Curt Storring 0:00

Welcome to the Dad.Work podcast. My name is Curt Storring, your host and the founder of Dad.Work. This is episode number 69 uncomfortable truths for fathers. And this is a Friday reflections episode, running a chat at you about things that are real in my life that I've been thinking about that I think might be able to help you along your journey to become a better man, partner. And Father, there's not gonna be a lot of preamble here, the episode goes into the nine uncomfortable truths for fathers that I recently posted on Instagram, but goes much deeper into each one, there's obviously limited space on Instagram. And what I wanted to do is share deeper because I think some of the nuances missed and I'm glad that it's you know, getting traction on Instagram, whatever. But I want you to hear this, because there's a lot of nuance and a lot of specifics that I think can be shared in in a platform like Instagram. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, obviously, let me know, by leaving a rating or review on Spotify, and Apple would really appreciate that I think we've got 30 reviews on Apple now between the US and Canada. And I know hundreds of you listen the episodes. So if you're getting value from this at all, even a little bit, or if you want to tell me what you think about it, please go to apple on your iPhone, if you're listening to that there and scroll down on the Dad.Work podcast page and leave a rating and review I would really appreciate it. It really truly does help reach more men who could use this in their lives. So if you have benefited, please extend it to other men. By leaving a review. I very much appreciate that. Okay, well, no further ado, we're gonna get into it nine uncomfortable truths for fathers on this episode number 60 of the Dad.Work podcast. Here we go.

All right, dads, we're gonna get into it today talking about the nine uncomfortable truths for fathers. And this was something I recently shared on Instagram. And I wanted to share here too, because I think there's a lot of work we can do by identifying where we are falling short, or not accepting these truths, because I think they all have a deeper meaning to them. I'd like to go into that today. So the first one is sacrificing your own needs for your family is not noble. And a lot of men, especially fathers think, well, I'll just put myself in the backburner. I'm going to show up 100% For my family, and don't worry about me, I'll be fine. But the truth is, you're not fine. When you do that, are you when we don't do self care, when we don't engage in healing work, our family suffers because we are not showing up at 100%. For them, we're not showing up 100% for us. And one of the things that gets lost in this is that you actually matter as a human being, I think as fathers, it's only too easy for us to see the needs of our partners or children. And to go like, well, I guess it's my lot in life, to not really feel like I matter. And that's a tragedy because you actually do matter. And there's one thing about, you know, helping dads and working with dads that I see quite often, which is they come into it looking to do the work for their family, and that is absolutely noble in itself. But if you only try to make your family's life better, without making your life better, there's no way you're gonna actually be able to do that they need you to be at 100%. So self care and healing is not actually selfish, itself less, because when your cup is empty, you can't fill up anyone else's cup. In my opinion, in my experience, in my own life, working on yourself becoming a better man is the single greatest gift you can give to your children. So if you are sacrificing your entire self, your self worth, whatever you want to do with your life, if you're not taking care of yourself, because you think you need to give it all to your wife and kids, I can almost guarantee you that if you start taking better care of yourself, you will end up taking better care of them. And you will model to your children what it looks like to love themselves, to hold themselves in high regard and high self esteem and to not give themselves up for anybody else. This is not the message we want to be teaching our children at least it's not what I want to be teaching my children. So I make sure now that I have a good self care routine that my needs are being met, even if it means I'm taking an hour out of my day to do a men's group call or go to the gym or something like that, because I show up when I'm home way better than if I didn't do these things. The second one is one day, your children will no longer need you. And you get to decide by the actions you take whether this is a gift, or a curse, or your kids gonna write you off because they don't trust you and they'll just stop checking in with you. That seems like a terrible, lonely sentencing to have to suffer through as a father, when likely you love your children more than anything and you would love to be in their life when they are older. If however, you are treating your children in a way that has them feel safe and loved and seen and all these things, they might actually thank you for understanding this truth that they will no longer need. You will probably thank you for this because you will have been equipping them with the love and the tools they need to thrive. And part of this is very difficult to understand because we think that we know best for our kids, especially when they're young. And as they grow up, they become more independent. And that's what we should be shooting for. I think I saw it on Instagram. It was Ryan Meckler of order of man. And he said my job as a father is to become obsolete. And I thought that was so good. And it's so hard to understand. Because man Do I ever want to be in my kids lives, man do I want to teach them and guide them and you know, even as they're an adult, I will have gone through that. So I hope they come to me. And at the same time, if I do my job, right, they won't need me at all. Because I will have given them the tools and the self worth and the confidence and the resilience, parenting them, that allows them to blast off into the world and find their own way. And perhaps they might want me around that I think is the measure of a good father and child relationship when they're older, is that they don't need you. But they choose to want you in their life, when it's good for them. They don't know you anything, you decided to create them and bring them into this world. They don't owe you anything. And so I think it's incumbent on us to realize this fact early, and then work to give them what they will need to be good independent people. And to show them the things that we value and to model the behavior that is important to us, including community, I don't want to get that lost in here, because it's not about simply they don't need anyone, they don't need community, they just need to be independent. That's not it at all. But they shouldn't need you moving forward, you should I think like Ryan says, work to make yourself obsolete, I think that would be a great show as a father in my life. Number three is you must prioritize your wife, over your children. This is so counter intuitive for a lot of men. Because, man, your kids are there, they're young, they need you, it's so easy to give them everything and go well, we'll work on our relationship later. Like, I'm so selfish, if I want to have a relationship with my wife, but what does that do? It starts to erode the foundation of the relationship. And guys, the foundation of your relationship with your partner, your wife, is what makes everything else in the home work. If you are not actively loving on and ravishing your wife, especially in front of your children, treating them and teaching them what it looks like to have a good relationship so they can see you and mom are so in line. So in tune. So in love, that is going to create so much more benefit than if you actively try to give all of that energy just to your kids. Because when you have a great relationship with your wife, you give them a sense of trust in the household, they know that you guys are going to be there for them, they know there's nothing likely to happen outside of you know their own lives, that's going to Sideswipe them and they can relax into being themselves. And this is, you know, just me spoken from a broken home, my parents divorced when I was three. And so I didn't really get to see what it looked like for my father to treat my mother well to treat a woman well. And I just I never really got this. And so now in my own home, I want to be very sure that I'm learning and also applying what I'm learning to the relationship with my wife. Because I just assumed that, you know, Holmes got broken, you don't really have good relationships, there's no such thing. And it was very difficult for me to finally open up and really give my wife my heart because I hadn't seen it done before. So this really sucked for me not having it modeled. And it was a huge piece of work I had to do later on in my life in my relationship, that if I had just seen a mother and a father who came together to work on their relationship before anything else. Man, that would have been a gift. And imagine if I didn't have to worry about oh, How's mom and dad gonna be today? Are they going to fight are they gonna leave what's going on? That's a lot of undue stress on a child's life. And so, interestingly, when you focus on the relationship with your wife, over your children, there's a sort of trickle down effect that happens. But it only works that one way. When you prioritize relationship with your wife, you strengthen both relationships. If you prioritize your kids over your wife, I truly think everyone suffers. So look back in your life. And again, this goes sort of hand in hand with making sure you yourself are a priority that you're not sacrificing your own needs. I think that in a lot of senses, we can almost flip the the triangle on its head, if you will, most men put, you know, children at the bottom, maybe their partner second and maybe themselves last. I think a healthy father puts himself first not at the detriment of his family but in order to help his family and then his wife and then his children. And somehow it all works out better that way even though it seems more noble or whatever doing it the other way around. Number four is you will create a father wound and your children there's no getting away from it but you are responsible for its intensity. Will it be the wound that crushes your children that they have to crawl out from underneath that they have to go to therapy to fix that really ruins a large part of their life because they're in so much pain, or will you also impart the tools and model the behavior that will make the father wound a mere speed bump. So whatever

you do in your child's life, some of it undoubtedly, will be perceived as not great by your kids, you could try to be the most perfect dad. And somewhere along the way, they will simply perceive that it wasn't good enough, it wasn't the love that they needed some somewhere along the way, maybe you didn't give them the right attention at the right time, and they internalize that we can't get away from it. That's just how relationships work. But can you see that you can actually impart them the tools to deal with that along the way. And I had a great conversation on another podcast with a man named wil Spencer the other day, and he was talking about the fact that when you model repairing relationships with your children, you almost get out in front of the creation of such a wound. And I thought that was a very interesting idea. And so when we are parenting, can we repair right away? Can we show our children what we're doing mindfully? Can we give them the practices and the tools that we have developed and learned along the way, in order for them to dig into their own father wound in a way that is not so devastating when they realize that one might exist? What does that look like to you? And it's an interesting question that that will brought up on this podcast the other day, does the wound actually create if it's constantly being dealt with in the moment, and of course, there might be things that you don't even know need to be repaired. And that's why I think still that a father wound is absolutely going to happen, regardless of how well you communicate, or repair or show up as a dad. But as an interesting thought, could you simply being present, and showing up as an intentionally good father, giving them the love that you can give them will That in itself act as the safeguard against making this something terrible for your children simply make it the speed bump that I mentioned before, I think that's a very powerful idea. I would love to see how this plays out in my children's lives. Because it was not something that I was able to do in mind, I had to do a lot of work, a lot of painful work, and a lot of forgiveness and grief went into my father wound journey. And I'm so excited to see what it will look like for my children going through this and I'm ready for it to be painful and a big deal. And I'm going to hold that space for my children if they need me to. But at the same time, maybe it will simply be less intense than mine wasn't. Wow, that is such an interesting, exciting idea for me. Number five is set boundaries or lose your kids to the metaverse put down your phone around your kids, dads, this is something that is so vital and to be quite transparent. I'm not even perfect. I'm obviously not perfect at this. I'm not even great at this. But it's constantly in the back of my mind, I will always leave my phone downstairs in my office when I when I remember. And that's most of the time these days because it's important to me. And so I think it's important to discuss regularly the realities and downfalls of social media and screen time with your kids. And obviously, the flip side of this is, look, we live in a digital world we don't want our kids to be left behind. But I think that's an excuse to stop monitoring their screentime I think it's an excuse to stop having the conversation because we go oh, well, society is this way, and they got to learn. And hopefully one day they'll work at Facebook and make a lot of money. Like that's, maybe that's true, but I don't think it's a good enough reason to stop having the conversation and much like the conversation on sex, or drugs, or bullying or consent or whatever it's going to be. This needs to be an ongoing conversation. I know many men who never got a phone conversation on any of these things from their parents. I remember one that single conversation on sex from my father. And I thought that was pretty terrible. I only have one, but now I'm seeing like, wow, that was actually better than a lot of the men I speak to, which is tragic. And so I think screentime and the metaverse if you will social media, this needs to be an ongoing conversation. Because even at age nine, my son now has people in his class who have phones who are on Tik Tok. And man, I have a problem with that, like there is no there's nothing good that can come out of that. It is making instant gratification a thing it is stopping people from, you know, allowing themselves to wait for gratification, which I think is one of the biggest indicators of success if you can delay gratification. And men, there's just so much. I have such strong feelings about the so called Metaverse right now because it's not real.

I heard a stat on another podcast, I can't remember exactly where it came from. But this that was basically something like 24 out of the top 25 Facebook pages that were I think in the the Christian space or something like that. Were like Russian troll farms. And so when people interact with things like this, that are purpose being put out as deception, or to get likes or to, you know, even if it's not nefarious, even if they're just trying to get money based on how many followers they have on Facebook, what you're interacting with is not real. Like, it's literally not real every time you pick up your phone, that's not the real world. And it's become real these days, we've tricked ourselves into believing it's real, and that it's important, as though we're online avatar has anything to do with our value as a human being. I think that if I just dropped my phone and move to the woods, I would be significantly happier. And there is some some death that needs to happen in the identity and the ego, obviously, growing up with this instant gratification with the likes and the follows. And of course, with how I use it for business, and and just to help men, because I do post on Instagram, I've deleted Facebook from my phone, I will no longer interact with that. I think it's, it doesn't work for me and feels terrible to be on there. But like I don't spend a lot of time scrolling through Instagram, I will post I will respond to the men who asked for help and guidance. And you know that that's about it. Because I have taken the time to think about what does it actually mean to me? How do I interact with this? Does it actually bring value to my life? And in most cases, the answer is absolutely not. And it's even worse from what I'm seeing in children, because they get lost in this. They go home and just go on here all the time on Tik Tok or group chats or something like that all online. I mean, you see it, it's the classic cliche, right? Kids are walking back from school, they're all together, but they're all looking down on their phones. It's um, it can seem old fashioned to say that that's a problem. But I think there's more and more research coming out that shows just how potentially dangerous it can be even without the research, how does it feel to you to be on your phone all the time? Oh, it just feels terrible to me when I think about imparting that on my kids. Oh, man. And the last point that I made in this post was that you should be creating an amazing, fun filled life for your children, so that it would seem absurd for them to choose screens over real life. And this was in the back sort of the addendum to the book Wild at Heart by John Eldridge. He answers some common questions that readers has had posed him. Over the years since the book was initially released, I think I got the 20th or 25th anniversary edition. And one of the things that he says about screentime is that the the reason that children would not choose screentime is if they had a compelling alternative. Why would you jump on the screen to numb or comfort or whatever, when your real life is so vital when it's so filled with Vitality, I should say. So if you as a parent are being in your kids lives, if you're being present, if you're giving them the love and the affirmation, the validation, playing with them and having fun, and wrestling with them and going outside and like really encouraging them to find things that are real, maybe teaching them how to build, you know, focusing on books, focusing on writing going outside all the time, just giving them the option to compare real life versus the so called metaverse. If real life is more enticing, then of course, you're going to do that it's not any hereand that will just go to our phones. But I think for a lot of people, the life is so bland, they get up, they're tired, they you know, eat a poor breakfast, they sit in the car, they go to work, they have a terrible job, they hate their job to come back, they need to numb because of how bad their job feels, they probably don't connect with their kids or their wives. And so they go to the place where they can feel safe and comfortable. I think comfort in this day and age is overwhelming because of how uncomfortable we are inside. And so if you're listening to this, it's likely that you're doing some sort of inner work, and you're starting to become more comfortable with the discomfort that you are feeling inside. And when we can become less uncomfortable inside, it's less likely we're going to be looking for comfort externally. And that I think is the whole point of doing this work. And so make sure it's being passed on to your kids.

Because if you don't set boundaries, if you don't have these regular conversations about screen time, and about, you know the potential downfalls and how it feels to you and why it's not important to you, then it's very likely that your children are just going to fall in the trap of going like well, I don't really know what to do. I'm kind of bored. All my other friends are doing it. Nobody's ever talked to me about this. And so like, I'm just going to go on the phone, I guess. So don't enable this in my opinion. Otherwise, you're going to lose them to the metaverse and what? Why would they come out of it? Like what are you going to offer to them that's going to be so compelling that they put down the phone, which is designed over the last, you know, 10 plus years by the smartest people in the world to keep their attention. How are you going to combat that? In some ways, if they get into it, you know, it's going to be very difficult to do that because of what I just said is like this is being designed for distraction. So get in there early and make sure that your children know what to expect. Number six is you model what your children expect from a man. What I mean by this I've heard it say by a lot of men. And I even asked this question of some some people my podcast I'm thinking right now of diamond well he said it about his daughters, but for sons, you give them A model for what it means to be a man. So would you like it if your son grew up to be like you, and for your daughters, in many ways you model what a good man looks like to her. And so the question is, would you like it if your daughter grew up to marry a man like you? That's a very sobering question for a lot of men. Your children will use your example as a measuring stick. And so ask yourself, what kind of life? Are you setting them up for? What is your own life look like? Are you living a life that is full of self care full of self love, full of activity, and adventure, and fitness? And all of these things that lead to a wonderful internal and external life? Or are you teaching your children to bury their emotions, to express only anger to treat women poorly? Like what? What kind of life are you giving them? Because children learn best by modeling, they will listen to what you do much more than what you say. And that's just, I mean, it's just a fact. So what kind of life are you modeling? What expectations of manhood and masculinity? are you modeling for your children, that is your responsibility as a father? Number seven is you don't decide when or if your child forgives you, your child may or may not let you back in after you screw up. And so make sure you're building a relationship with them that has them trust you, when you apologize. And this I learned recently firsthand, I screwed up. I think I talked about this in a previous Friday reflections episode close to the beginning of this podcast. And I screwed up, I yelled at my oldest son, I was overwhelmed. And things just got out of hand. I was scary. I was mean and hearkened back to the days, years ago when I was like this every single day. And it was scary to me because I thought, oh, no, like, here I go, I've done it again. It's been a long time since I've done this. What are the what are the impacts and repercussions going to be? And after I got the baby to sleep, I went back in and I apologized and I owned what happened and I sort of validating the feelings that my my son might have had. And I asked if he wanted to talk. And if he could forgive me and he said no. And in this moment, I realized this truth that I don't get to decide when he forgives me because he is his own person. And he has his own relationship with me that I can't influence in that moment. And so I have to be very sure that the rest of the time that I'm with him,

I am building that trust, because one day, it might be too late if I don't. And that is a scary prospect. Because I cannot even I can hardly explain the fear that I felt when he said no. I'm like, What do you mean? Like I'm back now I said sorry. Like, I've owned my part. Now it's time because you're just a kid, like, let me in. And he's like, No, not ready. And so I had to sit. And thank goodness, it was like half an hour before you've been able to process that. And then we talked about it and we validated each other and, and he led me back in and we hugged and we repaired it. But in that half an hour Oh man, I have rarely felt anything so painful and frightening, to be able to think about losing the connection with my son. That was very difficult. And so understanding this will have you hopefully, build a better relationship outside of the times when there are ruptures. So that when there are ruptures, you can come back together. Because I guarantee you if you haven't experienced this already, man, it'll cut you to your core. So be sure that you are building up that relationship and validating and loving and affirming so that when things happen, your children do forgive and let you back in. Number eight, talk about this all the time, you pass on unhealed wounds to your children. This is the idea of generational trauma. Much like your father probably didn't deal with his wounds and his traumas he passed them on to you, much like his dad did the same and his father did the same. You are now carrying potentially generations of trauma and wounding. And if you do nothing about that, you are going to pass those on your children. So unless you take responsibility for your own pain in your shadow, and work to heal yourself, you're condemning your children to the weight you yourself are too weak to carry. This is unacceptable in my view, imagine knowing that you could do something to lighten the burden and the pain that your child will experience in his or her life and then turning a blind eye. Now that you know, what are you willing to do to relieve that burden? If you have believed that it's too scary or too hard to feel your feelings or to go inside and heal? Your own father wound your own mother wound whatever wounds you have. If they feel too scary for you, well, how are they going to feel to your children? Probably even scarier because it's one additional generation that has gone on healed. Would you like your children to feel the way you feel if you are not feeling well right now? I didn't. I couldn't imagine if I had to have if I didn't see my children grow up to feel how bad I felt. That was unacceptable to me. And that's one of the things that motivated me most never to give up in my journey even though it felt hopeless. For years. I would bash my head against the wall of figuratively going, why doesn't this work I'm

trying, I'm doing all the things I can do and it's not working. And that can seem hopeless. But the thing that had me keeping going, was the realization that if I didn't fix this, my kids were gonna have to, and that is completely unacceptable. Why would I burden them when I think my job is to unburden them, to help them to give them a better life than I had. And we talked about that all the time with finances, I want to give my kids a better life than I had. Because I grew up poor, and we work ourselves to death, our kids don't get us. And then they have worse drama than we have, like, use the same sort of lingo and the same sort of understanding, not just for finances, but for mental health, start doing your work and go deep, because you are a man, you have the capacity and the capability and the strength to go there. And I know this because I've gone there. I know this, you are strong enough to deal with it. Your kids right now aren't. Maybe one day they will be but why would you want to pressure them with that? Why would you want to make them deal with your shit, not acceptable. And so if you need help to do this, because man is heavy work, please find help. Whether that's professional help, whether it's a counseling, help, whether it's men's group, whether it's friends, something, make sure you get the help, because oftentimes, as men, we are the rock for everyone else. And we don't have the capacity left to deal with our own stuff. Number nine is that isolation destroys a father's spirit, lone wolves die. And lone wolves certainly don't raise cubs. Without a community of supportive men, dads become overburdened. And they teach their children that other people are untrustworthy. Fear and scarcity are not the basis for a happy childhood, and life. And I saw this in my own father's life. And I see that in him. And I say to myself, it's been very difficult for me to open up and find true friends to allow other people to support me. And I'm probably if I'm looking back on it, it's likely because I didn't see my father, have any friends, he was completely isolated. And I see now in retrospect, how he suffered for that, and how I suffered for that. Parenting should not be done in isolation, fatherhood should not be done in isolation, it is too heavy a burden to do alone. And that's not weakness. That's just how it is. We are meant to be doing this in villages and communities, with other generations around us to help us with friends, with uncles, with grandfathers with elders, with other families coming around to support us when we need it. And then us being able to support them when they needed. And so don't keep doing this alone.

I often say I am for some reason, excellent at doing inner work, self healing, all that stuff. And yet, even I, who consider myself an expert at this, I couldn't go any farther. By myself. It wasn't until I joined men's group, it wasn't until I was able to have space held for me, by men and men's group by my grandfather opening up and sharing my life with other men did things finally start to click, I can see it, I look back. And when I joined, that's when things started getting better. I felt for quite a long time that the visual I had in my head was that I was standing at the precipice of a cliff, through clouds all around, it was so high. And I knew I needed to take the next step. But I also felt like if I took that step I was going to fall. And so I just, I wasn't sure what the next step was. And it wasn't until I joined men's group, that I realized that the step I needed to take off that cliff wouldn't lead to death on the rocks below. But it meant that I would be able to spread my wings and fly. And I don't know if that resonates with you. But that was the visual I had in my head this whole time. And I see that moment of joining men's group and opening up to other men as being the thing that allowed me to integrate everything I had learned to slow down to feel support to get reflected back upon. And so whether it's community locally, whether it's a men's group, whether it's whatever it is going deeper with your own friends right now. I think it's vital for fathers especially to find community and to get over this lone wolf mentality as though that's a good thing. Like lone wolves, I don't know where this even came from. lone wolves die, they suffer, or they go back to the pack, they left. That's just what happens in nature. And so you're not going to see some lone wolf with cubs raising these like alpha Bros and like taking down moose one one wolf at a time. Like, that's not how it works. And so this idea is completely wrong to begin with. I don't think we should be striving to be this. I think it's completely ridiculous. And of course, it's hard, because our society says that men should be independent, strong hold up, everyone else hold up themselves. Never show emotion. Never show weakness never break. And that's BS. That's just BS. It's wrong. When you have experienced what it's like to be in the community of intentional men, changes your life. And that's it. That was number nine. I'm curious to hear. If any of these are harder to hear than the others curious to hear if you disagree with them. I'm curious to hear if there are other uncomfortable truths that you think father should know. So find me on Instagram DADWORK.CURT Send me a message, comment on the post. And let me know what hit hardest. What did I miss. And of course, with that last one, number nine isolation, destroying a father spirit, I'm going to invite you to join us in one of our men's groups, we have a couple spots left on the Thursday night Pacific, we have a few spots left Wednesday morning Pacific, and these groups are fantastic, I have got so much out of them, the men joining them have gotten so much out of them already. And this is a space for you to get that support to stop being an isolation to stop lone wolf thing, to be seen, to be heard, to be challenged, and to be supported, and to hear the stories of other men and realize that you're not alone. And you don't have to do this alone. As I said, this has been perhaps the most impactful thing I've done in my entire healing journey. And I'm very excited to be able to offer this to men for whom this is clearly your next step. And I think you'll know, it's not necessarily the right time for every man on his journey, although I do think every man should be in a men's group at some point or another. But if this is the point in your journey, where you feel like you can't go any farther alone, where you need the support of other men, check out dad.work/group That's DAD.WORK/GROUP and apply to join us. We'd love to get your application, we'll do a quick 15 minute call after that to be sure that we're right fit for each other. And I hope to welcome you in to our next meeting. That's it for now. Thank you guys for listening, really appreciate you. And again, try to live these truths and to understand them this weekend with your family. This might be the first time might be the only time might be the start of the times that you really understand all these things and that you apply them to your life and that you actively act in such a way that helps to guard against the negative potential of these truths. And so go out there, love your kids, love your wife, love yourself and have a great weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday for another episode of the Dad.Work podcast

that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. It means the world to find out more about everything that we talked about in the episode today, including Show Notes resources and links to subscribe leave a review work with us go to dad.work/pod that's DAD.WORK/POD type that into your browser just like a normal URL, dad.work/pod You'll find everything there. You need to become a better man, a better partner and a better father. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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