respectful manhood Archives - Shana James Coaching

Most men have thought they should limit what they express, or even feel….that emotions are not manly and won’t be well received. Times are changing though and there is a call to support men to be healthier and happier, which includes welcoming mens’ vulnerability. A Call to Men‘s Chief Development Officer, Ted Bunch, talks today about why it’s important to be bold, brave, and kind, and to teach your kids the same.

Many men grew up afraid of revealing their inner selves, causing them to hide their hopes, fears, desires, and emotions inside the “Man Box.” This limiting Man Box decreases healthy masculinity by telling you that you can’t express your weaknesses or ask for help. Thankfully times are changing. You are likely seeing and hearing more organizations and people talking about the importance of welcoming men’s vulnerability.

Today’s Man Alive podcast guest, Ted Bunch, is the Chief Development Officer of A Call to Men. He is a leading voice on building healthy masculinity to help prevent sexism, violence, and abuse. Ted is the co-author of The Book of Dares: 100 Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold, and Brave. This book has been called “a direct answer to parents’ cries for building healthy masculinity, respect, and emotional literacy in their sons.”

Today’s conversation is an important one to support men to be free from cultural limitations, creating more safety and well-being for all.

We discussed:

How being socialized into cultures of sexism hurts everyone, including men
Ways to welcome your kids’ emotions and authenticity
What it will take to decrease the astronomical rate of men’s anxiety, depression, and suicide
The importance of speaking up rather than staying silent
The Book of Dares and integrating A Call to Men’s principles into communities

Don’t forget to watch my TEDx talk episode called: What 1,000 Men’s Tears Reveal About the Crisis Between Men and Women. It’s important that you’re supported in your vulnerability and this talk is a great first step. Men and women have expressed how helpful this was for them to hear!

Connect with Ted

Website: https://www.acalltomen.org/

Connect with Shana James

Website: shanajamescoaching.com/3ways

Curious what you’d need to become a better leader and lover? Take the quiz

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Listen to the podcast here:

Building Healthy Masculinity With Ted Bunch

As I’ve supported men in their love and work lives for several years now, many men ask for the right words to say to be more successful, attractive, and desirable. I found it’s not so simple as giving scripts or lines because every man is different. Giving words or scripts would be like giving a tall and thin man, a shorter and wider man’s pants or vice versa. The words have to make sense for you and your personality. There’s so much happening beneath the surface that people are responding to. If you’re interested in how to become a better lover and leader in your own unique way, go to ShanaJamesCoaching.com/quiz, or you can text Alive to 44144. It only takes a couple of minutes and you’ll start to get an idea of how you can be both more respected and desired. After you fill it out, we can schedule a time to review your quiz and talk about your specific challenges and desires. Enjoy this episode.

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Welcome to this episode. I’m excited to be here with Ted Bunch, from A Call to Men. Ted, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much, Shana. I’m happy to be here.

I’m excited to get into the topic of healthy masculinity and challenging the status quo on manhood, both for men and for boys. Most of the readers here are men, but a lot of men who are reading have children who are boys or born male. We’re going to talk about all of it, how to accept our children and how to help the next generation also grow up without feeling as stuck in the man box as most of the men often feel. Tell us something that happened in your life that brought you to the work with A Call to Men. Maybe tell us a little bit about A Call to Men, for men who don’t know about it.

Thank you so much. A Call to Men educates men all over the world around healthy and respectful manhood and preventing gender-based violence. Our vision is to create a world where all men and boys are loving and respectful, and all women and girls and those in the margins of the margins are valued and safe. It’s around manhood. We know that as we promote and increase a healthy, respectful manhood, we prevent and decrease domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, bullying, homophobia, heterosexism, all of those things go away. Also, men become healthier and happier. I hope we can talk a little bit about that too.

I will love that. I have tears in my eyes hearing the clarity of your vision and how it aligns with what I want for the world as well.

This vision was born several years ago. My friend, Tony Porter, we’re still working together in the organization. When we’re working with domestic violence offenders, I was running the largest domestic violence program in the country in New York City. About 600 men every week, 30 classes in English and in Spanish, and Tony was doing similar work. As we’re doing this work where we’re trying to end violence against women, we’re also working with women who were born out of the Battered Women Movement. They were women who helped educate us about how male domination plays out. That’s important that we have the voice of women and the voice of the LGBTQ trans community at the core of our work, because then we can know how to move forward in ways that are helpful and respectful. Imagine if we did this as well-meaning men, wanting to do the right thing, just did it alone thinking that we didn’t need to have any input. Putting in racial terms, what if there were a wonderful group of white folks that said, “We’re going to end racism and we don’t need to hear from anybody but white people.” No, thank you.

Most of the men I imagine who are reading have the awareness that you have. They might be sitting here thinking, “I’m not promoting violence or I’m not creating these things.” How do you bridge the gap to help those men understand why this is important for them?

As we promote healthy and respectful manhood, we help prevent domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual bullying. Share on X

I’m sure that’s true because that’s where my experience also. While the overwhelming majority of violence and discrimination against women and girls, and the queer community, while the overwhelming majority of violence is done by men, the overwhelming majority of men are not violent but were silent about those that are. That is as much of the problem as the violence is. It might be more of the problem because those men who do those things rely on us to be silent. If you’re in California, in the Bay Area, I’m in New York, and all the places in between the coast, if I’m right now in 2021 see a man hitting his wife or girlfriend and I walk over to him and say, “Knock it off,” he’s going to say to me, “Mind your business.” That’s our collective socialization. We’ve never talked about that, but all men know that.

That’s based on male dominance, sexism, patriarchy that men are in control, that women are the property of men. Yes, most of us don’t do those things, but what is the thread through it all? This is why it’s important with the work of A Call to Men that the conversation that we’re entering is not an indictment on manhood, but an invitation to men. It’s not about calling men out, it’s about calling men in. We’ve all been taught the same thing. Those men who do the things that we would never want men to do, sexual assault, domestic violence, any of those things, discrimination, all of those things, those men who do that have been taught the same thing. The majority of the men in your readers are well-meaning men, trying to do the right thing, living the right way, they’ve been taught the same thing. We’re swimming in the same water. We’ve inherited all of this, so no one’s to blame.

Male privilege or white privilege, all those things are being said a lot in 2020 or so. We’ve inherited it all and we have it. I’m a man. I happened to be a black man, but I have male privilege. I have it, whether I want it or not. It operates for me, whether I wanted to or not. When we look at the collective socialization of men, that’s all of us. We don’t point the finger at, “This guy is bad. This guy is toxic.” Masculinity and toxicity do not go together. It’s a sexy word. People know what you’re talking about, but we don’t like putting it there because what it does is says that it allows the majority of us who don’t do those things to opt out, that it doesn’t impact me. It also allows us to start defining what’s toxic and what’s not. We might say that rape is toxic, but a lot of men are looking at that same woman who was raped and sexually objectifying her as she walks by. Is that not toxic? Who gets to determine that?

That collective socialization, there are three things that we’re taught. There are three main things that all men are taught, that women and girls have less value than men and boys. That’s in our socialization. I give a quick example of how it’s passed down. Six-year-old boy in your community, or in my community, or the community of the men in your audience is learning how to throw a football. He’s with his big brother, his uncle, his coach, his father, he’s with this man who wants to help these kid learn how to throw that football, and this kid adores him. Throwing a football and dad, uncle coach, big brother gets a little frustrated.

“Don’t throw like a girl. You’re throwing like a girl.”

You know the answer to that. Let’s say something like, “You got to throw harder. You’re throwing like a girl.” That girl does just fine, but what does that six-year-old boy take away from that conversation. Does he take away that girls are equal to him or less than him? How can he not?

There’s something in me that stands up for men and stands up for the nice guys. It’s funny, I have some work to do on my own to look at, why do I keep putting myself in this role? For the men who are silent, but not committing violence or for the men who are like, “I don’t even see people abusing other people.” It’s somewhere separate from me, but they are getting these lessons from a young age of don’t throw like a girl and all of these things. I’m curious also for these men. I know they’re impacted by the man box. Not just of girls being less than but now, “I’m supposed to be tough. I’m supposed to be strong. I’m supposed to hold it in and not cry.” All these things. I want to keep tying it into all of the different types of men who are reading.

You bring up a great point, especially around the man box. That’s our short version. It’s a term that A Call to Men has coined, the man box, which is a short version of that collective socialization of manhood. We’re taught all kinds of things in order to live in this man box. You said it, be tough, don’t cry, don’t openly express feelings, be in charge, be in control, don’t ask for help, don’t be vulnerable because all of those things showing you emotion, being vulnerable, asking for help are not “things that men do.” Those are things that women and girls do. If you’re a man that does that, we will punish you by calling you something like a woman or a girl, or perhaps a gay man, because this man box is a heterosexual construct. The glue that keeps the man box together is homophobia and heterosexism.

All of it sifted all down, it all goes back to that collective socialization that the women and girls are less than. If you’re doing anything like a woman and girl, like showing your emotion or being vulnerable, then you’re less than a man. When we tell that little boy to stop crying, we also tell him to stop feeling. He doesn’t learn language. He doesn’t talk about what he’s going through. He’s not emotionally literate. We grew up to be men that only had one emotion which is anger. Anger is covering up everything we obtain. That’s why suicide is 3.5 times higher with men than women. That’s why anxiety and depression is out of the roof for men. That’s why addiction, alcohol use, all of those things, and even with male youth, suicide is higher. When you look into LGBTQ, transgender, nonconforming youth, it’s even higher because they are punished and shamed even more because of these standards.

My TEDx Talk, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, it was What 1,000 Men’s Tears Reveal About the Crisis Between Men and Women. One of the stories that I talk about is walking down the call and my kid’s kindergarten, and this woman randomly told my son not to cry. I almost punched her. It took everything I had to not be like, “You’re messing up our world.” This is the belief that has men grow up to be anxious and isolated and to commit suicide more often. We’re bringing in even for men who aren’t committing these crimes, men who aren’t necessarily seeing the abuse and the violence, they’re still impacted as well because that limitation on, “I can only express anger.” Their romantic relationships, careers, their parenting and community life suffers. It feels good to bring it all together.

MA 171 | Healthy Masculinity — The Book of Dares: 100 Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold and Brave.

You had said something a while ago about your appreciation for working with men and what they’re going through and all that, because they’re good. Men are good. Whatever negative behaviors or unhealthy behaviors, or those things that people would consider “toxic” is not embedded in our DNA or in our testosterone. Those behaviors, the views of women, misogyny, sexism, it’s embedded in our socialization. It’s embedded in how we’re taught. Even when you say the woman who said for your boy not to cry, we live six years less than women because we’re dying from stress related illnesses. That emotional stress that we never released turns itself into this manifestation of physical stress and kills us as we get older.

In addition to that, we tend to not go to the doctor when we need to because that shows vulnerability. That means we ask for help. We’re not going to prevent anything. It’s always, generally, intervention. We also tend to do more high-risk behavior because one of the ways you prove that you’re a man is to do high risk behaviors in this man box that’s built on a lie. Those emotions that we shut down for our boys are important to express. Let me make clear to the dads who were out there saying, “My son’s not going to be this and that. He’s going to be tough.” He can still build that strength that we want and also share the emotions. He can do it. It will make him stronger.

That’s my perspective.

It doesn’t mean if my kid’s facing a fear and he’s crying about it, I’m not saying to him, “Cry all you want. You don’t have to face your fear. We’ll do something else another time.” No, you’re going to face your fear, but I’m going to acknowledge that the fear is real. I’m not going to demean you for having the fear or for crying. I’m going to share with you that I have fear too, and that when I share my fear, whenever I face it, I feel better for facing it. Even if it doesn’t result in what I want it to result in, what at least has been achieved is that I’ve faced my fear. That’s what I’m going to expect you to do. I’m going to help you face it.

It was the whole picture of fears like, “I also feel fear so you don’t have to feel like you’re alone and I’m going to help you walk through this. It takes strength to walk through this.” That connection between the vulnerability and the strength that they’re both important, or vulnerability is a strength as opposed to a weakness.

One of the things that I appreciate in the last several years, you’ve seen some male influencers like Michael Phelps who’s talking about going to therapy, and he points to mental health. It’s not a sign of weakness. There’s a number of other athletes who do it. Kevin Love who’s a basketball player. If you have the Calm app, LeBron James is on the Calm app talking about peace and serenity and telling your mind. This is important. As men, we need these tools. It’s not a weakness and we’re not trying to take anything away from masculinity, but we’re so much more.

It’s hard to find a way to say that in a way that’s not demeaning. We’re not trying to make our boys sissies. All those words that we’ve been taught and enculturated are all demeaning. I love that you switched that into we’re not trying to take anything away. We’re adding these tools and skills to make more healthy and happy men and boys.

We’re recognizing that those things that we’ve been taught that have value as being men, women have as well. Be a provider. I want to be a provider for my family, that’s important to me. I want to be a protector for my family, that’s important to me. I want to have strength, that’s important to me. Women have all those things too. If I took a poll of your male readers and asked them, let’s look at strengths. Take away the ability of how much you can lift, how much you can bench press, physical strength, and look at all the other characteristics of strength. Do you know more strong women or strong men? Whenever I ask men that, and I’m with professional football players and I ask them, they’ll say strong women. If we’re going to look at the physical ability, create life and give birth, “How much do you bench press? What was that?”

Part of what I love too is that you have been using A Call to Men work and bringing it into the younger generations. You wrote this book called The Book of Dares: 100 Ways for Boys to be Kind, Bold, and Brave, and co-wrote it with Anna Marie Johnson. I don’t want to leave her out of the picture. One of the things that I thought was beautiful that I read was that the book has been called a direct answer to parent’s cries for building healthy masculinity, respect and emotional literacy in their sons. I felt excited having a child seeing this book. I’m curious, what inspired you to write it and to start to bring this into the lives of youth?

Thank you for that. We’re excited about the book. It was written by myself and Anna Marie Johnson Teague. She and I are friends, anti-violence educators, and also parents. We happen to work for an organization, A Call to Men. The Book of Dares is for male identified youth. We wrote it for 8 to 13-year-old boys. Since it’s been out, we have high school boys who have been excited about it, and we have girls and gender nonconforming kids who were finding theirs that can resonate with them as well and then talk about the focus of those dares are. It’s built on the work of A Call to Men and promoting healthy manhood. That’s what it’s about.

Being silent about violence is as much a problem as violence is. Share on X

We survey about 1,000 boys from around the country about different topics. We did this because we found that in the market for children’s books, there’s a big gap for boys of any books that focus on empathy, authenticity or health. Very few books. Girls, there’s a lot more to choose from, but with the boys, there’s very little to choose from. We had already written a high school and middle school curriculum with Scholastic called Live Respect: Coaching Healthy and Respectful Manhood, which goes from 6th grade to 12th, there are some colleges also. We wanted to go earlier because the socialization starts so earlier. By the time these kids were in middle school, they already have these preconceived notions.

You have to work to unravel them.

We wanted to get a little bit earlier. The Book of Dares: 100 Ways for Boys to be Kind, Bold and Brave, they advance and focus in three buckets. The first is healthy masculinity. For instance, one of the dares is share three emotions you experienced now. They’re going to share three emotions they experienced now. A lot of men can’t do that. It helps them to think about, “What did I experience? Joy, sadness, I was discouraged because of this or that.” It’s opening a door to talk about some things. The second bucket is authenticity. It’s about encouraging them to tap into who they are. What else is there? You’re playing football, I dare you to take on a sport that you’ve wanted to, but you’ve been afraid to.

I love that one. I did another podcast where we were talking about that inclination to stay away from anything that you’re not good at, or that you don’t know how to do because it doesn’t look manly to be struggling or not know how to do it. I see it with my kid too at this young age.

That’s exactly where we’re coming from. Also, on gender equity and inclusion is the other bucket. When we look at the issues of race and gender that’s an awakening that’s happening in our country, where this is probably a national conversation now. Dares that allow parents to have conversations with their kids around these things in very nonthreatening and fun ways. Of those 1,000 boys we interviewed, they admitted that, “We’re terrified about dares, but fascinated about dares.”

I can see where it plays into the male psyche of like, “It’s not like I’m going to create a book on empathy for boys and call it lovey dovey. I dare you to be more empathetic.”

It’s positive challenges but those are dares. The other bucket is gender equity and inclusion. There’s a dare that is one about pay. There’s a story about two kids who are in the same household. One is a boy and one is a girl. They are about the same age. The girl does dishes for a week and the boy does dishes for a week. They both do a fantastic job, but at the end of the week, the girl gets $30 and the boy gets $27. He’s looking at it like, “There’s something wrong here.” There’s a lesson in that. When people get the book, they can read more about that dare, but it’s around pay equity and gender equity. Is that fair or not? The boy sees how unfair that is.

Another one that’s coming to mind is around, wear your favorite female athlete’s jersey to school. This was done, when we were writing the book, the United States Women’s Soccer Team had just won the World Cup. Everybody, all these kids, a lot of soccer players were excited about that. We were like, “Would you wear one of the player’s jersey?” “Yes,” and they loved it. WNBA players, there are other female athletes. It’s not about gender, it’s about their athleticism and their success. There are lessons in that. There are also lots around inclusion. There’s one dare to prove a stereotype wrong. Dare to ask your parents to take you to a Pride event.

I’m also seeing the beauty and the importance of community where it would be different for one parent. It’s great for a parent to buy this book for their kid, but their kid then goes into a community, and doing this on their own is different than the whole class is working with The Book of Dares. How do you expand from parent to parent to making this more communal?

We’re trying to. Having conversations like this, and you using your platform to elevate the book and our work, we appreciate it. There are a few dares that have the reader go to friends and do some things. There’s one dare that comes to mind that says, “Dare to ask a friend to teach you something they’re good at. Dare to start a FaceTime group with your friends because they’re playing Fortnite and everything. Dare to discuss the dares in this book.” What we’ve seen is that there have been young folks who have emailed us or hit us up on social media or their parents have that they’re buying it for their friends so they can do things together. We’re hoping to get into schools, and we’d love to have it as curriculum in schools.

What are you most excited about the book and what could happen with it?

I’m excited that we’re teaching our boys empathy and seeing outside of themselves and how we impact others. There’s also one around privilege, dare to see what your privilege is. That might be class, race, religion, as far as that more doors open to you than other people of different religions, those kinds of things. It challenges in a loving and fun way. We’re excited that we start preventing early on because these things give boys language and access to themselves. There’s even one around meditation about find some calm time. There’s one dare to start a journal. I love being a man. I have six children, four of them are male and two are female.

I have two that one’s gay and one’s lesbian. They are multiracial as well. I have two children that are white. I have four children that are black. This is important that we help our kids to be the healthiest that they can be. What this prevents are all those things we talked that men experience as adults living six years earlier, anxiety, depression, suicide. This is going to prevent that because it helps boys start to identify how they’re feeling. They don’t have to hold it in. I can start talking now instead of when I’m 40 in therapy.

My clients who are men in their 40s and 50s are like, “I wish I had known this in my teens and 20s and 30s.”

Wouldn’t it have been great to not only know it, but to be able to share that with a man in your life? How nurturing would that be? Women do so much and fill so much in our lives. Fathers, dads, men are doing so much also, but the construct is that men are supposed to do this, women are supposed to do this. The nurturing place is not where men are encouraged to be with their boys. Take them to the football game.

I do see in this day and age so many men who are also nurturers. It’s amazing to watch my male friends with their kids. I’m curious, as a father, what would you say? What’s one of the most important things that you’ve learned that has helped your children grow up to be free to be who they are?

Before I go there, I would say the nurturing piece that you mentioned is so important. Men do it so well. It’s in us, we’ve just never been allowed to do it. When we have done it, we’ve been punished for it, or laughed at, or ridiculed by other men and some women that you’re not man enough, that you’re falling short. That’s what women do and that our kids need that so much from us. To your male readers out there, as kids grow, we need to talk to them about boundaries and consent in the bodies of girls and women. It’s important because we’re taught to sexually objectify women, and we pass that down to our boys. That’s part of that collective socialization. As a father, the impact I hope makes a difference with my children is that when I’m wrong, I can admit that. I might need to step away for a second because they’re not in charge of me, but then I come back and own if there’s anything that needs to be owned.

If I didn’t take the time because I’m frustrated or maybe one of my kids did, and they want to explain it and I’m like, “I don’t want to hear it. We’ve talked about this before.” I might need to come back and say, “I need to hear it. I was frustrated because of X, Y, and Z,” sharing my emotions. To be open to hear what they have to say and to be mutual with seeing them, respecting them as a person, and not feeling like I need to control them. That is an important thing, and the way that they see me interact with their mother. That’s important.

I’ll share with the readers because it’s mostly men, this is important because I have six children, three biological, three adopted. I don’t usually share this, but because there are men on the audience, I want to because things don’t always work out perfectly. I was married for twenty years and got divorced several years ago. My biological children’s mother and I are best of friends. We get along wonderfully. We do things together even now. She’s in a relationship and I’m in a relationship. We adopted one of the kids, the teenagers that came into our lives. The other three, we adopted one of them two years after our divorce.

I’ve never heard of that before.

We grew up to be men that only had one emotion - anger. Share on X

We’re raising this kid, they’re the same age, “I might as well raise this one too.” If we go through the lens of love as men and put down some of the ego, and how we want to control things and work to be mutual with whoever that is, whether it’s our kids, with our current partner, with our former partner, there’s hope. We can do this. Love is the answer to all things.

Thank you so much. What do you want to leave men with, if there was one last thing that feels important?

I have a lot of hope for men. There’s a lot of healing that we have to do. There’s a lot of trauma that men experience, not only living with this man box, but also the trauma we experience that we don’t get to share because the man box says that we can’t. When I think about boys, the statistics say that it’s 1 in 6 adult men have unwanted sexual experiences as children, which means 1 in 6 boys have been sexually abused. It’s more than that. We don’t share that, and we carry that pain all the time. When we see addiction and trauma and risky behaviors, if we trace that back, we can find some pain there. Even the hurt that man cause hurt people.

I want to share one last thing that resonated with me. A friend of mine, Joe Ehrmann, he’s a former football player. He’s a pastor, a coach, and also a motivational speaker. He’s an amazing man. Joe, years ago, when I first met him, I heard him say this and it resonated with me. He said, “I have a hole in my soul shaped like my father.” I was like, “I have that.” I’m like raising my hand. I wasn’t literally raising my hand but in my mind, “You get it.” When I heard that, I was like, “I don’t want my kid to have a hole in their soul shaped like me.” That’s what I work towards. I want to fill whatever holes they have, not create them.

That was beautiful for the fathers reading to know that it’s okay that part of filling that hole. It’s your own vulnerability of admitting, “I wasn’t my best here. I am feeling these emotions.” It can seem like in the man box, the role of father is, “I’m tough. I’m strong. I teach my kids to be tough and strong, or my boys,” especially when you’re tough and strong. When you get that you can open up and be all of you and invite all of your children, the freedom in that and the healing that happens is incredible.

Being tough and strong is great, but we’re much more than that too. We’re missing out on it. It stops us from being our authentic selves. Can I share one story about authenticity? I’ll tell you my son being gay because I know there are some fathers who have kids who are maybe questioning, who may be presenting in a way that they’re uncomfortable with it around their gender or their sexuality. I want them to know there’s nothing to be afraid of. What we want to do is love them so that they come to us with whatever their issues are and however they identify. We want to challenge the ways that we think about gender. My now eighteen-year-old was fifteen when he came out.

We expected him to come out. Expected is different than suspected. We were awaiting him to come out. We were expecting him when he was very young. If there were girls on one side of the room, he’s crawling to the girls. They fascinated him much more so than the boys did. He’s taught me a lot about authenticity. Let me also own that as prepared as I thought I was as a father, and as woke as I thought I was as a father, and as ready as I thought I was for him to come out, I was ready to celebrate him. I wanted to have a coming out party when he did come out and fully embrace himself, because even though I wasn’t questioning, he’s still questioning it because most kids in that situation are trying not to be.

They’re trying to fit into the boxed culture.

“What’s going on with me?” When he did come out and embrace his fullness and blossomed, there were a number of things that came up that I had to pause. I’d say, “Take a breath here.” I wasn’t ready for and I had judgment about. That was my heterosexism and my homophobia. I’m not cooked. All these things I’m saying even relates to women, sexism still creeps into my mind, but the difference is I’m anti-sexist because when it does, I address it. That’s the difference.

Even with racism. “You’re not racist? Do you know that you benefit from racism?” “Yes.” “Are you anti-racism? Meaning you stand up against it and if you don’t stand up against it, then what are you?” It’s the same thing with sexist. With authenticity, I want to share this with the men because as you see over my shoulder here, you see a bouquet of flowers. I was married for several years. I would bring flowers home every week, every other week for my wife. She would appreciate it. If her girlfriends were over there, they’d be like, “He’s so good. He’s still giving you flowers.”

If I didn’t bring them home, she wasn’t asking where the flowers are. About ten years in, I’m realizing, “She doesn’t care if I bring her flowers or not, but I like them.” It was always about me and flowers. I brought it in as a gift to her because women are supposed to like flowers, not men. The fact of the matter is I like that. I like the way of the colors, I like the way they smell when they come in the house, all of those things. When I started embracing that, I’m going to the florist and I’m much more intentional about the flowers.

Picking them out for what you enjoy.

The color combination I want. I don’t need a vase because I’ll arrange them at home, you know why, because I like flowers.

You like arranging flowers.

There are men that are not doing all kinds of things because they’ve been told that’s not what men do and were missing out on life.

Thank you so much for being here and thank you for all the work you’re doing.

Thank you. I appreciate you, Shana.

—

I’m glad you joined us for this episode. I hope you enjoyed our conversation, and it gave you something to consider and explore in your life. If you like what you read, I’d be so grateful for you to subscribe and write a quick review that helps men like you find us. Head over to ShanaJamesCoaching.com/quiz or text the word Alive to 44144 to get a sense of how you can become a better lover and leader. You’ll start to see how you can be both more respected and desired in your unique and genuine way. If you don’t feel as confident or as excited about life or love as you’d to be, this quiz is a great starting point. We’ll guide you toward a more passionate love life and a more inspiring and successful career.

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About Ted Bunch

Ted Bunch is an author, educator, activist, and lecturer working to end all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls. He is the chief development officer for A CALL TO MEN™️.

Ted is an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is the former director and co-creator of the largest program for domestic violence offenders in America. His innovative work laid the groundwork for the prevention strategies now endorsed as best practice in engaging men to end violence against women.

He has developed model response programs and consulted on many major media stations on the issue of domestic violence.