DOD62: Is It Easy For Your Partner To Make Asks Of You?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that is not taking notes. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Thomas: Boy, that has so many different meanings for me, because I also, due to focus problems, couldn't take notes in class. So, not only do I not take notes, I don't take notes.

0:00:43 Eli: Can't take notes on those notes.

0:00:47 Thomas: Yeah, should be the, actually, title for my memoirs. Thank you, Tom.

0:00:51 Tom: I remember the first time I heard the idea of taking notes was actually doing Citation Needed with Eli. Like, he would just make jokes like, we're not taking votes! You know, we were not giving notes or whatever. And I was like, oh, I never actually heard that. Because I don't come from an improv or comedy or theater background like you guys do. So I don't have all the lingo sitting in my pocket.

0:01:00 Thomas: Right. Right, yeah. Oh. Oh my god. I, that is, I'm sorry, Tom, I am sorry you brought that up because I'm remembering.

0:01:18 Tom: Will I be?

0:01:19 Thomas: Yes, exactly. I'm apologizing to you. No, but it's actually it's it's I think it's actually important for this conversation because I think it could outline just how much I sucked back before I tried to get myself figured out. And now I just moderately suck. It's such an improvement. You have no idea the gulf between how much I sucked and just moderate suckage. It's like it's you could fit like a Gandhi in there, like in that gap.

0:01:44 Thomas: In high school, when I first started doing theater, my first play, that is a thing that you do. Now, I'm going to give the theater fucking teacher, director, whatever guy, I think he's a little bit to blame for this. But that first show, when I didn't know how anything went, there is, after every rehearsal, there's typically the notes session where the director gives gives notes and what directors tend to do when they suck and well actually they all kind of do this but but but they tend to when they stuck is they make a big big production out of it because they want to show off that they're directing so they'll make a lot of like big like probably possibly like hard to take feedback like tough feedback they'll do in front of a bunch of fellow peers which is how the best way to give give someone feedback is to embarrass

0:01:44 Tom: Well, that sounds fun.

0:02:34 Thomas: Them. Yeah. Is to like, totally.

0:02:35 Tom: Yeah, public shaming is the best kind of shaming.

0:02:37 Thomas: It really makes you receptive, but combine that with the fact that I was me, which was a fucking piece of shit. Uh, had no idea. It was so fucking arrogant about it. Thought I was doing everything right. And, so I, an asshole really looked at this as an opportunity of like, okay, this This person's going to say a bunch of things they're wrong about. And then I got to be like, no, dude, like, here's why you're wrong in your criticism of me. It's because of this. And it sucked. I just want to say I sucked. I'm going to give the teacher a little bit of blame because that's a bad way to do it. But I fucking sucked. And that's relevant, I think, to today's episode, because learning how to take notes and not, you know, suck like I very, very much sucked in high school when this happened is critically important. Like being able to like set your ego aside a little bit and not look at it as like, oh, this piece of shit is going to correct me on something.

0:03:33 Eli: Yeah.

0:03:34 Thomas: It's, yeah, it's a tough process. It's a life. I think it's lifelong process for me. I won't speak for anybody else.

0:03:40 Eli: Absolutely. Uh, just on the theater note, by the way, now I am directing children again. Um, or high schoolers I guess. Well,

0:03:44 Thomas: Yeah. Pull them aside. That's, I think about this every day. Pull them beside in private and tell them things. You don't need to embarrass them in front of their peers. I hope that's what you're going to say, Eli. Unless you're gonna say, oh no, I doubled down. I want more shaming. I want

0:03:58 Eli: Actually the opposite, which is like, I, that it's a director's job to be like, how did that go, and then have a conversation so that they can make the discoveries themselves. Um, became very obvious in this group of kids that I'm working with now that they had never experienced that kind of notes process before. Um, had never felt like collaborators. They just felt like there was a secret good performance and that they would either hit it or not hit It he

0:04:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Oh, and it's so toxic with, with certain, uh, there, the theater is so ripe for abuse because any situation where a man has a bunch of control over people is that, and there are so many shitty theater dudes, so many shady theater, literally Lydia's childhood theater company. I won't go into it too much, but this, this was what Lydia pulled a Tom actually, where she would tell me about this childhood theater company she was in. I'd be like, oh, so that, so you were abused. So that, so this, so yeah, is that person? And she'd be Like, oh no, it was, you know, it's really good theater. I was like, yeah, yeah. Okay. But it's because he was abusing you.

0:04:57 Thomas: Like he was, he was literally, this guy was mentally abusing a bunch of kids is what you're saying. And it took her a while and she now, she finally internalized that. And like it got to the point where and I think a lot of it was me recognizing I, at that point, I had very much begun recognizing my dad's kind of emotional abuse. And it's such a, it's so similar. Like it's a lot of the same shit. So when I hear it, especially when it's on Lydia, it makes me fucking furious where I'm like, oh, so this director body shamed you in front of everybody for not being thin enough and doing the right dancing. Like a child at this point. Just to clarify, you're a child and

0:04:50 Eli: To jail, right? Because he was in jail, right?

0:05:04 Tom: Jesus Christ. And

0:05:34 Eli: Yes.

0:05:34 Thomas: He body shammed you as a child. And, used to tell some of these stories with a, with a much different attitude of like a casual attitude about it. And now I think, I think she has internalized like how shitty that was. And, And honestly, I Think that's good to be like, to realize like, Oh no, that was really bad.

0:05:48 Eli: Oh. Right.

0:05:50 Tom: I know that we're going to talk about, and I want to, and I want the focus to be on receiving criticism and receiving. But I think what you touch on, too, is that in order for anybody to be receptive of criticism or receptive of feedback on something that means something to them, it's got to be delivered in the right way.

0:06:11 Tom: If you deliver it in the wrong way, I don't care who you are, it won't be accepted in good faith. It won't be accepted, like you want to get a defensive shitty stonewall kind of reaction. Like deliver feedback in a shitty, awful Gordon Ramsay-esque way, right? Or like an accusatory you statement, always statements, you know, you pull that kind of shit and it's never gonna go well, so with

0:06:11 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Absolutely.

0:06:31 Eli: Yeah.

0:06:40 Eli: 100 true. And, and by the way, that reminds me, like, I would do an entire episode. I don't want us to get distracted because we've got stuff to talk about, but I would doing entire episode on like, like how to handle the people who have been mean to your wife from the past. Cause I,

0:06:54 Thomas: Oh. Oh my god. Well. If I ever met this director, I would literally punch him. That's, I'm not, I would absolutely would. Oh.

0:06:57 Tom: Extreme violence Oh.

0:07:00 Eli: Is okay. Okay. Okay. Tom, maybe this will be the bonus story today because I got to meet Anna's that director and she, and she did not tell me that's who that was until after I met them. And I was, I will never forgive her. I will not. Never forgive her as she grossed.

0:07:10 Tom: God. This

0:07:09 Thomas: Oh. Oh. Boy. Oh. Boy. Yeah. That's not forgivable because you at least, look, I know you and I, Eli, we would have fucking punched and killed these people, but like, at least give us the chance to just yell at them. You know, like to just roast them. Yeah, oh, you felt, when you were just, you know, fucking embarrassing a bunch of kids, a bunch of little girls, I bet you felt amazing. Did that make you feel really big to just, just be fucking piece of shit to a bunch of little girl's trying to do theater. I bet.

0:07:45 Eli: Yeah.

0:07:45 Thomas: You just felt, Oh, you just felt amazing about

0:07:46 Eli: Yeah, it's

0:07:46 Tom: This had to be the most retroactively verbal blue balls you've ever gotten in your life Eli to walk away and be like now I'm all pent up, I'm old pent up

0:07:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:52 Eli: The it's the worst thing. It's the worst thing.

0:07:58 Thomas: Which is rare for Eli.

0:07:59 Eli: And as I was whipping out anywhere.

0:07:59 Thomas: Cause he usually just, usually just fuck

0:08:01 Tom: He Just Spews over everybody

0:08:04 Eli: Yeah, my balls are pale. They're exhausted. No blood down there. I'm telling you. And Speaking of blue balls, we're about to give you podcast blue balls with some auto ads. They're the not coming of listening to a podcast. I think we can all agree, or having someone else come when you don't want them to, I would feel like is also a good description of auto ads. Anyways, uh, if you want to avoid them, uh, on over to patreon.com/dearolddads, uh, you'll get a commercial free, auto ad free version of the show every week. Tom told an amazing story about something that his kids did for each other, a little little kid on kid action, in the last

0:08:11 Thomas: These people. Fuck these people.

0:08:53 Tom: That should be rephrased, okay.

0:08:54 Eli: Okay, uh, the two children working together, double Two children Will Send you pictures of Tom's children on patreon.com/dearolddads No They got in trouble for that already this year. Never mind, we're not, I'm doing that, Daryl

0:08:58 Thomas: Team. No, no.

0:09:00 Tom: Okay, uh Oh My God, all

0:09:12 Thomas: Patreon.com/dearolddads. You don't want to miss the stories. They really are amazing. There's a bonus each and every month. There's an extra bonus story 98% of the time. Sometimes Tom is too fucking busy and we're sorry about that but 98.7% of the time there's an amazing bonus story you don't want to miss it it's so much good Dear Old Dads lore and fuck those auto ads patreon.com/dearolddads go there now yeah

0:09:14 Eli: Dance Yeah.

0:09:34 Eli: So we, we teased this a little bit, but uh, today's episode, or at least what I wanted to talk about, was inspired by a TikTok, not just that inspired by the TikToks, but also inspired by a stitch of a TikTok, which I think causes Tom a special Pain

0:09:46 Thomas: I don't I too don't know what that means I don't t I'm with you I don''t fucking look lydia's into tiktok as well and I don'T understand I DON'T I don't T GET IT I DON''T GET IT oh you want to watch

0:09:48 Eli: So yeah Exactly It's

0:09:49 Tom: The fuck Is A stitch Of a TikTok What I Don't never Mind, don't actually tell Me literally Don't Tell Me Don't Don't Telling Me I Don' T want to Know I

0:09:57 Thomas: Someone's

0:09:57 Eli: A Tikk Tok TikTok

0:09:58 Thomas: Face while they watch something or I don't know.

0:10:00 Eli: Yeah It's A Tiktak about another tiktek Basically

0:10:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:03 Tom: Don''t Want to learn this I Did I said I didn' T wanna learn This, now I'm dumber, you just made me Dumber For that information God Damn it

0:10:03 Thomas: I didn't want the first TikTok. Yeah Oh boy.

0:10:08 Eli: Involuntary Learning Exactly, well, the point Is, uh, the first tiktuk was this woman talking about how it's Mother's Day, and she and her sister and her mother are planning Mother's Day for mothers, they're putting the food together, they're cooking, they're Doing, yeah They're, they're doing all the work for Mother's Day because their husbands are busy doing other stuff. And then the commentary on it was basically that a calculation that women have to make a lot of the time is when you're not getting your needs met, the calculation you have to make is, is it worth giving this feedback, right?

0:10:22 Thomas: I missed that context. That's so much worse. Oh

0:10:47 Eli: And I already sent the link, but I'll send it again so that Thomas can put it in the the show notes. Cause I think it's really worth listening to an experience that I know I have not been aware enough of, which is the notion that when your partner, especially if they're a woman and you're a guy and you know, a typical heterosexual relationship, but I think it applies to all relationships and They need to give you feedback on their needs being met. They have to do the calculus of how much injury is this going to cause?

Is There going to be blowback, can I safely express that I'm not having my needs met, um, it's something that I really want to talk about because I think it's not a problem for bad men, although T-Dog, I think you're going to fill us in on what bad men do, by, I also think this is a good men problem Right, if you Think of yourself as a good partner, I think one of the real problems that comes up is that, that when your partner says, hey, here's a way in which you're not meeting my needs, we can get. And again, I'm just going to own my own shit. I can get very defensive, very much demand sort of a trial, if you will,

0:10:46 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yes yes. Boy

0:11:53 Eli: Of that particular need.

0:11:54 Thomas: It's what it's what I described at the beginning. You go into that mode. You're ready to defend it in the court of public opinion. The notes you're given. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. Eli, I wanted to say that too, because this is something where I want to be very careful. I think, and it's almost meta, the very thing we're talking about. There's going to be men who in reaction to this feedback about getting feedback, they're going to have this negative reaction. That is the very reaction we're talking about, which, wow, I'm caught in a loop here, but it really is true.

0:11:58 Eli: Yeah.

0:12:23 Tom: The top is still spinning, though, just for listeners at home. The top is still spending.

0:12:26 Thomas: It wobbled a little. It wobpled a little, Tom, a little wobble. And no, but really this is something, and maybe this is why Eli and I were particularly struck by this TikTok. This is something I am afraid of every day. I'm afraid so much that there's going to be some blind spot I I have, because I know I used to be like this and I know I make every effort to not now, but is there some blind spot? Is there going to be some, some in my life?

If not Lydia, who's like, God, I, this thing's bothering me about Thomas, but like, fuck, is it worth like, he's going to have a reaction or he's going to make a joke or he's gonna do like, I that sucks. That absolutely sucks. And it's something that you don't have to be a super shitty person to be doing. That's what I want to make clear. Like this isn't something, if you are guilty of this, you're the worst fucking Hitler misogynist.

No, like this is something that it sucks, but it can be very, easily be accidental. And it's something we need to be on the lookout. I think as men for sure.

0:12:28 Eli: Yeah.

0:13:24 Eli: And I want to give credit, because when I saw that TikTok, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about it on the show, and we've covered the full extent, episode, to go watch the TikTok, but I, of the reasons why I wanted to talk about it on the show is I wanted to point out something that you, Thomas, do that I really, really appreciate and thought about when I was watching that, which is that the joke you make about like, "Oh my first instinct is to be this horrible gremlin goblin," so I always have to go against that instinct, like as silly as that is, and as much as that, as like, at least partially joking, I think that That well, then as good as an expression as that is, I actually think that like that is very often something that men do need to hold ourselves accountable for.

Because like the deck, the world deck is stacked for you to feel entitled to certain states of being and one will come along and say, hey, you're wrong. This is a goblin mode of thinking, right? Right. You just think that this is natural. And again, just owning my own shit. Right. That like I constantly have to check in and say, like, am I pulling my weight when it comes to child care? Am I pulling My weight to when it Comes to emotional labor? Right. Because I can absolutely see myself if I do not catch myself allowing Anna to play in Mother's Day.

0:13:46 Thomas: Yeah. No, it's not joking at all. It's a hundred percent real. I wish it weren't. I wish you weren't a A hundred percent.

0:14:42 Thomas: Yep.

0:14:42 Eli: Right? And just being like, oh, what do you want? Well, she's going to plan it. And then I'll, you know, I'll swipe my card at the end. So I did a good job. Right, with all the best possible intentions.

0:14:48 Thomas: Yep, yeah.

0:14:51 Tom: Will say, and this is something that just means you didn't participate, right? If you just participate in the Mother's Day, for example, using this as the example, if you just participated in the mother's day that somebody else planned, you were not actually participating in any of the meaningful portion. You were simply reaping the reward. You are not actually participating. And I think that the standard for men for a lot of activity is to show up, right? The bar is that fucking low because for generations before that, we didn't even have to fucking, men didn't have to show up. So now I think men get to feel real fucking good for participating and participating is is already neglectful, right? Participating, if that's the only extent of your involvement in these sorts of activities, is already neglected. And we pat ourselves collectively on the back for the act of just showing the fuck up. That's it. Because we define, I think, a lot of times our good versus bad behavior by looking at previous generations and being like, well, it's better than what my dad did. It's better Than what his

0:15:21 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, well,

0:16:01 Eli: Absolutely.

0:16:01 Tom: Dad did, but it's like, like, yeah, man, but it was so bad before. It'd be like saying, well, the wage gap has shrunk to 90 cents on the dollar, so we're pretty much good. And not like, it's still just absolutely a problem. And it is just absolutely a problem to think you are participating just by virtue of you showing up. That's reaping reward, not participating.

0:16:02 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:24 Thomas: Well Eli, can you go a bit more into it? Because this is actually this, the, this is the meta issue. So this is, the issue that launches the video is that, but the video itself is about the feedback, right?

0:16:31 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:16:35 Eli: No, I mean, I, I think, I think Tom is is hitting it on the head because it's not just that, it is also then right to, yes and, what, what Tom is saying, then your partner must make a calculation, right?

You are a good person who they can ask their needs from, and I want to hear what happens when you're not a goodperson who they ask their needs from, uh, because Thomas teased us in our private message thread a little about that and I'm interested to hear it. Um, but like, there is also the moment that the very nature of having to ask is emotional labor, right? That the very nurture of having to get you to be better is emotional labor.

And that is again, something that I, again, just want to own my own shit. Something that I fall into all the time, right. Is that Anna knows she can communicate with me, right, and she knows that I take notes well, but I too often make her give me the note, right, not that I'm knowingly sitting there being like, haha, I'm not watching the child while she is watching the child, I'm getting away with something, but I am, oh, you know what, I'm having a little break from work right now, and instead of taking the extra step to ask if she needs support, I'm gonna play video games, or I'm going to do this, I'm to

0:17:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:47 Eli: Do that other thing, and so by, by putting the onus on the other person to ask you to be better, right, even if you're going to respond in the best possible way, you are still doing them a disservice, you are still putting work on their lap or stuff on their plate no

0:18:04 Tom: Yep. 100%.

0:18:03 Thomas: I think it's worth maybe now talking about the worst version of it, because I think it might paint a better picture about what the not as bad versions of it are, because the worst version of it, and I want to make clear, this is still incredibly common, incredibly common, is your, give that example, you're playing video games and your wife needs you to do something, maybe, maybe it something for the kids, maybe it could be any number of things, because in this typical situation, I'm this hypothetical, your wife is fucking doing and everything.

So it could be any number of things she needs help with. So what she can do is she has to make this calculation. You're talking about, Eli, which is all right. Do I ask him to fucking, do I ask them to make, make lunch for the kids? I got, I got so much to do. Do I asked him? And if you're a shitty dude, if you're a shitty dude, what she's thinking is, all right, I'm going to ask him.

And then he's going to have this defensive reaction. She, you're going to say, hey, would you mind making lunch for kids? And he's gonna be like, oh, I, I just, just took them to the fucking sports practice. The other, you know, there's going to be some defensive thing so that the dude can protect his ego and feel like he hasn't been slighted and he actually is doing, his pulling his weight. And so then there's got to be an argument. And then there was gotten.

So then this poor, overworked, hypothetical wife has got to be like, so not only do I just need the lunch to be made for the fucking kids, not only would I have to do that,

0:18:05 Tom: Yeah

0:19:23 Thomas: Then I got to manage like a fucking Oxford debate on on whether or not lunch should be made by me or him, you know, it's got, we got to go into debate mode about who, who deserves to make lunch or not, who's doing done enough. So then I'd have to win a debate. I'd Have to win it. Fucking, uh, what's the something square intelligence square debate.

0:19:43 Thomas: Yeah. With, with the husband who's just had like also this anger reaction that as a woman, male anger, I think is something that as men, we, we don't realize how perhaps scary that That is even, when you're not in abusive situation, I want to make very clear male anger for, for many women, I'm not speaking for everybody, but like for many women, that's really hard to deal with just any level of anger, because there is always the, the, sort of the underlying threat in reality, at least if not an actual threat, the reality of like, Oh, if he gets mad enough, like fucking he's bigger than me, you know? Like, so you got to deal With that. And then you got To be like, as I'm dealing with that, I got a baby crying. I got A kid, dot, dot. Out and so is it worth it for this woman to go into any of that or is it just like you know fucking all right I'll do I'll fucking make lunch with my foot while I'm fucking feeding the baby and doing something else with my hand you

0:19:41 Tom: An intelligent squared debate right yeah, like a

0:20:32 Eli: I'm

0:20:32 Thomas: Know, like and I

0:20:33 Tom: One -man band, you've got like peanut butter and jelly on cymbals you know

0:20:34 Thomas: Get the snare on my knees yeah and the hi-hat on my knee, is rather, yeah, it, exactly, and I have seen that not only with my mom, um, but I also want to talk about another pattern that happens because of this, and here's, I'm realizing now in the moment, kind of why I learned about this, because, um, I very much, I can guarantee you that this was a dynamic with me, if, and I hope it's not still, I bet you it is still to some degree, but this very much was a pandemic with me in college.

And I don't mean in like a marriage. I mean, like even in just friend relationships, this happens where you have somebody, and this is, is why I learned it. I was probably like this, was not self-aware about it at all. And then what happened was I had a friend who, it's really interesting, usually when there are people who are like me, I hate them. But this guy was kind of like me. But he was really likable in a way. I was actually decent friends with him. But I noticed, I was like, fortunately, it was almost like someone was doing a morality play next

0:21:34 Thomas: To me to teach me a lesson, kind of, because this guy, guy, good guy, but he was very much, uh, if something's wrong, he's got a debate about it, very much. So like if anything happened, and I'm just talking friends stuff, like, oh, you, you know, you're going to give a ride to that person or you, whatever it might be, became friends with him and friends of his, friends and his friends were like, God, I, I need, I wanted to tell him to do this thing.

But you know, when you fucking bring up, like at all criticizing him, he just, you know, he just loses it. And he's like, then you have to fight through a bunch of debates, and he's really smart, so like, you know, he's good at justifying whatever he's doing. And so what I witnessed around me was this guy's friends all did the thing that happens so often in this situation, which is you put up with it for as long as you can. You eat the shit.

You just eat it. You just end up eating. You're doing, you're making lunch with your foot, as I've said, for the kids, you do that forever, because every time you're like, I don't want to get into it, I don't want to get into it, I can't, I can't handle this, guy forever, until you reach a breaking point.

So you put up with it, you put up with, you put with it until you reached a breaking point, and then something very minor happens, and you're just like, fuck, I can't, I can do it, man, I'm out, and to this poor guy, in a lot of ways this is a poor unlucky fellow, maybe, I think I empathize because I think this has been me, what happens is that guy goes, well, what the fuck, I thought we were fine, and then, like, I dropped a fucking spoon and then they just left forever, you know, it's, it's like that guy's version of the story is that, and that is my biggest fear.

I'm so afraid of that because if you are that kind of person that where you're just, you're just, it's a little too hard to give you any sort of feedback, can happen. That dynamic can happen where people are either just eating shit around you, trying to make it work because they do care about you and they want to be with you. And in order to be friends or whatever, they have to just really just eat it all the time. Just like, all right, I'll just fucking let go of that thing, that's important to me. Or they blow up on you.

0:21:33 Tom: Well One of the things that that occurs to me is like, anytime if making an ask, ask into a conflict or making a request into a conflict, that is a form of manipulation, right? It is a form of manipulation so that people eventually become disinterested in having that, in creating that next ask. So like it is a way for people to manage conflict in their lives by saying like, look, every time somebody comes to me with an ask, I'm going to turn this into a debate.

0:24:05 Tom: And they don't not be a conscious decision to do it. But regardless, it is a way to manipulate other people into not asking of You. And so one of the things you can do to try to avoid that is to, one, ask yourself, how much should people have to come to me to ask? And how much should I anticipate? And this is the difference between being a mind reader and being a participant. Participant, right?

If you are a participant in your home, you will never feel, and a participant in your relationships, and you're an active participant, not a passive one, I think you will never feeling like, oh, I have to be a mind reader to know that, right? You just pay fucking attention, and paying attention should be an active process, not a positive thing that maybe happens or maybe doesn't. And for some people that's easier than other people, I, I want to fully fucking can acknowledge that.

But I think that this should be like part of your life's emotional work is to make sure that as little as possible, people are bringing to your attention the things you didn't notice. And one of the ways to make do it a point in your life to actively notice, to not passively hope that you you'd see things, but to actively take note and be a participant.

0:23:50 Thomas: Yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely.

0:25:22 Thomas: Here's one caveat I want to give. I think that what often happens with this, Tom, and it's not really disagreeing, but just because I've, I've seen this a lot. What, I think there's a weird, what's the graph that's the inverse of of the like typical fucking, the bell curve, like what's the inverse of that? Like there's like two poles kind of on either side.

0:25:39 Tom: It's a bell curve.

0:25:40 Thomas: Yeah. There's yeah. It's like that because what happens is the minute you're this person where, like my dad or like this guy or, or even me, people stop asking very quickly. So if you are this person and, and I guarantee you, we are talking to a bunch of this, but not that this is not insulting this audience. I want to to be very clear. I've been this person. I guarantee you there's a lot of this person in the audience. From their perspective, no one ever asked them anything. Virtually, it could even be their wives.

0:25:53 Tom: Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

0:26:08 Thomas: Their wives probably think, "Oh yeah, no, I pretty much pulled my weight. My wife, no, haven't heard any complaints." And what happens is very early on, again, people cope. In an ideal world, the partner would have the fucking emotional bandwidth and everything that you need for this to be able to just confront you and be like, "Hey man, I tried to ask you stuff." And it goes this way. But like, let's be real. Most people, they don't have that emotional intelligence or they don't have that bandwidth or they're already drowning. So they can't do, it's just uncomfortable to be in that position or they're too scared to. So that's the only thing I want to kind of amend a little bit, Tom, is you, if you are this person, you may not have anything to pay attention to in that sense. There may be no, yeah.

0:26:49 Tom: Because you might have already pushed past that point, right?

0:26:50 Thomas: And it happens fast. It happens fast and early in relationships, very and that's what scares me so much. Like it's hard to get back from that.

0:26:51 Tom: Yeah. Of the relationships, I try to look around and see the types of relationships that seem to govern other relationships. And one of the relationships I've noticed that seems very true is that the more responsible you are, the more responsibility you will have in your life. So one way to sort of gut check yourself to see how responsible do other people see you, like how comfortable are other people in placing those asks on you, is to really take stock of how much responsibility you have.

0:27:30 Thomas: Right.

0:27:30 Tom: Because all the people I know truly know that are really responsible people, like people that you feel they have a ton of responsibility. They have a ton.

0:27:40 Thomas: That's a good, that's a good

0:27:41 Tom: My dad was an incredibly responsible person. He was one of the most absolutely steadfast and trustworthy people you'll ever meet in your life. And as a result of that, he had a lot of responsibility in his life. And I think that that is a way for you to sort of gut check yourself. If you look at your life and you're like, I don't have as much responsibility as my spouse, house, that's probably because you don't seem as responsible and people have stopped asking. That's a way for you to sort of backdoor, because that's the relationship I see over and over and over and again, is responsible people have a tremendous amount of responsibility. And irresponsible people, nobody asks them anymore. Nobody

0:27:42 Thomas: Call.

0:28:24 Thomas: Yep.

0:28:24 Tom: Asks a lot of you if you are not seen as capable and responsible.

0:28:29 Thomas: Fucking expert or anything, but based on my life knowledge, I would say if you are in a relationship where your partner, even if there's a little bit of tension, if If they're asking you stuff, if they're comfortable asking, making asks of you, even if there's a little bit of tension there, I think that's pretty healthy. That's a good sign.

0:28:45 Tom: Yeah, man.

0:28:46 Thomas: That's like, hey, man, could you take out the trash? It's been a minute or something. Even if there is a little tension, I'm not or anything. Maybe there is tension there. That means they still feel uncomfortable asking you things. I think it could be a lot worse. Let me tell you, it could be a lot worse. There's nothing worse.

0:28:57 Eli: Oh. Yep.

0:29:04 Tom: I'll Tell you from personal experience, when you stop asking it's because you don't care anymore.

0:29:07 Thomas: You don't give a shit or you're just too scared. I've seen, I mean, certainly my mom, just my mom just, made the joke in the chat that my mom like made this calculation once in 1982 and never asked my dad for another thing like that. That's pretty much, it's not exactly true. Cause my, my mom would do a little bit of that bottle up and explode dynamic where, and this does happen where she would eat it. She would eat eat it.

She would eat it, and then every, like, couple years, there would be a screamy fight, you know, and the by the way, one last thing, the resolution of the screamy fight was when she quit, was and I don't, honestly, I don't even know if I witnessed this. I just know it. I know it in my bones that this is what happened with my dad, where my dad would probably say, well, if suck so fucking much, you you should just leave. And then what would happen is eventually she would let go. And then, then the relationship could resume in the form, shitty form that it was like, that was the dynamic because

0:29:07 Tom: Yeah. Right.

0:29:34 Eli: Well, for Those fights so often are the only way for someone to be heard. Right, you know, a lot of times. And I, I have friends who are in these relationships, I have seen these relationships where the only way one of the partners can be heard is to blow up and because the person has put them in that position. Now every blow up has to end as a, "I'm sorry, no, I'm so sorry." Right?

0:30:26 Eli: Because this person expressed their needs in this giant rush of emotions and maybe they said things they didn't want to, did things they didn't want to, um,

0:30:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. There very fine people on both sides, Eli.

0:30:35 Eli: Right. Honestly, that's really what comes up is it's like, well, we both yelled and we're both sorry, so instead of addressing

0:30:38 Thomas: Exactly. Yep! We both learned something here today. Now I will go Go back to doing none of the housework.

0:30:44 Eli: Yeah yeah Exactly, I mean, that's really, I see that pattern over and over and ever again. You need some tension, you need to be able to disagree, you needto be able to push back and forth, especially if you have kids. I mean, with Dear Old Dads, about being fathers, and like I tell people all the time, because I have friends who who are starting to get in a child having place and they're like, well, you know, any advice that you have, and I'm like, how do you fight, how do you fight, because every crack in the relationship is going to get pulled wide open by the stakes of parenthood, and you better have a good way to fight, you better have a good way to disagree strongly about things that matter, because too too many couples, they do not, they, I mean, one of the things that I hear all the time and is rarely true is, oh, we never fight. Right. And I'm like, okay, that's true for some people. Like, and that's wonderful if that's truth for you. But so often what that means is we do not have the ability to

0:30:51 Thomas: It's real. It's so real. Yeah.

0:31:16 Thomas: Yep. Yeah.

0:31:51 Eli: Fight. And the first time we fight, we're going to absolutely lose our minds because you're my Prince Charming and you're my Snooki Wookums. Right? And like you, you need to be able able to be like, hey, seriously, like we disagree on this, what do you think, or I'm not getting my needs met, I am getting my needs met, etc.

0:31:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:11 Thomas: Well, Eli, in one point you made in the fight episode that we did on that very topic, which is such a good point, such a great point. Such a good one, especially for people like us to realize is winning a debate doesn't mean you're right. You know, like, especially with your fucking loved ones, just because there are so many bad reasons that you can win a debate. So many. Any. It's actually a miracle, a miracle in any debate. If the reason you won is because you were right or had better arguments, that's like 1% max.

0:32:11 Eli: Yes.

0:32:23 Tom: Yeah

0:32:40 Eli: It's coincidence. Honestly, yeah.

0:32:41 Thomas: It is like, yeah, yeah. Because what happened, what's more likely is you're more comfortable in conflict. You're better, you're angrier. And so the other person is maybe they're too responsive to that. And so they shy away or you're louder or you are more, you are quicker to think of words. There are so many fucking reasons that one person could have a huge edge when it comes to the quote-unquote fight when it comes like the debate that aren't because they're right. Yeah.

0:32:44 Tom: Yeah and I, I want to add to something that was said earlier because I think it's a really, it's really good point that I didn't fully understand myself until unfortunately too recently, and that is that like I really do believe that if you're a guy your responsibility is is different and more to manage any anger that you feel so as not to intimidate or make your wife, if it's a heterosexual relationship, not feel fearful, right? And I've had to reflect on this, you know, in multiple instances. And there's been jokes that have been made. Like, I remember talking, I think I mentioned this before, like I was joking with Citation Needed crew and I was like, yeah, you don't realize everybody's like much more polite than they are. And Noah was like, yeah, maybe they're polite to you.

0:33:56 Tom: And there's a difference, right? Because our physicality influences how people see and perceive us. And even though I see and perceive myself as actually quite a gentle person, I am not a physically violent person as an adult at all and haven't been in more than 25 years. Long, long, long time. I've never had any, but there's a truth that if I lose my temper it's not the same as if Hayley loses her temper, it's just not, and it can't be, and it's not like there's no parody there because the reality of our ability to to be hurtful is different, you know, and I think that if you're a guy listening to this, you have to recognize you've got to take, you've got to keep tighter control over your shit, you just do because you are scary. Yeah.

0:33:30 Thomas: Mm- -hmm. Yeah Yep. Yeah yeah

0:33:56 Eli: Yeah you you You gotta be a safe person to piss off, right? Like and I, I

0:34:47 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:34:47 Tom: Right. That's a, that's the smarter way to put it. Yep.

0:34:50 Eli: I know it's a silly thing to say, but like the truth of the matter is Anna, no matter how much we disagree, and we have really disagreed, has never had a moment where she's been like, I've been unsafe. She's definitely had moments where she'd been like, I married a baby.

0:35:05 Thomas: What?

0:35:05 Eli: I married baby Huey from the Animaniacs and that was a terrible mistake, uh, know, I, I think, do we talk about the fireworks fit on the fighting episode? Oh, god, so Eric, me own my own shit, um, also maybe the audience will support me and rise up for me in a way that my beautiful bride did not, so the thing that, one of the things that I hate most in the world is fireworks, I hate them with the fiery passion of, and when Max was maybe one years old, my kitty corner neighbor, um, to have an all out firework palooza.

0:35:16 Thomas: Was

0:35:25 Tom: Oh

0:35:41 Thomas: Oh, Jesus. Christ.

0:35:43 Eli: And I was livid, livid, now here's the thing, my neighbor is a person of color, uh, and his family are all people of color, I live in suburbia with large, with a very very white, uh, police force, and our police force actually has a little bit of a reputation for not being so great in the way that they treat it's a police force. Yeah.

0:36:03 Thomas: Oh. So it's a police force. Interesting, okay. Gotcha

0:36:05 Eli: Exactly they have a special and especially bad reputation for that, so I was in a position where, you look, if I had neighbors, right, if this was my across the street neighbor Frank who loves the Giants, I'd be like, cops go yell at Frank for me, right, and I know you shouldn't have that impulse at all to invoke state violence on people, but I'm at least smart enough to know, hey, my neighbors are people of color, they're also first language Spanish speakers, and they might not be talking to someone who speaks Spanish as a first language, so I couldn't call the cops, so

0:36:05 Tom: Yeah right right

0:36:06 Thomas: Yeah yeah well Good, that's an important, I know, to pause you, but like, honestly, that from the Black Lives Matter movement, so that's something that I wouldn't have known and wouldn't have learned, that I think is very important. Lydia and I both, like, I don't know, fucking seven years ago, whatever it was, we kind of came to that realization because we had a neighbor, we actually had a black neighbors, and and we heard them fighting or something, some sort of something. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't anything like huge. It was just like, oh, should we be concerned? And like, we both had that moment of like, should we call 911? And we're like, oh no, I'm, there's no fucking way I'm going to do that.

0:37:03 Thomas: Like, I'm not going to call the police on the black neighbors who might be having a domestic thing, even though maybe that could be what they need. I don't know. But like the chance, the probably more likely chance that that's going to go horribly fucking wrong because of our racist belief system, I was like, I'm never gonna do that, I'm never gonna fucking do that.

0:36:50 Eli: Yeah right The the police, it is hard as a white person of privilege who grew up with fucking Paw Patrol to wrap your head around the police don't do for them what they do for you. Right, and it's it's really hard, right, because your defensiveness, and I know this because I went through this inner dialogue of being like, like, well, what do I do if there's an axe murderer, and I'm like, hey, hey, do you see how you had to create an axe murderer to deal with the way you feel in this moment, and I'm like, but what if there is an axe murderer, and I'm like, well, you know what, if you win the lottery, man.

0:37:52 Tom: Hey

0:37:32 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah yep exactly exactly yep that's our politics our entire One side of our, like, 50% of our country is the, what if there's an axe murder? That's where they live, though. They just, they stop there, and I'm glad you had the insight to be like, I had to create an insane situation hypothetically, because yeah, I know that's what people are going to respond. I just, in my head, I'm realizing, oh, I'm gonna get some messages, Thomas, what if he was beating the, and I'm like, no, I just heard a little bit of yell. It was, you know, it could have been a guy stubbed his toe for all I know. Like it's like, yeah, good.

0:37:54 Eli: Right. Right.

0:38:18 Eli: Also to Be clear, if he was beating her and she needed help, cops do not help them. That is not a and statistically

0:38:24 Thomas: Yeah. It's still, it still might not be, still might Not be the best thing to do. Yeah,

0:38:29 Eli: They don't help, and I know it's really hard to wrap our heads around that because, they help Anna, right? The thing that is most difficult to sort of grasp about this situation is that if I, you know, drink an evil person potion and go up there and I'm like, all right, Anna, it's walloping time, when she calls the police, the police will come and stop me and take me to jail, whereas it is much more likely that police interceding with people of color, especially in a poor neighborhood, or in a neighborhood where people's, like, where there's broken windows does policing going on, it is much more likely that there will be consequences for everyone in the house, victim included.

Right, I don't want to go on forever with this story, but I went over and I talked to the neighbor, and Anna didn't want me to talk to the neighbour because she was like, they're having a good time and not hurting anybody, but I was like, their gonna wake the baby. They did not, by the way, wake the maybe, so before you congratulate me too much for the absolute temper tantrum I have in this story, that baby never

0:38:34 Thomas: Yeah. Okay.

0:39:24 Eli: Even ruffled. This was my imagination and fear for the baby, and so I'm, I'm, see, I'm sitting there seething, right, seething with, I'm growling like some kind of dog with rage, and she, she is like, hey, you are overreacting to this, and I have an absolute temper tantrum about it right now. Let me be clear again, talking about a safe person to be around, my version of a temper tantorum is sitting on the end of the bed going, I just think it's really not fair, I really want you to understand, like, I feel, I don't really understand how to get my emotions across here, but, but just being an absolute child about the fact that I'm not allowed to go across the street and fucking Bruce Willis at the beginning of an eighties movie karate fight my neighbors for making noise that did not wake my baby for the potential of waking babies. Um,

0:39:23 Thomas: Baby was fine yep yeah god I know that feeling

0:40:21 Eli: Gentlemen, before, uh, we go, I rented a limousine for $400 this week, but when it arrived, they told me it didn't include a driver. So I spent all that money and nothing to show for it all

0:40:33 Thomas: I like that one all

0:40:33 Tom: All right

0:40:39 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

0:41:18 Eli: I'll let Thomas use a ChatGPT to look through the logs and delete it automatically if it did. But I, one of the things that I hate most in the world is

0:41:23 Thomas: Wait, can I actually do, is that, would that work? I'm not even joking. Does ChatGPT have our podcast somehow?

0:41:24 Eli: Yeah, it's just, you just use the, yeah, it's, it's not just whisper. Yeah. Just use whisper.

0:41:32 Thomas: Wait, no, for, because this would be extremely helpful. Are you telling me that I could search ChatGT for our podcast? Okay. Teach me how to do this because this is going to be very important.

0:41:35 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. So you use the whisper. We'll talk about it. Yeah. It's very good.

0:41:41 Thomas: Yeah.