Robert Glover’s Books on Amazon:

1. No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Proven Plan for Getting What You Want in Love, Sex, and Life
2. Dating Essentials for Men: The Only Dating Guide You’ll Ever Need
3. Dating Essentials for Men FAQ: Answers to the Most Common Questions About Dating, Relationships, and Sexual Intimacy for the Modern Man
4. The Big Stick: The Uplifting Tale of a Small-Town Guy Who Used His Passion, Persistence, and Grit to Become a Big-Time Dating Coach

Other Links:

1. Robert Glover’s website: https://drglover.com/
2. Robert Glover’s men’s program: https://integrationnation.net/

Interview Transcript

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 1:24
Good morning,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 1:26
good afternoon,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 1:27
good afternoon.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 1:31
What time is it? Where you’re at?

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 1:32
It’s morning. It’s seven o’clock in the

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 1:35
morning. Seven o’clock is three in the afternoon. My time? Okay, where about tell you I’m in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, wow. Okay, and you, you’re, you’re Australia, correct?

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 1:48
Yeah, that’s right, yep.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 1:50
Okay, I’m just shutting down a few window tabs or two browser few browser tabs.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 1:58
Yeah, you’re fine. I’m going to try and get my audio to work properly.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 2:01
That’s always a good thing. Can

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 2:17
you hear me? Okay,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 2:18
I hear you. Fine, yeah,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 2:20
okay, it’s not working. I was just over your way. I was in Miami,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 2:29
in Miami, yeah, how long? How long ago was that? No, I just got back. Oh, just got back. All right, yeah,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 2:39
you guys go, yeah,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 2:41
yeah, that’s a lot closer to me than Australia is,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 2:44
yeah, yeah. We went to Miami and then New Orleans, Louisiana.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 2:50
Yeah? New Orleans an interesting place.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 2:53
No, I loved it, yeah, absolutely awesome.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 2:57
I was there during COVID So and after, I think, not too long after a hurricane and kind of hit in that area, not right, New Orleans, but nearby, and they’re, like, housing a lot of homeless people from other cities there in New Orleans and ignored it. New Orleans doesn’t already have kind of enough of a riff raff feel like, you know, there’s just people milling about in the streets all the time. Anyway, it really did. And I tell you what, every everywhere we went, everywhere, even in the condo we stayed in, everywhere, smell of marijuana smoke, just constant smell of pot. Yeah. So anyway,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 3:39
can you see me? Okay, it’s the visual I can but just try the camera. Yeah,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 3:43
you’re right back. Let me wipe my camera off too, because, actually, this is kind of a little bit of a celebration for me. I’m getting to use my office for the first time in over two weeks, you know. And I’ve got, of course, all my gear here I got, you know, the good microphone, the preamp, the lights, dual monitors, head. But I have an older home, and we’d remodel the bathroom right behind this wall that you can’t see, but it’s right in front of me, concrete wall, everything. All the houses here are built out of concrete and brick. Yeah, and we’d remodeled the bathroom. We already knew that at some point we’re gonna have an issue that there’s a sewer pipe that goes from the bathroom and one above that goes under the floor of my office, and another plumber said, Well, we may have to go out and around the house, blah, blah, blah, but that was several years ago. Well, the problem is the sewer pipe is made out of concrete, and it’s been dissolving for the last 40 or 50 years, and roots from palm trees get in it. So we’d remodeled the entire bathroom now, and now everything was backing up. So our home Carpenter, construction guy dug a ditch basically through my office. It’s tile floor you can see about this wide, about half a meter wide, about three feet deep. Get down to that, that sewer pipe, and replace it with plastic PVC pipe, and then get it filled back in. And he just got it filled in, like earlier Monday. And then my our house cleaner got my office cleaned up yesterday. I had a giant pile of dirt in here. Everything was dusty. So today’s my first day to actually get to sit at my he’s

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 5:27
done, well, I can’t, I can’t let us any, uh, carnage in the office there.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 5:30
Well, if, uh, let me see

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 5:35
it looks like

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 5:37
there. You can see some concrete patches covering a lot up. So there’s actually, you know, it runs from one wall all the way out the other wall, out the window there, and it like it was about three feet deep, you know, half a meter wide, pile of dirt in here. So, yeah, he does good work. He cleaned it up well. So I’m excited that I get to be back here doing myself. You look fine. You got the word background. It’s working. You sound fine. So yeah,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 6:04
I’m looking forward to the interview. I know we’ve delayed it a couple of times, probably because of my schedule, but let’s get into it, because I do have a schedule myself. So I got about 30 minutes this morning. What relationship I want to talk about, men and men’s health and and relationships in that regards, is that sort of where you want to go?

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 6:25
Let’s dive into wherever you want to go. Who are we talking to? Who’s our audience? That that’ll kind of give me a clue.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 6:30
Uh, little self help gurus, I would say, like people into self development. Perfect. And this is, this is a, this is a topic that I’m interested in. I’ve just gone through separation myself year and a half ago, and interested in men’s health generally, but I see it as a big problem. So let’s you happy with that.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 6:56
That sounds lovely.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 6:59
And your most recent book? Is it no more? Mr. Nice Guy, is that your most recent?

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 7:02
That’s actually my oldest book. That’s the first book I wrote. Was no more, Mr. Nice Guy. It came out in print early 2003 so 325, years, I’ve written two books on dating, dating essentials for men, and a dating essentials for men. FAQ, and then I co authored a book called The Big stick that’s been about two years. That’s just an overview of everything that I’ve ever taught. You know, everything so, so four, four books with, actually no more. Mr. Nice guy being the oldest.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 7:36
Okay, let’s get into it. I

Peter, that’s recording.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 7:46
Let me stop and start. It should be it looks like it’s recording. Hey,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 7:53
Robert, welcome to the hidden white podcast. Great to have you here today.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 7:57
Leigh, good to be here. Thanks for the invitation. You’re early morning. I’m mid afternoon,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 8:02
mid afternoon. Yeah, the time zones are a killer, aren’t they? Sometimes it makes life interesting. I just traveled over there, and it was interesting because I could, I could look at my watch now, and you can check out my time where I was, and the Australian time where my family was. And, yeah, it was about three hours ahead, but three hours in the in the future on a different day. Yeah, different day. That’s

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 8:24
that’s the clincher, right there. Different day.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 8:26
That’s how I calculated in my brain. But my pleasure to have you here. I’m really looking forward to discussing your work and particularly well relationships, I suppose, and Men’s Health is where I’d like to dive. You’ve got a number of books out, which are all on Amazon, and for those listening, we’ll stick links in the show notes. No more. Mr. Nice guy, a proven plan for getting what you want in life, love, sex and life was, was your first book, and then you’ve had a number of books after that, but you’re a family and relationship psychologist expert, I would say, yeah. Is that correct?

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 9:01
Yeah. My, I got a my doctorate in marriage and family therapy back in 1984 so maybe 40 years ago, actually, no, my maths law, yeah, something like that. 40 years ago, been, been doing marriage and I’m not a math major, but yeah, I’m a marriage and family therapy major. And

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 9:22
so you’ve been doing that for 40 years, right? Probably

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 9:26
spent about 25 years private practice doing marriage and family therapy. And really, since no more Mr. Nice Guy came out almost 25 years ago, pretty much all my work’s been with men. Still. A lot of it around relationship, whether it be around dating men trying to, you know, find the relationships they want. Men in relationship, whether they’re having struggles or relationships just ended. Yeah? So a lot of my work really does focus on relationship and sexuality.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 9:57
Yeah, the Yeah, it’s fascinating arena at the moment, I believe, with relationships in the whole global phenomenon, that’s sort of shifting everything at the moment, and I don’t know it stemmed off the back of COVID, but I think it’s just been building up. And I certainly have felt and noticed and experienced myself and observing a lot of changes that have happened in that particular period of time, and since then, you’ve been doing this for 40 years. I want to ask you the first question is, what got you to write no more? Mr. Nice Guy,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 10:35
I didn’t set out to write a book. I actually what really got it going. I was about two years into my second marriage, two, three years into it, and my then wife said to me, everybody thinks you’re a nice guy, but you’re not. I can’t trust you. You can be passive aggressive. I can’t depend on you. You embarrass me in public, you let me down. You don’t follow through. You need help, and she’s I’m going to leave you if you don’t get help, I go, Oh, wait a minute. I’m the one that’s always trying to make you happy. You’re the one that’s always unhappy. How come I need help? Okay, I’ll go get help. And actually, I went looking for help. She said, You’re a sex addict. You need to go find a sex addict group. Okay, we never have sex. How can I be a sex addict? So luck. I went trying to find answers. Why me being a nice guy didn’t make my wife happy and didn’t make her appreciate me, and didn’t make her want to have sex

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 11:31
with me. You felt you were an Oscar? Yeah,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 11:33
I would have told you that I’m a nice guy. I’m one of the nice guys you meet. I do everything to make her happy. I try to please her. I’m not like my, you know, selfish, narcissistic father. I’m not like all those asshole men women complain about that. They only want one thing. I’m not that guy, and I’m generous, I’m patient, I’m kind, I don’t like to fight. I was conflict avoidant. I thought that made me a good guy and but I wasn’t honest. I wasn’t dependable. I had hidden, covert contracts, hidden agendas I gave to get abs, manipulative. So luckily, I landed in some really good places, some good groups, some good therapy, where I started realizing my whole I’m a nice guy pattern, my whole paradigm for life, if I’m just a good guy, I’ll be liked and loved to get my needs met didn’t serve me well, and you know, it didn’t actually make me a nice guy. And at that time, I was in therapy, myself in men’s groups, myself really learning about my patterns, why they didn’t serve me very well, and I was already, I was in private practice as a marriage and family therapist, and guys were coming to me for therapy. You know, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So all of a sudden, I saw nice guys everywhere. Guys would come to therapy with their wives or girlfriends saying, I’m a nice guy. I treat her better than her ex. I’m raising her kids. I buy her the new car she wants. I gave her everything she wants. She’s never happy. It’s never good enough. When’s it gonna be my turn? How come she never wants to have sex anymore? She’s always angry. I thought, I’m not the only one who like thinks like this, and I’m not the only one with this problem. Now, also, there was other men coming to me, but because I was mainly a relationship oriented guy. It took me a little bit to connect the dots with the dealing with

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 13:25
guys or

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 13:28
couples. Yeah, yeah. Mainly I saw individuals as well. So I get some men who’d say, I’m a nice guy. I have lots of female friends. They all tell me, I’m great, I’m amazing, I’m a good listener. And they all say, oh, some, some woman’s going to be so lucky to have you someday. But the guys go, but they don’t want to be my girlfriend. You know, they think I’m amazing, but they don’t. So I didn’t put it together that, oh, these were all the same thing. It was men thinking, if I’m nice, if I’m kind, if I’m different than other men. If I listen to women talk about their problems, if I’m giving, if I help them solve their problems. They’ll love me. They’ll want to be with me. They’ll be grateful. They’ll be appreciative. And so what I did with these men is I started a normal, Mr. Nice Guy men’s group. We met every other Wednesday, and then I soon added another one. And what I did I was just, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had always written to kind of express myself. I never thought of myself as a writer, but I just started writing chapters nowadays. Would probably call them blog articles. I just gave them chapters of what I was learning about nice guys, what I was learning about me, what I was seeing in the men I worked with. How did we get to be this way? Why didn’t it work? What’s a better way of interacting with the world. And I just kept giving these chapters to the guys whom we’d meet every other Wednesday. And over time, they and often their wives and girlfriends, said, Robert, you need to write a book. You need to go on Oprah. This could be a best seller. You know, a lot of people need this. So it took about six, seven years to write it, about three years, three years of hustling it to finally get a publisher to get it published. It came out in print in 2000 early 2003 and now, 20 plus years later, my royalty checks keep going up every year, so the book keeps selling more and more. I keep going on interviews and talking about it, so

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 15:21
there’s still very relevant information,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 15:23
I think more so even today than it was 25 years ago. I think it’s more relevant. Do

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 15:29
you see a shift in men’s health and their relationships in this world?

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 15:35
Everything seems to be shifting, as you kind of alluded to, as you said, COVID probably really put, put a lot of those things under a pressure cooker, from

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 15:44
your perspective, like in

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 15:46
terms of the shift or COVID or both,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 15:49
it’s just what’s changing your views. Because I guess I’ve got my own perspective of everything, right? So

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 15:54
Well, here’s kind of the bigger things I would see when I started working with nice guys, so like, 30 years ago, a lot of the men I talked to reported one of two patterns with their father. For example, one was either their father was absent, either because divorced or worked all the time, or just not, just not there. The other pattern was Dad was dangerous. He was alcoholic, angry, abusive, didn’t feel safe with that. That’s the most common pattern I’ve heard 25 years ago nowadays, especially with younger men that we might call Millennials or Generation Z. My son is 39 so he’d be millennial. What I hear from a lot of the young men is my dad was a nice guy. And really, all that their dads taught them was, don’t piss off your mother, because that’s what dad was trying to avoid doing as well, is pissing off, you know, their mother, his wife. So what shifted is a lot. There’s a lot more nice guys out there, kind of turning out nice guy sons, another big a couple other big shifts. One would be kind of the, you know, that we’re feminism has taken hold in a couple of different ways. One with, kind of, like the hashtag me too, movement that was really big in America. I don’t know. I don’t think it was quite so big in Europe or some other countries. America was a big deal where and then followed that with the toxic masculinity meme and everything about patriarchy is evil. To where now young men growing up, oh, throw social media in that where young men growing up basically been told everything about being male is bad. And you know if and and so they’ve they’ve repressed more and more of their masculinity. They don’t even know what it means to be male. Dad taught them Don’t piss off your mom. Social media taught them Don’t piss off women. Hashtag me too. Taught them Don’t piss off women. So a lot of guys are just walking around trying to do not do anything to upset a woman, whether it be at school, the workplace relationship, if they have one, which is the other big shift is more and more men don’t have relationships, and more and more men don’t more and more men don’t have jobs and don’t even have much of a future because of just some major shifts culturally in terms of men being less prepared, getting fewer advanced degrees, governmental decrees that corporations have to hire more women, more minorities, things like that, to where more and more men not only don’t have a future, don’t have a job, or if they do have a job, is perhaps meaning menial and they don’t feel they have enough status to get a woman at all, or the kind of woman they want. So statistically, more and more men report not having had sex in the last year, not that. More and more report not being in relationship for, you know, multiple years, the age of first marriage is going up. More and more men aren’t marrying at all, which means more and more women aren’t marrying at all. As the women’s status and income rises, they tend to want men that match their status and income, but they don’t tend to want that until they’re pushing 40 or in their 40s, and now they Oh, it’s time for me to make babies. And now suddenly they go looking for a guy, and all they can find is either the men that have kind of been washed out of the system and kind of given up. Or the men that have a high enough status that they don’t want the 40 year old woman that’s all of a sudden ready to have babies, you know, all the 25 year olds that they want, yeah. So all of this, there’s so many shifts going on, and I’m not trying. I really avoid playing any kind of victim role at all poor men or poor this but what’s happened is a lot less men are in relationship. A lot more men are depressed. A lot more men are committing suicide, lot more men are living alone with no hope of ever having a relationship. More and more men just turn to pornography sex workers to try to get some sort of sexual access. Is it’s, it’s sad. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 20:06
yeah. I was just about to say that same word, yeah. And I see that locally here in Australia. You know, men with, without relationships, without sex, avoiding women, because we sort of, and I’m in this group, right? So we sort of don’t know what to do, how to approach a woman, because, you know, we feel like we might be approaching them and considered a pervert, or, you know, whatever it might be. And women, on the same hand, I don’t know, they’ve gone through a big shift as well, and their approach to men has seemed to shifted, but particularly men and their purpose in life because of this, relationship dynamics have changing, I see, and that’s why, you know, men’s suicide rates are quite high, and that’s that’s a big issue, and I think it comes down to dealing with Men’s Health and this particular topic,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 21:02
and that’s, you know, I’ve been working with men, you know, for many years, and for the last 20 plus years. That’s That’s been my entire gig is just working with men, whether it be through men’s membership program that I launched a year or so ago, workshops and retreats for men, writing for men, classes for men. Number one, I just love working with men. And I it just, I just love seeing it. When the light bulb goes off in a guy’s head, he gets it. He understands why something hasn’t been working. He’s ready to put it into action, ready to put it into place. He sees results from from, you know, changing either his paradigms, his his roadmap, or his behaviors and and I just love that dynamic of working with men. And I don’t know that I saw this, this kind of state that we’re in now coming, that men were going to be so isolated, so lonely, so resentful, so frustrated, so angry, so helpless. It makes sense that, you know, I don’t know that I saw like hashtag me too, or the whole social media thing where men, you know, can have the illusion of having connection, but really they’re in isolation, or if they do something in relationship that either a casual person they’re with, or a partner, all of a sudden, now it’s gonna, you know, blow them up on social media. And I have friends, you have friends. They break up with their girlfriends, and their girlfriends just blow it up on social media and just, you know, you know, air all the dirty laundry out there to the world. So I think, you know, there’s good reason for men to be cautious. I One guy interviewing me, a young guy who mainly works like with very young men. And this guy’s, you know, kind of, he grew up with the Internet. He’s probably 20 years old, doing the interview with me. And he said, What suggestion would you give to a guy who’s 18, you know, likes a girl, wants to, you know, pursue something with her, you know, has the impulse to like, you know, ask her out, take her hand, try to kiss her, you know, put his arm around her. The things that that a guy has to do to actually get her, you know, a relationship moving forward and and to know that anything he does, the woman might just blow that up on social media. Might say, you know, he violated me, He abused me, he raped me, or he was clumsy and he’s got a small dick, you know, what would you tell men? I go Fuck if I know, I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but that’s the real world, especially younger men who live and breathe, you know, on social media, are dealing with it everything they do, even if it’s well meaning or clumsy, you know, it’s going to get put in the spotlight for the world to see. And there’s no recourse of even like defending yourself or saying that’s not what happened, or that’s not what I meant, or and so was my suggestion to men. In that case, either get off social media and don’t give a fuck about what anybody thinks, which I’m not on social media, so I don’t give a fuck. Or, you know, hide out and keep looking at a lot of pornography. That seems to be about the only other alternative, which, which, of course, isn’t, you know, a very actually, it probably is a pretty intriguing option for a lot of men nowadays. But you know, the thing is, we’re at our best when we have relationship. I’m not saying we have to be in a long term monogamous relationship, but when we’re connected as human beings, connected to other men, connected to women, have sexual access. We feel the best. We’re the most productive. We’re the most optimistic. It brings out the best in us. So when those when those options don’t seem open to a man, it brings out the worst in him. And you can see that. You can see it on the internet. You can see it in men’s behavior. You know, in general, you can see it in, you know, you know, white supremacy. You can see it in, you know, nationalism. You can see it, you know, in hate crimes. You can see in all kinds of ways when men don’t feel connected and don’t feel like they have opportunity and social sexual access,

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 25:23
the evolutionary dynamics have, really, you know, impacted this, this whole men’s health issue. Because you’re right. I think we, you know, we needed to have that, that female relationship, in place, to be our best selves. And I don’t know the evolutionary history of it all, but from what I can see is that without a spouse or relationship with a partner, female partner, and that sexual partner as well. Again, I don’t mean to put it out there that men need sex every single day, but requirement, yeah,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 26:02
we need some some sense of predictability, of sexual access that’s just built into us. All animals are that way. Every animal you know, repeats itself, you know, creates after his own kind. And you know, I joke with with my religious friends, because I two degrees in religion. I was a minister for about eight years. I’ll ask them. I said, What was the first come? What was the first commandment God gave to Adam and Eve? And most people think, well, it was like, don’t eat of the fruit of good and evil. I go, actually, it was, go, fuck a lot. And people look at me like, What are you talking about? The first commandment that God in the Bible gave to Adam and Eve was, Be fruitful and multiply, go have sex. Is what he said. Is wired into us. Whether we see that from an evolutionary point of view, religious point of view, we’re wired to have sex. And when human beings don’t have a predictable channel and access, accessibility to sex, that’s still going to go somewhere that’s still such a strong drive, so it’s going to get manifest, usually in hidden, secretive, shameful, guilt inducing ways, rather than in loving, celebratory kind of games. Yeah, and again, I don’t like to play victim or blame anybody, and I don’t really blame anybody. It really is some cultural dynamics. But for me, I actually am optimistic. I think we’ve seen some pendulum swings, like, for example, you know, for the last 10,000 years, under what’s commonly called the patriarchy, where, you know is, you know, we’re at monogamous marriage, and where men were kind of had in this ownership mentality of things, and their their wife and their the wife’s vagina and their kids. You know, we’ve swung from this kind of patriarchal model way over to the other extreme, that everything about patriarchy is bad, everything about men is bad, and and, you know, the whole toxic masculinity has me too, all of that. And, you know, people, I think, thing, well, we’ll swing back and find some middle ground. But I’ve always said I don’t know where the tipping point is between two toxic extremes, so I don’t think we’re actually going to swing back and find a middle ground that would just be, well, let’s just keep some of this that that sucks, and keep some of this that sucks, and maybe we’ll have something that doesn’t suck as bad. Yeah, the truth is, I think we have to rise up and find something above which I think that’s what’s happening, right? I see so, so much more, so many more movements and coaches and podcasts about men and women becoming their best selves, becoming more conscious, becoming more open hearted, becoming more authentic, more expressive and healthy ways, taking accountability for their actions and their lives, asking for what they want, putting themselves in a position to get what they want. I see a really amazing shift happening right now. It’s not like gonna happen in five or 10 years. It’s happening now, just the fact I get invited to speak on so many, you know, self improvement type interview podcasts, which says that we’re interested in leveling up to our best self. How

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 29:12
do you feel that lives? How do you feel women are feeling? Because that’s a point of view that I can’t really talk on. But other than from a men’s perspective, like I feel like that they’re pushing men away and almost hating men, right? That’s kind of the feeling, the vibe I get. And like, we don’t need men in our lives, and we’re happy with that, even though I think that in their lives, it’s a big, important part as well, just as much as men having a female

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 29:41
and again, since I’m not a woman, I will, I will speak very cautiously about what women might be experiencing. You know, when I was growing up, I’m 68 going on 69 so I grew up during the 60s and 70s. And you know that the whole, you know, revolution going on. I was the tail end of it. You know, we’re maybe, probably, it’s called second wave feminism. It was an angry feminism. Every man’s a rapist. An erection is a sign of aggression. The best, you know, woman for best man for job is a woman where there’s a lot of anger towards men built into feminism. And I grew up thinking I was kind of a feminist, because I thought, well, yeah, I mean, my mother was probably a first wave feminist, and that she taught me, you know, to be different from my father and be kind and caring to women, and taught her daughters to be independent, not need a man. And you know, years later, when I talked to women who say, Well, I’m a feminist. And I go, Well, are you, do you hate men? She goes, No, actually, I don’t hate men at all. Why do you think that? I go, because all the feminism I heard growing up was a lot of hatred towards men. And she goes, Oh, that was just a few angry, pissed off, really vocal people. But not, not every feminist was pissed off at men. We just, you know, said we need change. You know, I agree with that. We needed change. So what I came to find out is, just because there’s some loud voices doesn’t mean that represents everybody. And I think, I think now we’ve gone through another angry phase of feminism where everything’s toxic masculine, everything about men is evil. You know this manner the cause of all problems in the world. Patriarch is cause of all problems. And I think we’re still hearing from the angry fringe of of feminism, or woke movement, whatever you want to call it. And I think what, what’s easy to happen, because these, not these voices now sound so ubiquitous or everywhere because of social media, because of of these voices now have have platform and main mainstream media. I think, you know, it’s easy to think, well, all women hate men and think men are evil, and I don’t actually think that’s the case. Now have most women had painful experiences in regard to men. Yeah, probably, probably began with dad, when dad let them down, you know, hurt them in some way, abandon them in some way. Did they get hurt when their first boyfriend, you know, said he loved them and then had sex with her and she never heard from him again? Yeah, that probably got hurt in that way. Have they maybe been abused by men? Probably in any number of them. Have Now we could also go down the same checklist of men talking about, have you had a woman do this? Do you woman do that? And because I did a presentation at a retreat back in June where I had everybody raise their hand, it was men and women at this. This is probably 150 people you know, have you ever been lied to? Have you ever been cheated on? Have you ever been accused of things you haven’t done? Have you ever been hurt? You ever been abandoned, ever been left and, you know, to each question, Everybody raised their hand, men and women, and then I asked everybody, have you ever cheated on anybody? Have you ever lied to anybody? Have you ever accused them of something they didn’t do? Have you ever left them? Have you ever ghosted them? And everybody raised their hand, so I said, we’re all clumsy lovers. We’re all terrible at this thing of, how do you do relationships with the opposite sex? And because we’re so clumsy at it, we all get bumps and bruises and hurts and wounds and trauma, right? We all do now, we can either react to that by closing off or lashing out, or, as I know this might get me in trouble, you know, turning to same sex relationships instead of the opposite sex. And I think that happens both with men and women saying, I’m done with women, you know, or women going, I don’t need a guy, you know, I can get more love from from a girl, amazing, great, wonderful. It’s an option. But I don’t think all men hate women, and I don’t think all women hate men. Have we all been hurt, and then do we then project our hurts onto the that gender as a whole? Yeah, we probably all do. You know, men got hurt by a woman or two, and now all women are representative of those two or three women. Yeah, women, same way, been hurt by a few men. Now, do all men become a stand in for those few men?

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 34:17
And that’s just so escalated, right? And with social media

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 34:21
just blow it up. You know, if you I love it. Yeah, I’m a trained therapist, and I’m not a died diagnostician, but I’ve seen a lot of stuff as a therapist, right? What amazes me nowadays is almost everybody on the internet that breaks up if, as a woman, their ex is usually a sociopath or a narcissist, if, as a man, the woman is either a borderline personality or a narcissist. And I’m going, you know, are there really that many borderlines, narcissist and sociopaths out there, and they’re all dating, and they’re all you know, with people on social media. Everybody’s an amateur diagnostician now, and you know what, as a therapist for 40 years, I probably have met maybe two or three true narcissists in my therapy practice. Yeah. And now, all of a sudden, everybody that breaks up with their ex, oh, they’re a narcissist. No, probably we’re all just clumsy lovers. We’re all not very good at this. We’re all have our guards up. We’re all trying to protect ourselves. We’re all crappy communicators, and we’re all trying to do something that doesn’t come easy, that is two people, the opposite sex, trying to come together and have a relationship with probably two very different agendas for being together, probably some overlap, but a lot of you know divergence as well, and thinking we should be able to live in close proximity, get along well. Always have sexual passion. Always feel loving towards each other. Never get on each other’s nerves. Never get tired of each other. Never notice anyone out there that actually looks kind of better, either on social media or just walking down the street or through a mall. We think all this should work, and the truth of it is, it’s difficult. It’s challenging. We’re not built for it, but yet the expectation is we should just easily find somebody fall in love and stay in love for the rest of our lives. That’s a mythology that never has existed, never will, but we think we should be able to do that, and when it doesn’t work out, well, it’s either got to be my fault or it’s their fault. And I don’t like walking around thinking it’s my fault all the time, so it must be their fault. Yeah, so we’ve got people walking around it’s their fault that, you know, this didn’t work out while deeply inside thinking, well, maybe it was me, maybe I’m not good looking enough, maybe I’m not sexy enough, maybe I’m not good enough in bed, maybe I’m too boring, maybe I’m not interesting enough. And so then we’re either kind of dwelling on why I wasn’t good enough to make it work, or why all those other people of that gender are the problem. And luckily, I’m an optimist, and I really do think we’re on our way through that, yeah, but it is still pretty messy right now.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 37:09
It’s a journey. So what I’m just conscious of time, but to give a few tips and advice for men out there, what can we do to better improve our situation and the role, and particularly everyone’s situation, but the relationships were, my

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 37:24
number one answer is, go connect with men. And to me, it’s a no brainer. It’s not the first thing that comes to men’s mind, because we think, Well, I want connection. That must mean I need a woman, because I do want to have sex. So we go seeking for women’s approval, or we don’t, because we don’t know how to get it. So we don’t connect with anybody. And social media is just, it’s like junk food. It’s not really real connection. Like junk food isn’t real food. So you know our ancestors, our human ancestors, for a million and a half years, you are our great, great, great, great, great grandfathers in tribal times, the men connected with men. The men went out and 100 hunted and gathered and fought wars against other men and women huddled and raised the babies and waited for the guys to come back. I’m not saying we need to go back to caveman roles. I’m just saying a million and a half years of evolution wired women to connect with women men, to connect with men and just come together for short amount of time to connect copulate and move on. And then about 10,000 years ago, we started trying to do this thing where one man one woman would go shack up in the same house and try not to kill each other. But for you know, most of that 10,000 years people got together and stayed together purely out of economic need. Love didn’t even come along to about 200 years ago, and Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet to show the fallacy of relationship built on romantic love. Oh, we love each other so much, let’s kill ourselves. What was the message in Romeo and Juliet? So what’s the first and most basic answer? Get connected with men. That’s why I have a men’s program. Why I lead I have a workshop coming up, starting tomorrow, in my home with eight guys. I’ve been leading men’s groups for years. When I was in private practice, I did five men’s groups a week. When men go connect with men, we get our most basic needs met, we get our bucket filled, we get affirmed, we get valued, we get loved on. We can be honest with each other. We can be real with each other, because we’re not doing what I call maintaining the possibility of availability like with men. We’re not we’re not thinking about having sex with them. So we don’t care if we piss them off or they’re pissed off with us. We get the foundation built with men. We’re full, we’re filled, we’re filled. And from that overflow, we can attract women into our life who are drawn to this man, who doesn’t need them, who’s competent, who’s full, who’s going places, who he knows where he’s going. He’s comfortable in his own skin. Why? Because he’s connected and supported and held accountable by a man. Yeah, and that’s really attractive to the feminine. We don’t have to chase women when we’re connected with men. We got everything we need a woman’s icing on the cake, and the woman senses that and wants to be the icing on that cake, right?

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 40:17
Makes sense. Connection is a big issue, right? Is

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 40:22
the issue? It is the issue.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 40:26
It is the issue. Okay? So that’s connection. What else can we do?

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 40:32
I tell men as adults, we are responsible for getting our needs met, and when we were dependent needy little children, that was mom and dad’s job. That’s done. But what happens is, because no one taught us how to get our needs met, make our needs a priority, surround ourselves with people, professionals, practices, to help fill our bucket, get our needs met.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 40:53
Yeah,

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 40:54
a lot of a lot of adults, not just men, grow up. Women actually usually are better at this, but most men have no clue of how to make their needs a priority. I’ll talk with men about getting their needs met, and they’ll look at me like, What are you talking about? I don’t even know what my needs are. And really, literally, they’ll just like, stare at me like, I have no clue what what you’re even talking about. And so that is essential again. It goes back to getting our bucket filled. You know, I exercise to meet my needs. I eat healthy, I get enough sleep. I spend time with friends. I’m involved in work that I love. I take my dog for a walk every morning with my wife, and we enjoy doing that. I visit with my family. I stay connected to men. I do meditation. I read for pleasure. I write in my journal. I spend time in nature. I float in my pool. All of these things help fill my needs up again, make me happy and make me optimistic about this world and my life, and it makes me attractive. It makes me attractive to my wife. It makes me attractive to other women, because my jealous Latino wife always points out other women that are flirting with me, using women that are much younger than me. Why? Because I don’t need them. I’m full. I’ve taken responsibility for getting my needs met, filling my bucket and surrounding myself with people, practices, groups who all want to help me get my needs met. Now, some people I pay like my dentist, my doctor, my chiropractor, my accountant, my attorneys, my employees, I pay them help me get my needs met. But a lot of people, we just enjoy hanging out with each other. I probably got 25 to 50 guy friends that any given time we’re connecting, we’re online. I’m going to have half a dozen guys come to my house in December to come to have a writer’s retreat with me. I go visit my friends. They come here and visit me. I do workshops. I go to workshops. I’m around men that I love and again, both so so that two thing, connect with men, make your needs a priority and take full responsibility for getting those needs met on a regular basis. Good

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 43:09
advice. I’m going to direct people to the book there. Then we’ll miss the nice guy and the recent one too, which was co authored with Tony endelement and

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 43:19
the big and he’s in New Orleans. You were just in New Orleans. He’s a New Orleans guy. There

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 43:25
you go. My pleasure speaking with you to appreciate your time coming on the show.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 43:29
Thanks for the invitation. This was great fun.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 43:31
How can people best reach you?

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 43:35
Either at Dr glover.com D, R, G, l, o, v, e, r.com, or integration nation.net which is my men’s program, integration nation.net

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 43:45
Interesting. Yeah, I’ll check that out as well, and I’ll stick the links in the show notes, guys. So check it out at the hidden wide.com and until next time, peace, passion and purpose. See you soon.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 43:53
Leigh, thank you.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 43:55
Thank you, pleasure. Matt, I gotta run sorry, because I could have talked for a lot longer. Have a good rest of your day. You too. Talk more soon bye.

Robert G – Puerto Vallarta, MX – July 2023 44:06
Let me know when this goes live, we’ll spread the word.

Leigh Martinuzzi Martinuzzi 44:09
I will thank you Robert, aye. Thank you, bye.

Further Reading and Resources 

TED Talks: Ideas worth spreading

Psychology Today: Psychology Today is devoted exclusively to everybody’s favourite subject – Ourselves

Life Hack: Tips for Life

Elite Daily: The Voice of Generation Y

Four Hour Work Week: How to escape the 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich.

The Minimalists: How to pursue a minimalist lifestyle and be happier.

Mind Hacks: Tips and Tricks for Using Your Brain

Rich Roll: Plantpowered Wellness Advocate

The Art of Charm: Build confidence, feel comfortable and networking differently.

American Psychological Association: The largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United State

The Art of Manliness: Encouraging men to be better husbands, fathers, brothers, citizens.

Tiny Buddha: Simple wisdom for complex lives.

Brain Pickings: An inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness, spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more.

Mind Body Green: Lifestyle media brand dedicated to inspiring you to live your best life.

Zen Habits: Find simplicity and mindfulness in life.

Creative NonFiction: “true stories well told.” 

Addicted 2 Success: Motivation & Inspiration Website full of quotes and inspiring articles for entrepreneurs.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree: science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life.