just had second hand information about what my biological dad was like and maybe seeing some things from his side of the family that could identify his depression, but I didn't have really like a, hey, but this is what you're going through and these are some things that can help. Sure. Yeah. Obviously everybody's different and we all depending on financial status, depending on age, depending on lots of different things for some people, getting help for mental health related difficulties is a little easier than it is for others. Yeah. I mean, look, that's part of the premise of this whole damn podcast is that a lot of men have trouble identifying and accepting that they may need help for mental health issues. Which it's not like you fall down, you get a cut on your arm, you recognize it as a cut on your arm, you put a bandaid on it, you're good. Mental health is not something that is an identifiable or visible symptom. No, no one signs your depression cast, right? Right. Exactly. That was really good. Yeah. I said it before. Okay. I think too much credit.
That's about to say that is some serious thinking on your feet. So, and this is a question that I can kind of answer myself and I want to know what you think about it. Why is there such a stigma around accepting and getting help and what can men and the people who love men that are not men or even the people who love men that are men do to lessen that stigma, get it recognized more easily and just make it safer, more common to seek help. Well, how much time we got? I'm just kidding. I think some of it is culture and I think some of it is just kind of built into men being a little bit different than women. I think a big part of our culture relies on and sort of exploits male strength and doesn't support or facilitate spaces for what they would call weakness, which I really don't think sharing your emotions as weakness. Not at all. Yeah, but I think that's kind of the paradigm that we're in, that there's strength and then there's weakness and we go to work and provide and just all these stereotypical masculine things are what we do from strength and then our feelings or emotions, maybe even intimacy within relationships is a weakness. And so we kind of have this bifurcation of strength and weakness and I don't know about you, but I don't wake up in the morning go like how can I be weak today? I think that's kind of the menu that men and our culture have to choose from. And so I think part of the conversation is attaching benefit to the people that men love. We attach benefit to for them from us making mental health decisions that are sound and healthy and restorative. Most of my guys that I work with do have families or some close connections. And I find a profound motivation and a lot of guys is to be a better man for the people in their lives, which I don't want to be exploitative of that and milk it. But I think that's a huge drive for guys. So I think if the people in their life can identify ways in which it will benefit the people around them, you really tap into the deep motivation for men. And I think it's a healthy motivation. Like I said, I don't want to like milk it or kind of poke it that wound. So I think you have to be careful of that. But that's where I've seen real profound decisions be made on the couch that's sitting right behind me of what do you want your family life to be and ways that was different than yours? What do you want your kids relationship to to be with you that's different from what yours was? Like rubber meets the road really quickly when guys attach themselves to that goal and that purpose. That totally makes sense. I'm wondering should it reach a critical point before the guy finds himself on that couch? I had a supervisor Nancy. She was an absolute saint of a therapist, but she'd been in the field for like 30 or 40 years and she goes, I know, right? I was so grateful I got to kind of study under her and gain wisdom from her. But she's like in all my years, guys come to therapy like they would up plumber. Like when shit is up to their ankles in the bathroom floor, she goes, I don't know about you Tommy, but I've never heard anyone make a preemptive call to do it tune up on their toilet. It's when it's backed up, it's when it's clogged. That seems to be the case. So I say that as a joke obviously, but I do wish that the flow and the toilet started to slow down a bit, guys would be a bit quicker to pick up the phone because I think a lot of the times growth feels insurmountable when they're sleeping on the couch because their wives kicked them out or they're staying at buddies because something came up in their marriage or in their family. It's hard to claw your way back from that, but I do think there's good momentum. I think important influential people are talking about mental health in a way that is making it quite a bit safer for guys. So I don't want to paint it doom and gloom. I think there is some good progress in that, but I certainly want to be a part of the solution. Yeah. I'm sure you see some common themes that come up through many of your clients or through multiple clients at the same time without obviously being specific because you have client practitioner privilege or whatever that is. Confidential. That's the word I was looking for. Thank you. Obviously, there are some common themes. I'm just wondering what you see the most common themes is being. Yeah. So I think a very male form of codependency, which I think is a little bit different than it's often described. So I see that as being really causal and a lot of issues that the guys that I'm working with are talking about explain it a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I have a bit of a spiel here if you want to. I speak spiel. How familiar are you with the idea of attachment theory? Some what? Some what? Okay. So the basic idea is that in the first couple years of a child's life, they develop a series of patterns of relationship connection with their primary caregiver. Okay. And so attachment theory goes, the patterns that you develop early on in life with your primary caregiver are sort of archetypal for relationships in the future. Okay. So this is often pre-verbal. So this is about how needs are getting met, how consistent and predictable our caretakers are things of that nature. So this is a little bit of a roundabout way of answering your question, but I think it's important. So for most men and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, their primary caregiver is their mom. And so in that sort of pre-verbal state, they're learning to pick up on moms, emotions, expectations, values. The boys are learning cues at this point. It doesn't have to be a woman, but oftentimes just the way that family structures are set up, it tends to be. So that's what the boy is doing externally in order to get his needs met, but internally his sense of, I'm okay in the world is sort of being shaped and the foundations are being laid. Because mom is responding to his needs and the better he is describing his needs through his behavior or through his crying or that sort of thing, the more likely is to get his needs met. So that's the pattern, I think, for kindergarten first grade all the way up. Most of the time, we're spending a bunch of time with female caregivers. Yes. I don't know a ton of male first grade teachers. I'm sure there are some who are out to our first grade teachers out there, but typically, we're not getting a lot of input from anyone really other than female caregivers for the first quite a few years of our lives. So I think this sets us up for a kind of unique form of of codependency, like I was talking about, that if we're not careful and we haven't undergone some real deep work on our own, we kind of move into later relationships in high school college moving forward in a way that we derive our own sense of well-being, our own sense of I'm okay in the world from the satisfaction, pleasure, feedback that we're getting from the significant women or woman in our lives. So I think a lot of the time without thinking about it, men don't really develop a sense of their own values, goals, principles that are separate or distinct from this satisfaction or positive feedback that they get from women. And so I think that is how that codependency piece slips in that kind of unique form of male codependency, because I think for most guys, it's super, super easy for us to just fall into happy wife, happy life. Happy partner, happy whatever. Right. And so I think we get a lot of problems developing from that, because first of all, no woman that I've ever met wants her man to be exclusively aimed and geared towards meeting her every whim and fancy like that. It sounds nice. Right. I mean, there are so many songs about that. Right. But in terms of developing a long-term relationship and developing a family and developing a partnership that can't stand. So a lot of guys get really lost in their own lives because of this structure. And I've heard a lot of guys, I've even described it to my own wife and conversations and conflicts that we've had of feeling kind of like an extra feeling like a supporting cast in their own life, because their well-being, their internalized sense of well-being has become contingent on whether or not typically their wife or partner is pleased with them. That's their only metric. That is such an ingrained societal thing where certainly I was taught and I think this whole thing
true for a lot of men, it's like your purpose in growing up is to provide not for yourself. But to the people who are seen as more in need than you are, i.e. your spouse, in most cases, your female spouse and/or your children. Yeah. And your parents when they get old. Yeah. If we're not careful, we become a tool to do that rather than a person. Right. And I guess that would be a really distilled version of kind of what i'm saying is how do we maintain our personhood within relationships. And that's really that codependency boundaries kind of conversation for all of us is how do we maintain our sense of value, sense of purpose, sense of priorities and preferences within relationships. It's super hard. Yeah. I think for guys, there's a unique flavor to it. I'd love to just kind of hear your thoughts because this is a hypothesis that I'm sort of working on. Does that carry some weight? Does that sound reasonable? It sounds reasonable to me. So my upbringing, I think, was a little bit different because certainly in my preverbal time on earth, the majority of my caretaking was done by medical professionals. I was a super preemie. I was in the hospital for a long time. I think at least a year. And then I was released into the care of my grandmother. So while I grew up with largely female caretakers, and the teacher thing also ran true to me, I don't think I had a heterosexual male primary teacher until I was in eighth grade. Right. So at that point, I was 13 going on 14 years old. Yeah. 12 going on 13 years old, whatever. So that attachment theory, I think holds true in a lot of ways. And I do see in my friend group, some men who fall headfirst into the happy wife, happy life trope, fall into the I'm just going to provide and not water myself, not get poured into that whole thing. And I think it leads to a frustration that is really hard to untangle. Really hard to untangle. That is a super good way of putting it. Yeah. That is a web. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, one thing that I've said for a long time is I am to some degree pro selfishness. I don't think you can really be a good friend partner, whatever parent to other people unless you are a self realized somewhat independent human being, independent of the spouse, children, whatever it is. You have to know yourself. You have to be cool with yourself. You have to be a fully realized person because ultimately when you leave this earth, you do so by yourself. And those other people that you have lived your life for essentially aren't going with you. So I think self awareness, self development, self realization, those things are all super important. And look, I'm a single guy. I don't have any children. So maybe some folks are saying like, well, Mike, it's easy for you to say. But I do think that having value for yourself independently of the people that you see yourself as responsible for who are also whole-ass people themselves. Yeah. I think that's super important. Yeah. Yeah. We get into like, I'm a good boy when I do A B and C instead of I'm a good man when I do A B and C. Right. And I mean, part of the vow structure and marriage is to have in the hold to love this person. Right. Well, I think any of us would agree that in order to really love someone, like truly profoundly love someone, you have to have the capacity to disagree with them. You have to tell them when their head is up their own ass. Yeah. And if we just stay in that sort of good boy mentality, we really lose our capacity to love because we lose our capacity to tell the truth. And I think that's really what's at stake. That's why it can be so tangled and so debilitating. And I want to be so careful that actively choosing to please your partner or to do things that are her preference, that can be done in a really healthy way. Absolutely. And I don't want to sound too callous or jaded or anything like that because that's not at all my experience. But what I'm talking about is is being able to have a metric by which you assess yourself that is exclusive and then dependent from people's momentary pleasure or satisfaction with you. Like the people pleasing, right. So that's my spiel and male attachment. I've tried it out and it seems to be a really helpful metric. So I'm still working on it. But a lot of the sort of a-ha moments that my clients will get comes in this arena of like, man, I've really lost myself and I can kind of start to trace the breadcrumbs a little bit back to myself through these decisions or through these moments in my relationship or my relationships. This is kind of where it started. Reconnect with that more independent place from which we're making decisions not just responses or not just reactions. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask, once that light bulb does turn on, what do people do? I think a question that people listening might ask potentially is, okay, this is resonating with me. If I see myself in this at all, what do I do next? Give yourself a pat on the back for identifying something and having some insight. It's a great place to start because I think that fends off the oh shit, I'm doomed sort of feeling. I think we have to see this as a byproduct of something a lot bigger, a lot older than just the relationship that we have with our partner. Because if we turn to our partner in that insight and go like you did this to me, I think we're going to be in a world of hurt. So I think really sitting back and reflecting with it of kind of tracing back, what was my relationship like with my primary caregivers? How consistent, predictable, what are some of the things that I really started to learn to do because it got me positive feedback? And then I think the concurrent thing is developing some idea of a North Star, some metric, some sense of principles and values that transcend the people in your life. I think that's incredibly important. Like, what am I for? When do I most feel connected to my purpose? What am I doing in those moments when I feel most connected to my life? Are there things that I'm currently doing that I really don't want to do and not just like, I don't want to do it, but like, I don't fucking want to do it. There's a difference, right? Right. And what would be the obstacles to me saying, no, why haven't I said no? And how can I find my know again? How can I find my yes again? How can I find my know again? And I think that really starts to happen when you have some sense of what your North Star is, what your orienting point outside of the moment, my moment, interactions that you have or feedback that you get, what sort of person do you want to be? So it really gets into those big existential questions pretty quickly, but I think it has to be because these run really deep and if you adhere it to the subconscious ideas, a lot of this stuff's taking place there. So these have to be big, meaningful decisions that we make. And it takes some time and it takes some patience. But I think once we start to see it, it's really hard to unsee. Right. Some of these concepts are so simple, but they're also so difficult to do. Like, I don't know about you saying no for me, that's hard. Oh, so hard. Particularly if it's saying no to someone that you care about, which kind of is like point 1A for me is that disagreeing with or saying something that you worry might be misinterpreted or taken the wrong way by someone that you love is difficult. And you're absolutely right. Real loving relationships, you're not going to agree with somebody all the time. You're not going to think someone is right all the time. You're not going to see either I all the time. But conflict is I think something that is so frowned upon or not really given the tools to properly handle conflict. And then when conflict arises and you don't handle it, it turns into resentment. So quickly. So quickly. Yeah. Dude, it wasn't until I was in my mid 20s that I saw a conflict actually resolve. Oh, without Fisticuffs or legal things happening. I don't know if I'm going that far. It was much more of a cold war in my family of origin. It never got out of hand, but you could just see because I've come to really truly believe that conflict is a fast track to closeness and intimacy if you can manage it well. And I first learned this within friendships believe it or not. These weren't even relationships. I had the fortune opportunity to be in part of a really good group of friends and some of them are.
Those are relationships. Those are valuable relationships. - Absolutely. I guess I mean more of romantic relationships. But there was a lot of love. So who's to say? - Right, and the point that I've made before is that close friendships are romantic relationships and just not sexual relationships. - That's true. That's very true. But I learned to see conflict a little bit differently thanks to those examples that I had of that like, man, you mean like working through something difficult like this can come out the other side and we can hug each other and actually mean it. (laughs) That was remarkable to me. That was mind blowing. And so I still am incredibly grateful for those experiences 'cause I think it taught me a lot about conflict that like really conflict is just symptomatic of that there's two pulses in the same vicinity. It's going to happen. But what meaning we attribute to it and if we have any idea of how to find resolution, I think we're miles ahead of most because I don't know about you but like I said it was probably to my mid 20s when I sort of observed a conflict come out the other end positively. - Yeah, I mean those are few and far between. People don't as a general rule don't handle conflict. Well, I don't handle conflict well. (laughs) I'm still working on it. So it's not my ministry to talk about successful conflict resolution just yet. Although look, there have been people that I've fallen out with over the course of my life that eventually we have a conversation and we clear the air and our friendship resumes or improves but there are still situations where, and I'm not gonna say they're all my fault. (laughs) Look, whenever there's a conflict, both parties I think are at least in some parts of blame. Or all parties if there's more than two people. But I think maybe I'm further ahead than some other people in knowing how to resolve conflicts but I got a lot of work to do the same way. I think most of us have a lot of work to do there. - But yeah, there's some hard work that you've done. I don't know the details but I know that's been hard to learn how to do that. - Yeah, I guess I can only speak for myself. When I feel emotional about something it runs super hot. - Ah, okay. - So in a lot of cases sometimes there needs to be a step back cooling off period. - Yeah. - Some deep breaths, some thinking about okay, what happened here and maybe a few days, a few months later. There's a renewed perspective and I can be like, okay, I was an asshole, I'm sorry. - Yeah. - But when you say that it's hot as anger, you're first and you're like your primary response. - It is and I'm not a visibly angry person. I think I've learned to internalize my anger very, very well. But I do think that in situations of a conflict, in my upbringing, in my youth, my teenage years, the way conflict got solved was by fighting. And there's the little mic that lives inside of me. When he gets angry, he is sitting on his hands because his first impulse is to throw a punch. - Yeah. - And I mean, look, I haven't hit anybody in many, many, many years. But the impulse to do it is still there. And I'm working on trying to get that out in a way that is not so predicated on anger and is calmer and more communication-based. - Yeah. Man. - But it's hard to talk to sweaty when you want to be like, "Fuck you!" - Oh my gosh. Yeah. Like why are you so quiet? 'Cause I am screaming internally and don't really wanna introduce that to the conversation. - Yeah, it's like, why are you so quiet? Because if I was to say something right now, the words that I would say would probably irreparably damage our relationship. (laughing) - Yeah, 'cause that feeling is so true and accurate of your moment by moment, like experience, just then. - Right. - But it doesn't have any bearing on reality. - Right. - And 15 minutes from now, two hours from now, I feel a little better and be able to articulate what I'm feeling in a more calm and rational fashion. But until then, I'mma just be real quiet. - Yeah. (laughing) I think, especially early in my marriage, I thought that my wife was the angry one 'cause she's much more comfortable with her anger than I am. And she has absolutely called me out for just managing my anger in a little bit different way. Like I get quiet and I get more logical and rational and precise. - Ah. - Yeah. - And I know people that are like that too. You can tell they're angry because they're voice softens and they become very, very articulate. - Dude, that's me to a T. - I feel seen right now, man. (laughing) But she's like, you just think that you're so right because you're calm and she's like, that's what you're saying. - Just 'cause your calm doesn't mean that you're anymore innocent in this than I am. Yeah, and I was immediately open to that idea but I've softened since. (laughing) - I appreciate that. It's nice to know that even the professionals have work to do. - Oh, dude. (laughing) Which, I mean, objectively, I'm very well aware of. But I think some people like, well, therapists must have all the answers and it's like, nah. - Yeah. - No, no, no. I mean, that kind of old, maximum or whatever that the people that are in grad school to be therapists are the most messed up or they're trying to understand what happened to them by understanding what happened to other people. Kind of a thing. - I have thought that. - Yeah. I don't think that it's exactly true but I think there's more than a grain-sized helping of salt. (laughing) - Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so easy, right? It's so easy to use the problems of other people to distract yourself from your own issues and your own shortcomings and your own weaknesses and hurts and wounds. Like, oh man, it's so nice to focus on someone else's problems when you're having a lot of problems on your own. - Right. - Yeah. Or to learn more about yourself through the problems of other people. - Yeah. - Or through the experience of working with other people. - You're right. I've said things and I'm like, dude, you needed to hear that right now, probably more than anyone else did. And it, depending, of course, on the rapport that I have with my clients, some of them, I'll share that stuff with. Be like, dude, I'm hopping in the pool with you. That vulnerability pool, this stuff is really hard for me to. These are the shortcomings that I have. These are the ways that I've seen it manifest in my own life. These are some of the things that I'm trying to stop it. We're trying to change it or trying to heal from it. And I think that comes as a great relief. I think more often than not, so many of us don't think that other people have the same problems that we do. - Right. Right. To think we're more unique than we are. - Oh, yeah. Oh, this, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this thing that happened to me makes me so special. And so uniquely wounded, that no one else will be able to understand me. - Until you meet 10 other people who've gone through slight variations of the same thing. - Oh my gosh, yeah. (laughing) - Yeah. - One thing I wanted to ask, this has come up actually in conversation a couple of times in the past, a couple of weeks with just friends. And I'm part of an online men's group and we talk about this a lot as well, is why so many men, and I'm, choose my words a little carefully here, find it difficult to make other male friends, particularly after a certain age. There is this weird conundrum where I was reading an article a few days back that said people, I don't remember who is people, in general or men specifically, are more lonely than they've ever been before. Yet, it feels like people don't know how to look for companionship beyond, or not even a serially companionship, just having stimulating supportive loving people in their lives beyond just a spouse. I think guys as a general rule, find it very hard to make friends. And not just like shoot hoops with or have a beer with friends, but like friend friends. - Yeah. - Also because you're younger than I am, and I don't know if it's a generational thing, or if you see it with folks more in your age range, or less with folks in your age range, or I don't know. You just wanna get your take on that. - Mike, how old are you? - I just turned 47. - Dude, nice. I just turned 34, so you're a baby. - I'm a young pup, man. - Yes, indeed. - So I'll just practice what I've just preached. I'll jump in the pool with you. - Yeah, buddy. - It's for me to make friends. And I mentioned that friend group that I had in just an absolute clusterfuck, that friend group dissolved. And I lost a lot of friends that I anticipated having for the rest of my life. These weren't friends, these were like brothers. There was that level of closeness. And those couple years ago, and I've not recovered in a lot of ways that depth of friendship. I have it with, I probably have one really close friend that we talk about most everything. And I'm seeing him weekly, that sort of thing. Outside of that, a lot of it is just a question.
acquaintances, people that I really care about and really are fond of. But I think I often use the excuse of how busy I am. I have a toddler and my wife's pregnant and I own a business. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. So I think I use that excuse to kind of mask the vulnerability of pursuing friendships. It like tore me an absolute new one, the loss of those friendships that I mentioned. And in a lot of ways, I'm real hesitant to get back on the horse. And so I think it's a kind of a convenient narrative for me to use that. I've just thought like again, how busy I am or how much I've got going on to maybe not address those wounds in myself as much. Because a lot of it is I don't even quite know where to start. And so I did kind of move towards the question a little bit in a response to it. I think a lot of it can be for us guys, we don't tend to know how much we love our guy friends until we don't have them. Hmm. Because I think it's not terribly common for us to entertain those ideas or I think write it in a card or that sort of thing. We just don't tend to do that as men in this culture. Right. And so I think that plays a part. I think male relationships, the sort of archetype for it is much more like shoulder to shoulder friendships than face to face friendships. At most people that I've talked to, if you kind of asked in the question, like, when was the best conversation you ever had with your dad? It was on a long car ride where you're shoulder to shoulder. You're facing the same direction. The golf cart is shaped that way, right? Like, right. Not a lot of dudes when there's the option to sit at the bar, choose a booth. Right. That shoulder to shoulder, the game's on or whatever else. So I think there's something natural to, to that of friendships being built on and sort of stumbling upon closeness through shared interests or through that sort of shoulder to shoulder experience. But as far as that loneliness, man, it is rampant. I definitely struggle with that. If I kind of let myself feel that it hurts. It hurts. So I want to connect. I want to be connected. And so I think that's a roundabout way of answering your question. But yeah, it's a complicated topic for me, just personally. Right. Putting your professional hat on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you were your own client, what would you say? What would behind the couch, Tommy? Yeah, say to you in front of the couch, Tommy on the couch, Tommy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What would I say? I think because most of us were never like formally introduced into the world of men. I'm going to sound a little strange for a second, but I'm talking about like initiation every culture that has lasted more than a couple hundred years had pretty formalized senses of male initiation of initiating them into the world of men. And so I, I think the beauty of that is that at the end of the difficulty of initiation, there is the acceptance among men like that belong there. And so I think for a lot of us, we don't really have a category for male friendship because it doesn't feel like we belong there. It doesn't feel like we're there yet. It doesn't feel like we've been given entry. We're still on the outside kind of knocking, hoping that someone will help us to find our way in. And so I think to a degree, we don't have a use for male friendship because it's not on the other side of that initiation process on the other side of welcoming in. I think that's why there's so much competition in male friendships. I think that's why there's so much disconnection is because we don't really know what to do with it because we don't really understand the purpose of it. My dad has a couple friends, but I wouldn't describe them as like terribly close or intimate. I think there isn't intimacy there, but it's talked away pretty good. I've had conversations about this stuff before. And sometimes when I talk about this, I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but I think that a lot of us have, we have this need, but we don't have the tools to support the need. And then there's also the stigma that says a close relationship with another guy is gay. There's homophobia that's baked into that as well. So again, it then becomes this need that people get confused by because they recognize the need, but they don't understand what the need is. Yeah. And then they don't know how to fulfill that need. And they want to fulfill that need with other people who also don't know how to fulfill that need. So then it just becomes just weird dance. Weird dance. We both, we want it so desperately each of us, but we just don't know how to achieve it. Right. Yeah. What would you say are some of the essential tools for that process? Like you've thought a lot about this. I can tell I'd love to hear your thoughts. That's a good question. I think I think as a queer person, it might be a little easier for me to access because whatever actually I was going to say something and it was going to be kind of a lie. I was going to say whatever internalized homophobia I had regarding male, male friendships is completely gone. It's not completely gone. I think it's mostly gone, but I don't know if it's completely gone. I think at this point in my life, I, I don't have issues reaching out to somebody and telling them I value them or I want to be friends with them or I'm grateful for their friendship. I think where my reticence always comes in is saying that and waiting for the response of someone taking it the wrong way or someone closing up or closing down because they feel like there's a motive that's being unspoken. That stuff kind of plays into it. But I think that like there's a suspicion of some like alter your motive or something. This suspicion of an ulterior motive or I think something that's happened a few times is that there is a latent desire on the other person's part that they now have to confront because someone is reaching out to them expressing fondness or desire for closeness or intimacy. Yeah. And their only category is like, oh, he must want me for more, right? Want more than what he's describing. Right. Right. Exactly. And that puts us in an uncomfortable vulnerable spot. Am I getting that right? Right. Okay. Yeah. So there's that. But again, between queerness and age and having had it go right. Sometimes I think I'm much more and also look, I live in New York. I think folks here are maybe a little more in tune with their emotions. Then maybe in other parts of the country, that are maybe not as diverse. Would you say that's a byproduct of reducing stigma around that stuff for man or what would you say has been contributing to that? I think I think that's part of it. And it's not just geography. I think it's partially geography and partially social status, I guess is the term of financial status or whatever it is. As I've gotten older and gone from being a working to lower class person to being a middle class person, there's become a lot more. A lot more interaction with people who are like, oh, yeah, it's cool. I see a therapist or no, it's cool. I I understand the needs of having a close male friend or having close male friends or I think people become a little bit more open-minded, a combination of situations where they're exposed to different types of people, where they may have a privilege or access to certain vehicles that poorer folks may not or folks that might be a little less educated might not have access to. I think being a middle class guy in New York being a 47 year old middle class guy in New York City and combined that with the work that I have done on myself, that puts me in a place of acceptance that is far greater than possibly a 65 year old guy in Montana or some guy in the deep South where the access to behavior models isn't the same. Yeah. I mean, I can even kind of imagine a scenario where someone would make a comment of, you go to therapy and sort of pejorative sense and people may like, yeah, what the hell is wrong with you? Like there would be almost a reversing of it. Yeah, and I can even, I can tie that to 25 year old me, 22 year old me or maybe even 30 year old me would never have sat in front of a group of people and talked about going to therapy. I might not even consider it myself, eight because I probably couldn't have afforded it then and be because culturally, they're
therapy was not something that was really even thought of as an option as a man of color as a poor man of color. It was never an option for me. And also the cultural conversation has changed in the last, even in the last five years. Never mind the last 15 or 20. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, to kind of touch on what we talked about the very beginning of is there a positive momentum here? Is there? Oh, 100%. That is a sea change. That is a fair. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, an even incremental change is change. But I do think the acceptance has grown significantly. And I think that is, again, largely due to modeled behavior. If you're a country music fan and you love Jason Isbeau and you sit and you watch that documentary where he talks very candidly about having mental health challenges and how it's a generational thing and kind of getting better. And you're like, oh, well, this 40 something you're old guy from Alabama can talk openly about this. Here is a straight white guy with a draw. And I see myself and this guy, maybe I can go see it therapist too. Boy, I can't imagine how many people had that realization because of his vulnerability. His choice. Yeah. Yeah. And that's certainly that's using your voice for good. I mean, the great thing about the proliferation of social media is that it's given voice to a lot of people have used their voices to advocate for things that are really good. And it is move the needle for other people who maybe are not as visible or not as brave or whatever you want to call it, but to do things like seek therapy to explore friendships, to talk about mental health, to do all of these things that ultimately turn out to be positive. Yeah, belonging isn't geographical anymore. Yeah. Isn't that great? Yeah. I mean, you're in New York, yeah, Brooklyn. Yeah. Incredible. And look out for chat. We are literally across the country from another country from another. Yeah. Thank you, Tommy, for taking the time out of your schedule to appear on this podcast and talk about the work that you do. And a bigger thank you for jumping into the pool with me. I'll use your words there and talking about your own experience and the things that you're still contending with. A lot of times people think that therapists or counselors or coaches have all the answers. And the reality is that we're all humans and we all have different things that we're going through. And you know, even the people that are giving help are working through things themselves. Anyway, if you want to know more about Tommy, you can find him at his website. That is TommyMateraMFT.com, T-O-M-M-Y-M-A-T-T-E-R-A-M-F-T.com. He is also on Instagram. You can follow him there at TommyMateraMFT. I like the continuity there. I should have maybe thought of that myself. Anyway, thank you Tommy for being on the show and hopefully we'll do another one of these. Thank you for listening to Detoxicity. I hope you found this particular episode interesting. And if you are new, I hope you go back and listen to all of the older episodes. Once again, my name is Mike Joseph. I am the host and producer of this show. And there are a lot of things that you can do to continue to support our mission, continue to support this podcast. Follow me on social media. I am on Instagram, Twitter, and I'm on TikTok as DetoxPod Guy. You can also send me an email if you'd like. I'm at
[email protected]. I am always on the hunt for people with interesting, inspirational, and powerful stories. So if you know somebody who fits that bill or if you yourself fit that bill, please don't hesitate to drop me a line via email or via social media. Please make sure you subscribe on your podcast platform that you're listening to this on. Rate, comment, help a brother out. Help us move up in the rankings. Like I said, follow our Patreon or subscribe to my Patreon actually. Patreon.com/detoxicitypod. You get access to exclusive episodes. You get episodes a little earlier than the general public. You get a cool ass sticker. Lots of stuff. Once again, patreon.com/detoxicitypod. Quick shout out to Calvin Williams for providing the music and doing his magic on the logo, which was originally designed by Jacob Block. I thank you all for listening. I wish you all the best. Please take care of each other. Till next time, peace. [Music]
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