DOD118: Sex vs. Intimacy

Transcript

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

0:00:30 Tom: Now just cribbing straight from Facebook videos. I am Tom Curry. I've joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello gentlemen I'm

0:00:39 Eli: Mean, you're the one who brought the video, Tom.

0:00:39 Thomas: Yeah, what the?

0:00:40 Eli: I don't know why you're acting like we're cheating on our homework.

0:00:42 Tom: Not saying I'm immune to my own criticisms you know

0:00:47 Eli: Welcome to the podcast that's really half -assed. Thanks, new listener. Hi, welcome to our show, new listener. Person who was scrolling through iTunes and found our show and decided to give us a shot. 7% an episode, Tom. Get your game on. Get your Game On. He

0:01:04 Tom: We actually have a really great video that I did find weirdly enough from a facebook video that haley sent me that's a trevor noah clip from the daily show which I guess he's not on anymore more because john stewart's on the daily show now um I thought it was a great clip and I think he brings some things that are worth talking about um the table in a way that I don't even want to try to sort I I think his he does such a nice job of putting this together that it's it's worth talking about well

0:01:17 Thomas: Yeah, you want to get right on it? You want to?

0:01:30 Eli: Is. Let's jump in.

0:01:31 Thomas: Well, the only thing worse than

0:01:31 Eli: Let's Jump On It. Thing worse than Tom's intro to our podcast just now is the auto ads. Yes, truly. We might half -ass this show, but we full -ass to mouth you, the podcast listener, every time we fill your ears with auto ads, But there is a way that you can avoid that pain and suffering, and that's by giving us money over at patreon.com/dearolddads. We'll get an ad -free version of every single show. Plus, you'll get a little bonus episode every month.

0:01:44 Tom: Oh

0:02:04 Eli: Now, the bonus was late.

0:02:04 Thomas: Ooh, yeah. Well, what? Yeah. Maybe we should tease that a little bit.

0:02:08 Eli: Yeah, the bonus was late this month, but we had a really good conversation about relationships and when lines are crossed. And look, I gotten the feedback. I'm not going to say who. I've gotten the feedback that I occasionally tend to make this show too often about monogamy or the lack of it or its absurdity. And I will say, while conversation may have started that way, I think it ended in a really interesting place about boundaries and how we set them and how we enforce them in relationships. But the only way you're ever going to hear it, and the only way you are ever going escape the confines of monogamy, is over at patreon.com/dearolddads. That's right, for just $7 an episode, we will free you from your monogamous relationship. Check it out.

0:02:51 Tom: I'm

0:02:58 Eli: Tom?

0:02:56 Thomas: Wow. Is there still the sugar, a sugar tear over there for Eli and I?

0:03:00 Eli: Yeah, sugar tear, yeah exactly, has anyone been, anyone signed up for it yet?

0:03:03 Thomas: It's a thousand bucks an episode. Yeah.

0:03:05 Eli: Come on, people, make it happen. Little sailor suits together come on there

0:03:07 Thomas: Make Eli andI dress in little suits that match and do stuff together. Together a little all right

0:03:13 Tom: Gonna go be a patron now actually I know know it's my show but I don't I'm putting my third in here there

0:03:14 Thomas: Hey hey works for me I

0:03:14 Eli: It is uh it's it's recursive to the other levels Tom

0:03:18 Thomas: Wasn't sure how to approach Tom about that, but hey, Tom, if you're gonna, yeah, awesome, this is good news yeah I was scared to ask personally

0:03:23 Eli: The answer is yes, yeah I

0:03:26 Tom: All right so thomas I think you've got this clip queued up do you want to go ahead and start the clip and we'll uh we'll kind of jump off from there

0:03:26 Thomas: Yeah

0:03:28 Eli: Wasn't

0:03:34 Clip: Don't realize how often men are experiencing a lack of intimacy, and the only place that they can experience that intimacy is through sex. We've created a society where men are so afraid to be vulnerable with each other, to be, you know, sensitive with each another, to care for each other. To love each other? You're even saying that as a guy. You always have to change. You can't just say, I love you. I love your dog. You know what I mean? You've got to throw it.

You can't just say it. And it's interesting because that is where I do feel women have done a much better job of being there intimately for each other. Not sexually, but intimately. And I think we take for granted how much in society men who say sex is the thing they're not getting are actually struggling with a lack of companionship, of intimacy, of being in a space with a person where they're sharing everything from serotonin to endorphins to what humans need to feel.

And I hope we can change that conversation just a little bit more. I hope to get to the place where guys go, oh, I actually do need the sex. I need it to be held. And I live in a society where it's hard to be helped unless I'm having sex. Because as guys, you can't just go to a guy and be like, just hold me. True. And I, I hope the conversation goes there. You know, not just from a right to sex.

It's like, no, sometimes you just want to be heard. There are many sex workers, we've talked about this, where they'll talk about how many men will pay them and then say, hey, can we just talk? Can we just sit on the bed and talk and can you just hold me?

I think if we have a little more of those conversations, a few more honest conversations, few more vulnerable conversations, we may get to a place where it's not just about sex or no sex, sex, it's people actually saying, oh yeah, we are full human beings who require a full spectrum of affection and affections towards us. And in the same way, for many years, great therapists have been saying that women have to be allowed to express that they want and enjoy sex. I think we also have to encourage men in society to go, hey, I want to express and enjoy intimacy despite or apart from sex, and

0:05:52 Thomas: I just need sex, honestly, I just, so that's Dear Old Dads that's the show

0:05:57 Tom: Well that's the show

0:05:57 Eli: Imagine someone someone made it through our that entire clip and was like, wow, I can't wait to hear them. Yeah, well, not for me, thanks. Yeah.

0:06:11 Thomas: Oh

0:06:06 Tom: I wanted to talk about this one I thought this was great like I I don't know trevor no I'd never watched the daily show with him on it before so I don't know shit about Trevor Noah but like I loved about that, um, is a couple of things AND THE ONE THING I WANT TO LIKE HIGHLIGHT FIRST IS EVEN IN THIS LIKE KIND OF INTIMATE SPACE WITH THE AUDIENCE THAT HE'S CREATING hold me is still played for laughs when he says like what if men just want to be held everybody still laughs at that even as he's calling out in that same conversation I think that's really like says so much about how true what he's saying is if what he is saying wasn't really true then that would not play for laughs that way it plays for laughs specifically because Because, like, it's so socially unacceptable for men to ask for intimacy, one among other men, you know, male -to -male intimacy, and an ask for that intimacy is really difficult.

And it's socially not acceptable or it wouldn't play for a laugh on his show. And I also think that that lack of knowing how to ask for intimacy that is non -sexual, like stop just when it's male-to-male. I think that also in many ways, many times informs the way that men treat women, to his point, where like the only way we know how to ask for any intimacy, oftentimes because of the way that we're socialized, is to ask for sex. And I thinkthat that's a really important conversation that I want to have here.

0:06:30 Thomas: Yeah, yeah man

0:07:31 Eli: No question, I think one of the things that he also touches on in that, that's really interesting, and that we've talked about a little bit, but like patriarchy also harms men, and one of the things that he talks about is like, because the lens of how men have have sex and experience intimacy has been created within patriarchy, it's hard even to break out of what you're supposed to want because it was created by other men, if you know what I mean. I know that was a sentence worth diagramming, but like one of the real traps that comes up in that situation is like, what, you don't want sex? And it's like, well, no, I, I, I do want sex, but like, like, we created a system that's harmful to us. How do you talk about creating a system that's helpful to you when you were the ones that were in charge, you know?

0:08:01 Tom: Yeah.

0:08:20 Tom: And what I think that socialization, socialization, it affects everybody in the equation. Right. Know. I knew we know that. But like, it affects, you're saying it affects men. But men are not the only people that are socialized to enforce patriarchy in some ways. Right? Right. So we, we have taught everybody that this is how men are going to want to ask for intimacy. It wasn't just men in that crowd laughing at the hold me joke. Right.

There are women in that crowd that are laughing at that hold me joke as well, because we've also socialized women to expect men to ask for intimacy only in this one socially acceptable form and format. And I think that's, that's really something as well. Like, everybody in the whole society we've created swims in the same soup. Nobody gets to not be a part of the soup. We all lose by this and we all enforce it.

And like, when we do that, we lose our ability to ask for intimacy. And I think if you can't ask for intimacy outside of sex, we are creating weird pathology, social and interpersonal pathologies around sex and sexuality, and that that ask and that sort of entitlement and demand that many men feel, and many women bear the brunt of. Right.

0:09:33 Thomas: What, what do you think the claim is, is it that, like, if are not having as much sex as I used to or something, and like, also, they have a problem with it, is he saying, well, maybe the solution is if we were able to snuggle more, with you either other men or I guess even just our partners, that would like change the number, or what? Yeah.

0:09:51 Eli: I think that was just an intro into the thought about men craving intimacy. I don't think he was proposing it as a solution. I think he saw sex work being put in this context of the right to sex, and inspired him to talk about the idea of, like, what men are craving versus what they're told they're craving. I

0:09:55 Thomas: OK, that's that's the part I can't relate to. I don't understand it. I, I crave what I crave Eli. Okay. I crave what I crave. Uh, nobody's telling me to crave anything. Do you think that's a, I don't know how to evaluate that. Do You think men are?

0:10:25 Tom: Is that intimacy is what is often missing, and sex is the only socially acceptable way for men to request intimacy. And so certainly like we want a certain amount of sex. Everybody has a certain libidinous sort of like space that they want to live within. Right. And that varies from person to person. But I do think that there's something at the core of his argument that says, like, set aside your ask for sex as its own thing and consider how we go about asking for intimacy as men from our partners, like from our our partners. I think it's a really important conversation to have because I think if the only way for men to ask for intimacy, both emotional and physical, is through sex, then we will create a really problematic and broken dynamic interpersonally and personally.

0:10:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:16 Thomas: Yeah. So I understand the argument he's making. I, what I'm trying to say is I have no way of evaluating if that's like of

0:11:25 Tom: Don't feel like that's socially true?

0:11:27 Thomas: , I have no idea. That doesn't resonate with me at all. And so I don't know like, okay, random guy guy on the street, are you asking your wife for sex because you actually just need, you know, in addition to sex, some other intimacy you're not getting? I actually just don't know. I have no idea if that's true. I could believe it either way.

0:11:43 Tom: Give you a way to evaluate that truth claim, which is is that when said, like, men want to ask to be held, that was played for a laugh. Fact that it's played for laugh tells us that that is socially unacceptable, right? For men to want that ask. It's silly. Like, that's why we all laugh at that. Like, oh, men wanna be held. That's ridiculous. And then everybody understandably laughs, and Trevor Noah gets a joke out of it.

0:11:44 Thomas: Sure. So I want to point out a couple of things about that. So he's saying, he specifically talks about a man telling another man hold me. And that's, yeah, utilizing certain language to get that reaction a little more than me. Cause, cause if a man said, you know, if he had said, oh yeah, it's hard to just get a hug from another dude. I THINK a lot of us would have been like, well, I don't know, I get hugs from dudes and it's not a, you know what I mean? Like, I think, I the language played up the, the difference, the disconnect there.

0:12:12 Tom: Right.

0:12:27 Tom: I do too, because he's told a joke, right. I do, too, as he's hold a joke. But I do think that the joke, what I'm trying to point out is the joke rests on a gender dynamic that doesn't play as well in the opposite. And I think that that is telling. I thinkthat the gender dynamic in theopposite, if you try to tell a joke about how sometimes women just want to be held, that joke just, I don't think, falls. I don't think it plays, right?

0:12:49 Tom: I don't think you can write that joke. And that's kind of what I'm trying to point out. Think that's a way, linguistically, to evaluate that truth claim, even if you can't personally identify with it.

0:12:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Right. Fair. No, totally fair. Yeah. Yeah. Well, On that, in... of that being a difference, in but I guess the part I'm saying I can't evaluate is, while it's true that I do not feel like I can go to any man on the street and be like, "Hold me," or even like my close friends, I wouldn't, you know, maybe maybe you a choice few, I guess I could, I could use those wordings. That's all true. But I, I wouldn't ever say that I'm missing intimacy that, that I need, that I'm not getting and that IIm compensating for by demanding sex from my wife. Like, that part I just don't have any idea about.

0:13:28 Tom: Right. But another way to think about it is, do you think socially, just looking out more broadly socially, like, do you think, socially, most men, like considering like most people are not college educated, most people are just regular, you know, Joe on the street. Do you think most people out there, because I don't, would feel comfortable asking their wives to just hold them? Think about like the plumber who just came over yesterday or like the average guy that you meet on the Street, not like the sort of of rarefied leftist circles that we swim in that are not most people. I don't think that most people would feel comfortable asking for that kind of intimacy. I do not actually think most people, most men, would know how to ask for intimacy, and I think that is Trevor Noah's point, and I believe it, outside of asking for sex.

0:13:32 Thomas: Sure.

0:14:15 Thomas: Okay. Important question. Key question here, Eli. It the truth that, and this is why, like I genuinely meant I didn't know how to evaluate it. I wasn't making a claim about it. So I think you're probably right, Tom. Is it true that most men who aren't me, I guess, don't just occasionally sidle up small spoon to their wife, small get spoon action when they need it and their wife's big spoon. Do most men not just get a small spoon?

0:14:17 Tom: Yeah.

0:14:39 Tom: No.

0:14:39 Eli: Think a lot of men are only physically intimate with their wives when they're having sex or trying to have sex, yeah.

0:14:44 Tom: Yeah, absolutely.

0:14:44 Thomas: Okay. Then yes, that's absolutely fully agreed then.

0:14:48 Eli: No.

0:14:46 Tom: Yeah and want to would address that, too. I think most men would not feel comfortable with that. And I think many women, not all, but I think any woman would not be comfortable with it. I don't think many women feel comfortable with that expression of vulnerability either. Because we've all been socialized to want and expect certain things from the other sex. We have, we swim in a soup that tells us to some degree what is desirable, what is expected, what we should want and not want. We don't build these things entirely of ourselves. We build these thing as a result of living in a social culture. And I think that there are a lot of people who will be like, that's not, I don't like that. I'm not the big spoon. That's not for me.

0:15:30 Tom: And I don't t think I'm, no, I think for women.

0:15:30 Thomas: The small spoon, you mean, or the women are saying that. Oh,

0:15:33 Tom: I'm saying women.

0:15:34 Thomas: Okay. OK, gotcha. Gotcha.

0:15:34 Tom: I'd be like no, that's not, I'm not the big spoon. That's not my role here.

0:15:38 Thomas: OK. Then, yeah, they're missing out. Go

0:15:40 Eli: Have Have you guys seen these posts? These actually go viral. The, like, what is your ick when it comes to a man? And it's like wearing shoes or eating a salad? Have you not seen? They're insane.

0:15:49 Thomas: Like women say that?

0:15:51 Eli: Yes. The look up like what's Your Ick online. Some of them are so fucking bananas. I remember one specifically was like if when he talks to his mom too much. And I was just like, okay, look,

0:15:52 Thomas: Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Yeah. OK, well, maybe that one is kind of reasonable.

0:16:07 Tom: Well, I think there can be, we can talk about that. I think there could be some mama's boy stuff that is problematic.

0:16:09 Thomas: Tom and I are both like, maybe that's actually fine. I don't know.

0:16:13 Eli: I had your mom's, I also would think that was an ick. I don't want to talk to either. Well, I do want to talked to Tom's mom, but it's more of a it's a heckle than a conversation, yeah.

0:16:21 Thomas: Yeah I want you to try to talk to my mom for more than four minutes and see how it goes. That's what I would love that

0:16:29 Eli: No I think I think by the end of it we would just be disagreeing on the definition of pair, and then yeah.

0:16:30 Thomas: Okay

0:16:36 Tom: One thing that occurs to me listening to that too, that I think is really important is that if men don't have a language, a physical language to create in and of themselves with their partners to have intimacy that is non-sexual, and I, and I think from you, you read about what women complain about, a very common complaint is, "he only touches me when he wants sex." You read that all the time. That is a very uncommon complaint, right? Yeah, well, but if what Trevor Noah is saying is true, and I think that it is, that may be because he doesn't have, and we have not created socially, a physical language to express a need for intimacy that is non-sexualized, and I'm not giving everybody an out, but I'm saying that like there are reasons why that exists that are not always just that dude sucks.

Sometimes it's that, that dude sucked, like, I'll say that, like, that dude sucks, but like I think that socially we have not done a good job of creating spaces and physical languages where we allow people an ability to say, "I just want to be held." I don't think that that's something we're good at teaching men socially. You, I think we're good at teaching men, you should ask for sex. We're real good at that. We teach that constantly. But I can't think of a single socially broadened example where we teach men how to ask for physical intimacy with a language that's vulnerable. Miserable.

0:17:00 Thomas: Yeah well that's a problem yeah I

0:18:02 Eli: If anything, which, and this is interesting because it's positive thing, but like one of the things that we have been teaching men recently is like when not to ask for sex, as opposed to getting your needs met, which I think is really interesting. Like, I, the conversation has switched from, you know, take what you want, which is obviously horrendous for a variety of ways to don't ask for that thing you want. We know you just want this thing, but you're not allowed to ask für that. You're not allowed to push for that, you're not allowed to do this.

And so instead of the conversation being about what men do want and what men should ask for, it becomes about what men shouldn't ask for, and therefore all asking becomes its own form of digression. I think that's partially why the crowd laughs at the discomfort, right, is that like all desire for male, um, right, become taboo, because society has shifted, shifted from it being something that is the law of the land to something that is dangerous or unwanted, and that good men are the ones who keep their desire in check. Right. And so asking idea, right. And this is going to get a little like meta philosophical, but forgive me. The idea of male asking is something that we societally now recognize is dangerous and scary. Right.

Think there are good reasons why we tell young men, like, hey, just so, you know, when you were asking for or wanting something, you may be changing another person's feeling of safety. Right, and I think that's an important conversation to have, but I think the reason why when that ask is for intimacy is for silly, is it's sort of like a cartoon where a guy walks up and he's like, why, I, yeah, you ought to give you a dozen roses, right? Because it's about the expectation, which is a different power dynamic, versus the ask, which is the expectation. Which is a power dynamic that men don't usually ask for.

0:18:22 Tom: Jesus. Right. Yeah.

0:18:47 Thomas: Yeah

0:19:55 Tom: I, you know, so this analogy won't work, but here's, here's a weird thing that I think is, is true. And I've seen it. I'm sure you guys have seen the same thing. Have you guys ever had a professional massage?

0:20:04 Eli: Yes.

0:20:05 Thomas: I get sports massage all the time, and it's pure agony the entire time. If you're going to talk about the ones that are like for pleasure, I don't know what those are. I've never I actually haven't gotten those.

0:20:06 Tom: Okay.

0:20:13 Eli: Okay.

0:20:13 Tom: No, So, no, so here is, here is a true thing that I've discovered, and I think is fairly typical. Men very often, when they are going to ask for a massage, they overwhelmingly, in a professional environment, ask for massage from a woman. We don't know how to fully separate the idea of being touched from sexuality. Touched by a man, I don't give a shit personally, right? But I've always thought, and tell you, one of the first times this came up is that I went to a work thing, and there was a spa day as a of part the work thing. And there were a couple of guys that were like kind of annoyed or upset or uncomfortable because the only masseuses available were men. And they didn't want to have a massage by a man. And what's embedded in there is not only a homophobia, right? So that's very obvious and upfront. But what's also hidden in there is the idea that we don't know how to be touched in a way that our brains can conceive of as non-sexual,

0:20:58 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah men sexualize way too much, yeah, absolutely, for sure, yeah from

0:21:15 Eli: Yeah.

0:21:15 Tom: And so if we're sexualizing all touch, how then do we ask for intimacy that is physical, that is divorced from sexuality?

0:21:25 Thomas: Okay, from other people or from our partners is the part I'm kind of stuck on. Like, hmm yeah

0:21:29 Tom: Our partners even, do we asked for that if we've socially said the only way, because like women are reporting, right? Women report the only time he touches me is when he wants sex, right. And men are saying like, "Hey, I don't know how to be touched without, without it at least having a sexual element to it." And I think there's a connection there where have not socially taught men how to be touched by other people in ways that is not taught to them to be sexualized, right?

0:21:46 Eli: Right.

0:21:59 Tom: Does sense to you? I feel that personally.

0:21:39 Thomas: Yeah oh I, I just genuinely can't get into the mindset of the, so like, think for everything you're saying is valid, I'm not, I'm just, I'm trying, I can't getting into the mindset, I'm trying to figure out why, but like, take, take the partners, the women who say, "oh, he only touches me when he wants sex," essentially, take, I've definitely heard of that, that's a common thing, I don't know, I wonder, what do you think is going on with the dudes? Because you think that it's that they, they want other intimacy and don't know how to ask, or I think that it's possible, and cases, and could just be because of the way our society has, you just fucked us a lot of the ways, but I think that the men in those relationships, they know their partners want non -sexual touch, and they just don't care enough to do that, and they don't actually want it themselves.

0:22:44 Tom: Yeah, I think that that's part of it. But what I'm saying is that I don't think, think that all, and I think what, what here is that not all the time that we're asking for sex is, is sex, really, like subconsciously we're asked for intimacy, and we don't know how to ask for intimacy that's non-sexual. Well, yeah, okay right right, but I think I think for you yeah, so, so for you, Thomas, I think that's because you do have a physical language where you know how to ask for intimacy that's not sexual. But if you can understand that most men don't seem to know how to do that, right?

0:22:45 Thomas: Oh okay, so every time I'm asking for sex, I'm asking for sex, that's why I'm confused 100 of the time but

0:23:22 Eli: Right. Men can't separate them. The only way they get intimacy is sex.

0:23:27 Thomas: What I don't know is, do, do you think that that, that's what it is? Or do you think that they've been, it's like a step before that, they've already, their expectations and their desires have been shaped by society to where they genuinely don't want like a non-sexual touch from their partners. I actually don't know which it is, you know?

0:23:42 Eli: Would posit, and Tom, I'm interested in your thoughts on this. I would posit that for a lot of the men who are blocked in these ways, they are unaware of intimacy that's non-sexual, right? Like, it's just a foreign concept to them.

0:23:52 Thomas: Hmm. Okay.

0:23:52 Tom: Yeah. Well, where would they see it? Where is it reflected back to us socially? It's not in our movies. It's in our books. It is not in television programming. It is oftentimes not in households. Where would this come from? And again, take yourself as, I have to do this all the time. I recognize that I live in this leftist sort of bubble that's not real.

0:24:00 Thomas: Huh?

0:24:01 Eli: Yeah. I

0:24:15 Thomas: No, it is not leftist. I don't know where this came from because I've always just been a snuggly guy my whole life. When And I was staunchly conservative, I've always been a snuggly guy. It has nothing to do with leftism. I I don'T know what. Is that just like a, oh, okay.

0:24:28 Eli: Think it's a family thing. I is family to family because I remember growing up like first time I confronted the fact that like other kids thought it was not cool to be affectionate to your parents. Like I would hug and kiss my parents and tell them I love them.

0:24:33 Thomas: Maybe.

0:24:43 Eli: And dated my dad and I was so, I so clearly remember the first time I like told my dad I loved him as I was leaving. And someone was like, I love you, Danny. And I was like what are you doing, man? That's Like how foreign it was to me is that like I genuinely did not understand what the joke was, right?

0:24:43 Thomas: And you dated your dad. Yeah, I remember.

0:25:01 Thomas: Hashtag parent goals.

0:25:02 Eli: It would be like someone being like, so you just flush the toilet every time you shit? And I was like, yeah, that's how one finishes that interaction.

0:25:06 Tom: To bolster

0:25:06 Thomas: Oh my God. Can you come talk to Arlo, Eli? Can you comes have that conversation with Arlo? Who doesn't do that currently?

0:25:15 Tom: Cuddling boys earlier and we touch them less than we do girls. We're affectionate in physical ways. And then puberty hits and adolescence hits, and then the focus and shift of how we are touched changes. And so then where would we get this learning to learn how to ask for these important kinds of touch if we aren't teaching them socially and familially? And I think not everybody is guilty of that to the same extent, but I think that often many of us are are guilty of that like socially and like I said, it's it's not part of our sort of zeitgeist, no

0:25:40 Eli: I yeah.

0:25:51 Eli: Right. Example One of this is like, I know if you've seen the, it's called gay old photos. And think it's an Instagram, but it's pretty funny. And it's like, it's photos of people who are very obviously couples, right? People being like, great pals, best friends, kissing on the neck.

0:25:58 Thomas: I haven't seen it, but I already love it.

0:26:10 Tom: Right.

0:26:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. But but seen that. But also, I actually am not sure some of that, though, is that men were able to be more affectionate back in the day. And so some amount of it might actually be that they were good pals. Right. It's interesting.

0:26:12 Eli: Right.

0:26:23 Eli: That's exactly what I was going to point out, is that what happens a lot of the time is people will point out. But men used to be physically more intimate. Not these photos. People are kissing each other's necks. It's not.

0:26:24 Thomas: Oh, sorry. Sorry. Oh, okay. I got you. Yeah.

0:26:33 Eli: I promise you look at all.

0:26:34 Thomas: Both those things are absolutely true. Like there's, yeah, totally. Both dynamics.

0:26:37 Eli: Yeah, all these photos are of homosexuals engaging in homosexuality. But that objection is really interesting because it's a homophobia in itself. Not always, right? Obviously, because It is true. But like the fact that when this gets brought up, one of the examples that I saw recently that I fucking loved was it was a medieval sketch of two women naked together in bed, and the caption was like, "No one knows why there were two women naked together in bed in this caption, perhaps they were friends," and and took a picture of it and was like, "Wow, we really had a lot to go."

Like So there's also that very interesting, like, reinforcement that comes of, like, look, that was for the before times, right? We gave men hugs when we saw them in the before times. But now, in modernity, we've invented isolation. And and that's Another point that I wanted to talk about is, I think we have isolated ourselves, like, this is worth its own episode. Which, right? Is the bad the lessons men learned from Me Too. Right. And as people who live through Me Too, it's really interesting because our generation, and no other generation will have had this, has straddled the Me Too movement, right. Grew up in a pre me Too time where talk was talked about and relationships were talked about in one way.

And now we're in in the post me Too times where we see those things being talked about in different ways. And we sort of had to navigate that. And I think it was pretty easy for us, as liberal dudes, as Tom has said, to navigate those things. A lot of us were already living with that. Although maybe not understanding the extent of the experience of the women in our lives had gone through these kinds of things, but, like, we were pretty much on that page.

But I also think that, like, one of the bad takeaways that straight men took and I'm not kidding about this, I think one of the bad takeaways that straight men took from Me Too is that you cannot touch anybody. We have become a non -touching society. I think that contributes to this lack of physical intimacy, this lackof physical intimacy amongst each other, right? Right. You know, one of the things that I remember being so transformational, and, Thomas, you were a drama kid in high school.

0:26:41 Thomas: Okay. Uh,

0:27:26 Tom: Yes. Yeah. Right.

0:28:48 Thomas: Yeah. A little bit. Yeah,

0:28:49 Eli: Yeah. So, like, one of the things that signified the drama kids that, like, set us aside from the rest of the school is that we were physically intimate with each other. Now, to be clear, we were theater nerds. We were not having sex with each another. We were practicing Les Mis, the musical. We, which I think we can all agree is the opposite of sex. But, like, because we would often lay in the hallway outside of the drama room, like each other, it was assumed that we were engaging in some, like large scale group orgies.

0:28:49 Thomas: Yeah Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:20 Eli: And I remember, like being a differentiated behavior between the drama kids and, you know, cool the kids or these kids or that kids. Think it all just sort of feeds into that narrative.

0:29:29 Tom: Uh,

0:29:26 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah, it's like when you see. Oh, God, I love it. You watch some like what's the snapping one and the Sharks and the Jets again? Yeah.

0:29:39 Eli: Childhood.

0:29:41 Thomas: You watched something like West Side Story and you see these

0:29:40 Tom: West Side Story it's the sharks and the turtles in that one

0:29:45 Eli: And the turtles. Yeah. Oh,

0:29:45 Tom: Right yeah uh,

0:29:45 Thomas: Actors, most of like these classically trained, you know, ballet dancer actors pretending to be like a scary gang, you know, and they're like they're, like, snuggling each other. They're, it's more than just that movie. You'll get like the boy there. They're really snuggly for a scary gang of scary men. Uh, real snuggley and you're Like, okay, okay. Maybe it was a different time. I don't know. Um, I had that same experience. He like, it was, it to be, cause I was in both groups and fit in with nobody really. I had the the worst experience, but, also good in some ways I was in sports and in drama and it was nice to be able to like, I think some of the relaxed stuff around male contact was nice.

Cause it was like, you know, you could just kind of get a little, get a little snuggle gone and it wasn't going to be like a huge thing. I, I, uh, I had that experience too, but I also think there's... there's an interesting thing going on here that I'm like, it's hard.

I don't know how exactly to talk about it, but I think it's even, even more than just talking about male sex drive or all that stuff, even just within your relationship, when you have a mismatch of sex drive, and that's going to be the case, probably a majority of the time, like the odds that two people are going to be exactly the same amount of sex drive, I think is pretty low, you know, and having a mismatch in sex drive, it does create a really often challenging dynamic where you're made to feel guilty for wanting more sex than your partner wants, and and then you can get in your head of like, oh shit, am I, am, am I a pig, am I being like, whatever, and then it's also, don't want to be the fucking men that his wives say they only touch them when they want sex, like you don't want that.

So it's a weird thing to try to like, okay, how do I judge based on you and not just like my temperament and my partner's temperament, how do I judge like what's the okay amount of that or what's, you know, and so I think it can be challenging just to find ways to not feel like you're, were pushing too hard, all that stuff, you know?

0:29:47 Tom: -huh. Yeah.

0:29:53 Eli: Yeah it's the best also

0:29:54 Tom: Oh, it's amazing

0:30:01 Eli: Of Grease. Yeah, if you watch Grease, there's a lot of touching a lot and look, Look, not to play the hits, because I'm gonna bring it back to monogamy being the problem, but if the only time you were allowed to eat was when your partner was hungry, it would be an issue, right? Certainly in my fucking household, I'm eating 19, 19 snacks a day. If I had to stand there and wait for Anna to finish practicing the violin, I would be mad. Be mad. She'd be like, oh my God, you're looking at me like you want a snack again. And I'd be, just a real quick snack if you could, just go, just want a little ice cream. And so I think that's part of what, the what's it, Tom, put this in good words that don't say monogamy is slavery. I think it's that's why it's important to let your partner have a snack if they want to have a snake, right?

0:32:23 Thomas: No, that's a hundred percent valid.

0:32:29 Tom: Well, To offer another, another question, a similar vein, though, but like, you is an inability to or discomfort to ask for intimacy that's non-sexual, or if you feel like asking for that wouldn't be well received. Right. Then if sex is off the table for some reason, what holds you together as a couple intimately that, because like there may be times in our lives where, you to injury or illness or age or whatever, sex is of the table and is No longer an option for a couple. And if that happens, if you don't have other ways to ask for and receive intimacy, then you create an intimate space?

And I think that's a huge part of the epidemic of men that leave their wives and their wives get sick. We talked about this on another episode that like when wives get like cancer and big sick nurses and other people will say hey you know just so you know there's like a non-zero number of dudes that peace the fuck out and I think that part of the reason that that happens is because many men have no language, no physical language to know how to connect in ways that are satisfying and intimate that are non-sexual. I

0:32:56 Eli: Yeah. Right.

0:33:00 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, oh

0:33:46 Eli: They Don't know How To love And Feel. Yeah.

0:33:46 Thomas: Think men are also just fundamentally selfish to a degree that's way higher than women, personally, because of this exact Same dynamic you're talking about. What

0:33:51 Tom: Don't think That I, I don't believe in that at all. I think that's insane.

0:33:55 Eli: I Think That Society I

0:33:56 Thomas: So Hold on, Tom. Hold On Time You

0:33:57 Tom: I don'T think that men are more selfish than women. I THINK that's, that's

0:34:00 Thomas: So, so is that you saying that there's an excuse for them leaving when their wives get cancer? Like, the selfishness would be them leaving, like, it doesn't matter if they're unhappy for whatever reason, it's selfish to Go

0:34:11 Tom: I, I'm, I'm responding to your, like, I DON'T think men are inherently more selfish than women, I DON't think that that's a true thing at all, I think there's no truth to that, is what I want to say, like I, yeah, oh

0:34:19 Thomas: I Don't Think Biologically I think in our society male desires and wants are prioritized in a way that women's aren't, and so Men Are able That's What I Mean, like Men are Good

0:34:26 Tom: Sure, yeah socially I would agree with that, yeah yeah

0:34:29 Eli: That's What I was gonna say is I think, I think societally the things that men are allowed to do and continue to function within society are significantly worth, right? Like, you know, how many famous, Yeah, men do we know of who like abandoned their families versus any time a woman makes any choice that isn't directly about about her kids. It's a lifetime movie, right.

0:34:40 Thomas: Right Yeah

0:34:40 Tom: Yeah, I would agree that I think that I think that's a social.

0:34:52 Thomas: That's That's what I meant, I Worded It badly. Yeah, no, that's Where I mean all

0:34:54 Eli: Yeah.

0:34:53 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, That's okay, yeah, yeah, think that's huge factor in what makes that happen. I think men are, they don't have a physical language to make this ask. I think the women have very infrequently had this ask

0:35:07 Thomas: Are Dudes not snuggling with their wives. What's Going on.

0:35:07 Tom: No, Dude, Read, read women's complaints. Dudes are

0:35:10 Thomas: What Dudes Hey, hey, let me talk to dudes.

0:35:11 Tom: Not snuggly, dude, like Well,

0:35:15 Thomas: Dudes, listen. Dudes, Get A little Spoon going

0:35:15 Eli: Hey dudes, dudes, Hey, non dudes, Turn The podcast off, get Out of Here You Know, no, You Can Never Listen, Again, it's

0:35:18 Thomas: Yeah, Now You Can Listen, it's fine, get A little Spoonful going. What do You, what, what are We, are we not snuggly dudes? Yeah, we're now the Jordan Peterson YouTube channel. It's only men, no other. No, I don't want that.

0:35:32 Eli: Only been, oh God, does This podcast Smell worse all of a sudden? I feel like the podcast smells worse for some reason. All

0:35:34 Tom: I

0:35:39 Thomas: Yeah, come on, get on it, men. Why are you not snuggley? I don'T understand that. It's always come been to so know naturally to me. And I actually don't know why, because as much as you, you speculate, it could be family based. I don't think my siblings are the same way as me. I don't, it might just be a weird dispositional thing that is random. I don't know. I've always been snuggly.

0:35:57 Tom: Your mom a cuddler?

0:35:58 Thomas: My mom was, yes. That's what I'm saying. My siblings are not, though. It's not like that affected us all the same.

0:35:59 Tom: Yeah, so I think you're, the an individual's need for personal touch is super, like, it varies person by person. By my brother doesn't seem to need or want physical touch. I never see him being physical with his wife. Never seen, he's just not a snuggly kind of person.

0:36:18 Thomas: Well, okay, there you go. But that was the problem I was having. I don't know if that's what dudes are doing. Because, like, if, say that's your brother or anybody, and they just don't really need or feel like they want that kind of touch, then it would probably be true for them that whenever they initiate touch with their partners, it would be for sex. Like if they're assuming they like sex. So like, that's an interesting, I don't know which thing is going on there. You know what I mean?

0:36:38 Tom: Yeah. But part of me wonders if like, you know, part of that is, why is would I see that? Right. So that's, that, that touching may not be visible to me, but it may be happening plenty behind closed doors. Right. Cause I have no, I have literally no idea. So I want to, I actually kind of take that back. Cause you can't, it's one of those, like you have no idea what's going on in someone's home tour of things. So yeah.

0:36:43 Thomas: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hey, hey men.

0:36:58 Eli: There. Yeah, get snuggled.

0:36:59 Thomas: Get snuggling. Yeah, it's nice.

0:36:59 Eli: Conclusion. Get snuggling, all right. Anyways. Gentlemen, before we go, I asked my new girl to meet me at the gym, but she never showed up, so I guess we're not gonna work out.

0:37:21 Tom: I like that one, that was good, I

0:37:24 Eli: You guys ready for Disney World? So

0:37:28 Thomas: Yes.

0:37:28 Tom: Am ready to hear you talk about Disney World.

0:37:29 Thomas: Oh

0:37:29 Eli: For Those of you who follow my wife on social media, uh, took Max to his first, way we did the Orlando live show this past week, and we took Max to Disney World and Sea World for the, the first time, and it was so wonderful. Let me say this, let me say this. Disney World fucking rules. The price doesn't rule, it sucks. The price is the worst, the price is three times worse than you think it's going to be. You're like, here we go, it's so much money to go to the world of Disney that it's embarrassing to tell other people. There used to be like, like a, well, we're taking the kids to Disney this year. I would never tell someone that I did not know extremely well that I went to Disney World, right? Because my first thought, if anyone

0:37:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:53 Thomas: Florida doesn't rule, but.

0:37:55 Tom: Is it really? Really?

0:38:18 Thomas: You hear that patrons you're, uh, yeah, that's what you get, yeah.

0:38:21 Eli: Me they went to Disney World, I'd be like, oh, so you're fucking rich, huh? That's the only thing I can possibly think about is that if someone says they managed to make it through those mouse gates, they have blood diamonds. That is the only things that I can think, or they've bankrupted their family, right? Like, if, they if if the person saying it is not now inside a barrel which they wear full time, I have no way of knowing.

I, I believe that they must be a multi-millionaire. But we managed it, we managed that, we made it to Disney, and it was awesome. Everything about it was awesom. Max had such a wonderful time, he went all the rides. Lucinda came with us and our friend Kelly came with us, and they, you did a great job of keeping him busy. By the way, it's also amazing for kids with special needs like Max because they have like all these quiet areas and yeah We didn't utilize this service, but if you can't afford to do like Lightning Lane or Genie Pass or fuck your dad or whatever the fuck they're talking about, you, they have a, my kid is special hotline you can called, and they will give you a time and they'll walk your kid in the back so you don't have to wait on lines and stuff.

0:39:12 Thomas: They're trained up on it, it's great now, yeah. Nice. Oh.

0:39:31 Eli: Yeah, Max was fine waiting on the lines that he did wait on, and he was happy to do what it is that he needed to do. He didn't need those services, but they are very upfront about all that, and it's just, yeah, get

0:39:40 Thomas: It's so nice because back in the back in our time, the solution was literally, this is not a fucking joke, the solution of, oh, hey, that mascot or something is making a kid a little scared, fucking rub his face in the mascot as hard as possible get him hug him hard, get it like, it's, it's so, it's sad, really. And it's so nice that now, like, even in the hellhole that is Florida, apparently they, they're at least like before DeSantos, you outlaws it. I'm sure he'll outlaw the ability to like.

0:39:53 Eli: Him! Get him in there! Just rub him on there!

0:40:03 Eli: Yeah. Sure, yeah. Next year, he'll be like, the rub the mascot law will be put into place.

0:40:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh -huh. That's

0:40:11 Tom: A whole bunch of weirdos lining up to be mascots now, like the kids are gonna rub me

0:40:12 Thomas: Nice.

0:40:16 Eli: So, since my acquaintance with the full Smith family, Obviously, I've always known Thomas, but since I've become more intimate with the Smith family, that sounds like I fuck your kids. I'm sorry. I don't fuck his kids. Since I started to know about Arlo's allergy journey, I sort of have become much more aware about the steps that are taken to, like, make those people safe. And Disney is taking some of those, and I thought it was really cool. Like, they have a bunch of peanut-free areas in the food thing. I have been, I so, I I'm, I'm not gonna go down this rabbit hole, but I had this thought like three months ago, and I think about it all the time, which is I actually don't know why peanuts are publicly available. Like, I understand why your restaurant would be able to order them, or like someone would be able to special order them, but I don't understand why peanuts are available in public places at this point.

Like, if there was a poison for just rick, I don't think they would sell it with the sandwiches at the airport. It just seems weird to me. Neither here nor there, it was awesome. All these amazing things, but here's the story I want to tell you guys, I want to leave you with this amazing thing. So Max speaks very, very, very little, right?

So one of the things that happens quite a bit is that we will be talking, we'll ask Max how something was, did you like that, are you doing this, what do you think about that, oh isn't that cool, and he just fucking doesn't talk to us, and that's fine, that's fun, but a way we keep ourselves amused when that happens is we will often turn to each other and go, "He'll never tell," right? And so we are driving out of Disney, right, and I say

0:40:45 Tom: That's awesome

0:41:46 Eli: Max, what was your favorite part of Disney? And he goes, "He'll never tell." It was the perfect close to created

0:41:52 Thomas: That's so good oh that's awesome you accidentally it's you you made it happen though you accidentally manifested. Now he won't tell you because you joked that he wouldn't tell you. Oh, it's a tragedy.

0:41:59 Tom: That's amazing I love that how

0:42:07 Thomas: Oh.

0:42:00 Eli: A meme, yeah we created, yeah, yeah it's Greek tragedy, but yeah, it was so wonderful, and thanks to all the friends and everyone who came out to the Orlando show, uh got in Wednesday, so we were there Thursday, Friday, Saturday was the show, and then we left on Sunday, yeah

0:42:11 Thomas: That's awesome.

0:42:13 Tom: Long were you guys there, that's

0:42:21 Thomas: Tell you one of the hardest things about you know, this awful, awful, ongoing by the way that I'm in is we just don't have the ability to like, hey, let's go to, let'S go on a trip. We just can't. We can't fucking do it. No time, can't afford it, no time, can't afford it for everything, and it's like, we have been, the day, you know, that's, that's the stupid campaign they did, right, it was, I'm going Disneyland, like, for all the ad campaign or whatever, like they would have the the players say at the Super Bowl, like, route, and then I think they would pay them money promotionally, like, but that's real though now, because like I, there is nothing more fun than taking your little kid who loses their mind, you know, because they love the stuff so much, to Disneyland, and I just, like, the day that I can finally fucking take the family on a trip ever again, I don't know when that's going to fucking be, but like, I cannot wait, I'm going to be literally the Superbowl player. That's

0:42:27 Eli: About Arlo oh yeah you can't do anything yeah you can't do, yeah just Thomas

0:43:12 Thomas: Like, yeah.

0:43:12 Eli: Is crying in all the pictures, so, uh, I see your dad, dad sobbing, he was happy, he was just, he would really, he was excited to be there

0:43:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Let's be real. There's a lot of those times. So

0:43:22 Eli: Why is your mom rubbing a mascot on him, he needed to toughen up, it was a whole thing, as I figured, that no no, we stayed at a place nearby, we don't have that many patrons Tom, I a one park one, I'm at, I'm at a one part, one day level of income, Tom, I don't know if you've noticed

0:43:29 Tom: Did stay at Disney the whole time? No I don't, I've never, I haven't been since I was, so I have no idea okay it's

0:43:34 Thomas: Talk about expensive, yeah yeah it really and it's funny how it used to be like normal amounts of money, it used to be you know, fucking 50 bucks for a ticket, you know, like now it's jesus

0:43:45 Tom: That bad it's that bad jesus

0:43:45 Eli: Yep yeah no, it used to be, be a thing that families could afford to do once a year, right, goal of that park, and it's interesting because they're in conversation about it, but like the goal of that park was you can take your family to Disney once a year as one of your vacations, and hyper capitalism has just transformed it now to exactly

0:43:54 Thomas: Christ well they can't keep up with the pricing to make up for the fact that wages are nothing across the whole economy so it might not even be Disney's fault, it might be like, like, yeah, no, like we can only go down so much in price for the, you know, awful fucking salaries that apparently, you know, we're OK with in this country.

0:44:17 Eli: Yeah yeah all right

0:44:33 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.

0:45:12 Eli: You, Thomas. Don't you ever speak about John Stewart like that in my presence again. You son of a bitch.

0:45:14 Tom: Podcast