Breaking the Masculinity Trap (with Kristal Desantis)

[Dana Skaggs] (00:01)
Welcome friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home, it’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Kristal Desantis. Kristal is a licensed marriage and family therapist known for her expertise in relationships, trauma work, and sex therapy. Her insights have been featured in publications such as Newsweek, HuffPost, The Good Men Project, and Time. Kristal, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Kristal Desantis] (00:35)
Yay, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

[Dana Skaggs] (00:38)
This is fantastic. You also have a lot of understanding regarding male psychology and the challenges faced by men in contemporary society. So fill us in on your journey and what got you interested in that focus, and I have a lot of questions and we’ll just kind of weave back and forth.

[Kristal Desantis] (00:57)
Sure. So first of all, I grew up in a family of a lot of girls, I am the oldest of six girls. And then when I went to college, I went to an all-women’s college, so until I was out of college I was just really surrounded by women, by female energy. I also have three aunts, so it’s just very much in the women’s sphere.

[Kristal Desantis] (01:30)
And I didn’t date at all, like until I went to college, I wasn’t even exposed to it, I was actually raised in Japan, so dating culture was very different. So I moved to America, went to an all-women’s college, and started being exposed to American dating culture. I was just so interested in how different the women are socialized here versus the way the men are socialized here. I also got my first job working in a sports bar, and it was just so apparent to me, coming from a different culture, that men and women are like two different societies, and at some point we expect them to live in the same house. I was in an all-women’s college, so it’s almost like a giant sorority, beautiful and cozy, and then would go to a frat party and I’d be like, people live here? So that is really what got me curious about, what are men doing in this society? I grew up around all women and went to an all-women’s college, so I was very familiar with the messaging and the scripts and the socialization of women, but I was completely unfamiliar with what the men were doing. So it really just started from a place of personal curiosity, of what’s happening over there?

[Dana Skaggs] (02:54)
That’s awesome. Let me ask you first really quickly, I’m curious about the differences that you noticed within the Japanese culture versus when you came to America, the dating and the male-female roles and the expectations there. Right from the jump, what were some of the things that you noticed?

[Kristal Desantis] (03:14)
It’s so profoundly different. The Asian dating culture, especially back then, when I was raised there, there really wasn’t a dating culture, throughout high school, throughout middle school, there’s just no dating. You’re focusing on school, and the idea is that at some point you will eventually find somebody, but there’s a lot of family involvement in choosing a partner. I remember one moment where I was working at the sports bar, and a coworker came back to work and said, ooh, I went on this date with this guy, and she was all excited, and I was like, ooh, who is his family? And she was like, what? That’s really a huge difference. Also, in Japanese culture, even when you start working, it is very gender divided, in that pregnant women and married women, especially back then, it’s changed a little bit now, but the expectation was that once you got married, even if you were in the workforce, if you got pregnant you would leave, you would leave the workforce and take care of the home. So Japanese marriages tended to be almost like 1950s America traditional in that way. So then coming to America, I was like, what is happening, I don’t understand any of this. So that’s really where it started, just me trying to understand this culture of relationships, dating, socialization of men versus women, and really starting from a blank slate almost.

[Dana Skaggs] (04:56)
Love that, love that. Now, I’ve talked to some men, I have grown sons of my own and I’ve had patients, I’m glad you have focused on this area, because there seems to be, in this particular culture right now, a difficulty that they’re having, they’re frustrated with the expectations, they feel like it’s moving, it’s like the shell game, they can’t figure out what they’re supposed to do or not supposed to do, they feel like it’s not really safe to express what they want for fear of getting criticized or judged. It’s really frustrating. So I was wondering what your experience was with them as you were studying and working with the men and with relationships, and the role of how sex plays in with all of that, and what that means to them and all the things.

[Kristal Desantis] (05:50)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that is the biggest thing, and that’s something I address in the prologue of my book: back in the day, the roles of men were very traditionally categorized into, you are the protector, you are the provider, and your job is to procreate. The three P’s of masculinity. And that all changed very quickly. A lot of research in my book is from an anthropological and sociological perspective, and in that prologue, an anthropologist basically went to multiple different cultures, different societies, and asked men this question, what does it mean to be a man? And they all kind of boiled down to: my job is to protect my family, my job is to provide for my family, and my job is to give my wife babies if she wants them. Back in the day it wasn’t really a question, it was like, of course your wife wants babies, so as a man that’s part of your job, is you give your wife babies, you procreate. Otherwise, if you fail in any one of these three categories, you are not a high value man. If you can’t protect your wife, you can’t provide for them, or you can’t give her the baby she wants, sorry bud, your line dies out, right?

[Kristal Desantis] (07:09)
And again, all of that changed incredibly quickly with the modern relationship, because then women started to be like, well, protect us from who? Just stop hurting us. And then provision, it was like, well, we have jobs too, so what else are you going to bring to the table? And then also for the modern marriage, procreation is by no means enough, where is the parenting? And then of course there are some women that are like, I don’t want to procreate, so then what have you got? And so that’s really what I found, is that the script for women changed dramatically, and this, the focus wasn’t so much on this idea of we are marrying for protection or provision or survival, it was more about, we want partners who can meet us emotionally. But for men, that script hasn’t changed very much. If you look at the messages for men, and that was part of why I wrote my book, was because when I was working with couples and I was looking for resources for them, there’s so many books for women on emotional intelligence, setting boundaries, getting a healthier relationship with yourself, healing your inner child. And when I would look at the books directed to men, it was how to be fit, how to have a good business, finance books and fitness books. And I was like, what? So we have these multifaceted women, and we’re still trying to shove men into these very objectifying categories, and then we wonder why these marriages are failing. It was almost like, on a very basic level, I was like, okay, so we walk into a sorority house, it looks like this, and we walk into a frat house, and it looks like this, and at some point they’re supposed to live in the same house? How?

[Dana Skaggs] (09:08)
Well, that you bring up an excellent point, because I’m hearing some women say, particularly ones that maybe are widowed or divorced or something like that, that they are somewhat resistant or reticent to engage in another relationship for fear of being kind of cast as the mom, someone to come and keep the house clean, wash the clothes, do the grocery shopping, cook the meals, and they’re not interested in that. So sometimes it seems like there’s a disconnect between what men want, what women want, and how the culture has shifted and changed, and now they’re having a hard time finding one another.

[Kristal Desantis] (09:53)
Absolutely. And that’s the thing in my work, I’m sure you’ve experienced this too. Men are people just like anybody else. Men have deep emotional lives, men have desires for deeper connections. So I think that’s also part of what I was seeing, is that men are people too. But where are the tools and the resources that help them develop their humanity, their emotional depth, healing their inner child, and all of the things that we really give to women? Why isn’t there that attention for men? And I hear that, women are very frustrated, they’re like, basic emotional safety, why do I have to teach my partner that? Or basic life skills, why do I have to teach my partner that? I would rather not have a partner than do the emotional labor of raising a husband. Absolutely not. But what I’m seeing is also the failure of society to let men know that those things are important. So that’s part of what I’m very passionate about, is trying to bridge that gap, men who want to meet their partner’s needs in that way, like, I want to be more emotionally intelligent, I want to understand how to show up for you as a partner, but how do I bridge from A to B, how do I get there? Because there really just aren’t that many resources out there for the men that want to make that journey.

[Dana Skaggs] (11:28)
Right. So let me ask you this, because along what you’re saying, I’m hearing men say that they kind of get caught in a trap where they want to be able to feel safe and free to express their need to their partner and say, is it okay when I came home from work, I just want to sit next to you, can I have a hug, can you just wrap me up in your arms and can I just lay my head in your lap, can you just rub my hair with your hand, not because I want you to be my mother, but because I want that emotional connection with you. But then, on the one hand they feel women saying, express your emotional needs to us, but then when they do, many of them get slapped figuratively by the woman, she’s saying, why don’t you act like a man, why are you acting like some kind of little boy who needs a mommy? And so then they get trapped. It’s like, well, can I express it, can I not express it, what’s going on here?

[Kristal Desantis] (12:36)
Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s very much where a lot of men are right now, where they feel like damned if I do, damned if I don’t. If I take the leap to be vulnerable and open with my partner, what if she gets the ick? I don’t know if you’ve heard this term, it’s like where women are like, ew, I saw my husband cry and it changed how I felt about him. Or, ew, he told me about his…

[Kristal Desantis] (13:01)
whatever, his trauma, and, ugh. And that’s a really real thing. Women have also participated in keeping men in these boxes. It’s like Brené Brown says, her little anecdote of telling her speech about bravery and courage, and a man coming up to her afterwards and saying, my wife would rather see me die on my horse than fall off. And I think that’s also a big piece of this puzzle: are we making it safe for men to be vulnerable, or are we putting them in this double bind, of all these messages saying we want emotionally intelligent partners, but we don’t actually have the capacity to receive those emotionally intelligent partners and meet them without seeing it as, congratulations for doing the bare minimum, oh, you want me to be your emotional nanny, you want me to be your mom. And a lot of that puts men in this very, very double-bind.

[Dana Skaggs] (14:03)
Absolutely. And I remember talking to a man one time, he was very good profession, had done well for himself, and he had kind of a reputation as being somewhat of a rake, somewhat of a player. But he felt comfortable just chatting with me, and what came out was his love language was physical touch, and he needed that physical touch, but for him, because of the position he was in, just asking for that or reaching out for that wasn’t really received well. But what was received well was him playing the role of a player, and he would actually end up using sex, but not actually for the sex itself, of course, that was pleasurable too, but that wasn’t the main goal for him. The main goal for him was to have that physical touch connection with a partner, and the sex was simply the vehicle. But it made him appear like a player, and that’s the reputation, but that was the reputation that women would accept, and he didn’t feel safe being honest about what was the true motivation behind wanting to have sex.

[Kristal Desantis] (15:23)
Absolutely, and that is so common. There’s a lot of research about this too, of how touch-starved so many men are. You think about female friends, female friends can be very touchy with each other, very complimentary of each other, giving each other hugs, touching each other’s hair or whatever, it can be very tactile. But for a lot of men, the only way they can get that is either through the wrestling thing, but then after a certain point, maybe after you get out of high school or college and the wrestling thing kind of stops, there are so many men that just go through their lives having no physical contact at all with anybody. And so the only way they can actually get some kind of physical contact is to potentially engage sexually with a woman.

[Dana Skaggs] (16:25)
Yeah, and I’m wondering, is that included, because you developed what’s called the STRONG model, tell us about that, that’s really interesting to me, the STRONG model of relational therapy.

[Kristal Desantis] (16:40)
So that was something else, as I was working with couples and my focus was on men, one thing I noticed is that the therapeutic field is very heavily female. So we very much like to talk about sitting with our feelings, sitting with our emotions. And one of my passion populations is veterans and first responders, and these are very action-oriented men. They absolutely have feelings, a lot of them were coming to therapy because they were struggling with PTSD or some kind of relational trauma, but there was this disconnect of, I don’t want to just go in a room and, you’re going to try to make me cry, and then what, what’s the point? So that was part of developing the STRONG model, it’s an acronym for the six pillars of what a healthy relationship needs. I really wanted to speak to men in their language, of, here’s a blueprint, here’s an action plan, if you do cry, it’s because there’s a plan here. So the first thing in a healthy relationship is safety, that’s the S. What does safety mean? Being safe with your emotions, being able to self-regulate, being stable, and then having some self-awareness. So these are the four S’s of safety, because safety is a big thing, and often when I brought up safety as the foundation of a relationship, women got it immediately, women were like, absolutely, I need a safe relationship, otherwise I don’t want to stay. And men, again, especially with veterans and first responders, they’re like, what do you mean? I’m the guy they call when there’s danger, I am the safest guy ever, what are you talking about? Safety? With men it tends to be this binary of there are good guys and there are bad guys, and a lot of the guys were like, I’m the good guy, I’m the hero, what are you talking about, safety, of course I’m safe. So breaking it down into, self-awareness, are you understanding the impact you have on your partner, are you self-aware of what you’re bringing into this relationship, because we all bring stuff into relationship. Second is the skills for stability, which is the basic, are you able to keep your family stable if your wife is incapacitated, she gets sick, she goes out of town, does the family fall apart? Again, so many couples, it’s the basic stability stuff, I can’t go out of town without him calling me every five minutes, where’s the bottles, where’s the food, keeping your family safe is also helping keep it stable. And then also there were certain things, as I say in my book, you can’t bring the stability if you are the chaos. If you have an unaddressed mental health issue, or an out-of-control drinking problem, or in some way you are bringing the chaos, your wife won’t be able to feel safe with you, because you’re not stable in yourself.

[Dana Skaggs] (19:30)
So let me ask you this, Kristal, in that safety factor, the S of STRONG, does it talk also about if they feel safe? Because what I’m hearing you say so far is how they can bring a scenario where they’re helping their partner feel safe, and what that looks like, because they’re like, well, I’m a first responder, of course I’m the hero. Does it also address what does it look like for them, what did they need for their own safety in the relationship?

[Kristal Desantis] (20:12)
Yes, absolutely. That’s really what, when you know what safety feels like, you can also recognize unsafe people. That was also something I saw a lot of men, especially men who see themselves as the hero, they would choose partners who were not stable, because then they were like, I’ll be your stability, I’ll save you, and they would pick projects that would actually not be able to show up equally. So they were constantly in this position of providing safety for them without ever being on the receiving end of that. So absolutely, that’s kind of built in there.

[Dana Skaggs] (20:55)
That makes so much sense, because if they’re getting their value, their identity from being this hero, if you think about the hero-villain-victim triad, every hero needs a victim, and usually a villain out there somewhere, finding that victim is going to just create problems. I bet you did some interesting work in helping them get to a place where they could see their value outside of being a hero, so they stopped choosing projects.

[Kristal Desantis] (21:29)
Yeah, and this, I love this work because, at the end of the day, it’s really about allowing people to be human. Because even being a hero, it’s a great thing, but it’s also in some ways a role. And the same thing that women got with the feminist revolution is the ability to choose how to be human. It’s like, we weren’t just relegated to being mothers, being wives, being roles, we were allowed to say, no, you have worth as a human, you could be a woman with no children, you could be a woman who chooses not to be a wife, you could be a woman who, whatever, and you still have inherent value. And men still haven’t quite gone through that revolution, where they’re still

[Kristal Desantis] (22:18)
very much getting the message that your value is in the role you play in society. There’s a whole bunch I could go into here, but there’s so many men that have this purpose void where they’re like, well, I don’t see a place for me in society, so I guess I’ll just check out, I’ll just play video games all day, because at least there I get to complete a level and get to win stuff and get to feel like I’m progressing.

[Kristal Desantis] (22:48)
And then, gosh, the book “The Boy Crisis,” they talk about it as the multi-option woman and the no-option man, is what has happened. It’s like, women get the message, you could be anything. With men it’s like, do you have a lot of money, are you over six feet tall, are you really hot, if not, then yeah, nobody really wants you around.

[Dana Skaggs] (23:14)
And that sounds, when we say it like that, it sounds, oh my gosh, are you kidding me, but it’s true, it is absolutely true, because I’ve talked to men that feel that way, and they say that the women that they try to engage with, or approach for a potential relationship or just getting to know one another, that that question comes up: first of all, the men who aren’t super tall, that’s hard right off the jump. And then even if they are taller, there’s that question invariably, what can you give me, how much money do you have, kind of thing. And it’s very disheartening for them.

[Kristal Desantis] (23:55)
Yeah, and that’s part of what I talk about even in that safety chapter of my book, that self-awareness of, are you also presenting yourself as a role, are you trying to attract women with your wallet? If so, then don’t be surprised that the women that you’re attracting are the women that are attracted to your wallet. And really getting away from, it’s men versus women, it’s, there are healthy people that will value you for your humanity, and there are unhealthy people, that are only looking for the hottest girl, the hottest guy, the richest, the trophy wife, whatever, and that’s going to continue to be true. But if you don’t want to play that game, here are the skills and tools to have a different type of relationship, and to recognize when you find somebody else who has the same kind of core values that you do.

[Dana Skaggs] (24:52)
So I have another question for you, and I know we still need to get to the R-O-N-G. What recommendations would you have for someone who’s sort of stuck in that position, where they feel like they don’t fit whatever criteria, and yet they’re trying to reach out and feel some possibility of a healthy relationship? What’s one practical tip that you could say to that person listening right now, who’s thinking, oh my gosh, what Kristal is saying is absolutely spot on, that’s my life, I’m walking that right now. What is one practical tip you might give them for what do they do when this is the reality for them?

[Kristal Desantis] (25:43)
I think one thing that I see as a difference between men and women is their support system. If a woman goes on a bad date with a guy that’s like, you’re too blank for me, she has her friends that can be like, no, you are amazing, you are gorgeous, that can validate her worth. Men don’t generally have that. If they go on a bad date and a friend says, hey, how’d that date go, they’re like, eh, meh, all right well, good luck next one, or oh, that sucks man. But that validation, so practically, is have a, create a group of people, create a support system that you really truly feel values you for who you are, because that’s where you can come back to if your perceived worth, if somebody’s like, oh, you’re not tall enough for me, or oh, I was hoping that you would have a fancier car or whatever, that you have that support system to validate, no, your worth is so much more than that. Your worth is not by any means determined by your external factors. Having that support system can also help you start to believe in yourself, and that’s where therapy comes in, really figuring out why your worth has been so dependent on external factors, and for a lot of men that was the script they were given. So unlearning and deconstructing that script so you can actually feel confident that your worth is not dependent on any external factors.

[Dana Skaggs] (27:22)
Love it, that’s awesome. So, what is the T in your STRONG acronym?

[Kristal Desantis] (27:28)
So T is trust, which is, again, in doing a lot of the research, trust is often kind of the main thing that people talk about when they talk about what relationships need. As a trauma-informed therapist, I was like, you don’t trust people you don’t feel safe with, so let’s start with S. But then T, trusting your partner, building trust between the two of you. I talk about attachment styles in the T chapter as well, and also how to repair when trust is broken, because we’re all just human, we’re going to make mistakes, there’s going to be miscommunications. How do you rebuild that trust, how do you repair a rupture?

[Dana Skaggs] (28:06)
That is a big deal. I mean, Kristal, that is a huge one right there, and I have a feeling we’re not going to get to, listeners, you’re going to just get the book, I’m telling you, this is a big teaser, you’re going to have to go get the book, because the trust thing is so huge, because what we’ve been through in past relationships, and things that have happened to us, and we bring that forward, it’s so hard. I hear this in so many people’s stories on a regular basis, how hard it is for them to trust this next person because of what they’ve been through before. Did you hear some stories like that, of those situations?

[Kristal Desantis] (28:45)
Absolutely, absolutely. And I have some little client stories in my book as well. Part of it is learning to trust yourself, learning to trust that you can make good choices, learning to trust that you can leave a relationship that’s not meeting your needs, learning to trust that you will know what your line is. Because often where I see people with trust issues is, they’re like, I gave them so many chances, and I just kept getting betrayed. And it’s like, well, maybe let’s work on your self-trust of being able to know when this person is not worthy of your trust or your belief once again. And then also so many times, we talk about trust and all of that, but we don’t talk about, what do you do if inevitably you break your partner’s trust, it might be a mistake, but they thought you were going to be there at noon, you showed up at one, and now they’re hurt, and they feel stood up, and you’re like, oh my God, I didn’t mean to. That can lead to so many conflicts, as opposed to, what can I do to repair? And just going straight to that, like, I don’t need to defend, we don’t need to fight about who was right, who was wrong, let’s just go straight to repair, how can we recover from this, what do we need to learn from this?

[Dana Skaggs] (29:54)
I love that, and the repair, because when you see patterns, because I know when I talk to people it’s like, does something like that happen, if you show up at 12 and they show up at one, that wasn’t a good thing, but is that a one-off, or is that something that they do regularly? So I love the word repair, because if they’re truly repairing something, then you’re not going to continue to see that pattern. Now I know our time is up, but I did want to ask one last question.

[Dana Skaggs] (30:22)
I love being able to address misconceptions, debunking myths, these kinds of things. So the question is, what are some common misconceptions about masculinity and relationships that you would like to debunk in this work that you’re doing?

[Kristal Desantis] (30:38)
A couple of things. Toxic masculinity, that phrase leads to a lot of defensiveness. So the thing I like to talk about is masculinity, and also performative masculinity: the idea that masculinity is something that you have to perform, it’s something you have to earn. And that’s often where we talk about toxic masculinity, these men trying to prove themselves in a way that turns out to be very harmful, either to themselves or to others. So just kind of dispelling that myth, that masculinity is not something that you have to perform, it’s not something you have to earn. The masculine and feminine polarities are inside all of us, and it’s just about finding the balance of your personal expression of that, and that’s completely yours, you don’t have to perform it for anybody else. Nobody else gets to tell you how much of a man you are, nobody else gets to take away your man card, nobody has that power over you. And so if you are a man, you are inherently able to inhabit your masculinity in whatever way you choose, you just got to embody it, you just got to claim it, and it’s yours.

[Dana Skaggs] (31:56)
Love it, I love that. Okay Kristal, I want to make sure that my listeners can get more, because the acronym is STRONG, we covered the S and the T and we just didn’t have time, so listeners, I know you want to know what the R and the O and the N and the G all stand for, you can get all of this in Kristal’s book. Go to amazon.com and, the title is the STRONG model of relational therapy.

[Dana Skaggs] (32:27)
The title is “The STRONG Model of Relational Therapy.”

[Kristal Desantis] (32:30)
The book is called “Strong: A Relationship Field Guide for the Modern Man.” And it’s also on Audible, if you’re more of a listener.

[Dana Skaggs] (32:39)
Love it. Okay, fabulous. And the Audible is helpful too, people are doing something, folding laundry or doing dishes, or they’re in a car and they just want to listen, like a podcast.

[Kristal Desantis] (32:44)
Yeah, and that’s part of the audience for this book. Obviously women can read it too, but I wanted to make it easily accessible, and a lot of men, the feedback was, I’m not going to read a book, but I’ll listen to something. So I absolutely put it on Audible for that reason. My website is strong.love.

[Dana Skaggs] (33:05)
Yeah, got it, I’ll put that in here too.

[Dana Skaggs] (33:17)
Kristal, thank you so much, you have really spent your precious time and your wisdom and your experience and brought that here to me and my listeners, I appreciate it so much.

[Kristal Desantis] (33:30)
Absolutely, thanks for having me.

[Dana Skaggs] (33:33)
Hey guys, I know you have heard so much today, things that Kristal has shared with you, you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I have a friend, I have a coworker, I have a family member that needs to hear what Kristal Desantis is saying. Take this episode, take the link, copy and paste it, send it in text, send it in email, post it on your favorite social media sites so that we can grow our Phoenix and Flame community, so we can reach out and let people know, you’re not alone. I hope you have had a wonderful day, I hope the rest of your day goes fantastically. I’m Dana on Phoenix in Flame.