Episode 09: Claiming the Relationship you Desire with Kyle Wright
Kyle Wright 0:00
Focusing on your relationship, you get more fun stuff. Right? Because if your relationship is supported and happy, both partners feel supported and loved by one another, you’re not going to get less sex. You’re not going to get less date nights. You’re not going to get less of things you like to do. That doesn’t make any sense. By doing a minimal amount of work, if you consider the amount of work that we exist on the planet, by doing a very minimal amount of work – like a couple of hours here and there – that’s going to have insurmountable benefits.
Matt Johnston 0:28
The human experience is the greatest project any of us will undertake, yet it’s often the one we spend the least amount of time working on. My name is Matt Johnston. I’m a self-professed personal development junkie, a retired pro-golfer, and I now work for an organization that provides employee and health benefits to hundreds of thousands of people. It should be common sense to realize that what happens at work is what people bring home, and what happens at home comes with them to work – but that’s too often ignored. That’s why, each week, I hope to uncover a little more around what it means to be a human working and living in the 21st century. We’ll be learning from experts, having conversations, and getting insights into all those things that fall at the intersection of life and work. Emotional and physical health, skills and money, all the relationships we navigate each day, and – of course – the purpose and meaning we all desire. This is The Human Assignment.
Welcome back to The Human Assignment Podcast. My guest today is Kyle Wright, a therapeutic relationship coach who is a leading voice in the conversation around modern masculinity and transforming how we talk about and work on our relationships, sex lives, and mental health. He’s been featured widely in the media, including US News World Report, Bustle, Fatherly Glam, and dozens of other outlets. Kyle and his wife Rachel are based in New York City and are the founders of the Right Wellness Center, where they bridge the gap between self-help books and the therapist coach. This dynamic duo has worked with hundreds of couples and have taught thousands of people about healthy communication.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Kyle. He's a down to earth guy, a former bartender turned relationship coach, and it really did feel like I was sitting across the bar talking about relationships with him. A lot of the solutions that you'll hear in this podcast that he shares aren't rocket science. They're just common sense. As he says, most relationships don't need therapy. They need basic communication skills. Since recording this episode, I've been consuming a lot of content that Kyle and Rachel have online, and I'd highly recommend you checking it out. They are the co-hosts of the bachelor-themed podcast The Right Reasons, and Kyle has a popular podcast called Masculinity on the Rocks. You can learn more about them at the WrightWellnessCenter.com. That’s Wright (W-R-I-G-H-T) Wellness Center dot com, or you can follow Kyle on his Instagram page @thewright_kyle. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Kyle Wright.
Matt Johnston 3:08
Kyle, thank you for being on the show.
Kyle Wright 3:11
Yeah, man. Super stoked to be here. Thank you for having me.
Matt Johnston 3:14
Thanks so much, for taking the time. Been digging into all your stuff online. I've downloaded the scripts - the relationship scripts. I've been going through your podcasts. I'm so pumped for what you and Rachel are putting out in the world. So, I'm looking forward to digging into all that. I have a whole list of questions, and this this interview can go in many different directions. But I thought that we could start by asking you if, when you're talking to someone in the coffee shop, or, you know, you run into an old friend, how do you describe what you do for a living now?
Kyle Wright 3:45
That's a great question. It's funny you asked me that, too, because I was just talking about this yesterday. I get kind of roped into a conversation. I really didn't want to be in a bar a few months ago. I went out like quiet beer by myself and some guy starts talking to me - talking my ear off - and he's super rambunctious and a little super hammered. You know, I had to basically give like the very modified version of what I did. So, someone who is, you know, clearly intoxicated, so it's really simplified version of things. They kind of stuck. So, what I tell people is that I help people have happier, healthier relationships. Just blanket statement.
Matt Johnston 4:18
That’s a hell of an answer.
Kyle Wright 4:20
Well, you know, it kind of puts together all things. So long, long, long version of that is that Rachel and I founded a company about four and a half years ago, almost five years ago, called Wright Wellness Center, where we help people have happier and healthier relationships by teaching tools and skillsets that, really, you don't have open access to in our society, that actually show you how to have a successful relationship. I mean, there's been research for 50 years on what actually can make a relationship succeed or fail. Yet, no one knows about it. Rachel, my wife had to get her master's degree to get it, and a license to practice therapy to understand this stuff. Yet it's held behind these bars of, you know, education or licensing or whatever. You know, our society doesn't have great access to relationship building tools.
Matt Johnston 5:05
What I’ve loved, to this point, digging into your YouTube videos, the two of you together, and your podcast, is how accessible you make this information. Part of what, to me, makes it so accessible is that I feel like we could be having a beer right now as we're as we're talking. So how did you go from, you know, five years ago? How did you turn into a relationship expert and a relationship coach?
Kyle Wright 5:30
Well, I was definitely not a relationship expert five years ago, that's for sure. Well, at the time we’re recording this, we’re coming up on, what, our third year in marriage, our eighth year together as a couple. When Rachel I met, we met working in restaurants. I had been a bartender for a couple of years when we met, and I still bartended for the first couple years of our relationship. So about nine years I spent behind the bar, and it was fun.
That's where this conversational ability, where I can just - it's the gift of gab. I can shoot the shit about most things. Like, I can sort of armchair expert it, so to speak, around a lot of different topics because that's like the school of the streets: bartending. You talk to a million different people in a million different formats, and everyone's got a different story and advice and things they’re doing. So, I was getting really burnt out doing that. Rachel had a successful therapy practice in San Francisco - we lived in the Bay Area. She was getting a little tired of having to deal with the same issue: what would happen is you'd have couples come to her, and she would start doing you know, what a therapist would do.
It turns out that a lot of couples who were coming to her didn't need therapy. They needed to learn how to talk to each other! They need basic communication skills. So, she would teach them that and then they kind of go away after four or five sessions, or they'd get caught up in the, you know, the “supposed tos” of therapy. Just keep scheduling appointments when they really didn't need to spend the time or money on that level of treatment. They needed the basics, not, you know, a higher-level treatment, like what you get in a therapy practice. I was frustrated. I didn't want to bartend anymore. I was super tired. I was such an ass with everybody too. I was so burnt out bartending. Both my parents were entrepreneurs. They started their own businesses throughout the years.
I've always wanted to help people feel better. I don't know why I'm so caught up in this idea of “better,” but I always wanted to help people feel more comfortable in their lives. Rachel and I sort of looked at each other one day. She was feeling unfulfilled by her practice. I was unfulfilled bartending, and we wanted to kind of help people feel more comfortable in their relationships. One thing led to another, I helped her write out the communication scripts you're talking about before we hit record. We built those together as the foundation of our company. Because, the couples that were coming to her therapy practice, that would solve their problems without them paying for therapy. We just give them a handout. “This is how you talk. This is how you communicate in a way that benefits both partners.”
And from there, that almost killed her practice like overnight, because we rolled these scripts out. Everyone's like, “Oh, that's all we need. So, no more therapy. Buh-bye!” So, we decided to try to sell that and build a company. One thing led to another and I've been exercising and practicing these tools for five years now. So, you know, long, very long-winded story around how I became a relationship expert from a bartender, but that's pretty much it.
Matt Johnston 8:06
Well, let's dig into those tools. Rachel had clients coming to her, and all of a sudden you release these scripts. As you joke all of a sudden or client list disappears. What is in these magical scripts?
Kyle Wright 8:19
Well, that's the thing. It’s that they're magical. But that's the thing. The magic is there because it's just not taught. The magic is society's failure, really. The idea of the communication scripts, it's a basic framework around how to have a conversation where you actually say what you feel and what you mean instead of… Well, okay. So, there's a really interesting linguistic trick that we do as human beings, because the English language especially as a nightmare.
People often don't say what they actually feel. They try to use the word “feel” as a way of explaining a thought. So, here's an example of it. “I feel like you're being an asshole,” or “I feel like shit when you do this.” That's not a feeling. You feel like something, that's a thought. The communication scripts come with a feelings chart to help you use the actual feeling term. So, it's, “I feel sad when you X.”
It's a way of actually saying what you're feeling and not trying to sort of Inception your partner into understanding your side of things. To the idea of the scripts, it's a basic format and structure in how one partner can talk to the partner to clearly explain what they're feeling, and then what they want out of it. And the other partner has a basic set of instructions on how to listen and what words to use to fully understand what their partner is saying to them.
Matt Johnston 9:39
As I was reading the scripts, I was laughing to myself because, non-stop, I feel…I feel X. It's such common sense, but it's almost hilarious to see your tendencies within that.
Kyle Wright 9:54
Oh, absolutely. That's something that I've become…The attention to detail and the words that we use has been one of the most powerful things that I've ever learned. Rachel and I, we get really, really caught up around a word. Our friends and family hate it, but we're helping them. So, you're welcome, I guess, friends and family. The word “should” is really, really interesting, because think about the way we use the word “should:” “I should do this,” or “I should have done that,” or, “You should do this.”
That's not fair. You're giving up control of the situation by saying, “Well, this should have happened.” Well, nothing should have, and that doesn't work that way. Like, if you want something, you can go do it. You can also learn from a past experience and say, “I want to do things differently,” But giving up control of a situation, that's what the word “should” does. In short, paying attention to little details around how you speak, and how we've been taught to speak – because, like I said, there's no education on communication out there. Like, there's just none.
Paying attention to the way you talk to your partner is probably the foundation around most things in relationships. Coming to a way of improving it, is that if you're really, really, attentive to how you speak, it’s showing really the respect to your partner and your relationship because you're being exactly as honest as you can be. Why hide that kind of stuff from your partner?
Matt Johnston 11:09
So, what kind of clients are coming your way? Like who's downloading the scripts? What are the what are you seeing? Who needs this stuff? I'm putting up my hand to start.
Kyle Wright 11:21
Well, the thing is, is that it's easy to say this. Everybody needs this shit, because they don't teach it. Like I was saying, communication, right? So, I've taken every single communication class that I could find when I was trying to go to college (all five times to try to go to college). College and I don't get along. That’s a whole separate podcast. But it's easy as everybody because it could be really beneficial. And I would say the predominance of our clients tend to be millennials or just outside of that age range on the older side, because people in their early 20s really aren't looking for like communication skills or relationship foundation work. It's just not something that you really come up crossing their 20s very often, especially early 20s. But as time goes on, so it’s millennials right now. I think they're 2023 to 38 is the average age of a millennial.
So sort of the middle aged millennials, then the older aside, then people in her 40s usually will come to us too, and mostly over social media too, because part of our work that we do is really showing up as models for the skills that we teach, because we also we talk about how we drop the ball. Rachel and I still get in dumb fights all the time. I mean, that's being a human being. We navigate them more efficiently than most because of what we do. But we still show up on social media, especially Instagram to kind of model our abilities and skills and what kind of why it's important to do.
In fact, we live stream to fight into… We had a private Facebook group for a couple years. We live streamed the kind of winding down talking out of a big fight of ours in the group to really show like we're not perfect, but we do practice this stuff every day. That's why we're good at it, and that's why we teach it. So, I'd say millennials. The older age of millennials, like lower and Gen X, and then mostly over social media, they find us. Just, I think our society is really attached to seeing people do something that we're also curious about learning about. If that makes sense.
Matt Johnston 13:12
Yeah. I watched the fight video before this interview, and I loved it. One of the things that I got onto that is that a skill is something that you practice, that you're that you're working at over and over again. It sounds like you come from the world of sports. I do too. Like, to get better, you're grinding day after day. Then with every up and down, you're back out there grinding. You do, from what I've seen, you really are a model of that. You've got the scripts, you've got all sorts of resources on your site, but one of the things that I'm curious about is, you know, relationships are fluid, right? And, you know, you can learn the skills and techniques, but all of a sudden, when you become overwhelmed with emotion, or you know, things just don't feel right for whatever, like… How do you help people through that?
Kyle Wright 13:59
Like the messy middle, when you’re just in it?
Matt Johnston 14:02
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The messy middle. Start. Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle Wright 14:07
You know, it's a good question. Well, a lot of the issues that we face in our relationships comes from these weird societal perceptions of, “you're supposed to be good at it,” right? Like, you're supposed to be good at relationships when you're married. Like, that's the implication. “Oh, you're married,” like, you’ve got to be like a relatively functional human being around this kind of stuff. But we're all just kind of faking it till we “make it.” Like, people kind of put on a facade of feeling comfortable in the relationships.
But one of the things that is so helpful - and this comes with, I think people get really caught up in what this sounds like, but taking a timeout is so helpful when you are having a fight or an argument where you're getting caught up in it and you don't see a way out and all of a sudden both you and your partner are flooded. Which, flooding is when you're seeing red, your ears are pounding, like, the blood pressure's up and you're starting to devolve in the argument where it's just a bunch of, “You do this! Well, I hate that!” and blah, blah, blah. Taking a timeout: we do this to our children, which doesn't make a lot of sense, because children's brains don't really work this way.
But adults benefit from a timeout so much more than kids ever could. Take in 15 seconds just to breathe separately in two different rooms, that's a great start. Taking five minutes? Even better. Go outside, walk around the block once and really breathe, and then think about what you're actually upset about. That's a great way of diffusing an argument before it gets really out of hand. You start yelling about people's parents and your mother and this and that. You don't want to get to that point in an argument. So being able to hit it off before it gets there is super, super valuable. And honestly, a timeout is like one of the best things you can do.
Matt Johnston 15:46
So, I'm going to bounce all over a little bit here. But one of the things that we talked about before we got on was your focus on millennials. I'm just curious if there's different challenges, you know, potential different expectations with the millennial generation as you’re working with them.
Kyle Wright 16:06
It's really interesting, actually. We've been doing a lot of research on this in the last year or so because, you know, the idea. I feel like the media still uses the term millennial to describe like an 18-year-old - which, by the way, no millennials an 18-year-old anymore, that's far gone. When it comes to the millennial mindset, which is kind of my slang term for it, there's a lot that goes into critical thinking and not adhering to societal perceptions.
Because, if you look at the way millennials are running their day to day life, right, they are settling in long term careers later in life. They are getting married later in life. They're having kids later in life. No one's buying a house. We're talking about “what should be done as you become a successful adult” isn't happening because we, as millennials, myself as I'm 32 years old, right smack in the middle of it. I think that there's a refusal to accept the status quo. Like this is the way it should have been done or this is the way it always has been done. You see the millennials really backing off of that because if you look at what you know, the “should” of marriage, right? Divorce rates still up around 50%. It has been my entire life.
I remember when divorce started hitting like my small town. So, from a small town in northern California. My parents got divorced and then everybody's parents got divorced. It's so prevalent. Whatever we're saying works for marriage, that's bullshit, because it's not working for almost half the country. When you see millennials being a little bit standoffish to the way things have always been done wanting to change. There's always a new article, you can Google it, and they'll be a million article, probably. “What industries have millennials killed?” Well, that's because we don't want to do things the way it's always been done.
Because the way it's always been done has gotten us to this point in our culture and no one's happy. So, being able to approach relationships outside of the very like heteronormative a guy and a girl get married in their early 20s, and they have kids and their mid 20s, then they buy a house by the end of the 30. Like, that's not happening anymore. And so, we're really excited to update the way that we approach relationships and in a healthier format, by focusing on communication, by focusing on what the two people want before they add kids, or a dog, or a house. Like, let's get to happy people happy together first before we start adding all this shit, because millennials have student loans in a on a scale that has never been seen before. So financial stress is a massive, massive hindrance to relationships.
In fact, financial stress is one of the leading causes of any form of divorce or separation. So, you're already saddling an entire generation with the biggest handicap for successful relationships. So, a lot of what we teach is open communication because these more difficult life experiences have to be navigated. It's no longer one person works out of a three-and-a-half-person family and they're able to provide for a house and two cars. Like, that doesn't exist and yet our society has not latched on to that, but every millennial knows that's not life. No one's living that.
Matt Johnston 19:04
What comes up for me when you when you're speaking about millennials - but it's just for all of us - is that this is like this is a very proactive approach to relationships. Right? We spoke a minute ago about the messy middle, and I think, like many things in life, but especially relationships, it's when we get into the messy middle that we start taking action. “Oh, shit. We’re in trouble here. What do we do?” To this point, what I see in your in your work, and so I guess, open communication, this all sounds great. But from a proactive standpoint, where do we start?
Kyle Wright 19:34
That's a really good question. This is, again, a societal thing that is difficult to shake off because we're very reactive as a culture. Right? Like, human beings want to do something until there's a stimulus - like stimulus response. That's the way we've pretty much gotten as far as we have. What's annoying for me personally – well, and for Rachel. I'll speak for her in this case. We're always talking about how annoying this is. Productivity is taught to us in very inconsistent methods.
So, almost every single person who is walking in the street, if they own a car, they know when they got their oil changed last. Proactivity. Change your oil. You get that little sticker; the top left your windshield. This is when you change your oil, do this. When's the last time you went to the dentist? When's the last time you went to the doctor? Those are proactivity things that we’re talking about. And yet, why aren't we taught that about relationships? Make sure you're a happy person on your own before you enter into a relationship. That way you're not reliant on someone else for your own happiness. Like, enter into a relationship as a complete person. That's something that's not talked about.
We teach productivity in ways that yes, absolutely, the dentist very beneficial. A lot of body stuff. A lot of illness comes from the mouth. Super beneficial to go to the dentist. Obviously, go see your doctor. Work out of the gym. That's preventative. We always talked about that too. Proactivity, and yet with relationships, it's not taught. So, being able to sit across from your partner and just say, “Hey, nothing's wrong. But we can have more. And I want to do that with you. This is something exciting for the two of us.” That's a great place to start, because you don't know what you don't know until you know it, right? It sounds confusing, but you can't know something until you know it.
And so, coming to your partner and saying, “Hey, let's see if there's more. Let's see if we can be closer. Let's see if we can grow. Let's see if we can get ahead of the fight where one of us goes and stays at someone else's apartment for the night. Like, let's get ahead of that by building these reinforced foundations for ourselves in our relationship, because that's looking out for ourselves in five years the same way going to the dentist every six months is looking out for yourself in the future.” If we're trying to teach our society these ideas of taking care of your relationship ahead of time, I think everyone's going to be a lot happier.
Matt Johnston 21:51
Do you have just some use cases? Some examples of couples that you've worked with that have come to you that, you know, not in the messy middle, but come to you from this place and have had success?
Kyle Wright 22:01
You know, that's the challenge. There are not a lot of couples that have come to us that are very proactively minded. We mostly work with couples who are in a reactive place. The end of their relationship, like right in the barrel. And that's a really hard place to work with people in, because once you get to that point, there is resentment there is just so much built up that has damaged and drained the relationship that more or less bringing it back to life is not something we specialize in because that's where you need real therapy. You know, that's where you need to sit in a room with a therapist, whatever works for the couple. That's a harder place to work from. We have and we do, but we try to find people in the messy middle when they're not as reactive.
The couples that have come to us though that want to get out ahead of things. Like, they see kids in the future - like in the near future - they really want to make sure they're solid. You know, we've done everything from a half day intensive you know, three hours with us over Zoom or Skype, and it's Rachel and I doing two on two coaching with them where they get to pour out what are their upcoming fears, concerns.
We kind of help coach them into “Okay, this is what you need to do on a weekly basis to really keep this foundation. This is something that you want to talk about make sure you're prioritizing, you know, the two of you want to date night once a week. Make sure you're doing this.” Meeting people in the middle is so much easier for everyone involved, and yet it's one of the harder things to do, because, like I said, our society teaches you to be reactive rather than proactive when it comes to your relationship.
Matt Johnston 23:30
As you’re talking about the intensive, it sounds scary as shit, number one. But also, what I’m thinking right now is, “Oh, that’d be amazing,” because you’re there as a middleman. You or Rachel are there, you know, as a ref in a way, or as a coach to guide you through this. I think that one of the things that I can imagine would be scary for most people is that maybe confrontation is something that we all are not good at, which is part of what you’re helping people through. If you’re not confident in being able to navigate through confrontation, it’s scary to even enter into it in the first place. Like, when I watched your video after the fight, I was like, “Oh, damn. These two, they’ve got some skills to get to this point.” Yeah, like that seems like a leap even to be able to jump into the deep end and say, “This is going to get messy so that it can get better.”
Kyle Wright 24:30
Well, I think that it's all about what you really want in the relationship, because I know that I want to be with Rachel for as long as I'm alive, be that the next 10 minutes or the next you know, hundred years of my life, whatever it is. And so, with that knowledge, with that trust in my decisions, I know that whatever happens we'll figure it out. But the thing is that there is going to be challenge. You're, you're going to have to put your boots on your you have to wade into the shit often, because that's life. Things are challenging. There's so much that happens in our day to day life in our world that we just don't talk about enough.
And that's part of why I think our social media is part of how we get a lot of clients is that we talk about the messy middle and the in between and the challenges that come up in life. I mean, when we started our business, we were starting the business filing for our LLC, planning our wedding and then we moved out of state in the same three-month period. Like, that was so much stress and pressure that of course we had way more fights. Like, way more stuff was going on, but even just acknowledging that it happens is so valuable. I mean, you talk about the fight video.
I mean, you see, we look like shit in that video. My pupils are blowing out, eyes are all red, like a tear streaks on my face. We both didn't look good, but that's the point. It doesn't have to look good. You just do it. And if you model it for other people, it's helpful. And I think that's one thing our culture doesn't like to accept is that yes, working on a relationship is not fun all the time. It can be fun the majority of the time, but it will suck often, and you Just kind of have to get used to doing the hard work if you really want to be in that relationship, because the positives always outweigh the negatives.
Matt Johnston 26:06
What about the couples where you have one partner who's into this stuff? Like, Oh, you like this makes so much sense. And the other the other partners, just they haven't watched your YouTube videos? How do you bridge that gap for couples?
Kyle Wright 26:19
It's a great question and it comes with a singular frustration of mine, which is in the context that you provided, which is the most common one, right? One partner wants to go do some work to grow the relationship, to reinforce the relationship, and the partner is dragging their feet? “Oh, why do we need that? I'm happy. Aren't you happy with me? Why is it…?” Then they put on the other person. Unfortunately, in this specific example, which is very common, the woman in this heteronormative example. It's usually a male female relationship, and the woman wants to go do some work on the relationship and the guy doesn't want to. That's super normal.
In fact, it's frustratingly normal and it is the majority of the challenge that we face. That's why if you look at our website demographics, it's like 70/30 women and men coming to our websites. Everything we do. Our podcast demographics are 70/30 women and men. It's challenging. I think men are handicapped our culture right now because we've been told from day one that stoicism and strength and masculinity and you don't share your feelings, because if you share your feelings, you're a pussy. Like, that's sports growing up, right? Like, don't cry, don't do these things. So, you have an entire generation of men who are handicapped around expressing their emotions. When it comes to relationship stuff, they're already not equipped with the ability to even go into it. So that's my frustration, even building this out.
But what we've done in those cases is that, you know, we'll talk to the woman or the partner who wants to do the work in this very, you know, simplistic example of the woman. And we'll just say, you know, coming to your partner and saying, “Hey, I want to grow this. There's nothing immediately wrong. I see things in our future that could be, you know, challenging to go through. What I want to do is to prepare for that. I want to make sure that, you know, if we're going to go take a road trip with our relationship, I want to make sure that the car has an old change. It has new tires, good brakes, it's all set up to go the distance.
And that's what we'd like to do or what I'd like to do for our relationship. Like, do you want to start trying to prepare ourselves for the future? Do you want to grow with me?” And one great thing to remind your partner if you're trying to offer to them like, “Hey, let's go do some work on a relationship. Let's build a foundation, let's make sure that we're supported. And we're able to grow together and a happy way.” The stuff you'd like to do together, that's not going to stop, you're going to get more of it. By focusing on your relationship, you get more fun stuff, right? Because if your relationship is supported and happy, both partners feel supported and loved by one another. You're not going to get less sex, you're not going to get less date nights, you're not going to get less of things that you like to do. That doesn't make any sense.
By doing a minimal amount of work - if you consider the amount of time that we exist on the planet. By doing a very minimal amount of work. Like, seconds out of a year. If you think about it in the way of the amount of time you're alive versus the amount of time you spend working in a relationship, a couple hours here and there, that's going to have insurmountable benefits as long as you stick to it and keep doing the work. Like I said, by doing the work in a relationship, and by making sure you're supported and happy, you're not going to get less sex. You're not going to less dates. You're not going to get less things. You're going to have more of those things. And still, that can be a challenging thing to explain to people. That's why I was asked to break it down into like food and car metaphors, because it's pretty easy to understand.
Matt Johnston 29:29
When you do put it that way, it makes so much sense. And, you know, I think that this conversation leads into what your podcast focuses on: Masculinity on the Rocks. I love that I love the featured cocktail. It's 10:35 Eastern time, but I might have to figure out what the Monday cocktail is after this conversation. But in your bio, it says “leading voice around the conversation around modern masculinity.” So, what is modern masculinity and how did you how did you start talking about this?
Kyle Wright 30:30
It’s a good question. When I think about modern masculinity, it's whatever you want it to be, honestly. Because, you know, you're not going to tell someone how you want them to be. Like, you want everyone to be happy with who they are. So, my struggle around masculinity in general is that growing up, I mean, I always felt different. Like I was getting more in touch with my emotions, and that they're always kind of really close to the surface growing up, and I always kind of felt like an outsider as a result of that. As I got more and more involved in the relationship space, I started talking to more and more guys, and I kept finding that regardless of age, we all have the same experiences in high school. Feeling like someone was kind of mean to you and you feel like crying and you're like, “But that's not what I'm supposed to do. I'm a man like that.”
Yeah, we all feel very similar things and yet, I haven't heard anyone talking about it. And so that was kind of the foundation idea for the podcast: helping guys just feel more comfort talking about their emotions, because the biggest hindrance for our business is men being a little emotionally closed off. Again, this is no one's fault. You think about every action movie you see growing up. Like, the protagonist cries when like his best friend dies and no other point. John McClane is a terrible husband. There's a reason that Holly leaves him and changes her last name in the first Die Hard. That's not the model for a relationship.
And yet there are no - well, there are not as many positive influences in our media, in our culture, and TV, in movies, and music, and books around what a healthy man looks like who's comfortable in his own masculinity and not trying to live up this 1950s John Wayne bullshit, because that's not a reality anymore. We're not hunters. We hunt by choice. We don't hunt by need anymore. All these old masculine archetypes don't really play into our current society and yet, society has not caught up because there's still people who expect a man to feel the chocolate firewood. I've done that. I've done all the all the normal, stereotypical masculine things. I drink whiskey, I've chopped firewood, I've climbed mountains, I've shot guns, I crashed my car when I was 18 because I was stupid. Like, all the things you do, right? Those, like, masculine things I've done, but the strongest thing that I've done that makes me feel confident in my masculinity is crying in front of Rachel. Being able to cry in front of my wife is so powerful because that's who I want to be: emotionally available.
Someone who can be there for their partner whenever they need, and I trust my partner to be there when I'm feeling like I need to lean on somebody. Being able to lean on somebody is so important as a human regardless of whatever gender you identify as. Like, if you can't lean on another human being, what's the point? We're pack animals, like, we're supposed to be around each other. We're supposed to rely on one another and yet, we just teach ourselves the opposite. While our culture is shifting, post #MeToo Movement, you know, people don't want guys to be dickheads who run the pace patriarchy anymore. That's shifting and yet – well, let’s correct that. Our society says we want men to be different, to be more emotionally available. We want men to be softer to themselves, to others. We don't like this toxic masculinity anymore. But no one is saying how to do it. The world says “change,” but no one's saying how.
And so, the idea of the podcast initially for masculinity on the rocks was to take my bartending background, and simple conversational tones and just kind of very easy pace of discussion, interview, and talk to people around their experiences of masculinity just to kind of help talk about it more. Like, I'm not trying to solve it. I don't know how to solve it. I have no idea, and yet, just having a conversation period is a great start to it. I don't think I'm going to shift the world, but I'd like to move a little bit of it by just having conversations where guys can say, “Oh, I understand I feel the way he feels. I remember feeling like that I can relate to that.” Hopefully that opens the door for more men to feel comfortable talking about their feelings and sit down their partner and say, “I was really sad when we didn't get to do something together the other day.” Like, simple stuff.
Matt Johnston 34:09
I love the show too. You have 20 episodes, which I've been nudging us since the start of this conversation to start bumping up. But in hearing each interview with very different guests, you get a sense of these rock stars doing really cool things in the world, but don't have this closed off, stereotypical persona. It's, in fact, they're, you know, very in-touch, grounded. So, thank you for what you're doing.
Kyle Wright 34:38
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It's important to have these conversations. I really focus on keeping women commonly as guests on the podcast because it's very important to have men understand women's perspectives on things. I think that listening to understand your partner is something that Rachel I teach all the time in our business, but having guys be able to understand like, “Oh, that's what it is on the other side of toxic masculinity. That's what the actions are for the other people.” We're sticking to a very, very broad brush, heteronormative standpoint in this conversation, but if I, as a single guy, want to be more successful with women, then I like to know their experience of things. So, I know that when I flip off the car, who tailgates me? I want to know if that's just my own venting of frustrations or if my partner is really going to absorb that energy in a way that's going to be a turn off long-term.
Like, it's important to know everyone's perceptions and experiences around stuff because I mean, well, how else are we going to learn anything? Like I wasn't born knowing anything, right? You learn all this stuff, and only by having a conversation and talking to each other do we grow. That's how human beings… We’re the apex predators for like, yeah, we have opposable thumbs, and we learn stuff. And yet, we're expected to be good at relationships and it drives me fucking crazy.
Matt Johnston 35:58 So you're in it every day. You're in the weeds. You're producing all sorts of content on this on this stuff. Like, what comes up most for you guys? Like you're going to get off this this show and I'm sure you're coaching this afternoon and producing more supportive material for people. What's hitting you more than anything else?
Kyle Wright 36:20 A common issues that will come across, I would say: basic communication skills are always at the forefront, because like I said, they're not taught. I tried to take every communication class that ever was available to me and they're all about being right. I took argumentation, debate, public speaking. All of those are specifically about being the winner in a conversation. If you view conversation and communication in your relationship in a sense of wins and losses, nobody's winning that. Your relationship loses that, because who I would never want to feel like the victor over my partner in an argument because…
I mean, people can be, there can be a conversation, one person realizes their standpoint is actually not one that they want any more through healthy conversation and dialogue. But I don't want to walk away from something like, “Yeah, I fucking won that. I was right. Uh!” Like, why would I want to feel that to my partner? Like, if I'm playing sports, and if I'm playing soccer and like, I score an awesome goal of it, yeah. “Fuck you, goalie! I scored on you.” But I'm not going to do that to my wife. Like, that's crazy to have that same mentality for winning an argument. Because no one wins that; absolutely nobody wins that.
You may feel like it in the moment, but you're not going to like it later on when your partner is too afraid to begin the conversation with you. So basic communication skills. Then also, as our culture has changed, because you know, women do not stay at home and do all the chores, because that's a psychotic concept for people to be like pigeonholed into. Men don't just bear the burden of making money because that's also crazy to do to anyone. We’re all humans, right? So, as our society has changed in that way, the fall of hasn't gotten yet to who does chores around the house. How do you distribute day-to-day things against making income back and forth?
An organization of household duties is a common thing that we come across, actually. We have something called “family meeting.” It’s one of our free downloads, too, that is a worksheet on how to have a once a week meeting where it breaks down everything the two partners are doing: where are you going, what your meetings, where do you need to be? Do you have kids? Do you have pets? Who's walking the dog? Who's taking care of the chores? When's the next bill? When's the next date night? What are we doing for self-care individually and together? There's so much that goes into it, and that's just a healthy conversation to keep having to make sure both partners are on the same page. I would say communication skills and really just being out of touch with what needs to happen for the household or the partnership to be healthy together.
Matt Johnston 38:47
That's great. I'm jotting this down as you're as you're speaking. To start wrapping things up here. I'm just I'm thinking about the I'm thinking about the couple that is, you've got two people in a relationship that are working nine to five or, you know, eight to seven or whatever the, you know, the crazy hours there. In many cases, raising kids and picking up from soccer practice, what have you. Running in six different directions. Where do they get started? You've got all sorts of free downloads on your site. I'm sure there's a there's a number of books that you've recommended you have, you have intensives, what do you what do you offer up to?
Kyle Wright 39:26
Okay, the first thing to do - the very first thing to do - and nothing can happen without this: you and your partner, you sit down, you look at your calendars, and you schedule a time, and you schedule two to three hours. And you put on there, we're going to start looking at how we can increase what we want in our relationship. And that's it. You start there, just schedule it. That's it. Because, like you said, there's a lot going on in our lives. It's impossible. I'm looking at my calendar right now for the next three weeks. I am not prone to anxiety, I feel anxiety looking at my calendar because there's all of like seven hours that I have free, there's some it's not specifically scheduled over the next three weeks because we're crazy.
And that happens to a lot of people. First of all, scheduling it, that shows so much respect for your relationship because you're appropriating time, which is really the only resource we have is time. Money is a construct. We created that. It doesn't actually exist. Like we just made it up. Right? Money. Time is really the only thing we really can control, so you separate time for you and your partner to sit down. Then, when you're in that space, it's real separation time. If you’ve got kids: babysitter or a different room. You got dogs? Take them out before so I'm not bothering you. Turn your phones off. You spend those two hours or three hours or however much time - 20 minutes, if that's all you can spare, 20 minutes.
You look at what you want to do for your relationship, and you start building it, but it all starts with separating the time out of your schedules to show that you two are prioritizing your relationship against anything else. Because if you don't have that time, you can't start working on your relationship. So, by controlling your time and by giving the respect and time that your relationship needs is the great start. Because from there, everything else can start falling into place. You schedule the first one. You take that time to figure out, “Okay, what are you interested in?” “I want to learn about this. I want more of this, I want more of this.” “Okay, let's schedule the next time we're going to do this. Is it in a week? Can we not schedule for two weeks? Okay, let's see if we can get 10 minutes in between this one in the next one.” All you want to do is start scheduling it because it's often the only way you can have the time that you need.
Matt Johnston 41:34
Awesome. Well, Kyle, I so appreciate you being a part of this. What I've loved about this interview, and all the things that you and Rachel are both producing, is how accessible it is and how real it is. It's not high-level. One of the things that you that you talk about on your site and in your bio is bridging the gap, and you're doing a hell of a job of that. So, I just I really appreciate what you both are doing. I encourage anyone who's listening to check you out. Where can people find you, Kyle?
Kyle Wright 42:02
Honestly, the easiest way to do it is either go to our website which is wrightwellnesscenter.com. It's “wright” with a W. So, W-R-I-G-H-T Wellness Center dot come. But the best way to do it really is – it sounds funny saying social media and Instagram. Like, “Oh, follow me on Instagram!” But that's usually the best way we do things. We have a Wright Wellness Center on Instagram. It’s @wrightwellnesscenter. Then for Rachel and I, it's @theright_rachel and @theright_kyle. Super simple, super straightforward. We’re not on like a cool Instagram screenname. I don't know. Just made sense when we did it. Check that out.
We’ve got a lot of cool stuff coming out. We have some millennial-specific resources, which is also a joke because anyone can use them. We're just targeting specifically millennials and our current next thing that we're doing, and October 17 we are teaching a free workshop, which is basically going to be the five traits that successful relationships need to thrive for 2020. So it's going to be a lot of communication skills, a lot of ways of listening to people, which is also a huge part of communicating. We always think about communicating being the one to talk, but listening is also a massive part of communicating. So yeah, that's going to be on October 17. I think we're going to do the live workshop twice that day, just to make sure we can bounce them both time zones. So if you're interested in that, go ahead and check it out. We'll have that in our website and on our Instagram accounts, and other than that: Masculinity on the Rocks, the podcast, will come back later this year, I believe. If you're a fan of the bachelor franchise, we also have a YouTube show and podcast called The Right Reasons that will come back next year when the show comes back.
Matt Johnston 43:40
Very cool. Well, Kyle, thank you again for being on today, for taking the time, and for all that you're doing. I look forward to joining a workshop. I look forward to continuing to dig into your material and learn - and to be continued.
Kyle Wright 43:55
Yeah, yeah, man, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate all of it. The questions Everything so then super fun.
Matt Johnston 44:00
Thank you.