Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Strong Men Develop Strong Boundaries
In this episode of Mindfully Masculine, we explore the crucial role boundaries play in the life of a strong, self-aware man. Drawing from our ongoing discussion of the book *Unfck Your Boundaries* by Faith Harper, we break down the various types of boundaries—physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and time—and discuss how men can set and maintain these boundaries to protect their well-being and enhance their relationships. We also delve into the balance between rigid, flexible, and permeable boundaries, and why strong men need to understand and navigate these distinctions to lead fulfilling lives.
Types of Boundaries
Physical Boundaries: How you touch others and how they touch you. This includes comfort levels with physical contact and personal space.
Emotional Boundaries: Respecting your own and others’ emotional needs and personhood, and avoiding the pitfalls of violating these boundaries.
Intellectual Boundaries: Protecting your thoughts, beliefs, and ideas, and respecting others’ intellectual space.
Spiritual Boundaries: Understanding how your spiritual beliefs intersect with your interactions and respecting others’ spiritual spaces.
Time Boundaries: Managing your time effectively and learning to say no to protect your priorities.
Balancing Boundaries
Rigid Boundaries: When and why it’s important to have non-negotiable limits (e.g., not tolerating certain behaviors like disrespect or dishonesty).
Flexible Boundaries: How to adapt your boundaries depending on context and relationships, maintaining balance without compromising your core values.
Permeable Boundaries: The risks of having boundaries that are too loose, and how to firm them up to avoid being taken advantage of.
Practical Applications
Real-life Scenarios: Examples from personal and professional life where boundaries are tested, and how to navigate these situations with confidence.
Communicating Boundaries: Tips on how to clearly express your boundaries without coming across as defensive or aggressive.
Common Challenges
The Fear of Conflict: Why many men struggle to set boundaries due to the fear of causing conflict or being seen as difficult.
Learning Through Experience: How past experiences shape your current boundaries and what you can do to recalibrate them for better outcomes.
The Impact of Boundaries on Relationships
How setting boundaries early in a relationship can prevent future conflicts and misunderstandings.
The importance of discussing boundaries openly with partners, friends, and colleagues.
Why You Should Listen
Boundaries are the foundation of healthy relationships and personal well-being. This episode will equip you with the knowledge and tools to set boundaries that protect your peace and empower you to live a more fulfilling life. Whether you’re dealing with difficult colleagues, navigating romantic relationships, or simply trying to manage your time better, this discussion is for you.
Call to Action
Enjoyed the episode? Share it with someone who could use a lesson in boundaries! Subscribe to Mindfully Masculine for more insightful discussions, and leave us a review to let us know how we’re doing.
#MindfullyMasculine #StrongMen #Boundaries #MentalHealth #SelfImprovement #healthyrelationships
Welcome to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles Okay. In this episode, dan and I will continue discussing the book Un-F your Boundaries by Faith Harper, and we will introduce and discuss some more of the terms and concepts of boundaries, types of boundaries, flexible versus rigid boundaries, the challenges of maintaining boundaries, boundaries and relationships, and the importance of giving and receiving consent. Please check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom, where you can see full video episodes, all of our social media links, download audio episodes. It's all there, mindfullymasculinecom. Check it out. Thanks and enjoy.
Dan:Good morning Charles. How are?
Charles:you. Good morning, Dan. I'm well. Thank you, I'm tired and about to get more tired in the near future. Sounds you Good?
Dan:morning, dan, I'm well, thank you. I'm tired and about to get more tired in the near future Sounds exciting.
Charles:Can't wait for that. Yeah, after we're done recording, I'm going to get my haircut and then come back here, and then you're taking me to the airport and I'll be gone for 10 days, nine nights.
Dan:Okay, so I got to call you out. Though why are we tired? You're teasing us now. I'm tired because I woke up at four o'clock.
Charles:Why did we wake up sore? Because I still had things to do around my house before it was ready to abandon for 10 days. Last night I was running around tying down and zip tying all the outside stuff, that there's a tropical thing wave brewing out in the I think it's around Puerto Rico right now, but it's looking like it's going to come into the Gulf and possibly loop around. And I'm in Bradenton, not that far from the oceans. Yeah, had to do that, and I got very tired last night around probably nine o'clock or so, and then I still had more work to do, so I was like, all right, I'll set my alarm for four, so I just wake up and go to quick shower and shave and do the remaining tasks that I had to do.
Dan:Is this a little bit of a change of routine for you, where you call it quits a little bit earlier Like nine o'clock is earlier for a lot of people and decide to get up early and do more stuff?
Charles:No, that's what I usually do Like a couple weeks ago I had to be in Jacksonville before nine o'clock through. A couple weeks ago I had to be in jacksonville before nine o'clock and I had the choice of do I break the four hour drive in half and do part of it sunday night and finish the rest of it monday morning?
Charles:I was like no I would rather wake up super early and make that drive than drive at night. I think we talked about that at some point. We were talking about sleep and I think the breakdown is most people would naturally be better going to bed early, waking up early. It's just, you know, our between what we do for work and what we do for fun, a lot of people just aren't able to. Yeah, get on that schedule. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
Dan:I read some papers about our natural circadian rhythms and it actually the percentage of people who can operate later at night is actually higher based on your age and typically younger people, especially the people who are especially kids who are going into high school. Actually they were making the case that it's doing kids a disservice by having typically high school kids waking up earlier than the younger ones, because when you're before high school, the younger ones they're the ones that are more operate, similar to when we get older, where getting up early we're more alert. Our natural circadian rhythms percentage of the population higher is higher in the younger kids and when you get to high school, that shifts high school and college and that's why a lot of college kids and high school kids can work those late night shifts and stuff like that and still operate. That means they also need to sleep later as well. So when you force them to get up early, it's got to be.
Charles:There's got to be hormones. I was always right. All the hormones that are dumping post-pubescent.
Dan:That would totally line up for me in my mind. Yeah as well. I just haven't fallen asleep in high school all the time, those early, those early classes and stuff. I was never been a great sleeper but yeah, I could be part of it.
Charles:I'm going to blame my hormones on that. Yeah, I've been having a couple nights a week where I've been waking up around one and not getting back to sleep until about four and just waking up and not feel like I was going back to sleep, or waking up and checking my phone and then just not putting it down for hours.
Dan:So I don't know if you've heard this or if I mentioned it down for hours. So I don't know if you've heard this or if I mentioned it. Apologize if I have, but it's not just the blue light that causes us to stay awake. They found that the high flicker rate of those types of screens is very stimulating to our brains, and so it's not just. It doesn't matter how dim it might be or how yellow it might be. By looking at a screen, it's literally stimulating. Yeah, I do too.
Charles:All the people who say don't have the phone, even in the room. I get it but I can't do it or I've chosen not to do it. I can say I could do it if it mattered, yeah, yeah, or it hasn't, yeah. So a couple things I wanted to you into doing. 75 hard you did. What day are you on? Six, how's it go? A?
Dan:it's going. It's still going almost a week. Almost a week. I am starting to get a little bit sore from the two workouts a day and also the all the yeah, the walking, but it's going well. It's going well, I'm enjoying it and I'm enjoying the 10 reading, the 10 pages every day. I am not a huge reader, but I found some good books because and again, it's non-fiction books, so it's right up my wheelhouse. I don't read the non-fiction stuff anyway, I don't listen to the non-fiction stuff, and it's only 10 pages, so it was pretty quick. Oh boy, yes, I meant fiction. So you can see my brain's a little tired because I've been getting up very early to go to the, go to the gym and try and get everything done. But it's been good.
Charles:I posted a meme earlier this week that said something about the. I'm not the product of thousands of years of handed down oral tradition, just to hear people tell me that audio books are cheating and I do agree with that, for the sake of keeping your language precise it's very easy to say, oh, I read a book, when you really listened to a book, and I get people who think that distinction should be maintained. But man, I like listening to books and I get a lot. I would say I get more out of listening to a book than I do out of reading a book.
Dan:I used to think that myself I'm a huge, and I still do. I still love that because I can multitask. But sitting down and reading these books, not just for the 75 Heart Challenge but for our podcast, whenever we bought the book, I definitely retained the knowledge more easily in a different part of my brain when I'm reading it than when I listened.
Charles:Oh yeah, Then tell me what sort of crystal promotes being the best.
Dan:I think it was amethyst Anyway.
Charles:So, yeah yeah, the self care for men was the last book that we did not have access to an audio copy we had to read and it was miserable, so that made it miserable for me.
Dan:I guess maybe it's not a fair comparison because we're also listening to this on audio and I'm reading it as well, so I'm getting it from both sensors. Sensors oh my gosh man, sensors. Yeah, we might need to, we might need to, so anyway, but the side effect too of the 75 hard is. It's actually helped me get a little bit more disciplined in some of my other habits that I wanted to start. For example, wordle I don't know if you know that game from. Yeah, okay, shirk by, because he's so mad at ted danson. He was telling them the answer to wordle before they actually had a chance to do it, and so that was his little petty way of ruining the guy's day, right, I had some people sharing the word of the day on facebook.
Charles:I would unfriend them immediately. That's a story. If you did that, I would. Yeah, during the pandemic was when I oh, I think I see him out and I was playing it every day and I had streaks going like crazy.
Dan:My dad's really into it, yeah. So I was like you know what, I just came back from visiting my dad and I'm like you know what, trying to find new ways to connect and stuff, and I'm like, all right, teach me Wordle, because we'd sit there and we'd watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and stuff like that and I enjoyed that doing that with him. It's kind of like Wheel of Fortune stuff. You go with the most popular constants and vowels. What's the starting word? It changes depending on what I feel like. I try to focus on the R, s, t, l, n, e. I try to get two or three of those and then a couple extra ones. I don't have one yet. I agree, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've started doing that and I've got a little streak going and it happened to coincide with me starting 75 as well, and it's nice because then I'll text my dad every morning and say, okay, this is my score and he'll text me back and that's his score. So just like another way of connecting with him and it's been a nice little side effect.
Dan:So who's better at it? Who were you? Oh, him, by far. He used to be like a Scrabble champion, like he memorized all the two and three letter words in the dictionary so he could be really competitive with Scrabble online. Yeah, is it, or a little bit weird, I don't know. I just all the two and three letter words. There's a lot of them, there was like 80 some. I had no idea. Yeah, that would help Scrabble, I feel like that's almost cheating.
Charles:But whatever, there was something like that. I there was some game that I would study for in that way. Maybe was just trivia nights, when, when we would go to trivia where they would tell you what the topics were going to be in advance, oh, I would just yeah, if it's okay, there's gonna be, one of the topics is hockey or something like that. And then I'd go online and be like okay, what are what are the most common hockey facts or stuff that would come up in trivia, and I'm well that I've had ai would make cheating on stuff they didn't. It's not really cheating, prepping.
Dan:I was prepping for that. But you know what? That's not cheating, because everybody knows what it's going to be about.
Charles:Everybody suss up anybody else for that right the other thing I wanted to bring up was we got some feedback on a recently aired episode and I wanted to get your opinion on this.
Charles:In talking about this was back when we were doing our series on the five love languages, and some of the things I said and you probably said or agreed with, about how women will have more opportunities for relationships or at least for being courted by partners than men do, or at least for being courted by partners than men do, and how that can possibly, why that could be a factor and why more relationships are ended by women than men. And the feedback I got from one of our listeners and a friend of mine who was a woman was no, you don't understand. It's not easy to just go find good men for relationships. It's extremely hard to find them. So we're not walking around with this attitude of I'll just jump out of this relationship because I can go find somebody better. And while I would agree with her that it is equally difficult for men and women to find optimal partners, but the amount of pursuit that women often get from suboptimal partners is way higher than the amount of pursuit that men get from suboptimal partners.
Dan:That makes me think of an interesting point here. Potentially is it more difficult for women to find an optimal partner because they have to sift through all the suboptimal stuff that they're being confronted with, versus a man who, typically an average guy, isn't being dealt with, isn't being handed offers from optimal or suboptimal women on a daily basis. It's once in a while and so is it. Is it, is it more? I guess that's the question is, a woman also could be not realize it's suboptimal initially, and they end up wasting time with a guy who is suboptimal.
Charles:That's what I was going to say I think, yeah, I think that's definitely a pattern that happens, where a woman's in a relationship with a guy and the relationship's not going as good as it was at the beginning. The guy is not seeing and hearing her, not courting her, not speaking her love language, not being romantic, and then she's getting attention from some other guy at work or in their friend group or whatever, and because things aren't going well at home and she's getting attention from this guy and this guy is new and novel and unique because that's not who she sees and deals with every day. Yeah, I think sometimes that attention can feel like, oh, maybe the grass is greener, and then turns out, if she does leave the one relationship for the other one, that grass wasn't as green as it looked like when she was in the middle of her own not really watered that well lawn. You know what I mean. I think women and we've also talked about women are more selective because the cost of getting it wrong for them is usually higher, whereas with so much of human history, if a guy marries the wrong woman, procreates with the wrong woman, for a lot of our history all that guy had to do was move to the next town and start over, where it's not that easy for the ladies. They're stuck with the kids that they that are made, yeah, that union, and they have to raise them and take care of them and so forth.
Charles:So, yeah, so for that reason, I think women are choosier than men are and, as a result, because the converse of that is, men are less choosy than women and so I think for women to maintain the high standards that they have on who they're willing to get into a relationship with, that, yes, it probably is harder for them to find someone good enough. Yeah, it's their trailer too. Yeah, but again, I would say, for so many guys they're going through life feeling like they've got no options at all, and so if they are in a relationship and that relationship goes south and they get dumped, then they're going to look around. There's usually not a group of female coworkers or friends or whatever that were just waiting for that guy's relationship to end so that they could ask him out. Yeah, it doesn't happen that way.
Charles:Yeah, where, again, even with women, even if the choices that they get immediately after their breakup goes public they're not ideal choices they're still very quickly gonna have the men around them will usually do something to reaffirm their value as a romantic option where I would say, the majority of guys don't get that kind of experience. Yeah, yeah. So on the one hand, I do agree with her that, yes, finding a partner good enough for a long-term relationship is not easy for men or women. But getting the ego boost of interest from people that are at, or slightly below a level that you would mostly, I would say, slightly below or further below what you would actually accept as a partner, yeah, to get interest from that kind of person is way, way easier for women than men and on that note as well, even if you are swimming in a pool of suboptimal partners, you do build a little bit of experience and knowledge of what you don't want, which I feel like helps you zero in on what you do want.
Dan:I feel and I was assuming here, obviously that on the whole, women have a better idea of a suitable partner for them than an average man would, in terms of just experience saying, okay, I'm seeing this. And the other thing is, I think it's more comfortable and more common for women to talk about relationships with each other. True, they're building knowledge just from their basic day-to-day conversations. And guys, we don't typically talk about that stuff with other guys and if we do, it's rare and sometimes maybe with women. So I feel like women are better at figuring out, and they need to be, because they have definitely like some consequences, more serious consequences, if they make wrong choices. But I think they've got I think they just the environment that a typical woman is in.
Dan:I feel like they've got better experience at figuring out very quickly who's a good partner, who's not. And we're guys, we're not exposed to that. So one, there's that feeling of scarcity. So we're going to probably let things go with that. We shouldn't with partners. When we do have, when we finally do have an opportunity to connect with somebody right, we might not be as diligent about some of our standards. We let it go. I've been there but I just think just lack of experience from a guy's standpoint puts us at a disadvantage in terms of trying to connect with somebody optimally.
Charles:Yeah, and I think the abundance versus scarcity mindset definitely backside up with some of the statistics that you hear about dating apps, where you know some ridiculously high what I consider to be ridiculously high percentage of women will set their height requirement at six foot and not even consider going under it, and I think Bumble said it was like 75% of women will say six feet or over or I'm not interested, and then the swiping rates like women will swipe, like on 5%, swipe right on 5% of guys, where guys are swiping around 50-50. Yes and no on women. And so, yeah, the choosiness is definitely a factor. And then out there in the world, that's going to be. You're going to see that too with the way that men will talk to or approach or flirt with women versus women talking to, approaching or flirting with men.
Charles:Yeah, versus women talking to approaching or flirting with men. Yeah, it's, yeah it. Well, I do agree it's hard to find a good partner that's a good match for you, for everybody. Sure, everybody struggles with that. Yeah, but the world feels like a more abundant place for most women, especially what society considers to be conventionally attractive women. It's very easy for them to walk around with an abundance mindset of lots of men want me. It's still hard to find the right man, but lots of men want me, where very few of the guys that we are or we know walking around with that mindset of some women want me and they demonstrate that to me almost every day. Like, that's a very small number of men and usually it has more to do with success, fame and status than it does just how physically attractive those guys are. But yeah, when you're Chris Hemsworth, you're going to walk around feeling like, oh hey, almost every woman I see wants me.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Because they probably do yeah For a variety of reasons, and that's not a moral judgment. I think the way people work at scale is just the way people work and there's nothing right or wrong about that. It just is what it is. But we do have unique challenges and unique approaches and unique experiences when it comes to our relating to potential romantic partners, but, again, the one thing we both share in common is finding the right person is difficult. I agree, okay, thanks. I want to encourage our audience to continue giving us feedback.
Dan:That was great. I really enjoy I want to talk about it Making me think about things again a little bit differently. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, keep them coming, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, that's great.
Charles:So now, we're going to talk about boundaries. We're still using the Un-F your Boundaries book by Faith Harper and we're going to get into some definitions today on what are boundaries? Boundaries, in the very general sense, are the lines that are between one area and another area. Boundaries aren't just hard no's, they can also be maybes and yes. Within these parameters, yeah, and we'll talk about those flexible boundaries, those rigid boundaries and those permeable boundaries in a minute, but first we'll go through the. I think she has got seven types of boundaries. Physical boundaries deal with basically how you're touched and how you touch others, how you touch others, and that can certainly overlap with your sexual boundaries, which is a type we'll go to, but it can also be completely free of that.
Dan:I definitely have some permeable boundaries and she even said in the book she's like you probably picked up this book because your boundaries are too permeable and she's guilty for sure. So I'm. I definitely want to firm up some of mine.
Charles:Next time I'm in a group situation with you, so you'll see me do it and you'll laugh. I'm going to and somebody gives me the I'm a hugger. I'm going to do. I'm going to give him my hand and be like I'm not and just shake their hand and then immediately hug someone else, just to rub their face at it.
Dan:I'm gonna go take it one step further.
Charles:I'm a kisser I'm an open mouth is there, okay, yeah, how you touch people, how people touch you, when, where, how, who, all that stuff, those are your physical boundaries. Property boundaries is your stuff, basically, yeah, and other people's stuff, yeah, and how comfortable you are letting people have access to your stuff either giving it to them, letting them borrow it, whatever that is any anything about your property, yeah, how you handle other people's access to it and how you access other people's stuff, that would be your property boundaries. Yeah, sexual boundaries, not just the physical and emotional aspects of sex. But I like that she got into the more details with the kinds of people we like, what we like to do with those people, the except language that we find, except yeah, just talking about sexual or willing to anything related sexually absolutely falls in this boundary, absolutely you can definitely encroach on people's sexual boundaries.
Charles:If you tell a joke around them that, yeah, you're fine with, but they don't like, makes them uptight of self.
Dan:So in that case, who's to blame? Because the person. If they don't express that. I'm uncomfortable with this type of walk, yeah, how is that other person supposed to know? Or should the other person just play it safe and not? I mean and you know that's where it's tricky, and she even makes a point here that there's no magic formula to be applied because it changes based on the situation, the person.
Dan:So there's there is no magic formula, but it's again one of those things where and over time it could change too people have different opinions as they learn things to get older, so their boundaries might shift as well.
Charles:So it's a it's a little bit of an art form here and I would say certainly the setting that you're in is going to make a point, a big impact on that. If you just meet a new co-worker, what jokes are okay to tell them?
Charles:yeah art might be different from some guy you hit it off with. Sit next to you at the strip club. He might be hearing some jokes that Susie, the new intern in the file department, when she's open to hearing. I think setting should probably be the number one, but maybe your relationship to the person and the setting that you're in is going to be big. And yeah, ideally, when you're comfortable enough to tell a dirty or off-color joke around someone, it's also someone that you know is comfortable enough with you to say, hey, I'm really not into hearing this kind of thing. Yeah, so if you are unsure whether they are comfortable enough to tell you, thanks, but no, thanks, I don't want to hear those kind of jokes, then you should probably also be uncomfortable with telling them those kind of jokes yeah, for sure.
Charles:If it's not obvious, play it safe. Yes, emotional relational boundaries are not just about how we want to feel and how others want to feel. They're more about demonstrating our respect for our own personhood and the personhood of others. Yeah, seeing someone as a unique individual who has their own list of things that they're into and not into, and their own feelings and their own responses to the things around them, that's. These are a bit more nebulous and a little harder to get to the root of until somebody, pretty well.
Charles:And then it's time to ask those questions of, and just be watching and looking for people's reactions and trying to notice when the people around you feel uncomfortable and say, hey, did you feel when I did this it felt like you might've had some feelings around that you want to talk about that.
Dan:And yeah, just being on your guard for that is very important, absolutely, because you don't want to just develop a pattern of just trouncing on somebody's emotional boundaries yeah, I usually try to take the approach of what I can remember, listening and trying to hear what things they talk about and try to get a sense of whatever I'm trying to express to them or want to express to them, listening for related type of things coming from them to just figure out where they lie on that spectrum of my compared to what I'm saying. And, of course, a lot of times what I'm trying to say maybe never comes up in conversation or whatever. So I think it's important to try to, like you said, just really pick your audience wisely and just really assess where they're coming from before just blurting stuff out.
Charles:Yeah, and especially blurting stuff out that does anything to minimize their experience or their feelings, such as when we got an upset kid and the parents you're okay, it's all right, you're fine, you know that would be a violation of an emotional boundary, yeah. Or telling a romantic partner oh, I didn't do anything wrong, I wasn't trying to offend you. Yeah, stuff like that, yeah, I'm sorry that it bothers you when I do this. A lot of stuff, a lot of stuff from the last book about the bad apologies right, those bad apologies are encroaching on people's emotional relational boundaries and, yeah, keep that in mind.
Charles:I was a little less clear on the intellectual boundaries, about thoughts, beliefs and ideas and how they are respected. They're also about access to information, ideas and opportunities to learn. So I could use a better example of what is an emote or an intellectual boundary. I guess it might be getting someone to help you with something or tell you something that you can then use for your own good without crediting or benefiting them. I don't know. I wasn't really clear on this one yeah, it's.
Dan:I feel like it blends into all the others in some way, right, yeah, it doesn't respect that someone could be emotionally high, but doesn't respect your worldview. Is that really intellectual?
Charles:I guess one of it would, okay, imagine a scenario like this would this be an intellectual boundary? You, as a fundamentalist christian, have a child, and that child comes home from school and says I read in a book that the earth is 4 billion years old, not 6,000 years old like you told me.
Dan:And then throwing out the book. Yeah, I would say that I don't get to read that book anymore.
Charles:Yeah, I would say that. Imagine that would probably be encroaching on their intellectual back. Yeah, and then you get into yeah, I wonder. I don't think she gets really into the boundaries between parents and children in this book, At least she hasn't so far from what I've read. But there's some interesting conversations to have about where parents get to set boundaries on behalf of their children and where parents are required to respect the boundaries of their children on behalf of their children and where parents are required to respect the boundaries of their children.
Dan:That's again not an easy answer, I feel, because it's your child and you. I want to bring it up in the way that you think is best, and part of that process for me would be to naturally set boundaries because this is what you believe to be best for them. Right and yeah. At what point, though, are you doing them a disservice? Yeah?
Charles:and we've with some of the conversations in florida, specifically about access to books and things like that, and and access to other people's ways of life and things. The thing I've added is it's a parent's job to teach their kids how to think and how to feel, not what to think and what to feel. Yeah, because if you take on the role of, I'm going to teach their kids how to think and how to feel, not what to think and what to feel. Yeah, because if you take on the role of I'm going to teach you what to think and what to feel, then as soon as your kid is approached by someone who's better at convincing them what to think and what to feel, they're going to jump ship from what you taught them to what the other person taught them when, if you teach them how to think and how to feel, then they'll be able to evaluate thoughts and feelings that come their way and decide which. What's a good thought, what's a good feeling of my classes in college. But that's something I feel is a valuable skill.
Dan:It is, in addition to managing your finances, which should be taught in high school or elementary school as well, and it's typically not right. Yeah, I think there's a lot of critical life skills that just unfortunately get kind of brushed under the.
Charles:If you're not by your parents and if you're not taught them by your school, then where are you going to pick them up? And I, I would almost say, if you have not figured out how to recognize and label your own feelings and you're not capable of identifying where your thoughts come from, maybe you're not ready to start having kids yet fair we would certainly have a very different looking society if people prioritized I need to understand the nature and the origin of my own thoughts and feelings before I reproduce.
Charles:We would have a bit of a different looking society, I would say. So. Spiritual boundaries, yeah, this is what I'm sure I must have encroached on more when I was more heavily religious than now. Yeah, but yeah, how we practice our spiritual beliefs, how we share them with others, those spiritual boundaries, they she offers the example of making someone pray or refusing to allow someone to pray.
Charles:I would also say dismissing the things that people believe as nonsense. When that's what you feel, which obviously you're allowed to feel that the things that people believe are nonsense, but how you would express those to those people? And, uh, I'm sure I still struggle with doing that, mostly unintentionally. But then again, when someone wants to impose their spiritual boundaries on me and say you have to live this way because X, y, z and I'm going to use my spiritual boundaries to inform the kinds of laws that I support being created in society, then it's a very natural reaction to say, okay, I'm going to push back on your spiritual boundaries by violating them and dismissing them and saying that they're nonsense or whatever yeah, it's hard to not get dragged down into, yeah, very much that, that level of communication yeah yeah, I think, not just with spiritual conversations, but almost any conversation, it's yeah, we start to feel emotionally, we get riled up because our boundary got violated and now our emotions are running high.
Charles:It's tough because, look, you're just going by the numbers and I think this is. I may have a blind spot here, but I would find this argument hard to refute. The majority of people on the planet participate in religions where the free exercise of their religion includes modifying society in a way that forces compliance with their religion.
Dan:Yeah, that doesn't. I never understood that.
Charles:And it's for me to feel like I'm being a good fill in the blank. Christian Muslim, you need to spread the word, right, I've got to spread the word and I have to codify the word into the government of the place I live, so that certain things about what I believe even the people around me who don't believe them have to behave as if they do. Yeah, that had more people that not live in those societies.
Dan:Yeah, including us right now in America, yeah yeah, that had more people that not live in those societies. Yeah, including us right now in America, yeah yeah, that doesn't jive with me either.
Charles:Yeah, it makes respecting and maintaining our own spiritual boundaries feel impossible.
Dan:The other thing that I've come to realize, too, is some people actually enjoy those feelings of being uncomfortable by having confrontations with other people. It's not something that, necessarily, is easily cured or fixed right, nor is it your job to fix somebody else, but I think it can happen quite a bit. Not because they believe it so much, but maybe they're getting a dopamine hit or feeling good because they're going out there, right. Yeah, what was that? What did High Coughlock High Coughlock personality that was this book, that's right. She talked about it right. And it's just because that's what they're, that's the pattern that they have and it's how they enjoy things.
Charles:Yeah, or they feel like they need it. Whether they enjoy it or not, they feel like it, yeah, yeah. The last one is time boundaries, which I liked. This is one I hadn't thought about before, but she talked about it, me either, yeah.
Charles:Where there are things that don't encroach on any of your other kinds of boundaries, you'd be interested in doing them. You just don't have the time and you have to prioritize, to say I don't have a problem with that, it's something I might enjoy, but I just don't have the time to do it. So I'm not going to do it, and that's a hard one to maintain with yourself, because it's about keeping your values in mind, keeping your other boundaries in mind, and say listen, there's a lot of things I'd love to spend my time doing.
Dan:And some of those I just can't say yes to because I would have to say no to something that is worth more to me. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's probably one of the biggest boundary categories that I would say most of us have is saying yes and over committing to other people or other things.
Dan:And that means our time boundary to our. It's our own fault. Yeah, we don't have to say yes most of the time. It obviously depends. But I know to say yes most of the time it obviously depends. But I know I've been guilty of that too, and that's when we start to feel overwhelmed because we're not good enough about holding up our own time boundaries.
Charles:Yeah, which will often lead to the other kinds of boundaries getting trampled on too.
Dan:And here's something I think about too is another reason why I found value in Strategic Coach and other people who say schedule your free time first is because if you have nothing scheduled in a block of time and somebody asks you to do something, that thing when nothing is there. But if you have carefully curated and planned out free time, rest time activities, self-care activities and you book that into a calendar and you see those as actual appointments, it's a lot easier not totally easy, but a lot easier to say at least there's something there to hold back from saying yes to that other commitment.
Charles:Yeah, that was one of the great things in Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, where he said every time you agree to an hour-long meeting and you put it on your calendar, also put in an hour of, if not free time, certainly an hour of self-work time where you're able to just work alone by yourself. That was brilliant. So let's real quick, go through the three kinds of boundaries and when we use a rigid boundaries, our boundaries, where it's like I'm setting this and nobody violates.
Dan:I liked her example Like I've got a pretty rigid boundary about people punching me in the face or draining my bank account. I was like, okay, that's a pretty good example.
Charles:Yeah, you never want to be in a position where some people are allowed to punch me in the face or some people are allowed to drain my bank account and I was like, no, that's, that is a rigid boundary. No one's ever allowed to treat me this way. I'm not ever tolerate this behavior. Uh, permeable ones, basically, that's anybody who wants to get their way through that boundary are going to be able to get their way through that boundary. Other people define those boundaries for you and they basically treat you the way they want to treat you when they want to treat you that way. And permeable boundaries really aren't boundaries. They're, there's that there's. You're unspoken, boy, I wish life this way. Instead, these are covert contracts, yes, yeah, yeah, where you wish things were a certain way, but you're not willing to, or you expect things to be certain way to verbalize it to other people.
Dan:What's interesting is she said about this was a lot of us. We picked up that book because we have permeable boundaries and I think it's because we're used to making covert contracts and we're not that comfortable having those conversations with people about our boundaries. And I liked the way she phrased it when she said I would rather have an uncomfortable conversation about my boundary than go through my life having other people dictate exactly what I do and when I do it.
Charles:Yeah, and we said that in the last episode or maybe when we were at the end of Five Love Languages. Uncomfortable conversations lead to comfortable lives.
Dan:We need to say that more often. I forgot that. I need to be reminded of that for sure.
Charles:Yeah, it's tough. The example she offered, which I thought was great, was she has a permeable boundary when clients come to her office for therapy sessions. I think she says she has a sofa and she has a comfy saucer chair, which I guess is where she likes to sit. But basically, when you come into her office for therapy, you can sit wherever you want. You can sit on the floor, you can sit in her chair, you can sit on the sofa, you can sit wherever you want to. You can sit on the floor, you can sit in her chair, you can sit on the sofa.
Charles:She doesn't care, she has a preference. But she does not have a boundary and permeable boundaries can be the same as I've got a preference, and it's a light preference to the point where I'm not even telling people that I have it. I guess the negative side of that would be covert contract. The other side could be there are some things where I just don't care. I have a very light preference for when I go to a restaurant to have my back to the wall face of the door. But if I hold the door open for my girlfriend and she walks in before me and she takes that seat, I'm not going to be like hey, can I have that seat. Instead, it's a mild preference. If I was the first one in, I might grab that chair, but if I was the second one in and I didn't get that chair, I don't care.
Dan:Another example that I like to use with herself actually was she doesn't take calls after 9 pm and she's got a son West Coast or a different time zone who literally can't call her before 9 pm and sometimes calls her after that.
Charles:She doesn't take calls from anybody else, but if he calls she will take that and even when he does call, she's not staying on the phone with him all night. She's having a short sort of catch-up conversation how the day, but she's not getting into anything super heavy or super lengthy with him. So, yeah, with her it's. Yeah, he can. I've got this rule. But my son can call me. But even when my son calls me, we're not. We're not going to get into a heavy conversation that I stay on the phone with them all night. For If a conversation like that has to happen, she'll schedule it with them.
Dan:It's like a VIP list, right? Yeah, whatever that is, only certain people are allowed to engage with you.
Charles:People on my phone are allowed to call me or text me, even when my phone's in do not disturb, as a very exclusive list which you happen to be on.
Dan:Oh, you're on mine as well.
Charles:So I appreciate that, yeah, these flexible boundaries, these the sort of middle ground that she talks about, which is going to be dependent on lots of other factors. You're okay with certain things sometimes and not other times and you get to make those calls where permeable boundaries are always like okay, this, you should do some introspection to see if this boundary is permeable for a reason or people are just walking all over you. Where flexible, it's a little harder to verbalize why some things feel okay with some situations and they, the same thing, could not feel okay in other situations. But you're entitled to that, that's okay.
Dan:Yeah, and that's the whole purpose of this book, and what we're doing with this podcast is getting to a place where you feel okay making those calls.
Charles:Yes, absolutely, and you don't want to be too permeable too much of the time, you certainly don't want to be too rigid too much of the time and you don't also want to just be flexible where you have no hard and fast rules. So it's-.
Dan:A little bit of, I think, hard and fast, a little bit of I think hard and fast, a little bit of flexible, I think what?
Charles:she said yeah, and I think the the workbook that she sells might. This might be a good time to mention that, cause that's probably a good resource. We haven't bought it yet I probably will, but I haven't yet but that seems like a good resource for working through some exercises to narrow in on a little bit more on what your boundaries are, which ones should be rigid, which ones should be permeable, which ones should be flexible, and how you feel about certain things, and identifying. Here's some times when I had a boundary and it was encroached upon, or when I should have had a boundary that I never actually expressed but would probably been a good idea. Doing some of that work probably is good for you and the people that you surround yourself with absolutely, because that gives you clarity.
Dan:There's gonna be things that you've you might have some feelings about or might be a little bit blurry about, but you've never actually written them down or gotten clear on them like a goal. And the same thing is, if you're not clear on that, you're never going to basically be able to get that, because it's still blurry and you're gonna have a really difficult time communicating that to somebody else, and so you're not going to feel comfortable doing that. And so then a lot of times you fall into the trap that I fall into sometimes, which is just rather not have that conversation.
Charles:Yeah, and there there is potentially a cost to this too, which is particularly in romantic relationships. If two people are in a relationship together and they very clearly communicate all of their boundaries, their what's the list again Physical property, sexual, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and time, you could come to the conclusion that, okay, we might not be a good match with each other If somebody has a physical boundary. Look, I don't like public displacement of affection at all. I guess I could be a physical and a sexual. I don't even want you to hold my hand or put your arm around me in public. It makes me feel awkward.
Charles:Yeah, Like, well, I'm really kind of into that. And if you're telling me that that's your boundary, that's a rigid boundary for you, and it's also a rigid boundary for me that I like to express myself that way to my partner. Rigid boundary for me, that I like to express myself that way to my partner. Okay, then we need to have a conversation about the prospects of us moving forward in this relationship. But, boy, that's certainly better. The earlier you find something like that out, the better off you're going to be.
Dan:She also does say that it does change over time and it does change in different situations. That's, I think, something to dig into and say, hey, how rigid are you on that boundary? It could be her past experience just was really negative when it came to PDA and maybe she's going to feel a bit more comfortable with you based on some time that you spend together, right. So it's not necessarily like a death sentence, but it's just good points to actually address because they're important good points to actually address because they're important.
Charles:Yes, unless, uh, if someone tells you this is a problem for me and I'm never going to be okay with it, then you believe them okay, okay.
Dan:You said before that I'm never going to be okay with it. That's different.
Charles:I totally agree with you otherwise, you could find yourself in a situation where you're now putting a covert contract and you're trying to manipulate them.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Once she gets to know me, she'll be able to understand why this is okay. And yeah, you don't want to set yourself up for if somebody says whether it's another sexual thing or the way that her time is where she needs alone time, she needs to decompress after work for an hour before she is willing to talk to you about your day. When somebody says this is what I need, this is what I've always needed, this is what I'm always going to need, and then you say, yeah, she'll come around once she gets to know me, once she has a good of a boyfriend or husband.
Dan:Listen if you can find somebody who knows that and can express that to you, that's some value there, whether it works for you or not. But I feel like a lot of us. I think it's rare to find somebody who goes I know this is what I need. I know this is how I haven't. I haven't done that, I haven't been that way, I haven't met anybody who's I have to have this kind of which. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I'm saying I think that's valuable to be able to have that, at least get that information. Part of it comes from asking questions. Oh, I got to ask questions. Dude, so much work Having conversations. Why do you always make me do more work?
Charles:Yeah, it really when somebody can say, when somebody has a conversation, this is my boundary, this is probably always going to be my boundary and this is how I arrived at this boundary. This is what happened before. That makes me need this now. You got to take them at their word and not think, yeah, but she'll change her.
Dan:She'll come around yeah.
Charles:Yeah, yeah, that's true, yeah, because, look, I think once, once you get, once people get into relationships, they want to maintain that momentum of staying in that relationship, and we're always looking for reasons why we should stay and rarely looking for reasons why we should go until things get really bad, and then you're probably only seeing reasons why you should leave. But for the most part, I think most of us you and I, both 100% of the people at this table have been in situations where you saw very good indicators that the relationship was not going to last and you decided not to see them and focus on the yeah, but maybe it will last because of this. And so I think when somebody tells you their boundaries and their boundary and your boundary, their boundary and your needs are incompatible, then you got to say, okay, that sucks, but it's better to learn that now than five years from now.
Dan:Yeah, I think going through the workbook, and through this book as well, will help you get a little bit more clear on what your needs are and what your boundaries are, and it will be a little bit more obvious, I think, moving forward than with relationships, when you run into that situation, you actually know.
Charles:Yes, hey this conflict.
Dan:This really conflicts with my boundary boundary.
Charles:In the past it might be a little bit blurry, a little bit permeable, but then, after going through this and go wait a minute now this is pretty important to me then, yeah, you can save yourself some heartache and some time and here's where the fun, almost magical aspect of this comes in, where, when you become the kind of person that reads a book like this and goes through the workbook and you have that crystal clear vision of what your needs and boundaries are, the people that are around you are going to tend to be the same kind of people.
Charles:It's amazing what you attract, right, it really is, yeah. And when you put in the work to be the kind of person that you want to be around, then, yeah, without taking any extra steps, without changing hobbies, changing jobs, rewriting your dating profile you'll have to do any of those things and yet somehow the people in your life will be closer to what you're looking for, seemingly magically yeah, I think it's a subtle shift in terms of how you carry yourself, how how you talk, the things you talk about you're literally your identity really becomes somebody who has solid, clear boundary, and people will be able to see that and feel that, yes, and so the people with ultra rigid too rigid boundaries are not going to be into being around you.
Charles:And the people with super permeable boundaries that enjoy being walked all over, they're probably not going to really into being around you. And the people with super permeable boundaries that enjoy being walked all over, they're probably not going to really enjoy being around you either. And while that could be disruptive to some of your existing friendships and relationships, in the long run that's going to be good for you. It's hard to see it that way.
Dan:when you're in the middle of it, when you're doing any kind of real personal development or self-improvement, the group of people you hang out with is going to change for the better, but also for the sad in the short term yeah, that's the thing is you're looking at, you're comparing to, and there are some good, there's some probably some great qualities and great traits about the current group of people and the relationship that you have, and now you're comparing it to an unknown, a black box, box, right, and so it's scary. It's scary, and so it's a lot easier.
Charles:And that's why a lot of us just stick with what we have and what we know and we settle, yeah, yeah, because, yeah, the pain that you know is often more attractive than the pain that you don't. But the pain that you don't know might not be pain at all Often when it comes to self-improvement. Yeah, but yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah, what you know is certainly attractive. Okay, we'll stop there for now. We're going to then get into how our boundaries are violated and the concept of consent and what what consent means, and we'll look at the current sort of social definition of consent which usually is applied in the sexual arena. But we'll look at a broader envisioning of consent as well to see how that works for not just having your sexual boundaries respected or respecting other people's, but how that applies to people's time boundaries and how consent applies to their property boundaries. There's a whole lot of complex stuff with consent that I've never thought about before.
Dan:And I think it really makes you a better potential, better friend, better partner, because you are showing by thinking about them and thinking hey, I need to get your buy in. I'm asking you, that shows care and you're giving both requiring it and giving it at the forefront of your mind.
Charles:People, will not describe you as an entitled person For sure. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yes, that's good, because that's one of the when we think about talking about a third party, somebody you work with, saying man, he's, he feels really entitled. That's one of the worst things you can say about somebody, because what it really means is that's not a person that has a handle on the idea of consent, and defining and understanding consent is the antidote for walking around being unintentionally entitled.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:And so we'll talk about that in the next episode. Sounds good, all right. Thanks, dan, appreciate it. See you next time, all right, bye-bye, all right. Thanks so much for listening to the episode, the whole episode. We certainly appreciate it. Please check us out at mindflaymasculinecom, where you can find all of our social media links as well as watch video episodes of the show, listen to audio episodes. Everything that we got out there it's at mindflaymasculinecom.
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