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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Hello, everybody. Today I'm here with the lovely Chris Wong.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: We're going to talk about men.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: men's feelings, men's relationships, men in marriages, men's social connections. It's the whole caboodle.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: This man here is so qualified to talk about this.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: He's a father of 2, a podcast host, a business owner, and he lives outside Boston, in Massachusetts.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: He's worked in the non-profit and healthcare sector for more than 15 years

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: he began his career, working as a licensed therapist and transitioned into learning and development.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: He also built a leadership and organizational department from the ground up, including formal mentorship and leadership development programs and led organizational projects.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: He founded the leadership potential where he partners with new nonprofit executives to confidently navigate chaotic transitions and create high performing cultures to get things done.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: This involves working with nonprofit leaders around executing strategic plans as well as addressing challenges such as conflict, resolution, culture, enhancement, board, engagement, building, influence and fostering inclusive work environments.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: He serves on the board of a foundation and the board of a non-profit

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and also co-host, the podcast the art and Science of difficult Conversations.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: where he helps people master difficult conversations in all domains of their lives.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Welcome, Chris.

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Chris Wong: Thanks for having me. Thanks for that really nice introduction

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Oh, you're very, very welcome.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: It's impressive, it's impressive.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: It's lovely to have you being here with me. So let's let's think. What would you say really got you into working with men's issues? In the 1st place.

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Chris Wong: Well, I, I guess, started as a therapist, and I was working with teen mostly adolescent boys. There were some girls in there, too, but mostly adolescent boys around. They I just lucked into a specialty specialty where they had sex offending behaviors. And so it was just a underrepresented treatment area.

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Chris Wong: I remember going to a conference early on. And they said, You know, if you want to do research in this area in 2, 3 years you'll be world famous because there's not enough people doing research around this type of issue.

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Chris Wong: And so I didn't do that because I didn't care about it as much. But that always stuck with me. And then, as I got older, or as I matured in my professional career, I also just grew like. I've always been interested in suicide prevention as something that's affected me. That's why I'm on the board of a Suicide Prevention nonprofit.

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Chris Wong: and I was.

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Chris Wong: I was finding that, you know, there's high rates of suicide among older men, and a lot of it's due to this. We have a lack of socialization. We don't. We don't have as much emotional bonds as as females do as women do. And so that just struck me. And so I was able to. Luckily I was able to find good men's groups, social peer groups, and we were able to build strong relationships, so that always mattered to me.

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Chris Wong: But I just found that that's not true for everyone. People are a lot of men are just trying to go through life on their own. And so when I started doing therapy again, I said, you know what I want to work with men. I think these. There's a group here of people. There's a subset of people who really need help learning how to manage things, and just even talk about their feelings

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Chris Wong: in general.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, absolutely. It's a much needed field. It's 1 of the major causes of death amongst men in the Uk suicide.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah.

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Chris Wong: Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah. So what would you say? Are the major issues? Let's maybe put it into different categories, you know, like young men and older men. What! What have you observed

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Chris Wong: Yeah, I think older men are stuck. And I'll say this, I'll only speak from a Western perspective, because I haven't done a lot of work with kind of Eastern cultures or other kind of African cultures. Things like that. So I don't wanna speak for everybody. Every man

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah.

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Chris Wong: But I will say that for the men that I've seen I've interacted with I've worked with

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Chris Wong: a lot of men, older men in the later large, later stages of life tend to really focus on their career as their identity.

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Chris Wong: And so then, I tend to work with them when they've lost a job when they're feeling unfulfilled.

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Chris Wong: And suddenly they're like, I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am. I feel lost. I feel overwhelmed with making all these other big decisions.

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Chris Wong: And so I think they come to a reckoning point of like, what do I do? I don't have any friends I don't have any social group

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Chris Wong: to reach out to. I'm just stuck by myself.

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Chris Wong: So I think that's for older men, that stage at least, I think there's a lot of intertwining of the mixture of their career mixture of who they are as a person because they've just wrapped so much into their career. And that's across like a lot of demographics that I see, even if you're religious, even if you are not religious. You know, across ethnic groups, like people here in in the in the Western culture, really identify with what they do for work.

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Chris Wong: You know.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: I am what I do, and if I don't have what I do, who am I

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Chris Wong: Exactly.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Hmm.

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Chris Wong: Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: So that's a really big shock to the system.

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Chris Wong: It is, it is, I, I think, cause they put so much effort into it. And they say, like, I'm really good at what I do.

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Chris Wong: But now, what do I do now? Who am I? You know they don't say, who am I? Because they don't know how to ask that question yet, but they're essentially asking that question. You know, what value do I have? I've asked some of my therapy clients. I'll ask them, you know, if you. One of the exercises I have is like, if you're on a desert island, you don't. You're not a father, you're not a son. You're not a a dad anymore, and you don't have a job. You're just there on an island. You're just living there. What's your value as a person?

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Chris Wong: And most of them will say, like between 5 and 7. They can't even rate themselves highly as a person, because they don't know where they are, what they want to do and

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Chris Wong: And so it's it's there's a lot of different factors, much smarter people than me have researched about that. But it certainly does contribute to the idea that the struggle that they have at that stage of life

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, I can get that, especially if it's very, very well entrenched.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: like forties or fifties. You've been doing what you do for 2030 years. Yeah, that's very deep. Yeah. And what about younger men?

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Chris Wong: Younger men, I find that they have the same thing. They just don't have as much.

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Chris Wong: you know. They're brought up in this social media world where there's so much people talking about. Do who you be, who you are, be true to you.

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Chris Wong: you know. Live your life, Yolo. All that kind of stuff. And so.

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Chris Wong: even though they have careers, even though they're like doing stuff like they're just maybe out of college, or they're they still feel unfulfilled. They still feel like I don't know who I am. I don't know what I should be doing.

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Chris Wong: And some of the guys I work with. They. They have friends, they go out with friends.

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Chris Wong: but it's really more. They're just kind of going through the motions. They don't really have a good sense of like, what? Who am I? What am I trying to do?

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Chris Wong: So I I find that the younger folks that I work with like the younger guys like twenties. They tend to have more friends. A lot of them are holdovers from college. A lot of them are because they have roommates. So they have built in friends they have. They haven't necessarily had to go out and create new friendships yet.

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Chris Wong: but they still feel the same way of at least they have someone to talk to, but they just still don't have the who am I? What's my ultimate goal? Who am I? Where am I trying to get to

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, yeah, I get that I get that.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: So what happens then? I mean, because you know, my podcast is largely about relationships. What happens then.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: when they are having relationships

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Chris Wong: Well, once they get into a romantic relationship, their spouse tends to end up being like their entire focus of their friendship and social sphere.

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Chris Wong: you know, and then otherwise, they're just by themselves. And so they depend on. You know, a lot of the guys I work with are straight. So like a lot of their wives will then become like their best friend, which is okay. That's fine, that they're their best friend.

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Chris Wong: But it's also their only friends like that's the only person they'll talk to.

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Chris Wong: But then, you know, there's more complicated dynamics around that, you know I I

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Chris Wong: not every spouse, not every wife is able or willing to have those deep conversations about kind of what men are feeling

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Chris Wong: just because of different gender roles. Right? And so I saw. One guy was talking about how he on a podcast is not somebody I treat, but somebody on a podcast was saying.

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Chris Wong: he, he, him and his family were sleeping at night, and he heard a noise in the in the basement, so he went to go check it out.

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Chris Wong: You know, with a with a something to defend himself in case somebody broke in, and it was nothing. It was just like something fell over

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Chris Wong: but the expectation. But he's like it stuck with him like. The expectation was that he had to go check it out.

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Chris Wong: or at least call 9 1 1, and he wasn't allowed to show fear like. If his wife had seen him show fear like he wasn't sure what to do.

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Chris Wong: It would kind of disrupt how she viewed the situation, how she viewed him.

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Chris Wong: And so I find that in those relationships men

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Chris Wong: think, feel like their wife is their best friends. At the same time they're not really able to be fully true and open and vulnerable to a degree with that right, because it's whether the the wife's own personal views on what dynamics there are, or things like that. But so like essentially they had don't really have anyone to chat with. They don't really have anyone to share like I'm scared about this, or I'm worried about this or this makes me anxious until they talk to someone like me, or you know, some of them do find friends, and that's fine. That's great.

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Chris Wong: But they don't really have an outlet for vast majority of men

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: So what you're saying is, in a way, although their wife may be their friend, they still are living in role protector, provider, sort of thing

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: right? So there's an emptiness at the heart

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Chris Wong: Right right, and like I I've done it with my own wife like I've tried to.

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Chris Wong: I've tried to share about like how I feel overwhelmed about something.

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Chris Wong: and you know I wasn't complaining about it. I just want to say, Hey, listen. I'm just, you know, I'm just talking about like I feel overwhelmed.

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Chris Wong: and her 1st response is like, or I see her like tearing up. And I'm like what's going on for you. And she starts tearing up saying how she feels guilty as a mom, because she's not able to manage all these things. And so, even if I'm trying to share vulnerably like. And I. I hear this from lots of guys like they, they might try to share vulnerably. And then all of a sudden, their spouse or partner starts sharing even something more like intense. And then so like

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Chris Wong: whether it's intended to be like, let's bond together over this.

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Chris Wong: you know my instinct is, oh, let me help you soothe through this. It's not. Let's let's work through this together. So it's a very difficult dynamic to work through

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yes, I can see that. That's sort of almost like a competition, for who is the most needy to get looked after

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Chris Wong: Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah. Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Hmm.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: that's quite fascinating. I'm I'm sort of wondering if to share something that I don't think we did talk about before, and that is 2 and a half years ago

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: my nephew took his own life

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Chris Wong: And I think it was for similar reasons

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And that he felt like there was nobody there for him. Everybody else had greater needs

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: but it. It's not until you're saying this that that is becoming more possible as a a thing for me.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And there is a lot of stuff, I think, about women expecting men to man up all the time.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and at the same time, how can I put this wanting to be in their feminine and still being in the masculine in the daytime, you know. It's a lot of shifting sand at the moment

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Chris Wong: It's I think so. I think there's so much conflicting messages that men are receiving. Right like that. We are part of a patriarchy. We're we're setting up these systems which are harmful, which I agree. We are part of a system that's harmful towards women. Totally agree with that.

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Chris Wong: And

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Chris Wong: I think. Luckily, I'm part of a faith, and I've got training as a therapist. So like I have a pretty good understanding of my my emotions, and what's going on, and understanding in my mind, at least, like how to create a more, what manhood should look like in more equal equal setting.

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Chris Wong: But I recognize not a lot of men get that. And so then, essentially, a lot of men are being told. You're the problem.

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Chris Wong: You're part of the problem you're causing this, but nobody's telling them. This is how you should behave, or this is how you could be

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Chris Wong: a better man. And how do you, you know, be a leader or be a man in the society that's more equal.

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Chris Wong: And so then they had. The only examples are like these really toxic masculine perspectives that come out that.

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Chris Wong: you know are are to the nth degree, you know, you know, harmful to themselves and others, and so

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Chris Wong: it's not helpful. So there's not as many voices about like what does a healthy male and masculine leadership look like or masculine energy look like? That's both

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Chris Wong: in touch with emotions and feelings, and and being able to share and still play whatever roles you want to play

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, yeah, I get that. Men are people, too, you know.

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Chris Wong: Yeah, we all are. We're all we're all people

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yes, I know, is it?

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: yeah. And I think there's some sort of political redressing of balances going on, because, you know, men of this era weren't the ones that set up the patriarchy to begin with.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and women of this era are making that transition to be more independent and not necessarily choosing men to be the father of their children and the ideal partner. They're just choosing them

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: because they they want that one. Now.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: it may not be for an enduring relationship. I think there's there's even some negative stuff about having partners at all.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, which I think is a lot for men to address

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: like, there's there's all the stuff you get about catfishing, you know, men online trying to lure women into being in relationship with them and then taking them for everything they've got.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: But you also hear it the other way. I mean, maybe I'm in a privileged position to to hear that. But I hear men talking about going on dates with women, and being expected to pay and do everything, even one woman going out on a 3rd or 4th date and asked to go shopping, went to a high end shopping center and tried on lots of clothes, and when it got to the pay desk stood back and expected him to pay for these 6 dresses she'd chosen

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Chris Wong: That's so interesting.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, these things happen. It's yeah. And it's really tough on men.

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Chris Wong: Wow.

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Chris Wong: I you know, I think of that as like it's it's always about that mix or that complementary like, what is your cultural and and expectations also, like, what's your view of what's right and what's wrong, and how people should behave like.

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Chris Wong: you know, if if a man and a woman in this kind of scenario were in that 3rd date, but both of them both had that viewpoint, and that value system like this is what it should look like

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Chris Wong: there's not really a problem right like, if if if that guy also believes I am a provider, I need to pay for my date.

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Chris Wong: Then I in my mind, there's not really an issue. There's no disconnect because they both are coming from the same cultural viewpoint, and it makes sense that it's not

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Chris Wong: overly hurting anybody because they're both on of the same mindset right?

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yep, but if they're not

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Chris Wong: They're not. Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah. And and I think as well, a 3rd date's quite a lot to expect a thousand dollars worth of clothes

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Chris Wong: Yeah, I mean, I'll say this every day. I wish my wife would just wake up and say, Hey, listen! I'm actually a billionaire. I've been testing you for the last 1012 years to make sure you really love me.

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Chris Wong: So I don't know. I think there's plenty of people like plenty of guys, also that would like to be pampered and and taken care of, too.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. My my partner, Ian and I went away for his birthday, which happens to be New Year's Eve, and we went away a couple of days afterwards, because, you know, it's always mayhem that night, and he absolutely loved being taken away. We went to Rick Stein's in Padstow, which is a nice restaurant with a place to stay

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: by the seaside. It was absolutely lovely, and I could see him sort of soaking it up.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: It was really really lovely. And why shouldn't men want that

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Chris Wong: Yeah.

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Chris Wong: yeah, absolutely love it. If my wife were to make enough where I didn't have to work anymore, I'm all for it. I'll take care of everything in the house. That's fine with me.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Sweet, sweet. Yeah. Yeah. And then we get into that whole other dynamics of the children. Yes, which we, we don't have, because we don't have children together. But what's that like

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: for men these days, the the balance of childcare and working.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: What do you see in the people you work with

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Chris Wong: I think it's the same thing that we've always had. It's always, how do I like every guy I've ever worked with cares about their kids. They want their kids to be successful. They want them to learn respect.

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Chris Wong: you know. I don't think there's anything hard about that. I think it's they have maybe unrealistic expectations of how much kids can learn by themselves.

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Chris Wong: and they don't remember or realize how much their role in shaping the kids is is, it doesn't matter how much time, right where kids aren't counting how much time you're you're spending with them. It's it's really matter. They're thinking about like when you're with them? Are you with them? Are you doing something with them? Are you helping them understand the context of why things are happening?

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Chris Wong: You know I have a client who has a teenage son in there. He just went through a layoff. A pretty pretty, devastating layoff they have to sell their house. They have to do all this stuff.

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Chris Wong: you know, and their and their son is understandably very upset, you know, acting out kind of refusing to help with the move, and things like that.

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Chris Wong: and my client keeps describing how he's feeling overwhelmed and how he's feeling stressed. And and all this stuff.

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Chris Wong: It's the exact same feelings. His son is going through no different there, and he just can't seem to understand that he just wants his son to like stop acting like this, and figure it out and move forward. And it's

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Chris Wong: it's hard for him to see like, oh, my son is going through these deep emotions, too.

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Chris Wong: Me just tell him to buck up is not gonna work, no matter how many times I say it.

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Chris Wong: It's really about how I navigate this, and we keep talking about that? He's like, how do I get through to him?

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Chris Wong: And you know I can't like. I wish I could just tell him like, you just gotta sit down and talk to him and just

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Chris Wong: listen to what he's saying and feeling, and not try to tell him solve the problem for him.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah. And it it strikes me that he may well be replicating what was given to him, you know. Just buck up and get on with it.

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Chris Wong: Right which we talk about, we. That's why I you know I bring up his dad and his parents, and he talks about that all the time. So like it's, it's so interesting, like they're replicating it. But but yeah, I'm not. I think the in terms of the

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Chris Wong: The the both parents working

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Chris Wong: at this point. I think it's still really, just when you're with them. You gotta be with them and I get it. You're like, I have 2 young kids. There's times when I just want to sit down and not do anything.

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Chris Wong: So there's times when they want to play, and I don't want to play, and I can't promise that I play with them all the time.

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Chris Wong: But there's certainly times I do play with them, and I make sure that I I'm there with them, or I'm describing like, why you do certain things, or why we have to treat people nicely and things like that, because.

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Chris Wong: you know, that's that's his life. They have to be out in the world, but they also have to get some guidance from somewhere

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And that full attention. Not scrolling sideways, attention or TV. Yeah, attention, yeah, full attention really really matters. And I see that because.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: you know, working with men and women. I might work a lot more with women than men.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: even though women are supposed to be more emotionally attuned. They're not necessarily emotionally attuned to themselves. So there's that endless thing that we need to teach as a cornerstone. Which is, what am I feeling? What do I need.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and really being with yourself, listening to that, because if you haven't got that, you haven't got anything

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Chris Wong: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I work with a lot of guys who

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Chris Wong: they get. They come in because their wife keeps trying to like have conversations with them, and they say.

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Chris Wong: you know, I just don't know what I'm feeling. I'm not lying to her. I'm not lying to my wife

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Chris Wong: when I say I don't know. I just really don't know. My mind goes blank. I don't know what I'm feeling

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yes, yes, and sometimes I give out the the list from the center for nonviolent communication lists of feelings and lists of needs and the feelings you have when your needs are met, and the feelings you have when your needs aren't just so, there's something that gives something to hang on to the naming of things by somebody else. Oh, that's what that feeling is. That's when I could expect to feel like that, because we don't really teach our kids that very much

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Chris Wong: Right.

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Chris Wong: Right it. Yeah, unless you're into like it. Like to your point unless you're in touch.

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Chris Wong: And you have those words, how could you help your kids identify what they're they might be feeling in that situation

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how can you really communicate with your wife?

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: I guess you're not using words, which is a very strong suit for women, but you may be using acts of service or gifts or quality time, physical touch.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: but because you're not using words she won't notice you're loving her

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Chris Wong: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yep.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: So you talked a little bit about what the barriers are for men creating social groups. And it seems to me that

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: ideally there'd be social groups where these sort of things were being discussed. But it it sounds like we're talking about social groups per se.

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Chris Wong: Yeah, yeah, I think

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Chris Wong: it's hard. I I think this, everybody that like starts working full time. And or they move to a new city.

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Chris Wong: This is a very common question, like, how do I make friends in the new place?

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Chris Wong: And the more social you are, the easier it is, the more extroverted you are. It's just easier for you because you're just willing to talk to people.

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Chris Wong: the more introverted you are, the more shy you are. It's just harder because you're not

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Chris Wong: purposely talking to people, or, you know, joining hobbies or activities where you meet other people like.

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Chris Wong: If your hobby is clay molding.

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Chris Wong: if you have all the stuff in your house, you're not. You don't need to go out to do anything. You don't need to talk to anybody about it. You can just make whatever you want, and then throw it away, or or give it away, whatever it is. But

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Chris Wong: you know you're not doing us. You may not be doing a social activity where you meet people

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah. And even if you're introverted, it doesn't mean you don't need people

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Chris Wong: Right.

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Chris Wong: I heard a quote also, like, I think, the younger generation, I think there's a not a trend. It's not a it's not explicitly like wealth, conscious trend. But it's a it's a trend of I would love. I'd like to go to a party, but I don't want to throw a party.

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Chris Wong: So people are more than happy to go to social events. They want that they're everybody. We're all craving that social interaction and connection.

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Chris Wong: But how many people. There's much less people willing to actually put the effort into creating that space and doing it

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Chris Wong: because it just takes energy. It takes mental energy, physical energy, and if you're working all day, and your and your mind is just drained at the end of the day, you may not want to. Then just throw a party and get together with like a bunch of people

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I think maybe meetup groups really do form a a beautiful cornerstone for that, because somebody else is making that their purpose

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Chris Wong: Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: And I think, as well as the sort of status of what kind of party you throw, you know. Is it a success? And

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: then the comparison

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: thing. And and that's not just men that's women, you know. Is this, is this going to be well received.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: and so much more about the social media assessment of that, you know

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Chris Wong: Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Well.

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Chris Wong: Yeah, like me. I was talking to my wife about this last night, and we said, You know, when we throw a party, we know what we're trying to do. We just want to get people over to eat and enjoy themselves and not stress about anything. And we've got it to like we've thrown off parties where, like we're good at like, we'll finish cleaning up within like half an hour, 45 min.

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Chris Wong: because we like set it up in a way where, like everything is disposable or easily cleaned up, we don't so stress about a lot of different things.

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Chris Wong: And so we've got it. So it's not a huge burden to us to think about that. It's really just

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Chris Wong: really more just thinking about when we're gonna throw it

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: I think there could be a training opportunity in that. You know.

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Chris Wong: Yeah. How to throw, how to throw easy parties that are easy to clean up and recover from

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: So is there anything else? That is a burning question for you around working with men, any other issues? We haven't touched on

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Chris Wong: I think the yeah, I think the social thing is so huge. I I think about this a lot. I wish there was

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Chris Wong: non-religious open groups that men could just. I could just assign men to go to

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Chris Wong: like if they come to me, and they're like struggling with whatever this. And they don't have any social supports, because if they do, then that's fine, we can work on other things. But

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Chris Wong: if they don't have any social supports, I wish I could just prescribe. Go to this group and start

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Chris Wong: sharing about your your feelings and what's going on?

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Chris Wong: You know a social group that's meeting once a week, or more or less, I mean.

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Chris Wong: just an opportunity for you to share openly and honestly be vulnerable with other guys.

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Chris Wong: Yeah, yeah.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: That's very rare.

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Chris Wong: I don't know any place that does it on a regular basis. The only places I know that do it are religiously affiliated. But I understand not everybody's religious. So I wish there was like a non religious type group. You could do do that in. And

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Chris Wong: I get that. There's like sports leagues which are okay, sports, leagues, game leagues, those those are also okay. But I I think you need to find the space where you can talk

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Chris Wong: as men and start sharing about like, hey.

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Chris Wong: I'm struggling because my 3 year old hasn't been sleeping over the past 6 months. I'm about to tear my hair out and my wife just lost her job. So now we now we're strapped for money.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Hmm, yeah.

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Chris Wong: It's helpful to just talk those things out loud, even if there's no answer right? It's

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Chris Wong: you just have to live with it, those kind of things, but just being able to talk it out and have other guys listen and not

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Chris Wong: say you think you have a bad look at my situation.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yeah, yeah, yeah, get out of that competitive thing and get into the supportive, compassionate thing. Yeah.

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Chris Wong: Right.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: I'm completely with you.

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Chris Wong: So if anybody out there has got any ideas about how to set these things up

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Let us know we'd love to see if there are any, and if we can make any sort of perpetuation of them, or extension of them

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: across the globe,

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Chris Wong: Yeah, yeah, I feel like, that's not a that's not anything you would make money off of. But it's just something that would be like a good social social good like how to do healthy masculinity

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Yes, so you could do that, and you wouldn't end up with the Samaritans because you're lonely or suicidal. Yeah.

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Chris Wong: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: So, how can people contact you if they want to

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Chris Wong: Well, you can always follow me on my website. It's a myleadershippotential.com. I'm also active on Linkedin, Chris Wong, Lmhc. That's where you'll see, most be mostly posting my stuff.

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Chris Wong: my, podcast. You can catch anywhere. You get podcasts, you can also watch us on Youtube, it's called the art and science of difficult conversations.

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Chris Wong: where we cover lots of different difficult conversations and heather. You're going to be a guest on our episode next week, or our recording next week.

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Chris Wong: So we're looking forward to that. And then you can always just email me at let me see which email to give you. Let me give you my leadership potential@gmail.com. Let's give you that one, but feel free to reach out. Let's talk about this. If you have. If you know about men's groups that are kind of running all over the place.

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Chris Wong: I'd love to learn more about all of them, and how they're growing and how they're doing and things like that. But

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Chris Wong: yeah, I'd love to continue the conversation

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Heather Garbutt Love and Relationship Coach: Right. That's wonderful. Thank you so much, Chris.

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Chris Wong: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on