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Dads Dating After Divorce
Dating after divorce isn’t what it used to be—especially when you’re a dad. The rules have changed, the world has changed, and now you’ve got kids in the mix. Join Dallas and Jude as they share real-world strategies and insights from their work with dads and men at BlackBoxDating.com and TheDivorcedDadvocate.com.
Dads Dating After Divorce
25 - Emoting vs. Communicating: Give Her the Release She Needs
Dating after divorce can feel like the Wild West—especially when emotions run high and the old rules no longer apply. We dig into one of the most misunderstood dynamics in modern relationships: the difference between emoting and communicating, and why confusing the two keeps couples locked in loops. With Jude Samval of The Divorce Advocate and Dallas Bluth of Black Box Dating, we unpack how men’s instinct to fix isn’t a lack of feeling, it’s a distinctly male emotional response forged by biology and sharpened by responsibility.
Across a candid, practical conversation, we map what actually works when she needs to vent. You’ll learn how to become a steady, engaged presence that invites emotional release without absorbing it or shutting down. We explain why her logic might be offline during the storm, how to signal safety with short prompts, and when to move from listening to clarity. We also show the exact pivot: once she feels regulated, ask whether she wants input or just witnessed space, then use simple, nonviolent communication to clarify any accusations aimed at you. No lectures, no therapy-speak—just grounded tools you can use tonight.
We also zoom out to the bigger picture. Traditional relationship roles have dissolved, and couples now need to write their own rule book. That means agreeing on values, deciding when problem-solving is welcome, and creating a shared language for “I need to be heard” versus “I want solutions.” When men master this timing and presence, something surprising happens: emotional safety turns into chemistry, respect, and momentum. If you’ve ever wondered why “just listen” can lead to a stronger bond and better intimacy, this episode connects the dots with clarity and warmth.
If this resonates, share it with a friend who needs a better blueprint for post-divorce dating, subscribe for future episodes, and leave a review to help more dads find the show. Got questions or a story to share? Join our mailing list for the next live Q&A and bring your toughest moments—we’ll tackle them together.
Hello, and welcome to Dad's Dating After Divorce, the only podcast that is going to help you to traverse the Wild West of dating post-divorce. My name is Jude Samval. I am the founder of The Divorce Advocate, and my co-host, as always, Dallas Bluth of Black Box Dating. How are you doing, Dallas? Doing great, Jude.
SPEAKER_02:Love to be out here in the Wild West with you, covering all the dating for the.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we're literally in the Wild West because we're both here from the Denver metro area. And then we're in the Wild West of dating after divorce, which is its own kind of Wild West within the Wild West. So and on that note, maybe we need to be exploring maybe other cities and talking to some of the other guys and dads from some of the other cities. And maybe in the future we talk about that or we invite some on because we're kind of in our little Denver Metro Colorado bubble. And I know there's definitely nuances to that. So if you are a divorced dad in one of the other metro areas or even one in a country that you might be listening in on, touch base with us. We'd love to to chat with you kind of about what your experience. And this is in general also. Any dads that are listening, we'd love to get feedback from you and hear about what your experiences are. And maybe we'll have you uh even have you on the show, possibly.
SPEAKER_02:And and the best place to start with that would be to jump on the mailing list so that you can come to our next QA, live QA session. Do we have one of those on the calendar? I don't have my calendar up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we have one coming up here on December 18th. So this episode will will hit what on the 9th. So yeah, about a week and a half after this episode hits on December 18th. So go to the divorcedadvocate.com and go to the events page, and we've got everything linked there to where you can get the you can get the the time and the date and the the the zoom link as well and and jump on. And and and this is a great opportunity, guys, to to uh pick Dallas's brain. And and I know the guys were really, really picking your brain on the last one. It was a really great session, and we actually had that to end it after the hour, but and then go check out well after you do that or before you do that, go check out Black Box Dating. And uh, what's the the name of the group at Black Box Dating? Your your dating site, like the membership group?
SPEAKER_02:Uh it's black box dating. It's it's the community that we have, it's it's under the same name. Oh, we well, we got a name at something, man.
SPEAKER_00:It could be like the motherhood or like the sharks. Maybe with the sharks, like or something, man. We need to come up with a like a community name for black box dating for for you guys. Okay, I'll work on that. Yeah. Well, yeah, no, well, let's have the guys mail it in. What's what's the the community name for for black box dating and for all the work that Dallas does? Because you know, because then you guys could go out and when you're doing your field work, you could like have jackets and stuff like that. That creates some conversation around like what you know, who are these guys, like all in their black jackets, the sharks. Like, yeah, I want to talk to them.
SPEAKER_02:We've got some cohesive branding coming on so the women see us and they're like, ooh, this this must be something special.
SPEAKER_00:All right, man. We've I I have totally digressed this episode for the first five minutes. So let's get back on track. And we're gonna talk about a massive topic as far as I'm concerned. And it's one of those things I feel like that our society takes for gospel, but we have to question this. And that is do women actually express their emotions better than men, right? So we're kind of told all the time women are the emotional experts and we're maybe the emotional rocks, right? But I want to to challenge that because we had a conversation last week. I have conversations all the time with other dads, and I have commu I have communications uh out in the dating world myself, that there is a difference between emoting and communicating, right? These are not the same thing. So I want to talk about the differences between emoting, who emotes more, and who communicates more? Maybe talk about some emotional intelligence and then also ways in which we can communicate more effectively. So that's that's what we're gonna talk about, guys. So so Dallas, first, let me just ask you do you experience that that claim first that men that that men are emotionally less abil to communicate or in tune with their their feelings? And second, do women emote more than men and are they better at communicating because they do emote? Gotcha. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna come back to the word emoting because I want to be sure that we're all on the same page. Actually, let's start with that. When you say emoting, is that basically just kind of sharing, spewing out the emotions in sort of a raw way? What what do you mean by emoting?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah. So like she's in tears and she's talking, or she comes home from work and she's like emotionally charged and and talking a thousand miles a minute, or she's uh shouting and venting, or something like that, right? And that's like working just get mad at you about something that you didn't empty the dishwasher and like like spewing all this stuff out. So that's that's that's emoting as opposed to like oftentimes when that happens, guys will start to maybe shut down, maybe start to withdraw because and and we we can get into this is the the difference in in how we do stuff, and then people will be like, Well, look, like she's really in tune with her mother, she's like getting it out, and she's talking about it, right? And and and talking about it is screaming and yelling, but that's not actually communicating your feelings, right? That's what I describe as emoting.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, gotcha. Okay, want to be sure we're on the same page, and that that's more or less the the same image I have in my mind. Okay, so the first question you had was, you know, are men in my experience, are men less emotional than women? No, they're not less emotional, but men tend to lead less with their emotions. And so men tend to lead more with thoughts, with logic, with competency. We men socially connect with and and assess other men differently than women do, just fundamentally differently. A man that shows up and he's just emotions first. We're just we're just gonna put it in in sort of an order of operations. A man that leads with his emotions first is not going to be all that respected by his fellow male counterparts. He's just not. We're we are functioning, functional, logical creatures. We're we're task-oriented. You know, if we go out to the construction site to build a house, we've got a job to do, we need to communicate clearly, and feelings are not what it's about. We're not, you know, did you have a bad day or whatever? It's like, well, we can get into that maybe once we start swinging our hammers, and once we've got a rhythm going, and once we know what the job is. But but men that lead with their emotions, generally speaking, don't make it very far in the world with other men. So I would say that's that's the first that's the first step.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So can can I point that out because so, and and just to expand on that point, for me, it feels like it's a biological difference, right? So what you just described is men when something an emotion like the feelings come, they they're externalizing it first to solve a problem, or if they can't quite get to that point quickly, they're gonna stop and they're gonna internalize it, right? And that's where you get a lot of the the stoicism or maybe the the withdrawal, uh allegations, accusations, etc. Like you're not in touch with it. But men will, if they can't externalize it, figure out what the problem is right away, they'll usually stop and internalize it and not talk about those feelings, right? It's not the it's uh I don't know for you, but for me, it's like if I'm not sure right away, like I'll like I'll completely stop and I'll like I'll completely withdraw until I can really try to get my mind around solving that problem, right? The problem internally first.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I think that's true. I think a lot of men uh our first our first response, our first instinct is to solve the problem, whatever it is. And if we don't know what the solution is, we're not going to proceed anyway as if we knew we're going to take a step back and try to assess the situation and move forward once we feel like we have a solution. But let me point out, let me point out a really important point here. Men's instinct to fix problems, in a lot of ways, that's our emotion. That's coming from a feeling inside of us. We want to fix issues when they come up. That that's how we're wired. When a woman shares with us, you know, all the bad things that are going on at work and you know, her boss is doing this and the coworkers are doing that. When we have an instinct that comes up that wants to solve that problem, that is not unemotional. That's simply male emotions, the the the emotions that men tend to feel. That's our emotions coming out first. And I I understand that there's a that from the woman's point of view, we're not being sensitive, we're not listening to what she's doing, and we're not responding in the way that is most effective for women. I agree with that. When we are trying to solve a woman's problems, we are not being effective in what she needs. We're not being emotionally intelligent to what she needs. But that is not the same thing as saying that I'm being unemotional as a man or just logical. I'm driven by very different emotional motivations than women are. And right now, the the issue that I have is right now we have a very lopsided dialogue as far as emotional intelligence. The the dominant emotional intelligence comes from our therapy culture. And the therapy culture is for the most part dominated by a feminine and even a feminist voice. Yeah. I'm not saying that all of that is inherently bad. I'm saying that that is not the complete picture. And men have a different emotional intelligence language. We have a different emotional intelligence wiring. And the fact that our first feeling, our first gut, our first instinct is to fix something, that is not a bad feeling. That's a valid feeling. It's just a male feeling that comes out first and leads sooner than the female feelings.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's let's let's also emphasize the point from an evolution evolutionary biological standpoint is once upon a time, men had to do that in order to survive. Like it was problem solving immediately because you were going to get eaten or killed. And so that has been what for for centuries and centuries, what our nervous system is is has developed and has been trained to be like. So now that we're in a a time, and this time has only been not even a hundred years, where we where it's not that way anymore. We for for the most part, across most parts of the world, where you don't have to react that way in order to just survive, that have some compassion with men and guys have some compassion with yourself about hey, this is just wired into us biologically over generations and eons of time in order to survive. And so that's that's okay. That's okay. That that is the feeling that comes up first, which is survival. What do I start, what do I do? And and then you want. Okay. Yeah. So that's good.
SPEAKER_02:And and and it's not just have patience with it. Yes, have patience with the instinct. You know, less than 100 years ago, we didn't have the abundance of resources, particularly food, shelter, fuel that we do now. We live in a very comfortable environment for the last, I don't know, 80, 90 years, you know, roughly. And of course, we're we're giving gross generalizations globally. But compare that to the last 200,000, 250,000 years that Homo sapiens have been around, not to mention all, you know, you know, the evolutionary chain that comes before that. Yeah, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of DNA programming that comes into it. But the other thing that I would look at is the responsiveness that we have. A man that sees the situation and wants to take action, that is still a sexy man in today's environment. We just need to learn how to direct that instinct, that energy, that that proactive drive. We need to put it into new, into new situations. For example, rather than being passive about our diet and you know, eating fast food and whatever comes easy and you know blowing, you know, blowing our our calorie budget out of the water, you know, every day and gaining a bunch of extra fat. Learning how to become proactive as opposed to passive in those situations and driving towards a result that we want in our physique, in our diet, in our health, whatever it might be, these are still very, very valid and sexy traits for a man to have. It's not just a matter of us adapting to a resource-abundant society that we live in. It's learning what are the places in our current society where that hunter instinct, where you get up and you go get it, you know, where you're no longer stepping over the procrastination, where you're stepping past looking for the easy, quick life hack, you know, fix that's on Facebook or TikTok. Those are the places that that today's instinctive masculine hunter has to be applying himself. That does take that does take discernment, discretion, and that takes that takes a certain amount of insight. But it's the healthy place to channel that that masculine energy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I was gonna say that that's the delicate balance that is challenging, I feel like, for guys, like any guys, not just a divorced dad, but any guy these days, is to balance that because it used to be we could be in that mode all the time, and then that was also attractive to a woman, and she understood the fact that he was simply solving problems and keeping her alive, keeping the children alive, et cetera. We've evolved to a different level of consciousness now where we need to know and have that emotional intelligence that you spoke about, which is okay, this is probably the mode I'm in at work, and that's good, or or in the gym or with guys or or something like that. But when I'm home with the family or when I'm with her, then I need to then understand this delicate balance now where I can't be in that mode all of the time because that's it it could be frightening, it could be disconcerting. It's it's definitely not helping communication, right? Because there needs to be some level of communication. And then you also get the flip side of that with women. I have a conversation all the time when they're at work and they're in this like masculine mentality that it's hard for them to stop that when they get home, get into their feminine, and then allow that complimentary dynamic to happen. And that happens then a lot. Well, when you've got when you've got a woman comes home, but she's in that you know, that that masculine mode, and you're in that masculine mode, and then she starts emoting, and then you start withdrawing, like it creates this whole like a mess, yeah, right? Because you don't you don't know, she doesn't know that that that you're doing it, and then that becomes where there's a breakdown, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so I I completely agree with what you're saying, and it is a mess. And I want to point out one of the I feel the underlying causes of this mess is again, throughout the majority of human history, uh society was more homogenous. We had rule books that told men what men were supposed to be and do and behave and what was expected of them and what they were allowed to get away with. And throughout history, women were told this is your role, this is what you do, this is what's expected of you, and this is also what you can get away with. And it was different between the sexes. Those rule books, kind of like we talked last week, last episode, those those rule books have dissolved. They've they've really been blown to pieces. And I and we're left with the remnants of that explosion in the household, trying to figure out now, okay, what are our roles going to be? And the problem is everyone's trying to solve it at an individual level. What are my needs? What's my truth? Where am I gonna come from? How do I feel best? And then I start looking at other people. And I think that's maybe what you were talking about in the last episode, where there's an over-prioritization of individual uh independence of the individual. And I agree with that. When you're in a household environment, I think it's very important, not just once you're there, but before you get there, for you and your future spouse or your current spouse to say, okay, what do we want our rule book to be? How do we want our life to run? What do what roles do we want for ourselves and for each other? And and again, sharing these, getting them out there, and then realizing that because the social rule book has been completely demolished, yeah, we get to write it from scratch, however we want with our partner. And that's an amazing gift. But most people don't bother to do that. We just kind of have the old rule book that we sort of assumed that we, you know, is is going to play out because we got it from childhood and our spouse significant other is doing the same thing, and you run into a bunch of mess. When the two of you decide, you know what, let's actually get explicit about how we would like to feel, what our types of roles are, and we don't impose on them or on ourselves any external rights or wrongs. We just share with them what it is that we're looking for. That I think is the starting place to sorting out this mess.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree. It's been, I would say the state of relationships has been in flux now for a good 30 or 40 years, right? What you just described was pretty much static for a very long time. The traditional roles, masculine, feminine, et cetera, it's been really since the 60s, so maybe even more than that, 60, 50, 60 years, that that things have been really in flux. So that goes back to what we always talk about, which is knowing what your values, what your beliefs are, and then communicating those effectively about what you want, what you want your life to look like and what you want your your lifestyle to look like. And so on that, on that note, though, women do process these things differently. So we talked about we want to problem solve kind of immediately. If we don't, then we Step back and we're we kind of internalize until we can process process things. Women process things by by getting it out, by verbalization and talking. That's why you hear women say a lot of times, well, don't say anything. I just want to be, I want to be heard, or create space, or or whatever, right? Whatever language they're using at any given time, which which I'm making fun of a little bit, but is understandable because while they're not saying, hey, just let me throw up all of my words onto you right now and just sit there. And then so let's talk about that, but then let's also talk about then about how we handle that that storm, right? Because it's a man, it's that is a that is a big one. That is a big one. If there's anything you guys are gonna get from this, is how to handle the storm out of this out of this episode. Because if you can be that if you can masterfully handle that, then man, you're you're gonna be in good shape.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so I I love this topic. And you do. Yeah, I do. Well, it's real life too when you're experiencing it because I'm experiencing real life. Unless, unless I am at, you know, level nine or ten in Dallas in that moment, you know, which I'm usually not. I'm like level six, you know, trying to hold it together when the woman is throwing the storm at me. No, no, I don't live in real life, but I do, I do love the clarity around it. And and here's the clarity. You know, so when women are saying, I just need to get it out, I just need to share my feelings, I don't want you to try to fix everything. We wanna we want to listen to that and take that at face value. And and for this to make sense, I'm gonna flip the tables again. So, men, sexually speaking, we have a pretty predictable buildup of sexual energy, and that sexual energy needs release. It it's as simple as that. You know, we it builds up and we gotta let it out. It builds up and we gotta let it out. Women don't really have that. Women somehow can go dormant sexually, not all women, but a lot of women can go dormant sexually for years, and it's just not really a big deal. They don't have the same build-up need and need for release of the sexual energy the way that men do. So, so guys, first of all, realize like that's what's happening on your end, and she's not feeling that probably the same way sexually. Again, we're talking in gross general terms, but that this is generally speaking like it is. She, however, understands because we're very verbal about it, that a man has sexual needs and he needs that release. Women understand this about men.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, and it's another that goes back to the evolutionary biology, which is we were designed to spread our seeds because men are killed at war and battle and disease, like all the time. So that's how we're designed. That's God's design for us to go out and like have that drive. So, again, if you don't feel guilty about that, guys, like no, no, no, not a bad thing. That is that is a feature to keep our our species alive. So I just wanted to throw that in there because we get so all this talk, like you talked about the the therapeutic, and I I'm sorry, don't forget your point because I know you're getting somewhere, but we get all this therapeutic talk, and it's just like, well, why do you want sex so much? Like, it's because we're designed that way. That's just the way that it's designed, and that's okay, guys. Just just know, but we have evolved, we have a consciousness, we can communicate it better. Anyway, okay, back to your point.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, just to wrap that up a little bit. Male sexual energy, you know, women are on cycles, they're only ready to have sex, you know, for a short amount of time. As a man, you need to be ready to jump on that opportunity when it presents itself. And we are the descendants of the men that did that. We we inherited those genes, and it's still inside of us. Um, also, let me just say this because society paints male sexual energy as dirty. We're dogs. I know men are dogs, male sexual energy is cheap, it's expendable, gentlemen, it's not. Male sexual energy when properly mastered is beautiful. Full stop, point blank. Male sexual energy in bed, male sexual energy leading a woman on a date, male sexual energy by yourself and how you channel it into areas of your life. It is a positive, beautiful thing. Whoever's telling us that men are dogs because they're horny is is thinking in a very, very shallow way. Okay, that's enough about the male energy. Now, here's the thing women have a similar buildup of their own, but it's not a it's not a sexual buildup. Women have an emotional buildup that happens over time. And similarly to men needing the release sexually, women need the release emotionally. Women need to let it out the same way that guys sexually need to let it out. And if you think about yourself as a guy, after you let it out, you feel relieved, you feel unwound, you feel better, you feel regulated, you know, you feel calm. Women, it's the same thing. They have an emotional buildup that needs to be let out. Again, speaking in generalized terms, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop prefacing at this point. I think everyone understands we're speaking in general terms. There are lots of exceptions.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:A woman needs, a woman will build up, build up, build up emotions that need to be let out. And sometimes those emotions are let out because you're holding her and she just needs to cry. Sometimes those emotions need to be let out because she's being the the the nurturer, the caretaker, and she's letting out her stress. She's letting out her her what whatever it is that's accumulated inside, she's letting it out by cooking or you know, taking care of somebody or something like that. Sometimes that's how it's regulated. I know a lot of women cleaning helps to regulate this. But probably the biggest, most common category is talking. Women talk to let out this emotional buildup. And if you want to succeed as a man, realize that a woman needing to talk to you is kind of like her version of hornyness in a way. It's it's something that needs to be regulated, it's something that needs to come out. And if you take care of that, it you don't need to be like that in order to recognize that she is like that. And you let you let her release and you invite her. You're like, yeah, come on, tell me more. Let it out. I don't want any of this left inside. Please. What else is going on? And realize you don't, and and and and here's here's the real crux is when women are sharing, men think that it's about an external problem. Most of the time it's not. She's sharing because she has a buildup and needs to let it out. So when we realize she's letting it out, let her let her let her release it. Don't try to fix it because that's pointing to an external problem. You should just be inviting her to continue letting it out. I see you want to jump in. So go go right ahead.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I just wanted to say her logic brain is offline when this is happening. So that's the difference between the so I think for a for an analogy for guys, her logic brain is offline when this starts to happen. So that's why you need to be just a rock or a like a mountain. Not you don't here's the difference I described. You need to be a rock in a mountain, like with the wind blowing, right? Because her logic brain is offline and that's all that's gonna happen, right? You're not gonna be able to, you're not gonna be able to communicate, do anything. You just need to be that rock in the that mountain in the storm, but you can't be the leaf, or like you can't just be blowing, blown, run away, scared of it. Like you need to be that that rock in that because that's what that's what she's that's what she's needing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I I agree. I would take it a step further and say, you have to invite her. A rock would just be a solid, you know, passive, you know, uh monument that's able to withstand, you know, the storm that's coming at you. That's not really what she wants. She doesn't want a guy that just sits there. She wants a guy, she wants a guy that engages with her in the way that she wants. I'm gonna flip this back around. When you're a man who's horny and you want to release your energy, do you want her to be a dead fish? You know, do you want her to just be a rock, you know, until you release yourself? No, you want her involved, you want her engaged, you want her to say, baby, bring it on, let it all out. I want you to have your release. Okay, flip flip the tables. As a man, you should be telling her, baby, I want you to have your release. I don't want any of this left in you. I want you to spend yourself and let it all out. I'm on your side and let it all and let her expel this buildup that's inside of her.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And what I'm just yeah, and in the description of being a rock means you're not running away. Whether it's directed towards you, whether it's not directed towards you, you're there and you're you're not you're not taking off. Like you're not hiding from it. You're just gonna be there, you're gonna be the the the the emotional rock in this in this storm. But we're and we're not trying to fix, but we're trying to translate, right? So we're not we're we're trying to to understand what it is. So that's that feedback. You're not a rock just sitting there and like like being dumb, but you're not but you're not proactively doing what you want to do, which is trying to fix it, right? But what you're trying to do is trying to help trying to allow her to be heard, right? Which is gonna take like help, like maybe some feedback, like help me understand this or describe to me.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not sure how much we have to understand. We have to listen, you know, and take and take it in and collect it, and maybe we we we hear some new points and later we can process it and let let a clear picture come together. But I'm not sure we really have to comprehend what's going on. Again, let's go back to the. Yes. Well, I I would say your first priority is to let her dump out the box of Legos onto the table. Let her dump it all out. Do not try, wait, wait, wait, we have already we've got 12 out. Let's let's sort these out. Let her dump the whole dang kit onto the table. Let her get it out, and and and to your point, be a rock in this process, meaning don't take it personally, don't run away, wait until all the facts are facts, that's a that's the wrong word. Wait until all the pieces of data are out of her head and onto the table. Let those all get out before you try to sort any of it out. Because to because to your point, as long as she still needs to get this out, she's not she's in a she's in a more emotional place than in an intellectual and logical place. And until you let her expel all of those pieces and let her like get it out, she's she's still going to basically have an emotional heart on. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna continue with this analogy because I think it's appropriate. When we as a guy are are, you know, we're we're horny, our sexual energy is up, you know, and we're in the process of having sex. Do we want the woman to ask us to be comprehensible in that moment? Like, hell no. Like we're, you know, and she knows that. And she's not asking us, it's like, well, hang on, you know, well, what do you mean by this? It's like, just go with it. Just go with it, girl. Let's have fun with this. Just go with it. I mean, we're not, we're not entirely sane. We're emotional or primal or something when we're when we're when we're exercising our uh sexual energy. It's the exact same on her end. It's just not sexual, it's emotional. And when she lets that out, you you don't want to stop her mid session, you know, before she gets to the end. You want to invite her and baby, don't stop here. You know, I want you to let all this out onto the table. And don't take it personally, don't worry about it making sense. You know, later when she's when she finally gets to the point and says, Oh, thank you. You know, and that's your cue, you know. One and and you're only gonna get there if to your point you are not reacting, you're not running away, and you're just being a rock saying, Bring it all out. I can we can hold all this, yeah, no problem. Let it all out. And then she's like, Oh, thank you for listening. And you go, Okay, cool. There's a lot there. What uh this part this part really caught my attention when you said I I I don't lied the other day or I was mansplaining to you, or whatever it is. Yo, you you said that it's like, did you did you mean that? Or was that just kind of you kind of like getting it out, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and usually my first question is do you did you just need me to listen? Yeah, because if I don't need to get into a conversation, I don't wanna. Right? So sometimes it's you just need to listen, and then I've I've I've just said, hey, you know, well, thanks for sharing with me. I appreciate hearing your feelings. Like, yeah did you did you just need me to listen, or do you want to have a conversation about it?
SPEAKER_02:Well, okay, and and that's true. And and I think obviously, yes, she wants you to listen. She wouldn't be talking to you if she didn't want you to listen.
SPEAKER_00:I yeah, well, did she just want me to listen? And then we don't have to do anything else. Like, yeah, sometimes women just need to get it out, like you said. Like sometimes with our sexual energy, it's gonna be a quickie, right? Yeah, we just need a quickie and and do it. It's not gonna be filled with romance, right? That's their quickie, their emotional quickie. They just needed to get it out, and then you don't need the conversation and everything else, right?
SPEAKER_02:Or it could be a long love-making session that they're doing where they're bringing up stuff about their mom and about other things. It could be a long one too. The the point is you want to give her her release the same way you want her to want you to have your release. They just look differently, and and that's that is one of the services that that you provide as a primary partner. You're there to help her have that release. Now, let me point out something really cool here. This I had a session with the guys a while back. We were talking about this. It came up in actually a one-on-one session I had where there was a guy asking, why do I have to listen to her talk about all this stuff when she's got like a sister and female friends and like they all listen to her. Why do I, as a man, have to also listen to her? Good question. Yeah, it's a really, really good question. And it got me thinking, and I realized one, there must be a reason for it. Because you know, the fact that she's coming to a man who's not built to listen the way that women do means there must be something there that she's looking for. And I can't, I I I'm not recalling all of my notes on on the talk at the moment, but one of the important ones is women tend to take on and absorb responsibilities. You know, when a woman is sharing her stressful situation with another woman, the other woman will tend to absorb it. And oh, yeah, I know how you feel. Oh, that's so horrible when that happens. And, you know, and there's a lot of back and forth, there's a lot of empathizing that happens, feeling each other's feelings. When she brings it to a man, I really don't think she wants a man to be empathetic with her. She doesn't want me to suddenly go, oh, I know how that feels. Oh, that's so horrible. And should that that's not a rock. That that is not masculine for me to drop into a fully empathetic place. I I honestly believe that what she wants in that moment is to share it with us and for her to see that we are listening, we're seeing, she has our attention, and we're not absorbing it. We're not being empathetic because we're modeling for her something different than her and all of her girlfriends naturally feel. We're modeling how to not absorb and have and be overrun by feelings. We're showing her an example of a guy that stays clean even when you splash a bucket of emotional water on him. It just doesn't go in, we don't get saturated.
SPEAKER_00:The other thing the visual I'm getting when you describe that is a ship on the ocean, right? Like you are the ship, you are staying your course, the storm's going around, the her waves are going up and down all over the place, but you're still holding course, you're still going, and you're still steady, and you're still floating, right? Yeah, you don't become water when she starts talking to you.
SPEAKER_02:Other women do that, and she gets that from other women and she needs that. What she needs from you is for you to not become water. She still wants your attention, she wants you to listen, she wants all of that in place. She wants all of that, but she wants you to also demonstrate that you can maintain clarity and structure even when all this water is splashing onto you. Okay, there's another element though that I really believe that women want to see, and this speaks to the the instinct in men to try to problem solve. So when she's sharing with her with her girlfriends and her sisters and her mom and her daughters all the stuff that's going on, and they're all empathizing and feeling, it's all about validating the feelings. It's all about feeling the feelings with each other so we all know it's okay to feel these feelings. That that's being in the feminine space. And the priority of solving the problem is a lot lowered down. It's it's a much lower priority to actually solve any of this. As a man, our priority, you know, one of our top priorities is to solve problems. And thank goodness we are, because because the humans probably wouldn't have survived, you know, as long as we have if we we hadn't been wired for problem solving. Okay, so here's the thing, and this this is this is really subtle. When a woman presents problems to us, she doesn't want us to immediately solve those problems or even suggest things to solve it. She wants to be able to get it out and regulate herself so she's not storing it up inside. But when she shares that in front of a man who can solve these problems, if he was called on to do so, laying that in front of that guy and to see that that guy, and you know just from looking at that man that he could fix it in, you know, in in in two minutes if he had to. Her her sharing that in front of a problem solver, but that is not in it is not yet taken action in solving the problem, that is a huge part of her regulating herself. She's laying all this out, and she can see that her man is cue is as cool as a cucumber. He knows exactly what to do, and he doesn't need to step in and start fixing anything in that moment. He's gonna wait until it's time to do that. And that's after she's dumped it all out and gotten it out there.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. One more thing that I I just want to point this out, and and this this speaks to the problem-solving thing is the boy brain is seeing a woman that's upset, thinking, Oh my god, I gotta fix this. This is this is bad. Okay. One, when we try to fix it, we're we're trying to reverse the flow. She's sharing, she's dumping things out, and we're trying to fix it. And that's like trying to like shove the toothpaste back into the toothpaste tube. Like it doesn't work. You have to just let it's a one way direction. You let it out. Once once that has happened, oh shoot, I lost my train of thought. Dang it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let me ask you this, though, because that's really incredibly confusing. Right? Because what you did what you described at before earlier, our natural, their natural tendency is completely opposite of what our natural. Tendency is. And this is like the whole men are from Mars, women are from Venus, John Gray the thing, and communicating and and and whatnot. So it goes completely against what we what we automatically want to do. So now that we know, okay, well, we're the ship, we need to just weather the storm, we need to create the the ability to listen, we need to keep our course, we need to keep our cool, even if it's directed at us about something, then at what point in particular, if this becomes something where there's accusations, or I didn't like this or didn't like that. When then you know how do we know when their logic mind is then back online? Right? When that prefrontal cortex fit is working, and then we can start with say nonviolent communication of hey, you said X, I'm mansplaining to you.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:I understand that that upsets you. Can you describe to me on time when I like when do you know that? And then what is the process for then communicating about that?
SPEAKER_02:Okay, gotcha. Excellent question. Excellent question. So the frequency of words, you know, the rush of information coming out of their mouths drops down, drops down. That means there's less left to come out. There's there's less pr water pressure behind the words, like pushing them out. But as a guy, don't think that that means that everything has been gotten out. You want to invite her. Is there more? Please tell me more. I would love to hear more. Thank you for sharing all this with me. Thank you for trusting me and putting this out here. Thank you for telling me that you thought I was manslaining. Is there more? You want to encourage and invite her to get it all out. When you're in when you're inviting that way, she will tell you, no, that's it. You know, and the words will stop, it'll come to an end, and it'll and and when that happens, you will see that she has become, she has re-regulated. She and and you didn't have to do anything. She regulated herself through the act of sharing, the same way that a man regulates his own sexual energy through the act of having sex. We brought ourselves back to a balanced, regulated, calm place by having sex. A woman will regulate herself. And this is the thing that we don't have to fix. We don't have to regulate her. She will regulate herself by her own nature just through the sharing. Now, back go back to your question.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's be clear too. And this isn't like, Are you done yet? No, it's like you're inviting her. You want inviting right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02:This isn't like looking at your watch, like, okay, did you imagine it all out? Imagine a woman that did that to you when you're having sex. How would you feel? If a woman said, Are you done yet? If a woman said, Are are we? It's been 10 minutes. Like when I mean, she's obviously doesn't want to be in bed with you. Guys, it's exactly the same. This is her version of release. I'm again that there is a there's a very clear thing. If you're looking at your heart's going, really, you know, are you done? Can't you do this with somebody else? Can't you do this by yourself? That's like that's like your partner saying, Well, can't you just masturbate rather than have sex with me? Guys, yeah, like this is as important to her as sex is to you. That's that's that's the big takeaway here. Okay, now I want to come back to your question of bringing up stuff that she brought out. So once we gotten to the end, you're listening, you're encouraging her, and you can see she's regulated, and there's a big sigh, you know, things are calmer, and you can go, okay. Now if she now, if she was talking about problems in her life, that would be where I ask. So do you, you know, do you want, am I just listening right now, or do you want me to speak into any of these things? But realize we're talking about issues that she that are in her life with her and other people, not your territory. She's an independent grown woman. She she decides whether or not she wants you speaking in. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. And you can ask there. Okay, so that's some of the some of the Lego pieces that were dumped out on the table. All right, but there were some other Lego pieces like Dallas, you were manslinging to me, or you know, this other night, you know, you totally, you know, ignored me when you made this comment. Or, you know, there were pieces that came out that are very relevant to me as a man. I did my job of not reacting, not running away, not shutting down while she was sharing. That was my job so that we so that she can get it all out and we can see what we're dealing with. Okay, now I'm gonna I'm gonna look and sort through all these pieces and I'm gonna ask myself, which one of these is the most important for me to know about? We're not gonna go, okay, well, now I'm gonna spew five or six or twelve back at you, and I need you to answer all of them. We're men, we're not, we don't spew like that. We prioritize, you know, we we problem solve. And I'm gonna look at whichever one of these that I feel is the biggest red flag in me. That and I need to know, did you mean this? Or what part of this did you mean? But notice here that I'm asking for myself and not for her. You know, so if it was, you know, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Can I can I make a quick point? If you feel emotionally charged by anything that was said, wait to have this conversation. Like do right, like they don't because what you just said, like don't start coming back with stuff whether you did this, dah dah, dah, right? That's not helping. That will not help. So if that's what if that's what your initial reaction is, if you feel emotionally charged, if you're get angry about what she said or sad or hurt, like take the time and whatever that time is, maybe it's you step away for a few minutes, maybe it's you go back to it the next day, but don't have the conversation in an emotionally charged. You again, cool as a cucumber, you gotta be steady, you gotta be rocky, you gotta be able to have this conversation at a maybe normal tone, yeah, be able to create the emotional safety and security to be able then to address what she what she emoted.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So, and there's two things that are gonna cause your blood to go up, you know, for you to get heated inside. One is your own past and you're reacting because somebody struck a nerf with you. You do not want to be speaking from a reactive place. You want to find your baseline inside yourself again and speak from your baseline where you're calm and clear-minded. You don't want to be in an emotional place because that doesn't help with the clarity. The second thing is the way that she shared something could have been very accusatory. It could have been, you know, a you know, a very strong word, like calling you a liar. And it could really, you know, it might not be something that that you necessarily are triggered by. It might not be your past, but she could be, you know, weaponizing her feelings and and throwing daggers at you. She might be doing that. And here's the thing to remember in those situations, and you know, to and this is this would be like one of the most important elements to transforming a man transforming himself into a rock. Is, and this is the thing I ask is I would say, does a confident person behave the way she is behaving right now? Would a confident person say it that way? And the answer is always no, they wouldn't. Confident people don't have to throw daggers at people, they don't have to attack people. They're they're confident. They they there's no need for it. So when we realize that the way she's saying this is coming from a place where she's not confident, that means that behind it there is a hurt girl, there's there's some there's a there's a little girl that's wounded, there's somebody that feels insecure, they're worried about something, there's something you know coming out. And so then when I ask, so this thing, when you told me that I was mansplaining, what uh you know, what did you mean by that? Realize that if it feels like it was weaponized towards you, it's because she felt that she had to, not because of you, but that she's not confident enough to say it in a in a non-attacking way. And when and when we're saying, hey, can you tell me more about this? That's asking her to unpack it, you know, pull the knife out of your chest and and and transform it into, well, really what it is is I feel really worried when you do this or you forget to do that. It makes me feel like maybe you don't love me anymore, and then I think you're gonna leave me. And you know, and then we get the real story behind the accusation. The trick though is when you're when you're when a woman is, you know, when her blood is up and she's in the middle of the act, you know, it's it can, you know, it's kind of like a man in the middle of his sexual act. You look different, you know, you're wrapped up in it. There's a lot of energy. Well, check in afterwards and go, okay, so where so where was that? You know, what what what was that really about?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Give her the opportunity to share. Well, and that's so, and that is the crux of the original question, right? It's um it's until you get to the point where the emo the emoting's done or the sharing or whatever is done, you can't have any productive conversation about any part of it, right? So everything we've described up to here is what you got to do, and is your responsibility as the the the guy in this in order to bring this to some sort of pr productive outcome, right? Because they don't know. And and and and so they don't know what they're doing. Like they don't know when they're doing that. Just like you might not, hey, it's maybe a little bit more straightforward, but you you don't you know you're horny, but like you don't know what you're doing when you're horny, right? Like your mind kind of shuts off, right? That's when they talk about your your other head making decisions for you, right? It's the same thing for them. They're like they're our other heads thinking when we're horny. For them, it's their their emotional head, their heart exactly. Their emotional head is is doing it, and then once you get through all that, then you can start having the productive conversation, the nonviolent communication where you're asking, like what you describe the specifics about tell me more about that. What is that feeling that's comes up? What is behind that? What is it that you're needing from me? Can we agree on what how to go forward on all this? And then it can then actually, guys, I tell you what, like you described it, it can turn really sexy really fast when they start when they feel emotionally safe with you, when you've in a roundabout way help them solve their problem, which is what you do, and then they're like, Whoa, this is oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Once once that woman has shared the emotions and they are out and she's regulated and she feels light-hearted, light-hearted women tend to feel horny, and suddenly she's in the mood, and then she's feeling really grateful. She's like, Oh man, I've got this great man who listens to me. He didn't interrupt me, he didn't react, he didn't run away, he didn't shut down like every other man I've been in a relationship with. Oh my god, I really want to have sex with him now. That that will tend to be it. And and to come back to it, Robin Williams had this had this great line in one of his stand-up routines. I think it was live on Broadway. At the very end, he says, he's like, and then I realized that God gave man a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to run one at a time. And I feel like that's entirely true. It's like God gave woman a brain and I don't know, an emotion basket, but only enough blood to run one at a time.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Guides, let her do it the same, and and don't just let her invite her to do it the same way that you don't want her to let you have sex with her and ask you when you're gonna be done. You want her to invite you and want to have sex with her, and then say, you know, I I I love this. And and I believe, I believe that as we as we start to understand our role functionally and how we provide a genuine emotional service, an emotional regulation service to our woman, it gets easier and and it almost becomes beautiful and it becomes like a wild ride, the same way sex can be a wild ride. The emotional regulation of the woman can become a wild ride because you're not taking it personally anymore. You realize where it's really coming from.
SPEAKER_00:Man, I like that uh that analogy. I think we should end it right there. We've got all of these parts going and just enough blood to run only half of them. That's that's uh that's excellent. Dallas, this was this was terrific, guys. I hope that you found some value. This is one, again, like I said in the beginning, for me, it's like been an issue all the time when I when I hear this. So I I hope it brings a couple things. Just some solace in knowing that, hey, this is a learning process for you guys for you. Just like it was for Dallas, for me, for for all of us. And if we just approach this in a compassionate manner as men, hopefully the women that that we're that we're in relation with are are approaching it from a compassionate manner as well. If we just have more compassion around the evolving uh way in which we're we're relating now, it's just gonna be so much better. So, Dallas, where where can guys get a hold of you to to to get more information on how to utilize and and implement these pearls of wisdoms that you share with us every week?
SPEAKER_02:Jump on over to blackboxstating.com. You can check out the men's coaching program. You can also find my social media feeds where I've got lots of videos being posted all the time. Really, though, go over to the let's see, you know the website, I don't. Get on get on the mailing list so that you can be invited to the live Q ⁇ A session. That would really be the coolest place for me to meet you and and for us to to bring up more of these questions and topics and really dive into it. That's that's the best place. And we're doing it pretty much once a month.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yep, and that's at the the the divorcedadvocate.com uh at the events page, uh on the main page, you just click on join the mailing list, and you will get uh all the all the the good stuff that that we've got going on in the community. And if you found some value in what you heard today, please share it far and wide uh far and wide on social media. Give us a star rating, leave a comment, that helps as well. So, Dallas, always a pleasure. We will talk next week.
SPEAKER_02:Wonderful, Jude. Talk to you next week.
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