#76 Honest Fatherhood, with Daniel Grose

Gentlemen, welcome to the Formidable Family Man podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Denning.

Today my guest is Daniel Gross from Honest Fatherhood and brother, I have been looking forward to this conversation.

Super excited to have you here man.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I love doing this kind of thing.

Why don't you just start off kind of give us a little bit of background about your family and, and your story and, and I'm really curious why you started honest fatherhood and, and this whole kind of movement and, and journey you're on.

All right, so that the quick Cliff Notes, I'm 41 years old.

I'm a father of four boys, so they are 18 months old, 79 and 12:00 and they are all boys, rough and rowdy.

And I've been married to my wife Rachel for 15 years now.

So we've been together 19 years, married fifteen of those and we live in Memphis, TN and yeah, so people ask what's going on, I'm like, I'm married.

I got four boys that that's what I do like that that's what's going on in my life.

So yeah, there's that.

We also, we homeschool, so it's four boys in the home.

School is, is pretty intense.

So it does take a lot of our life, but I said that, yeah, the artist fatherhood Instagram thing was interesting.

So I have told my story several times in my life, things that I went through growing up to different friends.

And when I would tell my story, they're like, dude, you got to write a book about this, man.

This is a lot of stuff you've been through and how you've come through it and heal things in your own marriage.

Because man, when I got married, I thought I was going to do all the right things and be this like perfect man.

I had the vision for the perfect marriage.

And when hardships of real life came to us, finances, being a dad, you know, my wife not thinking I was just God's gift to everything and having real issues with me and things are going to fall apart.

I had to, I had to figure out how to work through it.

And so going back into my past and then my own trauma and my own upbringing and figuring that stuff out was a huge and very hard journey where I felt like I was, I was groping through the dark.

And it's like, we're not going to make it if I can't figure out how to grow, how to heal and do this thing better.

So I started writing a book and honest fatherhood was just a way for me to kind of curate my thoughts and put them out into the world.

And I didn't know it was going to be a thing.

I thought, man, in a couple years if I get, you know, a few 1000 followers, that'd be awesome.

And then exploded into this massive thing.

And now there's like there's like 170,000 followers on there now.

And man, I just talked about manhood and fatherhood and marriage just for those people who are like, yeah, I felt like you felt like I, I was groping through the dark and I needed somebody to give me some advice that had been through it.

And it wasn't he who made it through.

To know there's a light on the other end of the tunnel and that things can heal and they can get good.

So that's, that's kind of how the whole thing got started.

And man, no, I love it.

I love that.

That's awesome.

Thanks for doing what you do, brother.

It's so it's so cool.

I, I want to, I want to touch on this idea that that when things got tough, you went back and started working on you like that journey of the inner man.

I was, I was writing the other day and, and I, and I kind of wrote that it came to my mind as like if, if you and I as husbands and fathers, if we don't deal with our own past, that our wives and our children will have to and it, and it'll be done in an ugly way.

And it's so like, share a little bit of your story because I, I'm, I want to hear it because I had a similar story.

Like I, I grew up in a broken, dysfunctional family and I knew, man, I, I desperately wanted an amazing marriage and a great family and I knew I had to do my work.

Like I had to change first before it was ever going to get to where I wanted it to be.

So I want to hear kind of your, your version of the story.

What?

Why you?

Why you turned inside to fix?

You know, do that inner work first.

Yeah, so I'll give you the Cliff Notes version of kind of the the childhood and trauma stuff that sort of laid the groundwork because you kind of need to know that piece to know what was wrong with you.

Why did you have to turn inwards?

How did I recognize that?

You know, the problem was me.

So, you know, my mom was married to my biological father.

I referred him as Cecil because he was never around much.

And Cecil divorced my mom or my mom divorced him rather, when I was four years old.

He had, you know, he was doing drugs.

He had had multiple affairs.

He never held down a job.

And my mom was like, this is not the guy I want to raise my son.

So she left him and she remarried my stepdad when I was 5.

And he came in, man, he was awesome.

He was like our knight in shining armor.

He was a a new Christian.

He was on fire for God, but he did all the stuff like he took me to work with him just to ride around in the truck.

Like he taught me how to roll a left jab.

Like he took me hunting, taught me how to scout, hunt, kill and build, dress a deer like all this stuff that I had never had before.

And I took to him so quick with like reckless abandoned.

I took to him and they told me this story one night when they were dating that he gave her a hug and kiss good night and she left and I looked up at him with his big like 5 year old eyes and I was like, where's my hug and kiss at right?

I just, it's a 5 year old boy.

I wanted that man and he was, he was a fireman.

He was tough.

And so a lot of what I needed in my little 5 year old wild spirit was met in him.

So for many years, from ages 5 to 10, it was awesome.

I went to visit Cecil on the weekends.

You know, since he wasn't married to my mom, he went to live with his mom, my grandmother.

But they had an 80 acre farm and my granddaddy raised bird dogs.

And you know, back then they just let me go.

Like I just went out and the pasture, rode the three Wheeler, I'd ride horses, I'd go fishing with a cane pole.

Just came back for lunch and dinner and was living like the best version of my free, you know, childhood boy self as an adventurer out on this farm.

And then I came back to my house and I was with my mom and my stepdad and things were good.

And you know, I don't know, I've never spoken I'll word of Cecil.

So I didn't know that he was in any of these bad things.

He was just my father.

He was this cool guy.

He was strong, like a lot of addicts.

He had a big personality.

He was a life of the party.

Also with narcissists, you can often see that, but to the outside world, they can be very likable.

It's it's the family and the close people that really see.

Like, suffer the most, yeah.

Yeah, so when I was 10 years old, after Christmas, grandmother wouldn't let me come out anymore, and I didn't understand why.

And I wanted to see Cecil.

I missed him.

And April of that was my 4th grade year on spring break.

My stepdad called me in and he said, son, sit down.

I got to tell you something.

His demeanor was different.

I could tell something was up.

And it made me nervous and a little awkward.

You know, when you're in 4th grade, you're like, I don't know if I should laugh or be worried.

And he had pony punches.

He just told it to me straight.

He said, son, your daddy shot his girlfriend and he's on the run from the police.

We don't know where he is.

I need you to come inside.

We don't know if he's going to come try to see you or he might come try to get you.

I need you to go ahead and come inside the house.

And that was this moment of, like, big trauma for me because my mind couldn't process it, just couldn't fathom what had happened.

But my body was processing it like I felt the tears and like it just came up in my chest like a knife that I was trying to hold it in and it just, it hurts so bad right there.

I felt that feeling when you hit your funny bone, that tingling feeling start going on my body and it was, it was shocked and it was similar to almost like an out of body experience because I just couldn't understand what was happening.

My mind was shutting down, but my body was having this physiological response.

Stood up, walked about 5 steps so I could go to my room and cry there and I, I fell to the floor and just started crying and my stepdad picked me up and he held me and I, I just remember screaming why over and over again.

That was the only thing my Mike had come up with to say right?

So that was a hard moment for me.

The next couple weeks are really hard because my mom took me.

We went and stayed with some friends until Cecil.

Eventually the police caught up with him and he got arrested.

And the next year of my life marks a turning point.

So little did I know that my stepdad had used drugs in the past, gotten hurt at work.

I've been prescribed some pain pills.

Oh man.

In that moment or at that time, he had already started his descent into drug addiction, like relapsing into it.

It didn't happen instantly and we didn't boys, me and my brothers, we didn't see it quickly.

But over the course of the next year, he just fell completely back into drug addiction.

So he's a man of Italian heritage, he's a hot tempered guy.

He's also bipolar.

And when you throw in hard addiction to prescription painkillers into that, it was a mess.

So that year of my life was the loss of two fathers. 1 was ripped away from me immediately in a moment and the other was a slow taking away from me.

But it was this process of all the innocence and wildness and freeness of my youth being taken away.

And now all of a sudden these heavyweights that, you know, a child grows into adult responsibilities as he's able to care for them if it's done the right way.

His his dad initiates him into hard responsibility in the work of life.

But for me, all of a sudden, it was, you know, there's murder, there's jail, there's divorce, my dad talking about suicide, there's all these things that I was carrying at age 12 and 13, way before I should have.

And it happened so suddenly.

And I carried all this trauma around and couldn't tell anybody about it because my friend's dad's, they were like pilots and coaches and youth pastors.

So I couldn't tell him.

You know, my dad threw ATV at the wall last night and cussed us out till we cried.

And my, my biological father's in prison.

I'm hopefully I can go see him in two months.

You know, if my grandmother says it's OK, couldn't share these things.

So I felt alone.

I had no one to go to.

And it was a that's a tough upbringing.

And it stayed that way for the next 10 years of my life.

So I grew up under that.

And when I was 21, I decided I had to leave home.

I was three years into college.

I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I changed my major several times.

I was working two jobs.

I was burned out and I wanted to be free from all the stuff that had been over my life so long.

So I moved to Los Angeles, CA and just to have fun.

No plan, nothing, just.

And that's where I met my wife was in Los Angeles and I lived there for four years and thought that I was free from the IT had become a Christian around the time I was 18.

And I started finding some healing in my faith and in my walk with God, kind of started opening up to some people about things that happened to me, left home, thought I had healed from it.

And I had this, this obsession in my not in my mind so much, but in my heart.

I'm going to be different than my father's.

I'm going to be a new man.

I'm doing something different.

I will never be like them, the man that my mom deserved to have.

I'm going to be that man to my wife.

And when me and Rachel were dating, I really was trying to step into that and had this vision for it.

So that is the trauma that I carried coming into it and when so when we were dating.

Life's easy, man.

It's just it's fun.

It's a Roman.

It's so good.

You know, you don't even fight with each other.

You're sitting there before we ever fight.

Like she's so perfect.

He loves me.

We don't we something shifted in me after I said I do.

I went from really focusing on Rachel and just loving her and pursuing her to now pursuing the life that we were going to live.

And I became obsessed really with providing and that portion of it because neither one of my dad worked.

My mom did all the stuff.

She worked.

She took us to all the practices.

She did the homework stuff with us.

She did all that while my dad was comatose on the couch with his eyes rolled back in his head.

Because he's on pills, right?

So I went to work building a business, working 60 hours a week, exhausted, and it shifted in a moment.

And all of a sudden my wife was like, where'd my husband go?

He's gone personally, he's gone.

He's always tired when he gets home.

My mind was always elsewhere.

It was on work.

It was on our future life and I was no longer present here.

That's where cracks first started to form in our marriage.

So.

But that's a lot of stuff.

I want to stop right there and make sure you have anything you want to ask or comment on.

But.

Brother, I love, I love hearing the story and the parallels to my story.

So it'll be very, very similar and, and even some things that I haven't talked about or thought about for a long time.

My, my, my parents divorced when I was really young.

My first stepdad was this new hero to me, just absolutely loved him.

And then he same got into alcoholism and and drug addiction and then ended up dying from an overdose.

And so I lost him.

And then step dads came and went continually over those years and I left home at 16.

I was like, I'm out man.

And, and so same and, and I just listening to your story, but thank you for sharing that.

It's the same, that similar journey of and, and the pain that I experienced, the frustration, the hurt led to that same deep conviction that I'm like, man, I'm going to be an amazing husband and father.

I, I will not have my kids go through what I went through.

I'm going to, I'm going to have that same kind of conviction.

And and then I love that, you know, the, the shift, because I think thing men can relate to this is when you get married.

I'm sure you felt this.

I remember when I proposed to Rachel.

My wife's name is Rachel as well.

So when I when I proposed to to Rachel, I remember like this terrifying fear and weight of responsibility of now thinking, wait a minute, I'm responsible for her and providing for now the two of us.

I mean, I, I got I would slept in my truck sometimes when I was out on my own and broke or I, you know, sleep wherever, eat whatever, but I just asked a woman to marry me.

Like I can't ask her to live in a tent up in the hills into me.

Like I got to provide something.

It was a huge weight and the thought of of having children drove me.

So same.

I feel that.

I think other men have felt that as well.

It's like, OK, now, now I got to lean in hard to providing.

And you're right, there's a shift that can happen of, of taking like moving our focus and where the focus goes, the energy flows, right.

Let me tell a quick story because it's relevant to this.

I, I started doing jiu jitsu years ago and, and the guy who was training me was 40 lbs lighter than me.

And I kept thinking like, I'm going to work this guy.

Like I outweigh him.

Like I'm going to seriously work this guy.

He smoked me every time.

I was like, God, if I made a frustration, I'm like, what are you doing to me?

He's like, look, I mean, let me tell you something.

He says where the head goes, the body follows.

And I right where the head goes, the body follows.

And, and that I've used for, you know, my whole life.

It's like where the focus goes, the body follows, the energy flows like everything.

And, and when you and I shift our focus, boy, that's and like you said, that's where that's where the cracks begin to happen.

OK.

So carry on with that.

Yeah, so like I said, I started working 60 hours a week.

In my mind, you know, there's an an arrogance and maybe an ambition that I, I wouldn't even say is bad.

When you're young, sometimes you need a little bit of that to just have the audacity to start a great thing in life.

But there was a, you know, a measure of just being untested and untried that was woven through that ambition that told me, you know, I'm going to be married, I'm going to start a new business.

We moved to a new city.

I'm going to do all the stuff.

And because I have this work ethic and this passion, I'm going to be awesome at it.

Idea was get this business that eventually made me, you know, $250,000 a year salary, $1,000,000 a year salary.

And I was going to get this done within like five years and then be able to be this present father and husband.

I'd never done that before.

I did not have the acumen or the skills required.

I was going to have to make a lot of mistakes in business to learn how to run a business and my family's ability to have me out there working 60 hours a week making those mistakes was not going to outlast the time that I to learn these things.

So the first few years, it caused some fights between me and Rachel for sure.

It was she felt like she was pursuing connection with me always, right?

And this is my time.

I believe the man pursues the wife.

I think you pursue the woman you date and all all through that that responsibility.

The right way for that to happen is a man pursues the woman and I had always done that, but now all of a sudden she wasn't being pursued.

She was pursuing connection with me.

I already.

Didn't say it.

And I was.

Not only was I rejecting it and too tired for it, and not maliciously, I wasn't.

I was, I was just too tired.

But I would flip that around on her and make her feel like the bad guy.

So if it's 7:00 and I just got done working and she's like, oh, let's talk, let's have dinner together, let's do something.

The two of us.

I'm like, I'm tired.

I need to rest.

Turned into you're not being supportive of me.

You don't understand what I'm trying to build.

You're being too high maintenance.

You're being too needy.

So a woman who just wants to connect with her husband, who's getting barely any scraps of me, is now being told, you know, you're too much, you're too needy.

And so this sphere of maybe I'm loved, maybe he doesn't love me anymore, maybe he doesn't want to pursue me is getting confirmed for her.

And all these different ways she tells me the story.

I mean, I remember it, but it's it's harder for her.

She was trying to instigate connection.

She bought a book and it was this thing where we take 15 minutes at night when we're both in bed and you answer a question.

The book's got all these insightful questions that you ask each other.

She asked me and she writes it down.

I ask her and you know, that kind of thing.

And we started it a couple nights and I kind of was like, yeah, fine, I'll do it.

Sounds cheesy, but whatever.

I could see you're pursuing.

I want to be a good dude.

I'll do it.

And she tried it and she looked over in like 2 minutes and I was asleep.

Like I just fallen asleep.

And she felt very, very defeated in that moment.

It was just to her, she's like, this is, this is what it is.

When we started having kids, especially after our second child, this unsustainable survival mode really started to break us.

And I remember coming in one time and she was crying and I was like, what are you crying about?

There was nothing that had happened.

Like why, why are you crying?

And she's, I don't want to, I don't want to tell you.

I think if I, if I tell you, you're just get mad at me, you'll get angry.

And it was this wake up call.

I'm like what have I done?

That my wife can't even talk to me about something that's bringing her to tears because she thinks I'll get angry at her for it.

So I promised her I'd be unoffendable, that wouldn't get defensive, and I would listen, she said.

I just feel like all the weight of responsibility for the home and our two kids falls on me.

She's like, I'm not blaming you.

I know you have to work, I know you have to do that stuff.

It's not your fault.

I'm not mad at you, but it still is my reality and it's overwhelming and I feel alone and I sometimes I just need to be able to cry about it.

And that Amen.

That hit me so hard.

And that was the point where I started the inner work.

I was like, something has got to change in my life.

My wife crying, emotionally starved with that level of loneliness.

And I'm like my running from my father working so hard to not be that guy.

I have now become that guy.

I'm not on drugs.

I'm, I'm not doing that.

But I came at it from another angle.

I went off balance.

So that's what caused me to start going in and doing inner work.

And that's about 88 to 10 years ago.

I say that that was a moment, the inner work thing.

There was a process, right?

Exactly.

It always takes a little while.

You talk about like, that's the ego death, the pride death.

I'm like it was death by 1000 cuts but it was like cut cut cut slash with the sword.

A bunch more cuts and then like another slash to finally break me down.

Love it.

That's awesome.

So good.

Thanks for sharing that story, brother.

And and so let's man, let's let's let's jump ahead then to and maybe maybe you've already done this and share this.

Like what?

What is it that that works like in that journey?

So that eight-year journey, like what have you found for yourself and people you've worked with, the guys you've worked with?

Like if you could, if you could summarize it or put it in a short list, like what are the things that just work, the habits, the the practices that you find.

Like, hey, if we do this consistently or at least strive to do it consistently, it just works.

Man, that's a huge question because there's so many aspects and so there's but there's two kind of categories that go in and I really feel like you have to do both of them.

And so that's what we've talked about so far, inner work and outer work.

And guys, especially me, we always want to focus on the outer work because it's tangible, it's quantifiable.

And I feel like there's something in the way men are programmed.

That's like, all right, this is what I'm going to do.

I'm going to do this many sets of of this many reps of this workout.

I'm going to read me books and this is my regiment that's going to make my marriage equal this, right?

And there are some good practices there that you do need.

But often that skips over that inner work stuff and that if you do the inner work, the outer work becomes easier, right?

Because you got your, you got your Y and then the other stuff flows from that.

So for me, the first thing that I do that I think men have to do, because I think every man has a father wound.

Even if you had an awesome dad, you did not have a perfect dad, all right?

And stuff happened.

So kind of figuring out what are insecurities, what are defense mechanisms, what are my triggers, what causes me to fight with my wife and why, what are those things?

Where did they come from?

And figuring out how to heal from that stuff.

So for me, the first thing was accepting stuff my father's did instead of saying, you know, I don't need you.

Almost like ignoring it and not accepting what happened to me.

So I had to come to this moment where it was like, actually, I did need you.

I can't just say F you, I'm leaving you and I'm going on and building a better life.

I just actually, I did need you.

You got power over me when I was a kid.

You were supposed to guide me and you didn't.

And accepting that pain and then taking a moment of life or a season to grieve the loss of what you didn't get, the childhood you should have had and the things that happened to you.

There's like this moment of grief.

And that's a dangerous moment because too many people stay there, right?

And that's where you get to be a victim.

You just, oh, my dad did this to me.

I'll never recover it.

So, you know, you acknowledge it, you grieve it.

And then you start to look at, you know what?

I always yell at my wife when she acts like I'm not doing enough around the house because to me, that's her accusing me of being like my dad, that I'm not doing enough.

She's just trying to ask me to do the dishes.

Somehow I'm getting really triggered and taking it personal because I'm tired and overworked.

I'm like, I got to stop making what she says and mean something bigger than it is, right?

And so that I can just respond to her with I'm really tired.

I can't do the dishes tonight.

Or, you know, if I'm that extreme and have that conversation or sure, babe, I can do the dishes no problem.

You know, whenever, whenever you need to respond with, but respond healthily and not defensively because they touched that button of that unhealed wound.

Right, that's why that right there, brother, like that's why the inner work is so critical.

That story, that example is perfect because the smallest ask becomes a really painful trigger.

And if if the wound isn't healed, you're absolutely right.

And so we got to go back.

Well, I love, like you said, that go back and look, and this is hard.

We have to look into that abyss.

It's painful, it's scary, It's the things we've been avoiding and we've got to go back and look at it, look into the abyss, see the pain, see the suffering at at least in my case, I had to go back and look at it and then I had to find the the lesson that was there.

I had to find the value that was there and, and I was able to switch it enough to realize like, man, you know what?

Some of the worst Times Now looking back are actually some of the best times because they were enjoyable because I suffered.

But man, they were valuable because I took them as lessons.

I took them and and allowed them to make me a better man.

And now I can look from where I am today.

I can look back at those super hard times actually with genuine gratitude.

But I am I'm grateful that I suffer.

And again, I mean, it's, it's easy to say that now when you're in it, it's just that there's so much pain and so much hurt, but that allowed me to heal.

So now I'm I'm not triggered by the little things that rub up against what was once a wound.

Yeah, 100%, man.

So that is a ongoing process.

I started that a while ago, like I said about a decade ago, and it it still comes up.

I always tell people, you know, anger is a tool.

If you're getting anger, that anger is there to give you a clue about something that you've got to heal or fix.

So I don't want to act out of anger.

But as soon as I feel that and I recognize it, like what is anger telling me about myself?

Like why am I angry about this?

There's an insecurity, there's a defense mechanism.

There's a sometimes it's just practical stuff like I'm overworked right now.

I have, this is a whole nother topic, but I've crafted a life that doesn't allow me the work life balance so that I can have patience and presentness with my family when I get home.

And that's hard, but I'm like that's on me.

And that's where we were back then.

I started this business, I took on some debts, which I don't believe in debt anymore, but at the time I did and I thought I'm going to leverage debt to make all this money.

And I know some people do that.

It's not personal belief that that's not how you do things, but having debt, working too much, trying to be in a competitive market where the prices are low and doing all these things.

I created an unsustainable life that just meant I don't have anything left to give to them and that's not their fault.

I'm the one that chose this path.

I chose this job, this work, and this strategy and it wasn't a good one.

And there was no, at that point, there's no blame that I can put on anybody but myself.

So then it's just looking at it, you're overworked, your wife's crying, you don't get to spend time with your kids, your health is going downhill because you got no time to work out or do anything.

So who cares whose fault it is?

How are you going to change it now?

So that's a whole other topic.

But one of the changes that we made, along with inner work was my wife and I looked at my business, we looked at how unsustainable it was that we decided we can sell off this portion of it, pay off the debts that we've incurred and break even, right?

And then we could start it over.

So I started the business over and I'll give you some real numbers, I guess I've already worked 60 hours a week.

It was a landscape design firm and I was making like 60 grand a year with two kids.

But you can, that was, you know, 20/14/2015 you can live off of that.

But the amount of hours I was putting in to make 60 grand, that was a hard, hard.

I kept telling her one day it's going to pay off.

As soon as I I break this barrier and get to this amount of cruise and higher mid level management, then it's going to take off.

And she's like, when you've been saying that for a long time when but I don't know when you just need to keep going on for the ride.

And that was an unfair thing for me to require up right.

So we stopped and I was like, what I can do is we can figure out how much money do we need to make that we don't feel stressed from financial pressure.

And at that moment in time, it was like 80 grand.

We need to make 80 grand.

I'm not even making that now.

But if we get out of our debts, that increases my income.

And I switched over to a niche business where I just did design.

I kept my best guys.

We did this really high end custom work after that and immediately my income dropped every year.

My income was going up by like 1020.

Yeah, brother, nice move.

Yeah, and I didn't know it was going to do that.

I thought we'll make 80 grand and that's just where we're going to stick for a while until things get better and we reassess.

I had no idea that I was going to end up making more than six figures in just a few years, but it just started happening.

So my income went up, my presence and time and energy at home went up.

And it wasn't.

Things didn't just get miraculously better, but it provided opportunities for us to start healing.

But it got.

More incrementally better, like I want, I want to emphasize this.

You're telling the story is so awesome.

It it was the painful moment with her saying, Hey, this isn't sustainable.

Let's rework it.

I know.

And you probably meet a lot of guys like this and I do too.

And I felt this way too.

I felt stuck.

I felt trapped.

I, I felt like, what options do I have?

Like I don't have any other options.

Like I have to do this.

And I look around at the people that are around me.

I'm like, everybody else is doing it too, Like this is just the way it is.

But I love in your story and my stories similar is like, wait a minute.

No, I want to do things differently.

I want to be present as a husband and father.

And so I want to figure out a way to earn the income we want and need and still be present, still be engaged.

And making those shifts is critical.

I get that a lot, especially when I'm trying to talk about being present and having energy and and all this stuff and guys would in desperation and in reality, like man, I'm working 50-60 hours a week and maybe it's physical labor.

I'm barely making enough money.

Like what you're talking about is not realistic for my life.

Like this is privileged.

This is idealistic.

Like your, your head's in the clouds.

I'm like it.

It's not man.

I was 6-7 years into barely making any money, working crazy hours and before I made this shift into this other thing.

So I tell people when they're in that moment, I'm like, look, I know you can't get out of this thing in six weeks, but you and your wife sit down and talk about what's sustainable for your time and for your income.

And be real, we need this much money.

This job doesn't provide that.

So what are the moves we're making so that we can in three years maybe, and I don't know what that looks like for each person.

It might be 3 months, it might be three years.

But what are the moves we make now so that we come out of this instead of just continuing the downward?

I would know.

Exactly.

Right.

So that's.

Hopeless grinding, miserable treadmill.

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

Work before it gets better.

I'm like maybe when he has to get a part time job.

But if you're on the same page and you're like, we're going in a moment for six months and then we're putting an end on it, What's hard is for it to have no hope.

Like my wife asking me, when does, when do you start making six figures?

When do you get that big money?

And me telling her, well, I know it's been five years already and I don't exactly know when we just hold on indefinitely and she's drowning.

Like that's, that's not a thing.

You can ask if your wife or your kids or yourself.

And, and man, I've seen that so many times.

I'm glad, I'm glad you mentioned that, because in the coaching area to do with couples were men, it comes up and some of the saddest stories of divorces and broken families came because of this indefinite ask.

Just keep waiting.

Just keep waiting and thinking, well, it you know, it's, it's my wife that she'll understand.

She knows I'm doing this for her, for the family.

And it, it was asking too much and, and eventually, you know, it, it, it, it breaks some beautiful families.

And so, yeah, we can't, we can't keep going down that path and, and hoping things will change because hope is not a strategy.

We got to make some some serious changes.

Yeah, it's, it reminds me of, I know this is funny, that scene in Titanic where I don't remember people's names and that maybe, but they're at the end and they're both, you know, going to die because they're trying to both be on this one block and survive.

And there's all these people out there both fighting to get on whatever boat or furniture they can.

And they're killing each other and drowning, trying to find something to hold on to, to stay alive.

Now I'm like, that's how we are in a marriage.

A wife is fighting for connection with her husband for time, you know, help with the kids.

So she's not taking on all the emotional responsibility of raising the kids.

And he just comes in at the end of the day and kind of helps out.

You know, he helps instead of owns those responsibilities.

And the husband's dying for me.

And my wife only sees what I don't do.

She only sees that I'm not helping with the kids.

She's not saying how much I need.

And this is if she would support me, we'd get through this.

And you're drowning in your need and you're clawing at each other.

When you ask somebody in survival mode to meet an emotional need that you have, that's a really hard ask.

And when you're both in survival mode, that's hard.

I love the story or it's not a story.

It's just a true fact that but about, you know, oxen when they're yoked together or draft horses when they're yoked together.

And you might have heard this, but one can pull about.

I saw it.

I saw it.

I went to a rodeo and saw it.

Yeah.

So keep going.

This is awesome.

Well for people listening it's you know one can pull about 7000 lbs on a wagon.

So if you put 2 together, they don't just come and pull 14,000 lbs, they can pull upwards of £21,000.

And if you get 2 yokes together who have been raised together from an early age, they can get almost 30,000 lbs.

And so when you think of your marriage over time, these conversations about what does your work look like?

What does my work look like?

What finances do we need?

What are the needs of our kids and our unique emotional needs just for each other.

And you start having conversations to craft your own life.

You're, you know, your draft horses yoked together and you could pull more than the two drowning people just desperately trying to get the other person to meet your needs.

You know what I mean?

So that's.

Absolutely on.

So we went, we went to this rodeo.

I'd heard that principle and I went and and saw a horse pulling competition.

I thought, oh, this is going to be amazing.

And so I went and looked at all the teams and I picked my winning team, right.

They were huge and just beautiful.

I thought they're going to win for sure.

And so I watched a little competition and it wasn't that team, It was a smaller team that won.

And I had a chance to go over and talk to the drivers.

I'm like, hey, what, what, what was it?

What made the difference?

Why, why didn't the bigger, stronger teams win?

And he said because they hit the harness it exactly the same time it was it was being precisely In Sync with each other that made the power.

And then they won the whole competition.

And I walked away with that, with that same thing.

It's like, and if we can be yoked together, if we can be In Sync as much as absolutely possible and we can move mountains, we can do massive things together.

But it requires, it requires a, an open, an open dialogue and conversation that's often difficult and uncomfortable.

And this is something that comes up a lot with with the couples I coaches like you, you've got to get to this place where you can really truly talk.

Yeah, but I just wrote, I just had my first like e-mail newsletter go out in the first essay was on shared responsibilities.

And a lot of it was just around how do you people have this conversation?

So when I say shared responsibilities, that's all the responsibilities of the home, from making the money to buying the kids clothes, doing the dishes and and all this stuff.

And it's an important conversation to have because what I have found is that the natural roles that often happen is there's a breadwinner and then there's a homemaker, but often the default parent is the wife.

And the reason I think is because she's the parent before the child's even born, because she's taking care of the child in the womb, especially if the child was it's born as nursing and y'all are doing it that way.

She's caring for the child.

And then once that daughter or son turns two or three, it's still the mother who is primarily taking on the emotional responsibility of what happens with the kids.

Even if both parents work, it goes to the mother.

So unless a dad intentionally says, you know what, I'm making the doctor's appointments, you don't have to do dishes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I do the dishes.

They're mine.

I take ownership.

Yeah, because I would, and I did that for a long time.

I would help and I would do dishes, but my wife would say yeah, But I don't know when you're going to help or when you're going to be tired.

You do a lot of stuff.

I'm the one that has to make sure it gets done.

So it's taking up this emotional real estate in my in my mind.

But if we sit down and take work and, and time to say you do this, I do that.

And now she has the freedom to not think about it anymore.

She knows it's different for each family.

But like for us, I do food on the weekends, She doesn't do any meals on the weekends.

That's all me.

So she's like, I don't have to grocery shop.

I don't have to think about it.

I have to meal plan.

Daniel, just do it on the weekends.

And since we homeschool our kids and we get flexibility, I get to do homeschool on Sunday.

I was going to ask if you're involved in the homeschool because I am too.

We homeschool all of our kids and, and I'm involved in it and I, I take ownership of their education.

So it's not just all on her.

Yeah, so we talk about the curriculum together, but we didn't at first.

She picked out all the curriculum, but they're my sons.

I want to be involved in what they're learning, especially as they get older.

So now on Sundays and on vacation days or holidays, I take over the home school on those days.

And they have one day a week where they go to the Co-op.

So she does it on the other days, but she knows she doesn't have to do it that day.

And then I've got the kids all day.

But because we said that's what we're going to do.

But those conversations are really hard because when you first sit down to have it, if someone's like, hey, this is what I think is equal distribution of Labor and the other person says, no, I don't agree with that.

And you're trying to figure it out.

It's really easy to get defensive.

It's like walking through a field of land mines because it's insecurities and stuff for there.

So it's, it's a conversation you have to come at slow, you work at it over time and you get better at it, yes.

And and just talk about it openly, knowing that nothing is set in stone.

But let's get everything out on the table.

I, I did something that made a big difference and I'll share it here for, for people listening to see if it, it, it, maybe it'll serve some of them.

I never tried to get to an equal distribution.

And, and hello, a lot of people do that like, well, let's make this fair.

Let's just divide it.

And, and I don't think, I don't think that works very well, at least not for me and, and my wife.

And honestly, what I'm about to say is going to be ridiculous because moms work 24/7.

Like when do moms have time off?

When do they stop?

Like they work, they get up early, we're with the kids, they go interrupted during the night.

That's then.

And then they're daycare kids all time, all day.

We're working all day.

And we come on like, I worked so hard today.

I need a break.

She's like, well, so did I.

I worked all day long and will you expect me to keep working?

And then I worked tonight and then I get interrupted again tonight.

I mean, some moms just, they're amazing, absolutely amazing.

But the way I wanted to go with this is, is I, I at first I thought, well, it needs to be fair.

We need to divide it up.

And then for me, I thought, you know what?

No, I want to carry the lion's share.

I, I want to be the man here.

And I want to shoulder the bigger load.

If there's some unpleasant work to be done, that's on me.

If there's some heavy lifting to be done on me and, and I took that on and, and it, it's been absolute a game changer in our marriage and our family for me to generate the energy because I get tired too.

I'm working too.

And I get exhausted, I get worn out.

I get those times where I'm like, I don't want to do this.

There's no way in the world I want to do this.

But I, for me at least, this is where I dig deep and I'm like, you know, this is mine.

I'm going to own this and taking that load off of my wife made all the difference in our marriage and for our children, for our family, for our whole family dynamics, the feelings.

And, and so for me, at least as as a man, I want to do kind of, you know, quote, do the most and, you know, maybe need the least.

Now I'm not, you know, not getting neglected.

Of course I'm, you know, I have my needs and, and my wife meets some of the kids, but I want, I want to do the most.

And I don't know if that's true for everybody, but at least from for me and my family, I want to own that responsibility of like, you know, I do the most.

And of course, of course my wife's amazing.

She's doing tons.

She probably outworks me like crazy, but I want to take on the lion's share of responsibility.

Dude, that's awesome because I think a big part of this, well, one equal distribution of Labor is there's no possible way you can measure that.

There's no way to ever know it.

You know, you do want to have a sense of like, we're both doing stuff.

It's really just about communicating each other's needs.

So asking a question like, what would be the most helpful thing for me to do for you this week?

They would really take something off of you because my wife will usually tell me like if you could handle bedtime routines this week, that would be all.

So we check in all the time.

But here's the thing that you just did that is really powerful and that you change then the narrative in your mind to this is an obligation of something that I have to do to maintain my wife to this is my joy, my privilege.

And like, I'm proud of the person that I've become who does this kind of thing.

And so like, you want to do it because you feel all about yourself, about what you've provided for your wife and for your kids.

So there's this element of like a giving love.

Absolutely, yes.

Doing stuff out of obligation robs you of energy.

So getting that mindset right on the outset of, of doing this work helps.

And that's where you get all the way back into work life balance and healing trauma and and all this stuff.

If you're stuff still stuck in, I'm too tired and she's accusing me of being a bad dad and I'm a good dad.

And that's where your mind always goes.

So that inner work is important.

Like no, you got shift to a complete new space and that man, that's where the healing.

Comes Yep, so beautiful Hey, you said something a minute ago that that it comes up often for with people I work with and I want to I want to ask you about how you approach this.

Does your wife work?

Does she have an income?

OK, so she's, you're the, you're the breadwinner and she's the homemaker.

So a lot of, a lot of wives who choose to be moms and, and now not only mom, but educator, home educator and, and all the other roles that moms have.

So a lot of them, they feel, and I want all the gentlemen listening here.

I want this to really kind of hit home that if you, you have the income and she doesn't, then she depends on you for income, right?

And so she's going to naturally feel limited or trapped or in a spot where she doesn't have the, the opportunity in that moment to increase it, right.

And so like what she has available as far as financial resources comes from us.

And if we were to switch that role, I mean, I don't, I don't know for me, like for me personally, if we're to switch that role and I was totally dependent on somebody else and I didn't have my own ability to get the resources I needed.

I know that that that would be that could be a very frustrating feeling.

So with you providing, I'm really curious how you guys have worked that out for finances so that she feels like she has the resources she needs for for raising the kids, you know, taking care of all the kids, the house, keeping it nice and now home education on top of that and like overall family well-being.

How have you guys navigated that where like she feels where you both feel good about her being able to spend what she needs to spend?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Let's say 1 foundational principle that I hope everybody has is like, it's, it's our income, it's our money.

Like underlying principle and everything like my Instagram accounts, my e-mail, anything I do is always accessible to her at all times.

Same.

We have 100% transparency.

Yeah, like there's no separation of any of that stuff.

I have nothing that is not 100% my wife's to.

So we make a lot of those decisions together.

It kind of goes back to the the same conversation about what is our crafting, our life, what does that need to look like?

What do we need?

We do that same thing around money.

So it's, you know, we need this for our house because my wife, I at some point, I call her the curator of beauty in our home.

She likes me.

Exactly.

Yes, so does my wife.

I'm a dude and I like nice things usually outside the house, but inside the house it's me and four boys.

We are are not as nice, but we all love the home that she creates.

So being able to get her money for like homeschool curriculum, just nice drapes or hand towels that match and stuff like that.

I yeah, like that's not just practical things we need because that's how I think about, oh, it's practical.

I'm using it to wipe stuff up.

She's like, no, I want something beautiful because this is where I live.

So I do see it as this is an investment into my wife's soul.

This is the home that my kids grow up in.

And these things do affect us.

Like I don't want my kids growing up in a dorm room.

So my wife, which is where?

We would be if it was.

If it was just men and boys, it'd be a dorm room, Empty dorm room, or a cave.

So I guess the practical answer is that's that's just a budget talk.

Like we talk about this stuff together, like are we going to spend like it was last Christmas?

I think we had to get a new couch.

Like it was just time for a new couch.

And but that man, couches are expensive.

Like it's a few $1000 for a nice couch.

So we talked about it.

We talked about like getting a used couch and it's like used to couch is weird at this point in our life.

And eventually I just thought, man, my wife wants this.

This helps our home like and we have the money for it.

So I'm not going to Nick pick about things that I want.

So I'm just going to say, yes, we're going to do that.

But she also knows she's not going to ask me for like at our income level right now, she's not going to ask me for like some $10,000 couch to just be her Christmas present kind of thing.

So it's a lot of conversations like the same thing about shared responsibilities.

Like, we're open and we talk about it, but I have no possessiveness over that stuff and neither does she.

Yes, yes, yes, brother, you nailed it.

You shared some such pivotal things there because our wives, our wives want to provide the environment.

They want to beautify the environment they they have in their domain and, and their roles and and this that's theirs and they're so good at, you know, you and I maybe don't understand it.

We don't get it.

We don't really kind of see, oh, well, I wouldn't spend money on that or I don't really care about that.

But that's, that's her role.

That's her gift.

That's the power and beauty she brings into our world and we've got to have that freedom.

Say sure, Yep, those are those things are important to you.

I'm going to make them important to me and and allocate resources for that.

Man, I love that.

And that, that's a big deal.

It's, it's important to me because it matters to you and I love you.

So it, it matters to me now.

Yeah.

I love that.

So are are so how are you still in the same business?

Because I'm wondering how sure listeners are wondering like, what are you doing for business now?

Yeah, so that was really cool.

We stayed with this niche.

It was a landscape design with a niche on ecologically minded landscaping.

So it was if you want an Oasis that feels like nature in your backyard, that's what we do, right?

So it's less cookie cutter and more nuanced.

And I did that for several years.

And then a few years ago, a job as director of horticulture at the it's a 96 acre public garden in Memphis came up and I applied for the job, not had no idea what it would be, but I kept going through the interview process and finally it was like final three.

I had never had a boss before, right?

That was weird.

Or at least that since I was a teenager, I was like, all right, Ray, I might get this job.

Are we OK with that?

Like it's a nine to five.

Like then we never had a nine to five before.

That was right around the time we were having our fourth child and we decided that for a season of life that this was going to be a better situation for us for however long it lasted.

Because I'm an entrepreneur at heart.

I love doing that kind of thing, but a lot of the entrepreneurial itches I diverted into raising my sons and pursuing that.

And my work is, I guess this sounds bad.

It's a salary.

It's easier than being self-employed.

So once they offered me the job, I was like, look, this is how much money I make right now with my business.

These are my tax returns.

If you'll match this money, this amount of income, I'll come and work here.

And they offered it to me.

So it's been great.

So I'm the director of horticulture out of Public Garden.

I've been doing that for about 3 years.

And again, that was what fit our family best at this season of life.

I fully intend once our kids are older and not white, so in high demand to get back into entrepreneurship because I love it.

But my job is oriented around my family and not my family has to Orient around my job no matter what that job is.

Landscape company, men's coaching, being the director of horticulture out of nine to five, it's oriented around them.

So that's where I'm at right now and I.

Love it, brother.

That's so awesome.

So give us give us a quick kind of day in the life of a week in the life of just specifically, I'm, I'm curious about habits, routines, rituals, systems, strategies you guys have set up as a family that are working for you.

Just just so that people listening have some tangible things they can maybe try out or practice.

Yeah, so that's interesting.

I'm a morning person and my wife is a night person, so we recently changed because she'll like to sleep in till 8:00.

I get up at like 545 six and I love it.

So I get up and do my own routine as a man.

So I'll either read, I do cold plunges, I'll go run in the morning.

But like that's what I do, a little bit of my own like gross work for about 30 minutes, that kind of thing.

And then I wake the boys up and start their day.

So they start the day with me.

They each get a chore and it's like make your bed before you come out of your room.

They make breakfast for the whole family.

Like someone is responsible for making breakfast for everybody and then someone else will usually unload the dishwasher because somebody loaded it the night before and it's it's done.

So there's three of them that do dishes because the 18 month old doesn't do any work.

So they just get a chore in the morning and after chores, I set them up with their home school stuff.

And for us, we tackle the hardest subject first because that's a principle that I like.

Do the hardest thing in your day, first in the day, and two, that's most likely when we're going to get some complaining and feedback about.

And you're still there.

Yeah, I like to be the one.

I like to be the one to encounter those complaints as they're, that's a, to me, that's a manhood moment.

We talked about doing hard things and doing what you don't want to do.

And this is our job as man.

Like we have to do stuff we don't like because it's good for us.

That's discipline, right?

So I love that moment.

And then when I go to work at 8:15 or 8:30, I hand it off to Rachel and they're already breakfast is made, house is clean, they're already doing their home school work, right.

This is that is fairly new.

This is just a couple months old.

I love this routine.

It helps me be engaged and involved.

It sets her day up and what we do every day.

So that's a lot.

That's other thing.

That is huge, man, because you're, you're already winning.

You've already started your day, you've taken care of yourself, you've gotten everything teed up for her so she doesn't feel like first thing in the morning, she's just chasing kids and putting out fires.

You're you're kind of owning, doing the heavy lifting.

Seeing him pass it off to her I love.

That man, for her to wake up in the morning and because this is kind of what it was, it was like, oh, she does home school and I go to work.

So she'd wake up.

She's like, OK, there's breakfast has to be made, which is dirty dishes and the dishwasher is full.

And the kids are reluctant.

Like they don't want to do school yet.

They want to like hang out, play, she's fighting and maybe the baby's crying and having a bad morning.

Like all of a sudden my wife is in a hurricane and that's how she starts her day.

Oh my, that that's crap.

I can't how can I be a loving protector and provider and set my wife up for that?

Like that's that's not a thing, right?

So we set it up different.

So that's a practice that we have.

So that's the main one.

I usually work nine to five.

She just homeschool with the boys.

They're done at with school at like 12 or 1:00.

We do a lot of running.

So I run and do some sports with my boys almost every day because there's three of them and I need to get fitness in and so do they.

And so they usually go running with me so I can have quality time with my sons.

And we're being physically active, but they have soccer, baseball, basketball.

So we're always doing something right when I get home.

But then night time, it's pretty structured.

It's like we hang out as a family.

We have dinner, we clean up, do bedtime routines, kids go to bed.

And then we have a little bit of time for me and Rachel to hang out.

And that's either sometimes we talk and we have good conversations.

Sometimes we're like, no, let's just veg out and we'll watch a show or something.

It's like whatever.

We have the emotional wherewithal for that day.

That's how that kind of works.

So that's kind of family routine.

That's what I was hoping for to get some little insights to, to things you're, you're constantly modifying, refining and working in to to make work better.

That was that's an excellent example.

Let's wrap up right there, brother, because this has been so good, so insightful.

I really appreciate you.

Any, any last thought, anything that that's been on your mind that you see a lot of or or any last kind of bits of wisdom you'd share with with the men who are listening.

That's a good question.

But man, the main thing I want men to know is that there is a life that where you like you and your wife have a great relationship and you're present with your kids and you feel proud as a man of, of who you are and who you're becoming.

And you're not living in shame and survival mode and emotional reactivity because so many men are lost in that.

And they, they're like, there's no path.

This is just how we are and we live this way until we die.

And it's sad.

I'm like, it doesn't have to be that way.

And even I have seasons where I'm like, that's where I feel right now in this season.

Maybe it's two months during winter.

But you know, life always has ebbs and flows, but there is a better version of life than that.

It's cool with you.

I'm going to do a shameless plug real quick.

Yes, please.

Of course, yeah.

And March of this year, I'm doing, it's first time I've ever done like a coaching course.

So I got a couple courses that are going to come out because a lot of people made it on Instagram and even in messages and stuff.

People need to go so much deeper.

But what I'm most excited about is what about intentional fatherhood?

And it's being especially for fathers and sons because I got four boys.

But it's really taking 12 weeks to craft out your journey of initiating your stunts and guiding them from boys into being myth.

The idea is we think about the man you want to be, but really the foundational question is, who do you want your son to be the day he leaves, huh?

And how do we craft this journey over the next however many years you have left with him to prepare him to be that man?

And so we're going to do some intensive work for a a few months and we're going to have that journey crafted out and then you're going to put in the work after that.

I'm super excited about this course.

So they followed my Instagram on his fatherhood.

I'll be posting about it as it comes up if people want more information.

The Instagram page is kind of how I do all my, you know, getting messages out to the public, so.

Love that man brother that is beautiful and so needed and so important.

And, and I think that is one of the key elements of, of leaning into to fatherhood and just be, you know, trying to be world class fathers is a what is the end result?

What do I want my sons to be like, what my daughter's to be like when they are adults?

I play the long game.

What kind of relationship do I want with them?

How do I want them to to live life?

How do I want them to remember this time of their childhood with me?

I play that long game and and act accordingly.

Live accordingly.

That's awesome, man.

Congratulations, Siri.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, man, intentionality is key.

So Greg, thanks for having me on it.

I love this conversation.

Yeah, it's been great, Daniel.

Thank you.

Those of you listening, check them out on Instagram on Honest Fatherhood.

Thanks brother.