Part 2: Breaking Gender Stereotypes: The Evolution of Masculinity and the Importance of Emotional Support with Guest Matt

Dirty Skittles [00:00:16]:
You had another really impactful thing that happened to you. So when you got married, your what? You found out that your wife has Lyme disease and that you've really had to take on different responsibilities that you thought you never really thought about, I don't know, maybe ten years ago. Right. And the complexities of raising a family, taking care of your wife, doing a job, and then also helping yourself right. Giving yourself some self love and self care, because those are all things that we forget to do when we're taking care of other people.

Matt [00:00:58]:
Yes, absolutely. It's funny because this doesn't feel like work to me. Like, doing this. This is self care for me because this brings me so much joy. I feel like a golden retriever. I'm just excited to see anybody. I'll just talk to you, and that just gives me joy. And I told one of my best friends, I was like, I need you in my life, because there's sometimes I make friends with people who are just going to take and take and take, and I don't see those things about them.

Matt [00:01:27]:
I've gotten a little better about it as I've gotten older, but I'm still very much like, oh, new person, how are you? You want to be my best friend? Come on over.

Dirty Skittles [00:01:36]:
Let's go.

Matt [00:01:38]:
Then later, they'll be like, hey, buddy, he's killed, like, three people. You might want to not invite him into the house or something. I'm just like oh, really? He's such a nice guy. We talked about Ninja Turtles for, like, an hour. All right. Yeah. So my wife, since she was got it. When I kept saying that, I kept thinking of borat my wife.

Matt [00:02:01]:
Sorry.

Dirty Skittles [00:02:06]:
Ah, man, you're killing me.

Matt [00:02:10]:
Well, this is this is, like I said about knowing how to use your ADHD, hopefully. Yeah. I'm going to tell you this right now to anyone listening. If you have ever felt just constantly you're tired, you have sudden allergies to foods that you've eaten your entire life. If you can't seem to get over just, like, a normal fatigue, it doesn't matter how much you sleep. If you have sudden mood swings, depression, little random things. If you notice, like, your nails and hair have suddenly become very brittle, you need to go check out with a functional medicine doctor, someone who's going to look at your whole system, everything, and not just try to throw pills at you to manage the symptoms. They need to look at exactly what's going on, and it's really infuriating.

Matt [00:03:09]:
I'm going to say how difficult it is to find functional medicine doctors, but I have found a couple, and there's one that's national, or at least becoming national. It's called index health, and I don't want to overstep. If this is a PSA you can't put on, but Index Health, it is virtual. It is with a functional medicine doctor, they do tons of testing because I can almost guarantee there are more cases of Lyme disease out there than most doctors will tell you, and that includes to. And I will say this might be overstepping a little, but Ms patients have a functional medicine doctor. Look at you. Test your gut, bacteria, anything that's going on, because Lyme disease is what they call the great pretender. It can take on so many symptoms for other chronic diseases, and doctors will just look at it and be like, you're probably just too stressed, or, you're probably just not getting enough sleep, or you just don't eat dairy anymore.

Matt [00:04:19]:
It's so funny how so many doctors will be like, this hurts, and they'll be like, all right, just don't do that anymore, rather than, this hurts, and then figure out, all right, well, let's find out why that hurts, and let's look at what's going on. Okay. Oh, you're not getting enough of this, you're not getting enough of that. And that should solve your problem. And how often the Medicare system will just completely, especially, I'm going to say especially women, the medical system will dismiss you so often. And it is so infuriating and know, especially for husbands and partners, because husbands and men in general are very much like, you got a problem, I'm going to solve it. Loving your spouse and wanting to solve the problem and then going and solving the problem for us would be, let's go to a doctor. And those doctors just saying, you're just stressed or you're just not getting enough sleep or something, it's such infuriating bullshit.

Matt [00:05:15]:
Do not take that as your diagnosis that you're overworked, overtired, overstressed, guaranteed. We all are. But there's something more to it. My wife has for years complained about feeling chronically fatigued, anxious, depression, and not knowing where it's coming from and having very logical reasons for some of it. And then other times, just even something small like heart palpitations just being all of a sudden, I'm just getting, like, these flutters. And we have come to find that Lyme disease is rampant. It is not just like a Northerner problem. It's not just a New York or know that Northeast problem.

Matt [00:06:04]:
It is everywhere. And it is difficult to find anybody who actually knows how to even recognize it as a thing. But the CDC does. The CDC says, oh, yeah, we totally recognize, like, if you got patients coming in and they're complaining about this, this, and this and this, don't just send them away or dismiss them or give them caffeine pills or even treat them for Ms or something like that. Look into that. Look into their bloodstream. And we have confirmation that there are chronic Lyme disease. Sorry.

Matt [00:06:37]:
Chronic lyme disease. What's the word out of my Add? Yeah. Chronic lyme disease cases. I'll just say cases that can be there for years, for ten or 15 years, because Lyme disease, it can hide in everything, and it's just bacteria and co infections, and it can just wreak havoc on your body. It can cause random inflammation. There are some people who get Lyme disease, and they suddenly are allergic to meat. And it is rampant. It really is.

Matt [00:07:15]:
It is out there. There's a great video on YouTube where this guy's like, yeah, we need to pay attention to the tick problem. He literally is walking on a paved know, and it's surrounded by grass with a white sheet. And he walks down this path, and within, like three minutes of him walking, he holds the bedsheet up. And there are thousands of ticks on this thing. And the thing about it is, not everybody gets the bullseye. Not everybody gets the big, oh, look, a tick bit me. There it is.

Matt [00:07:42]:
That's what I got. It can be looked like a mosquito bite. It can look like a little red mark. So, I mean, I'm just going to tell you, this is PSA. Just get out there, get yourself tested. But yeah, definitely. When I got married and I thought what married life was going to be like and my role as a man, that completely went out the window. And I will say it's actually made me more not angry, but just passionate and encouraging to men to step up and do more in your house, because it's not that hard.

Matt [00:08:21]:
Guys. It's so funny now when I meet other men who are like, well, I don't know how to pick up my little girl's hair, like, put it in a ponytail or braid it. What? What are you talking about? I was like, you know how to tie a fishing line, though? Or like, you can talk to me hours about like, oh, this is how cables should be wrapped and hung up on a nail in the garage. You can't figure out how to put your little girl's hair into a three part braid. Dude, do better. Or even guys who are like, oh, I don't know how to cook unless it's on a grill, on open fire, flame in the woods with a bear, bro. Just put whatever you want to make and just get it hot. That's all cooking is.

Matt [00:09:03]:
You just take something, you put it on heat and add salt and pepper. At least you're on the right path there. It's not rocket science. And it's just weird to me where men draw the line. And it's such a strange like it's weird to say that there's still, like, this kind of toxic masculinity. Actually, a lot of it's not toxic. It's like lazy masculinity. It was like, dude, we used to hunt.

Matt [00:09:31]:
We used to do stuff to survive for our family and provide. And you're telling me you're afraid of the stove in grocery shopping? Dude, do better. Because when my wife's not feeling well when she's down and she can't do yeah, it's up to me. I got to get the girls up. I got to get them to school, and I had to learn how to braid hair, brush hair, how to wash hair properly, because hair, it's super important, and I want my girls to look good when they I don't want them to be like the ratty smelly kids that show up. And the teacher is always like, oh, here she comes. What's funny is, when I finally got into it and I learned how to cook, really learned how to cook now to a point where you give me five or six ingredients, I'm like, all right, we can do something with that. Or like little small projects and stuff, like fixing toys and things like that, I realized, oh, it's not hard.

Matt [00:10:31]:
It just wasn't in my field of interest before, but now that I know it, it's not difficult. And so my whole thing, to the young men especially, is like, bros, it's not difficult. It just wasn't in your wheel of interest, and you just need to step up and do it, give a hand. Learn how to put together more than just cereal or heating up a can of soup on the stove. Your kids need you, and your wife needs you, or your partner needs you, your spouse needs you. Men, women, whoever it is. But we have these weird definitions like, oh, that's the woman's job. And it's like, no, it's not.

Matt [00:11:08]:
We're all into the same house, right? Because if you want to talk about hunter gatherers stuff like that or whatever, no one's going out and shooting the deer and skinning it. That was just his job or her job or whatever it may be. No, we all have McDonald's down the street and Wendy's or all that stuff, and we all have Publixes and instacart and Uber eats. Like, figure it out, bro. You want to be a man, figure it out and stop making excuses that, oh, it's supposed to be her job. That's absolutely ridiculous.

Dirty Skittles [00:11:37]:
Relationship with your mom and dad, I.

Matt [00:11:39]:
Don'T know where you want to go with that.

Dirty Skittles [00:11:43]:
Some of the lessons that you learned from just growing up, do you think that some of that comes into play now with your married life and taking care of your kids and taking care of your wife and stepping up? Or was that something that you had to kind of learn along the way?

Matt [00:12:02]:
I've definitely always been a helper. I've definitely always had at least that mentality of, oh, somebody needs something, I'm going to do it for them. I'm going to try to figure it out. I think where the growth needed to happen was, as a man, in realizing that there are times when my wife wants help in actually doing something, me physically going and taking care of something, and when she wants help, of just letting her vent and letting me listen. And then that's helpful too. And then going and doing something. And I still have to stop myself now because I will say it's just like, naturally when I think for a lot of men I'm not going to speak for everyone, but for a lot of men, when their wives come to them, they're like, this hurts. This is a problem.

Matt [00:12:48]:
Or we need to do this. And they're just like, okay, go. And they just run out the door, and they want to just take care of they just want to solve the problem. And I think for me, was a hard thing, was, no, stop, stay, listen, and hear the whole details. And I still struggle with that too, because I want to solve the problem as quick as possible. For me, I think in my growth, it was to say, like, okay, no, I need to now pay attention not just to the physical needs, but to the emotional needs and the spiritual needs and the psychological needs. That to me, paints a more healthier picture for the identity of what a man is than I think most whatever modern media or what people see on YouTube or TikTok and what they think, okay, this is a man. This is a real man.

Matt [00:13:41]:
And I will say there are some dudes on YouTube and TikTok who are now famous for like, oh my, I got really angry at this was there was this guy, he's like, why would I stay with a woman who already has a kid? And he goes through this whole thing. It's like, oh, I get invested in you, and I get invested in this child, and then you decide to leave me. And now I have all this emotional investment that's suddenly torn away from me, and I was invested in all this. And he kept talking about investments, investments, investments. And he's like, and now I got it, so why would I start dating a woman with a child? And what I heard was, oh, you're too scared to actually be what they need. You're actually not man enough. You're actually not capable enough. What I'm hearing is you're terrified of them wasting your time, and you're completely missing the point of what a meaningful, deep relationship is supposed to be.

Matt [00:14:43]:
So, yeah, actually, don't dude, don't waste her time with you, and don't waste that kid's time with you. Let them move on and go to an actual grown up and not just a whiny child who's worried about their video game time being interrupted too often.

Dirty Skittles [00:15:04]:
Yeah, I just love your insight, and I love how much you love your wife and your girls and yourself. Right. You give them something that I'm going to say a lot of men don't do or don't have the intuition to do. And I just think that your message is really important is that men need to step the fuck up, look inside your soul, figure out what your wife needs, what your partner needs, and help the fuck out. Right? I guess I see that more now in this generation than I did so much in my generation. Right. I'm a lot older than both you and dirty skittles. Yeah, dude, I'm 60.

Dirty Skittles [00:15:57]:
60. But I don't remember growing up. I don't remember my dad or my men that I was growing up with that would step up and do things like that, right? But as I look at the generations after me, they're starting to pay attention a little bit more and understanding that they have more than one job, right? And maybe it's not just going to work every day, but you have a job of caring for your family, caring for your wife, your partner, the kids, not just mowing the lawn, painting, fixing stuff around the house. Learn how to fucking cook. It's not that hard, believe me. And you know what? If all you're going to serve your kids is ramen, okay, maybe get a cookbook. You know what? YouTube has a lot of videos that are going to teach you how to cook, believe me. But I commend you, man.

Dirty Skittles [00:16:57]:
And you have so much energy and so much to offer our listeners and the kids that are growing up right, that are coming through, finishing high school, moving on to their life into college, becoming young adults. And I just think that this message is really important. And as far as, like, the Lyme disease, I live in upstate New York, right? We live on eight forest of acres. Whenever we go out, we check for ticks as soon as we come.

Matt [00:17:30]:
Do?

Dirty Skittles [00:17:31]:
Yes.

Matt [00:17:32]:
Every time, every I'm still figuring it out. I still struggle with, I think, very natural, with feelings of self worth and anger. But the more important thing is that when my wife sees me, when she sees as my partner, as my friend, sees me reaching limits, sees me reaching points, she tries to calm me down, bring me back, reenergize me in those ways. And that is the truth of a healthy relationship, is when you have a partner, best friend, man, woman, whatever it may be, when they are able to see you and see when you're reaching breaking points, they're able to help you either bust through, just get mad, yell it out, scream it out, cry it out. If that's what you need to do, do it. I'm totally an advocate for like, if you feel like you need to cry, don't hold it in. That's hurting you more. Cry.

Matt [00:18:35]:
If you feel like you need to go scream, scream. Just do it in a healthy way that isn't scarring your children or hurting your partner, but do that. And that, to me, is the goal, I think, in the picture of what a partnership looks like in a relationship is those people, they know you to a point where they see you, they see where you're at, and they're either able to help you break through it and get over it, move on, or to bring you back down. Because I'm still a man sometimes I still get upset. I still get angry and I still have aggression that I'm often like, wait, why am I this angry? What about that made me this angry? And I think we all have trauma. Even in the Happiest family, in the most perfect environment that you can have grown up in, there's still trauma. Maybe you watched a movie too young and now that scarred you. Maybe someone on the street said something to you weird and that has left its mark on you.

Matt [00:19:36]:
It might not be even within your nuclear family, but everyone has trauma. Don't avoid it. Just roll with it. Experience it, talk through it, work through it with a professional, with your friends, with your community, and just learn from it because it's there. It's not going to go away. So use it to your advantage. Just like my Add and my ADHD isn't going to go away anytime. I'm trying to use it to my advantage and hopefully to the generations after me that I can be like, okay, well, here's how you deal with that.

Matt [00:20:11]:
You don't feel like you can get something done. You can't focus on something. Do this, this, and this and this. If we want to talk about generational purpose, that's a lot of it. Maybe you're not perfect. Maybe when you pass on from this time on Earth, maybe you weren't perfect by the time you got to the end of it, but hopefully you moved the marker a little bit ahead. You moved progress. And so then maybe your kids are a little less of that of you, and then their kids will be a little less and then a little less and a little less, and we'll just get better and better and better through generations.

G-Rex [00:20:46]:
That's amazing. As we for sharing your story, for sharing all of that, we need to have you back. You're so insightful and yeah, man, I was already thinking like, dude, oh, thanks. We need to bring you back.

Dirty Skittles [00:21:09]:
We do. Yes, we need to bring you back. But I also want you to plug your and where people can find we are.

Matt [00:21:20]:
So we do a podcast. I do podcast with my two best friends, Tyler and Trey. It's called nostalgia. Land podcasts. We release new content every Friday. We try to at least this week we're doing well, this week we just released Earnest, Scared, Stupid and we had hocus Pocus and we're doing our Halloween. Next up is Adam's family and Beetlejuice. And really, like I said, this is my outlet.

Matt [00:21:44]:
This is something that my wife knows. This brings them joy. This re energizes them, this refuels them. We were having these idiotic conversations all the time around dinner tables and friends, and I just one day thought, let's just record this, let's put this down somewhere and maybe other people will enjoy it. But yeah, so far it's been a lot of fun, it's been a lot of nostalgia. We try to talk about everything from eighty s, ninety s early two thousand s. And even before that, even into the some of those weird, wonderful Sci-Fi movies that are back there. We have those on the Dogget.

Matt [00:22:23]:
Yeah, there's just a lot of strange stuff about, I want to say, about the last hundred years, from the invention of motion pictures and television media to now. And it's just worth talking about. It's worth pulling back up and being like, hey, remember that? That was weird. Let's work through that. Maybe that's where your weird trauma against Mucus came from or something. Because we rewatched Ernest scared stupid. And I had to say I didn't remember this character. And the moment I put it on, I went, oh, my God, that's why I'm terrified of looking under my.

G-Rex [00:23:13]:
Don'T. Bryce, you can cut this part out. But Matt, I'm going to introduce you to So cat mandu is he's my friend Brady, and he's a film student now at Ithaca College.

Matt [00:23:29]:
Oh, cool.

Dirty Skittles [00:23:29]:
And you two would hit it the fuck off.

Matt [00:23:32]:
Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Dirty Skittles [00:23:33]:
So, yeah, I'm going to introduce you because you know what? He needs some inspiration from men that are a little bit older than him. Right. He didn't know his dad. He grew up with his grandparents. But I think that you could offer him a ton of inspiration and I think it would be really good for him, too.

Matt [00:23:56]:
I would love that. Yeah. I love to chat with anybody. And that's what I think I love most about, and something I didn't consider when doing this, when doing the Internet, life is the community you can suddenly grow with online. It's so cool to have found you all and to realize, oh, we have a mutual friend, someone down here. And then I love the work you guys are doing and that this platform is available. And what's great is that it will always be available. 50 years from now, someone might go like, you know what? I was scrolling through the archives of the Spotify podcasts and I found this.

Matt [00:24:34]:
Shit goes on in our heads and it helped me. I think that's such a wonderful, beautiful thing that this will outlive us in the digital realm.

Dirty Skittles [00:24:45]:
It totally will. And you're going to get another email from us because we totally want you have such good energy, Matt. You really do.

Matt [00:24:59]:
Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. Oh, man. I have a lot to talk about with this iPad generation. Kids born 2005 to now are now 18. Is that right? Am I doing that math right? Yeah, 18. And they never known life without an iPad. And I have witnessed and noticed the significance, or not just an iPad, just a device.

Matt [00:25:22]:
Witnessed and noticed the significant impact, I think that's had on this generation. Yeah, there's a lot to discuss there. In some ways, it's, okay, this is a wonderful embrace of technology in order to prepare them for the future, but there's so often it's actually just made them so fearful and anxious about doing anything. Because I think when you give a kid unlimited access to the Internet, they're going to hear ideas and thoughts and sounds that are going to scare them that young minds weren't ready for. And it's heartbreaking for me to see how many kids, they don't want to get their driver's license because now they're afraid to drive, they don't know what they're doing. Because literally, you have this impact on a culture, an entire generation, where it's like, okay, you can either, A, go to college, like, study in high school, get good grades, go to college, spend a ton of money, get that amazing degree that you want to do to be a professional in and then hopefully get the really good position in the job and pay that off and start making a really good living and be able to buy the house, car, the American dream, which is problematic in itself. But anyways, you can do all that work, and it can take you maybe ten years to get to a point where you've made it, you're doing it. Or you can go record yourself farting on the Internet and get millions of followers and start making a bunch of revenue from that.

Matt [00:26:57]:
What do you want to do?

Dirty Skittles [00:26:59]:
I love this. See, this is why we need you on the podcast.

G-Rex [00:27:02]:
Thank you so much.

Dirty Skittles [00:27:03]:
I love you so much. And thank you so much, Matt.

Matt [00:27:07]:
Oh, man. Thanks for putting up with me. I love you guys too. Thank you for having me and putting up with me. I know I ramble a bit, but using the ADHD hopefully for good.

Dirty Skittles [00:27:25]:
It'S.

Dirty Skittles [00:27:25]:
Okay to be not okay. Just make sure you're talking to.