TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO
Okay folks, how are you? It’s Michael Fiore, and welcome to video number three. Welcome to Part 3 of Make Him Worship You. Part 2 was quite a doozy, huh? Quite a lot to go through there, talking about what love really is. And that’s setting the plate for what we’re going to get into now, which is the secret emotional life of men. We are going to talk about what it’s really like to be a man, we’re going to talk about the difficulties of being a man, especially these days in the age of #MeToo and all that stuff.
Now a quick disclaimer: I know that life is no box of picnics for women either. But for now, just try to sit back and empathize as I describe what it’s like here for most guys in the modern day. I have many, many female friends, I do this for a living where I try to help women. I understand that women go through a lot, that it is very, very difficult to be a woman in our world, but right now we’re going to focus on guys so you can understand them better.
So what does it feel like to be a man? Look at this right here; look at this … God, to me this illustrates it in such a powerful way. Life hits you in the nose and you’re just like, “I’m fine. I’m a dude.” I had a conversation recently with a guy who’s married to a friend of mine, and we were at a thing in Utah, and we talked for awhile. And he was raised by a military dad, he’s about 45 or so, very handsome guy, always hold himself up straight. And within like 15, 20 minutes of talking, he was just like, “I never get to be soft. I never get to be taken care of, in a way.”
So this slide right here talks about the modern feeling of men. Notice this picture here, this guy who’s sitting all alone in the middle of the ball field. Nobody else is with him. There is a stat I read recently that talks about how most men who are 40 and above these days simply don’t have friends. They really don’t. Their entire social life is built around their girlfriend or their wife bring people in.
But men these days largely feel that they are not tough enough because we are taught we are supposed to be tough all the time. Most men are incredibly lonely because men have been socialized not to share our feelings, not to actually ever say that we are “weak,” quote unquote, in any way. Very sad. They do feel weak; we feel worthless, we feel like a crybaby. Boys do not cry.
A lot of men also feel like a disappointment to the women that they are with. There are a lot of women who are constantly going to the men they are with and saying, “You are disappointing me. You are not being my knight. You are not being what you are supposed to be, my warrior,” right? A lot of men feel like we are not strong enough. If we show any femininity or softness of any kind, we are told that we are a sissy, not manly enough, and then also not sensitive enough.
It’s a very, very confusing time, right? Confusing time for women as well. But it’s a confusing time for men because we are simultaneously told we must be the big, strong warrior, and we must be the soft and open feminist man. And these two things that are pulling in two directions are often what I end up talking to guys about. A lot of guys, especially younger guys, come to me and say, “Hey Michael, you seem to be pretty well balanced, women seem to like you,” et cetera. “Can you help me?” And these men are really pulled between these two things, of feeling like, “Hey, I’m supposed to be this big, strong, dominant thing,” which a lot of women do find attractive, “and I’m also supposed to be emotionally open? How do I do that?” It’s actually very painful.
And men have been taught that our feelings don’t matter and what we want doesn’t matter either. We have been taught, “Big boys don’t cry.” We have been taught that our job is to just be there and fight the dragons. Boys are told it’s not okay to have feelings and that showing emotion makes us less masculine. “Boys don’t cry. What are you, a baby? Men don’t get depressed. Walk it off. What are you, a faggot?” I grew up in Massachusetts. I’m only using that word as an illustration; I think it’s a horrible word. When I was a kid back in the ’80s, “What are you, a fucking faggot? What’s wrong with you?” was a constant thing. Showing that you were anything but hyper masculine was a thing to be attacked, was a thing to be made fun of for.
Men don’t go to therapy. I talked to you in the last video about my mental health adventure with the bi-polar stuff, and the reason that I did not get help earlier, I think, is because I was born in 1977. Plain and simple. And when I was growing up, you do not get help. You do not go get help. When I was growing up, the idea of a man going to therapy was this horrible thing. Think about Tony Soprano in The Sopranos; if anyone knew that he was going to therapy, what did that mean? How horrible! And men don’t complain or talk about our feelings. That’s what we are told. We are told that real men fight through the pain, real men get back in the field. There’s nothing wrong with you unless a bone is broken or we can see blood.
This picture on the left of men with PTSD, men who go to war and they come back and they have been destroyed emotionally by what they’ve seen and what they’ve gone through. Maybe they’ve killed somebody, maybe they’ve seen their best friend be torn limb from limb, maybe they’ve had some horrible, horrible tragic thing happen to them and they’ve been wounded. But they are told, “Hey man, suck it up. You’re a man, you’re a solider. You must not show weakness. You must not even admit that anything bothers you. You are un-perturbable. You may not have emotions, you may not be sad, you may not be hurt.”
Same thing with football. A lot’s going on these days with football, with concussions and disorders that come along with it, and all these men who are football players and they’re killing themselves in their 50s. But they are told, “Get back on the field,” right? And how many guys would go out there and bash their brains against each other over and over again? And they would get concussions, but they would just be like, “Hey, I’m going back on the field and I’m fighting again.” That’s what we are taught. We are not taught, “Hey, you’re hurt. Let me give you a hug, let me take care of you.” We are taught, “You must go forward. You must fight no matter what. What you are feeling and what you want does not matter.” Plain and simple.
And I think for a lot of women that’s a little surprising that this is going on, because for women it’s very, very different. Women are allowed to have emotions, women are allowed to be weak and soft. Women are allowed to feel these things.
In our culture and most cultures, there is a sharp divide between masculinity on the left and sensitivity on the right. The idea of being hyper masculine in our culture is that you are a knight, like I said before; that you are tough, that it is impossible to make you cry. That if you cry, that is showing weakness, there’s something wrong with you. If you are tall and strong and dominant, then you must have no other emotions. You are not allowed to be sensitive. You are not allowed to be, and the damage that is done to men and to boys because of this is horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. The fact that boys are taught from a little boy, “You must not feel these things.”
Me personally, I’ve made my entire career based off being emotionally sensitive, but it took a lot of time to be able to do that. When I was a little kid, I was made fun of, I was beaten up, I was called horrible names because I was not hyper masculine, because I was not good at sports, because I was not tough in all those ways. And I have been lucky in that over the years I have learned how to open myself emotionally. But it took a lot of work.
And I think a lot of women judge men for not being more sensitive; “Why won’t you open up to me? Why won’t you talk about your feelings?” But what you need to have is empathy for why he can’t do that. He is not choosing not to open up to you. When you ask a man, “What are you feeling?” and he says, “Nothing,” it doesn’t mean he’s not actually feeling anything; it means he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling because he has buried it. He has buried it so far down, so far down. He’s not lying to you, he simply doesn’t know.
It is hard to be a man. And yes, I know it’s hard to be a woman. It’s hard to be a man in our modern culture, being pulled in all these different ways, being both told we are supposed to be emotionally open and sensitive, and “You are a man, you are this ideal. You are big and you are tough and you are strong.” I know in my own life, I used to think my job was to be the big, strong, tough one. And I did a lot of damage to myself that way by not ever letting anyone take care of me.
So since guys aren’t taught how to process our emotions or our negative feelings, our negative feelings build up until they can get out through the one emotion men are allowed to feel: anger. It slices, it dices, it ruins your lives. The only emotion that we are allowed to show is anger. If we are sad and we want to show it in any way, we are angry. If we are happy, we are angry. If we are hurt, we are angry. Anger is the only emotion that men are allowed to vent through. And so because of that, everything becomes anger. If the only thing you’re allowed to show is anger, you’re not allowed to show, “Oh my god, I’m having a hard time. I need help,” you’re only allowed to be angry and to put that out at other people.
I did mention this before, but most men are lonely and sad and have no idea how to process their emotions because they were never taught and it doesn’t come naturally, right? It doesn’t come naturally. A lot of guys are emotionally crippled, honestly; emotionally crippled in their lives because they were simply never taught how to process emotions. You were as a woman, as a girl. You were taught this because, as a little girl, you’re living in emotions, you’re seeing emotions all the time. Your emotions are being celebrated, your emotions are being treated as being real.
But for men it’s not like that at all. It’s like a limb that we were never taught how to use. Like I said before, the biggest threat facing middle aged men isn’t smoking or obesity. It’s loneliness. As men grow older, they tend to let their friendships lapse, but there’s still time to do something about it. Loneliness. There’s a reason that the cohort, the biggest group of people who are increasing in suicide risk, are middle aged men. Because they’re getting to that point in their lives and they’re realizing there’s no one around them, especially if they get divorced. Now this slide’s the same as before, sorry.
And almost no men feel manly or masculine enough; “Overly manly man convinced me I’m not manly enough.” We feel like we’re failing. We feel like we are not enough of a man. We are not strong enough, we are not slaying enough dragons, we are too weak on the inside. We have to hide who we are. If we show any softness, if we show anything that our culture in any way would be able to interpret as feminine or soft, we will be punished and we will be judged, not just by men but by women as well.
And on top of all that, almost all men feel like they are a disappointment to the woman or women in their lives because of the lies about men and love we talked about before. Damn you, Prince Charming. A lot of men do feel like we are disappointing you all the time by not being Prince Charming, by not being the perfect man.
So the reason I’m telling you all this is because, as a woman, if you can show that you understand what it is like to be a man and the emotional damage that is done to most men, and if you can accept him for who he really is, and as manly and powerful as he is but as … If he can both be accepted as who he is and if you can also celebrate him for being manly and powerful, he will worship the bejeezus out of you. If you can be the person who can both envelope him, hug him when he is down, and celebrate him and reinforce to him that he is enough of a man, that he is strong, that he is powerful. If you can make him feel that way, great things will happen if you can be the one woman to do that. My wife does that for me and it changed my life.
So let’s talk about the evolutionary side of manliness. There’s a great book, Meet Your Happy Chemicals, by Loretta Graziano Breuning, PhD. Wonderful book, I love this book. And this book talks a lot about what we evolved in our brain to make us happy; why serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, et cetera exist. And one big lesson that book taught me is that evolution does not care if you are happy. We talked in a previous video about the three systems that cause you to get together with somebody, have kids, propagate the genes forward. Now the reason we get happy when we do things like eat food …
We get that feeling of joy when we eat food. If you eat a donut, for instance, the reason that makes you happy is because back in the day finding sugar and fat and things like that was hard to find, so your body wanted to reward you when you did find it, right? Evolution doesn’t care if you are happy, evolution cares about your genes surviving. So the reason that we feel happy when we feel happy, when we feel scared when we feel scared, the reason why we are all scared of snakes when we come out of the womb even though we’ve never seen a snake before, is because back in the day snakes killed us. If you saw a snake, you were probably going to get killed.
The reason that we get happy when we reach for a banana or something like that, if a monkey does that, it’s because hey, we’re doing what we’re supposed to do. The reason we feel happy when we have sex, et cetera.
So here’s a question: Why are kids afraid of the dark? Why? Every kid I’ve ever met has been afraid of the dark. You ever think maybe there’s a reason? The monster in the dark gets us all eventually. And it’s because, evolutionary speaking, years and years ago, the kids who weren’t afraid of the dark didn’t live lone enough to have kids. That’s how evolution works, right? That’s how evolution works. Those who survive have kids and their traits get passed on. It’s because way back in the day when we were gathered around the fire in our little tribe, if you wandered off into the dark, you would probably get killed, you’d probably get eaten. It’s for a real reason.
So we desire what we desire and crave what we crave because of these evolutionary drives. We can no more choose what drives us than we can choose what flavor of ice cream we like. And these drives are things like sugar. Like I said before, sugar used to be rare. It’s everywhere now and it’s caused obesity, et cetera, but sugar makes us feel good. Sugar causes a dopamine rush, or a chemical rush, in our brain. Sex, the reason it feels good, is for evolutionary reasons. If people didn’t like sex, we all wouldn’t exist, right? The fact that people have sex and have risky sex even when they shouldn’t; they don’t use condoms, they have sex with people they’re not supposed to, they have sex when it ruins their entire marriages, is because of these drives.
Same thing with power. Good old Vlad Putin there. Why does he want power? Because it feels good. Because it feels good, and the reason it feels good is because having power increases your opportunity to have sex, traditionally speaking. Sugar: it only tastes good because it used to be valuable and rare.
So these primary evolutionary drives, there’s five of them here: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fornicating. Fighting feels good. If you are being aggressive, if you are actually able to win in that way, it can feel really quite good. Talk to anybody who’s a professional fighter. Fleeing, feeding, and fornicating, these are all feel good and getting the chance to do them motivates the heck out of us because these are what push our genes forward. Fleeing is this reason that racing can feel so good. Feeding, food, makes us feel good. Why does certain stuff taste good and certain stuff not taste so good? Because it is either good for us or because it was once rare. Sex, et cetera.
So getting into evolution a bit more, right here we have some apes. And you notice here he’s standing here, he gets all the ladies, right? I talked about this in a previous video as well, but traditionally speaking, the alpha male of any given group gets all the girls. There is a stat that shows that 80% of men over the last thousands of years never had kids. 80% of women did, 80% of men didn’t, because basically if they were not powerful enough or rich enough, et cetera, they never had the chance to have children.
If you actually notice any kind of tribe or anything like that, any way that a man can have power in our world, he tends to try to hoard all of the women for himself. If you’ve seen The Walking Dead, the character Negan basically does that; he very quickly establishes that all of the women in his group are only allowed to have sex with him. It’s a very traditional thing for men to do.
So a man’s genes are telling him to be dominant, powerful, strong, rich, tough, exceptional, useful, a provider, successful, and in shape because it leads to him getting all the girls. It leads to him getting all the women, it leads to him being worshiped … Not really worshiped, but him being respected as a man. But he has to get the reward. If you want him to be dominant, powerful, strong, rich, tough, exceptional, useful, a provider, successful, in shape, you have to reward him for doing those things as opposed to judging him for not doing those things. Otherwise it’s like driving a Ferrari after the apocalypse; good job guy, who cares? He needs to be rewarded for his masculinity and understood for his lack of this.
So what men yearn for is for the woman in his life to be proud of him and to make him feel like he’s doing a good job as a man instead of constantly emasculating and disappointment, instead of basically saying, “Why aren’t you a man enough?” Remember, if you make him feel accepted as he is and as manly and powerful as he is, if you celebrate him for that, he will worship the bejeezus out of you. If you can show that you have empathy for his soft side and celebrate his manly side, quote unquote “manly side,” that is the secret right there. We’re going to cover how to do that in the rest of the program.
Now I want you to go and read a document down below called The Man Melting Hug, which is a way of doing this; it’s a way of triggering his ability to soften a little bit, it’s a way of causing him to feel proud of his masculinity. And in the next video, we’re going to talk about accepting yourself so you can accept him.
