John Broadbent · 77 min
A self-described nerdy engineer who once had no words for his own feelings spent thirty years doing the inner work to become one of Australia's most quietly influential voices in men's mental health, and his story reveals exactly why so many men are silently struggling.
Hear this story
John Broadbent was a logical engineer with three pens in his pocket, 15 years into a relationship that was falling apart, when his partner wanted to swim with dolphins at Monkey Mia in Western Australia. He went reluctantly. The place pulled him in so completely that within 24 hours of returning home, a stranger called to invite him to a meditation run by a teacher he'd never met. That teacher, Stuart, wore tie-dyed King Gee overalls and was nothing like the guru John expected. For the next nine years, John traveled the world with Stuart, learning to feel emotions he'd buried since childhood, to locate sadness in his body, to understand that he'd spent decades asleep.
John discovered that men his age were hitting invisible walls at 28 to 30 and again at 42, when the hero-work energy that had driven them their whole lives stopped serving them. No one talked about these passages, so men kept them secret and either made it through or didn't. He began running week-long retreats where men, held in a safe container long enough, would drop their guard and share their real stories. He learned that under anger is always sadness, and that men stay comfortable with anger because they were taught not to cry. He started working with couples, teaching them that relationships die when the friendship fades, and that the depth of grief is a mirror of the depth of love.
Thirty years later, John is a writer, a parent, a retreat leader, and someone working to help men and their partners understand what's really happening under the surface. His life has only gotten better year by year. He knows this work is good for men because he is one of them.
“I had to learn firstly that I had feelings in my body that were primary feelings. And then I had to learn the nuance of language of feelings. And that was really the beginning of my journey of starting to become more whole and more connected with who I am as a human being.”
“Without exception, 100% of the time I've watched men drop into their heart and I've watched them share the most vulnerable, incredible stories of who they are at their core.”
“There's nothing broken about a man expressing tears because he feels something. For God's sake, can we just get over ourselves and stop this endemic language?”
The hero, today
John discovered that under anger is always sadness, and men stay comfortable with anger because they were taught not to cry, making anger the only emotion they know how to express safely. John believes that the moment you marry or partner with someone, you're expecting them to fulfill all the parts of you that you've lost and haven't owned yourself, which is why so many relationships struggle. John says the depth of grief is a mirror and a reflection of the depth of love, and when grief surfaces, it should be celebrated rather than suppressed. John found that childhood wounds surface at specific life transitions like 28 to 30 and again around 42, seeking healing, and if men don't do the inner work during these times, they can become closed-hearted and isolated. John built his retreats to last a full week because when men are held in a safe container for that long with conscious activation, without exception every single man will eventually drop into his heart and share his real story. John's purpose is to serve, and he has found that his life gets better year by year because he puts time and effort into his own healing while helping others do the same.
Yes. John Broadbent is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
John discovered that under anger is always sadness, and men stay comfortable with anger because they were taught not to cry, making anger the only emotion they know how to express safely.
John believes that the moment you marry or partner with someone, you're expecting them to fulfill all the parts of you that you've lost and haven't owned yourself, which is why so many relationships struggle.
John says the depth of grief is a mirror and a reflection of the depth of love, and when grief surfaces, it should be celebrated rather than suppressed.
John Milham (Host) · 00:05
Welcome back to Kintsugi Heroes, helping people tell the stories they need to share so you can find the stories that you need to hear.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 00:16
In this episode, John Broadbent shares how he went from a hard-working engineer living by logic and routine to someone deeply committed to men's mental health and emotional growth after a life-changing trip to Monkey Mia and meeting With a guiding mentor, John began exploring his feelings and the roots of his childhood wounds. By embracing vulnerability and doing the work to heal, he discovered a sense of wholeness he once thought was impossible. Now, John supports others on similar journeys, helping men move beyond barriers and find real connection with themselves and those around them. Enjoy this episode with John Broadbent.
John Milham (Host) · 01:08
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another Kintsugi Heroes story, a story that matters. And, uh, today I am, um, again, like, enormously pleased and, uh, feel a sense of privilege in being able to introduce to you a man who has, uh, well, has a track record that few men can match in terms of supporting other blokes, creating the energy and movement for men's mental health and men's growth. So John's been a leader in this for a long time. Most of us have only just started to get on the wagon that John's been pulling for years. So I'd like to introduce to our Kintsugi listeners, John Broadbent. Welcome, John.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 01:55
Thank you, John. Crikey, is there big shoes to fill, mate?
John Milham (Host) · 01:58
More stories
This site is part of Kintsugi Heroes. Visit the main site for the full podcast. If any of these stories hit close to home, support is out there, you don't have to sit with it alone.
Read how we handle these stories ↗
Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗
John found that childhood wounds surface at specific life transitions like 28 to 30 and again around 42, seeking healing, and if men don't do the inner work during these times, they can become closed-hearted and isolated.
This conversation includes a nerdy engineer watching his relationship fall apart, flying to monkey mia to swim with dolphins, a call from a stranger's assistant about a dolphin meditation, meeting stuart, the tie-dyed mentor who was nothing like expected, learning he had feelings buried in his body and people think he's gone weird.
Yeah, well, look, if I can't blow some wind up the old orifice right, then, you know, what, what purpose is there to do, oh, do this, right? So no, but I look, I think, uh, to be honest, I was probably a little understated, mate. You have been, um, doing a lot for a long time, so well done, mate. So thank you. Let's, let's start with, um, saying, like, I understand, uh, from, you know, reading a bit of the, you know, the history, that 1990 seemed to be a sort of watershed year for your journey.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 02:33
Right.
John Milham (Host) · 02:33
So who were you before 1990 that led to that, Mark?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 02:37
A nerdy engineer, 3 pens in my pocket, 15 years into my first relationship, which is my high school sweetheart, watching it go pear-shaped for reasons that later became obvious. But she had this passion to want to go and swim with dolphins in late 1990. And I was like, yeah, whatever. You know, she was into crystals and chakras and auras and all that sort of stuff. And I was the the good old nerdy engineer on the sidelines judging the hell out of it, of course. Yeah. And anyway, we ended up looking around the world and we found we could go to Monkey Mia in WA. So we flew to Perth, we hired a car, we drove 1,000 km in 40-degree heat. We got to— finally got to Monkey Mia. And I remember getting out of the car and we got into our cabin and just threw our stuff on the bed and put on the boardies and walked out onto the beach area there. And you stand sort of knee-deep in water and the dolphins come along and they swim and look up at you and and off they go. So I've walked out there and I've stood, you know, knee-deep watching these dolphins come in, and sure enough, they swim along the line and they roll over and look at you, and off they go. And I remember the thought in my head going, well, I've done it now, and I'm here for 8 days. I'm going to be bored shitless by the end of this week. What am I going to do with myself? And I spent up there for the whole week up there, and I had a couple of interesting experiences where I was in, uh, swimming and I saw fins coming towards me. And it's called Shark Bay for a reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah.. But I realized it was one fin, not two. So I thought it's a dolphin, not a shark. And I end up sitting on the bottom of the— it was about 5, 6 feet deep. And I end up sitting on the bottom with my snorkel and saw these dolphins coming around and they did a bit of an orbit around me and started sonaring me, which is just an incredible experience. Anyway, it wasn't till the end of that week that I realized that I wanted to sell my house in Sydney and move to Denham and go and work on the pearl boat. Like the place just pulled me in incredibly. But the remarkable thing was I'd heard about a bit of a spiritual teacher who was based down here in Sydney, in Bilgola Plateau, through a teacher that I'd taken on board as a bit of a group meditation teacher. Not that I ever got into it well. I was very not a good meditator. But I'd heard about this guy. Anyway, I got back and I kid you not, within 24 hours, I was living in southwest Sydney at the time, my phone rang.. And it was this guy's minder calling me and saying, what are you doing tonight? I'm like, well, who the hell are you? She told me her name. Well, I didn't know who she was. She said, I'm, you know, Stuart's sort of assistant. I went, okay, what are you calling me for? She said, he's told me to call you. I have no idea to this day how she got my number, the days before mobiles. She said, but he's running a dolphin meditation tonight. Would you like to come along?
John Milham (Host) · 05:24
A dolphin meditation.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 05:26
And I was like, hang on a minute, I've just come from a week in Monkey Mia swimming with the dolphins. Like, and it was one of those freaky moments. Um, I could not have been home. I might not have answered the phone. I could have said no.
John Milham (Host) · 05:39
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 05:40
Anyway, it was such a privilege to be invited. I went up there and met this guy who I thought I was about to meet Gandalf because he had a reputation of, you know, that sort of sage-wise character.. And when I met him, he was a bloke a year younger than me. I was only 32, 33 at the time. He was a year younger than me. He had long striking black hair and he was wearing a pair of tie-dyed King G overalls and no shirt. And he went, g'day. I was like, who are you? And he went, I'm Stuart. I went, okay. So he completely blew my brain as to what I was expecting to see. Anyway, we became good friends from that experience. I went to my first workshop experiential workshop that he ran in 1991 in June, long weekend, Kicking and Screaming, because my partner was going to his, doing his work, and I was watching her change and transform significantly. And I knew that if I didn't get my shit together, I'd lose the relationship basically. And it wasn't until that weekend when I sat there and listened to people talking about their upbringing and I was pretty pissed off, to be honest. I was thinking, what am I doing wasting my weekend and $430 listening to people whinge about their lives? Mine was perfect because I had no memory of it.
John Milham (Host) · 06:52
Right. Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 06:54
And that was the beginning of my therapeutic journey, I guess you'd say. And then for the next 9 years, I traveled the world with him as sort of his bag man to help him get from place to place as he was running workshops around the world. So I got the opportunity to sit in on those workshops.. And in doing that, started to do my own inner work and then realized how much I'd been asleep and how emotionally bereft I was of being able to even explain what I was feeling, let alone put it into words. So during that period, he taught me that I was feeling. He was an incredible empath who could basically go into people's bodies. I know that feels weird, sounds weird, but he could literally say, What's up with you right now? I've got no idea. And you go, okay, close your eyes, go down, feel your liver, your spleen, your gut, you know, whatever. And that emotion that you're feeling there, and I could feel it, is grief, anger, sadness, whatever. So I had to learn firstly that I had feelings in my body that were primary feelings. And then I had to learn the nuance of language of feelings. And that was really the beginning of my journey of starting to become more whole. And more connected with who I am as a human being.
John Milham (Host) · 08:06
Wow. So when you say you didn't remember that, right, so the whole process of modern Australian bloke was about going through stuff and then trying to sublimate it or avoid then dealing with it. Was there trauma in your background? What was driving you to shut out your early early experiences.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 08:32
So the guy on the world stage, Gabor Maté, he's one of my favorite authors, uh, differentiates what he calls Big T and little t trauma. Yeah, he says we all experience little t trauma and some of us have Big T trauma.
John Milham (Host) · 08:46
Yeah, when I— yeah, when I didn't get the second helping I wanted. Yeah, definitely.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 08:49
And I wasn't aware of much Big T trauma, but I later discovered I had it. I just buried it away, which is an incredible facet of the human psyche that we can compartmentalize an entire experience, all its multidimensionality and its sensory experience, and package it up and stick it somewhere, God knows where, and the hope that it never surfaces again. But when we do, you know, therapy or inner work, it can surface, and then we've got to deal with what we, what we discover. But the little t trauma for me was being brought up, born in Yorkshire, uh, being brought up very low working class, being brought up in an environment where You know, if someone hurt themselves, you laughed at them. Emotions were completely— good or bad, to use that term— emotions were, you know, deliberately repressed. And it was a very closed, parochial, you know, sort of environment. So being brought to Australia at the age of 10, coming through Sydney Heads on a boat in 1968 on my birthday, which is an interesting coincidence and coming into Sydney Harbour as the Opera House was being built. I realized that as I started to do my unpacking that my dad had come from a very low base of self-worth and self-esteem. Of course, as a parent, you can't give what you don't have. So he was never cruel to me, but in his assessment of me, I was never good enough. I'd come third in the class, why didn't you come second? Come second, why didn't you come first? Get 98%, why didn't you get 100? So and I had a great relationship with my dad in the last 20 years of his life. And we had lots of conversations around that. And I knew that his intent was to get me to excel. But the impact was catastrophic for me because I ended up going out into life, getting married at 21, 22 with zero self-worth and zero self-esteem.
John Milham (Host) · 10:40
Not like it sounds and feels very common, that experience for, you know, the generation our fathers represent. Really didn't know much different on how to navigate the sort of supporting their young, their sons and changing that.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 11:01
My dad's dad was a foundryman in Bradford in Yorkshire. When dad was 13, he was the second eldest of 9 kids.
John Milham (Host) · 11:08
Wow.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 11:09
3 died before the age of 5. Infant mortality was high in those days. At 13, my dad's dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and it took 5 years to take him out. So my dad went out and became the primary breadwinner 13, basically, um, and watched his father, you know, slowly pass away over 5 years. And so at 18, he lost, you know, lost his dad, uh, he got married at 20, and I was born when he was 21. Wow. So he didn't really have much of who he was in the world, and in fact, he blossomed when he came to Australia and then got in, found that he had various talents that he didn't know that he had, and had lots of different jobs and, uh, did quite well for himself.
John Milham (Host) · 11:49
I love that story. It's, and it's probably one of the one of the themes of Australian stories, right? You know, of the 10-pound pom blossoming in Australia and, you know, like, because, you know, they never were the people that should have stayed in England, they should have been out here all along, right? So yeah, amazing stuff. So when you, like, when you got to that point and Stuart became a mentor, what— that's like an incredible shift from this conservative engineering background. And, you know, as an engineer, you were, you know, already getting accomplished at that time. So, right, um, you know, wow, to move away from it, dude. Were people around you saying, this is a really bad idea, or what's going on with you, John, or what?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 12:38
Oh, they felt I'd gone a bit weird.
John Milham (Host) · 12:40
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 12:41
But to clarify that, I had some really profound experiences that were way beyond what I would call this realm of the physical experience. Um, I had an experience at Uluru where I was, um, guided through Stuart and some other people that were there to climb into a cave that people can't get access to, but he knew someone who was part of the community up there. He knew a bit of Pitjantjatjara. Um, I met some of the elders, some of the Jilpis up there during the early 1990s and I climbed into this cave and he told me about it afterwards, but I got into this cave thinking, well, what am I doing here? But he was, you know, try this and see what happens basically. And I got into this cave and I reckon within about 30 seconds, my consciousness was projected out into who knows where. And suddenly I felt and absolutely knew that I was in a place of what I could only call non-duality. There was no good, bad, no up, down, no light and dark. It was just isness. And I stayed there for about 40 minutes, um, fully aware of my physical body, um, on Earth. But when you consider— I later learned that Uluru, what we can see is the top 10%, there's 90% of it vertical, down, down into the ground. And you hear about people being thrown off, and I can understand why, because my consciousness was basically propelled out of my body. I couldn't explain that as an engineer, um, and I had multiple ones of those over the sort of the first 3 or 4 years.. And I remember the day I got to a place where I went, okay, I surrender. And the surrender is not giving up. You know, surrender is, is the allowing of whatever happens happens. And you don't have to necessarily cognize and try and explain it. And I think I went away from a person sort of heavily embedded in the scientific paradigm. But as I watched science become almost a religion in its own right, where science would say, if we can't explain something, it doesn't exist. Whereas in the old days, science would say, if we can't explain something, we'll find the science behind it. And I watched that shift. And when I then started having these experiences that couldn't be qualified in any way, shape, or form scientifically, but I'd experienced them, I had to realize that I absolutely know nothing. And I'm here on a life journey just like everybody else. So I might as well just enjoy the ride and stop putting my feet down and try and resist the flow of life and where it might take me.
John Milham (Host) · 15:11
I, you know, you hear people say, oh, do you believe in science? And I like, it always throws me, right? Well, like, no, it's not. Science isn't to be believed in, right? You know, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's the, you know, it's see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and then, you know, faith beyond that, right?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 15:30
So, you know, well, we can, we can predict where the moon's going to be in, you know, 355 years and 10 days. We know exactly where it's going to be from Newton's laws of motion, but we can't measure love.
John Milham (Host) · 15:44
No, no, absolutely.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 15:46
Or empathy or intuition, you know, any of those things. So I've had to learn to be okay with that.
John Milham (Host) · 15:54
That's a— yeah, and, you know, that way lies, you know, managing ego, right? You know, like, you know, letting go of ego. So what was it like for you to put aside that sort of the sense of being a unit, a capable, in-control sort of ego body, right? And then actually create— you said you were a bagman for a mentor, right? That's a very different mindset.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 16:26
I've realized now, looking back, that in order to— and again, you know, Gabor Mate differentiates between trauma and wound. He talks about the trauma is the experience. So you're in a car accident, you break your leg, that's the trauma. You can't go back and and address that. But what you can do is you— the wound that comes from that is then what we carry forward through life.
John Milham (Host) · 16:44
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 16:44
And so I realized I had to tend to my wounds, and that was, um, using a process that he developed, uh, in parallel. Funnily enough, I only found out a few years ago, there's a guy in the States called Richard Schwartz who developed a modality, the IFS, Internal Family Systems. Stuart was developing this not knowing Richard Schwartz was doing this in the US, but he was developing it by doing his own mapping of his own psychology and realized he was a conglomerate of parts.
John Milham (Host) · 17:14
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 17:14
And his, his theory was based on the fact that, you know, there was an ad once upon a time at McDonald's where the kid would— or the adult would open up their stomach and a kid would run out and go get an ice cream from Macca's.
John Milham (Host) · 17:27
And he said, well, see that, but it sounds awesome.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 17:29
Oh yeah, it was a funny ad from years ago. And he said, well, firstly, You can't open up your gut and a child goes and gets an ice cream. So the inner child is symbolic.
John Milham (Host) · 17:39
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 17:40
Not real. There's more than one. Um, and they're created by us psychologically to protect our innocence against the unconsciousness of the world. So they're all wounded in some way.
John Milham (Host) · 17:52
Yeah. Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 17:53
So his model was called the Symbolically Wounded Inner Child Model.
John Milham (Host) · 17:57
Wow.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 17:58
And as I grew up through that and started to adapt what he had developed for himself in my own life and then share that with others, as I realized it had pretty significant efficacy. And then when I studied and read Richard Schwartz's work, I went, oh my God, this is absolutely a parallel development. It's just that Stewart's kept very small with a smaller group of people. And he hated the guru term, by the way, because there were a few people around him who'd come from that tradition, from, you know, sannyasins or, you know, Siddhi Yoga or whatever it was, and wanted to put him up on the guru pedestal. And he was like, shit, no, get me off there. Yeah. So yeah, it was a fascinating time. And I had a lot of challenges through that time, not only to deal with what I was dealing with within myself, but also to embrace the parts of myself that were more shadowy that I didn't want to look at. And he was very much a shadow dweller that he would go into people's shadow and he'd call you in and go, come and look at this part of you that you don't want to own. And really, that's the only way we can become whole.
John Milham (Host) · 19:02
Open those doors that so often don't get opened by anything or anyone.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 19:07
And that we don't want other people to see. And, you know, often in my couples work, just as an aside, John, a female partner might say, I want my husband or partner to be emotionally available. And I say, well, firstly, by design, he's not. Secondly, there's no way he's going to let you behind his facade to explore his levels of vulnerability and his inner world until he's been there first because he doesn't know what's there. So why would he let you in?
John Milham (Host) · 19:33
Just on that point, can I ask, you know, often we talk, you know, part of the discussion around men's mental health is the number of women who are both interested in men's mental health for, you know, for caring purposes, but who are in the sector offering care. So 80% of counselors are women. Most of the people driving the community groups and so on are women. They're attending the courses and they're doing the work, right? Men are not, but they're happy to talk to women. By their own admission, they're happy to talk to counselors. I suspect though that that conversation, as enjoyable for both parties as it is, or useful as it is,— it's still not getting to some of those doors.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 20:24
No, I've seen over and over again in the retreats that I've also attended and run— I feel moved every time I share this perspective— but every time I've been in an environment where a group of men have come together, someone's leading that group, and they have purposely and consciously created a safe container Yeah, it— I know the reason I do the week-long stuff is because if you go to a weekend, it can be a bit fragmented. But if you hold a bunch of guys in a container for an entire week and you spend the first 3 days activating stuff, like using conscious processes to do that, without exception, 100% of the time, I've watched men drop into their heart and I've watched them share the most vulnerable, incredible stories of who they are at their core.. And I know some men who have said point blank, I can't do this at home. I can't do it with my partner. I can't do it anywhere but in this type of container.
John Milham (Host) · 21:23
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 21:23
And I think that's one of the reasons why men find, particularly if it's a counseling environment, say with a female counselor, they just don't feel— whether they are or not is irrelevant, but their perception is they don't feel necessarily safe enough to be able to dig deep. But you get a bunch of, you know, 10 to 12 to 60 men in an environment. And that's starting to happen. And even some of the hardest closed-hearted men who come with a lot of baggage will suddenly start finding themselves just melting away. And it's that transformation I've witnessed so many times. It's absolutely breathtaking.
John Milham (Host) · 21:58
Yeah, maybe those men who have gripped hardest are the ones most ready to let that grip go a bit.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 22:07
Yeah. And they leave there feeling they can breathe again. Yeah, well, they've unburdened themselves.
John Milham (Host) · 22:13
It's incredible when you think, you know, how the culture, right, for men at the moment, right, it's been okay to put men, you know, in that threat stress, right? And now that they've embraced it themselves, right, so that they, you know, they can't afford to back off and take some ease because it's, you know, likely to let the the floodgates open.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 22:39
28 to 30, I've noticed through the work that I've done, is a classic transition time for most men that they don't know what's happening to them. Funny story, um, years ago I was at an event. My nickname's JB. Guy comes up, taps me on the shoulders, I'm walking out of the room from an event, and says, oh, hey JB, I've been told I need to come and talk to you. And that's always a sign that, you know, the man's going through something and needs some help. So I sat down, had a chat, and he explained what he was feeling. And two other men came up during that same day with the same issue. And I asked each of them how old they were. One was 28, one was 29, and one was 30. I went, bingo. So I organized with each of them to meet them the following day, but they didn't know I'd organized to meet them at the same time.
John Milham (Host) · 23:24
Same time, yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 23:26
So they all came and collected, and they're looking like, what's he doing here? And I said, can I share what you shared yesterday? Anyway, we did. And they suddenly realized that they were all experiencing the same thing. And the 28 to 30 transition is really a time for a young man. He's, he's stormed castles, rescued damsels, slayed dragons, you know, partied hard, sex, drugs, rock and roll sort of thing. And they get to sort of 28, 30 and going, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? Because now they're looking down the spectrum of hitting 30s. And what does that mean for them? And is it, you know, more serious relationship, marriage, parenthood, all that sort of stuff. And then we hit it again at about 42, which is really the beginning of the midlife passage. And I believe in Australia that one of the largest contributors to mental health issues for men in their 40s is that no one talks about the process that's taking place. And it's a tectonic shift in the way a man relates to himself during that 40s, mid to late 40 period. And what's actually happening is that the ego-driven action man hero energy archetype that's gone into there is no longer going to serve him into the next half of his life. And it really is a midlife passage and transformation can become a crisis, but not for, not for all men. Yeah. And he's about to turn and instead of looking back from where he's come almost in a reminiscing way, I noticed for myself during that time, I did like a 180 and I was now starting to look forward to where I was going and what I had left. And I've spoken to quite a lot of men and they've said, yeah, I'm aware of that transition. So we become much more focused on immortality and all that sort of stuff. And what's actually happening in that second half of life is we're looking for meaning. You know, why am I here? And so we shift from doing the hero work to what they call the soul work. And I think in Australia, because of sort of the macho culture, as this starts to happen in men, we lose, we don't know what's happening because we don't bloody talk about it. And so men don't know what's happening, so they keep a secret. And they either make it or they don't. And if they make it by doing the work, well, they become, you know, good, well-rounded men. If they don't, but they make it through without doing the inner work and the healing work that's needed and the reparation of the wounds during that time, what happens is we come out as grumpy old men that no one wants to be around.
John Milham (Host) · 25:49
Yeah. Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 25:50
And sadly, during that period, some men don't make it. And as you know, we lose 7 men a day to suicide in Australia, and the large majority are in that age group.
John Milham (Host) · 25:59
Yeah, and you know, it's interesting, you know, like no one— everyone seems to be stumped why, right? But of course, you know, when you start to narrow the tunnel, right, you know, it's harder for everyone to fit in, right? So, you know, it's—
John Broadbent (Guest) · 26:17
well, and there seems to be firstly an unawareness that we're carrying trauma, whatever that is for us, an unawareness that we can't just put a lid on it and hope for the best and go into later life. And what happens during midlife is all those unresolved childhood wounds come and bubble to the surface because they're seeking healing. They want to come home. They want to be— those wounded children want to be parented and come home to us as the owner and the master of our own house. So that we can together heal. And, you know, the word whole and heal come from the same Latin root, so that we can move into the second half of life as a more healed person. And then we can give our gift to the world and find a potency in the second half of our life.
John Milham (Host) · 27:04
Why do you think now, like, all the stats are going up in terms of Men's Impact. So often, you know, people seem to silo some of the issues, but I, you know, I would suspect that much of the issues and outcomes that are problematic for men come from the same root, right? Social— the social determinants of worth and of belonging and of support and of nurturing, right? So they're all coming home to roost at certain periods of transition, as you said, and then they blossom into terrible things like domestic violence, relationship breakdown, parenting issues, obsession, mental distress, suicide. Why was it different in, say, our great-grandfather's day?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 28:04
Gender roles— I'm not going to get into gender politics here, but gender roles were very defined. Love them or loathe them, it is what it is and it was what it was. Man was the provider, the protector. He went out to work, he came home. In the UK, put his pay packet on the table, took 10 shillings for his money for the pub for the week and went out with his mates and mum was left at home raising the kids. That's the way it was. And it's probably the same in Australia during that same sort of era. And it was very tight, very straitjacketed. And as we've come out of that, the roles have shifted because now, you know, in the old days, we might have got married for security and raising kids. Now we get married— or don't get married— and we live in relationships because we expect our partner to fulfill all the parts of us that we've lost and haven't owned. But the sad part for me is that the whole concept of psychology, particularly behavioral psychology, has been around for enough time now for us to know what's going on, why it's going on, and how to fix it. And I don't think we do enough in the education. I think certainly I'm a father to 23-year-old and 17-year-old sons. I've watched both of them, you know, come through that realm of their own teenagehood. But I've been very fortunate because I've been self-employed since 1987. I've been very fortunate that I've foregone a what I might have been a corporate career to be at every, you know, school play, school event, sports event, yeah, soccer training, you know, all those things and birthdays and holidays and all that sort of stuff because I wanted to build a relationship with my sons. And I knew what it felt like to have an absent father, both emotionally and physically. I didn't want that for my two fellas. And I'm a biased parent, but I can honestly say that within their peer group, both of those boys, sons, young men are now highly regarded, highly respected. I know their friends, they come around here and visit often and they've got a— both of them have a really great cohort of really good mates. But underfathering, unfortunately, I think has been one of the biggest things. I mean, in Australia, John, you may not know, but there's a million single-parent family homes due to relationship breakdown and 80% of them don't have a father in them.
John Milham (Host) · 30:20
It's massive. I do some mentoring in schools And you'd see it. It's almost— well, it's ubiquitous. It's almost a joke in that, you know, you get these young blokes walk through the door. They're terrific young blokes, but you can see it's not— you know, they're not there by choice so much as circumstance has dictated that they just don't have a balanced view of the world. Their development is essential on having other inputs that aren't available to them.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 30:56
Yeah, I mean, you know, from the time we're born, I've spoken to many mothers. The mother of my kids is one example that, you know, they give birth and they look and it's a boy and the first thought is, oh my God, how do I raise a boy? So straight from the moment of birth when boys are identified as boys, there's this not knowing what to do. And if dads are absent dads, and I've worked a lot in the blue collar space because of my manufacturing background, you know, dads are up at 5, 5:30 in the morning, they drive to work with a long commute, they work shift work, um, they're not there for their kids' breakfasts and get them off to school and, you know, all that, pack their lunch and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, if a boy is upset about something, the question that's asked of him is generally, what's wrong? Yeah, not what are you feeling right now, what's happening for you right now. And then that gets carried through, you know, boys don't cry, oh, he was so brave. And I've caught mothers that I know of boys when son's had an injury and it's quite a broken bone and they go, oh, he was so brave, he didn't cry. It's like, hear yourself, you're shutting him down from expressing his emotion and making him feel embarrassed and ashamed for shedding a tear. And then we move that into adulthood and then we hear, I remember when the West Australian senator who has cerebral palsy, I can't think of his name, but he was in parliament and he was in tears when he was expressing what it was like for him when the National Disability Insurance Scheme came through. And it's reported in the media as Senator whatever his name is breaks down in Parliament. Like, there's nothing broken about a man expressing tears because he feels something, for God's sake. Can we just get over ourselves and stop this endemic language that's pernicious in the way that it's used in our society, you know?
John Milham (Host) · 32:44
Well, he's doing something that is like, you know, demonstrating an incredible courageous decision to be, to reveal himself in the face of what he knows will be usually some form of censure or judgment, right?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 32:57
So Brené Brown and the power of vulnerability. But a lot of men firstly are afraid of their own vulnerability because they don't know what that feels like. And I have a theory I'd like to share with you that One of the reasons that I believe boys are quite comfortable in anger, and it's probably the one and only emotion that they really understand, is that in my work with men, I've discovered that under anger is always sadness. And if you're a man and you've been brought up in that mold of, you know, boys don't cry, you're not allowed to express, blah, blah, blah, and you're feeling some pain from sadness, would you rather push that out and purge it to get rid of it when that's what you're told to do on the sports field?
John Milham (Host) · 33:41
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 33:43
Or would you rather bring that in and implode and feel the pain of sadness when you actually haven't got the skills or tools to know how to process that?
John Milham (Host) · 33:51
Yeah, absolutely. That really resonates. That sense of anger cauterizing something, right? You know, internally, emotionally, you know, fear, frustration, sadness, right? Being cauterized by your anger, right? It's a very useful emotion from that point of view. Right, so why wouldn't a man make good use of that if he's protecting himself and then maintaining an environment where he feels safer? Anger is probably the best use, right? But of course, anger is not a connecting emotion, it's a disconnecting emotion.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 34:27
Coaching my youngest son when he was in the under-8s, memories burned into my skull. I'm on the sideline with the opposing coach and I'm just about to let, you know, do a team player swap. And the coach next to me has got this 8-year-old and he's leaning down and he's got him by the shoulders and he's just about to send him out there and he says, go out there and smash him. And I turned around, I went, dude, they're under 8s, come on.
John Milham (Host) · 34:59
I'm afraid some of my biggest regrets are 25 years of coaching juniors, right? So, like I've said, some really unproductive things, right? Which I now apologize profusely for to the universe and to the kids if I can recognize and bump into them occasionally. And that brings me to that sense of, you know, I love that theory around the language of anger, right?. And it's the one language, emotional language that we are encouraged to practice. You're given how many examples on television, on role models at home and at school.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 35:44
It's there, it's everywhere and it is ubiquitous, particularly in contact sports.
John Milham (Host) · 35:51
Yeah, I love the concept. I love playing footy and And the idea that that can be a metaphor, a safe place to practice those kind of unsafe practices, right? But, you know, we get confused that it's like that. Men give it far more importance and far more currency than it probably should. It should be recognized as an outlet, not a purpose, right?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 36:17
When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
John Milham (Host) · 36:20
Indeed. I love it.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 36:22
And if that's the only emotion that we're comfortable in knowing how to express, then that will be our go-to. I've been reading some work from a guy, his name escapes me at the moment, but as you know, Man Unplugged, second edition is coming out shortly.
John Milham (Host) · 36:35
Very exciting. We need to get into that in a sec.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 36:39
Yeah, sure. I actually got the book from layout an hour before getting on this call, so I've now got to sit down and plough through it, make sure it's all laid out properly. But I've been doing some work, and I mentioned in the book about a guy in America who's been working for 30 years in the prison system. And he's developed a, I guess, a theory or an understanding that often violence in men comes from a buildup firstly initiated with carrying deep shame, stepping into an environment, for example, an intimate relationship where the partner then uses that to humiliate the man. Yeah. And the man then, out of knowing— I'm not excusing domestic violence ever, But I'm simply saying that then in the only way that he knows how to get any sense of agency to not have to deal with his feelings of humiliation and shame is to become violent.
John Milham (Host) · 37:30
That's so important because, you know, in Australia where there has been a lot of rhetoric recently around domestic violence and the consequences of it, the social positioning of it, if you will, right? And of course, women are expressing their fear, of course, around men, you know, the whole rather a bear than a man, right, type stuff, which is incomprehensible for most men, right? But I find it interesting that so few— I think so few people are either prepared or aware enough to ask the question about what is violence in men, right? How is that happening? Why is that happening? What is the what is the nature of it, right? I hear that— I don't hear that discussion at all. So, and I suspect this might be something more like, you know, the reflex action when you tap a knee. It's not like men don't have agency, it's just that there are certain things that happen almost before they get a chance to regulate, right?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 38:34
Well, you do hear it discussed, unfortunately, under the term toxic masculinity. Yeah. And I personally detest that phrase because my question to people who use that term is, well, why are you applying gender or sex to bad behavior? Bad behavior is bad behavior, and everything is capable of bad behavior. So why don't we call it out for what it is, which is bad behavior? Because the moment you call it toxic masculinity, it's almost a carte blanche for anybody who then has a penis to be labeled as, well, you're toxic because you're male. It's like, well, and you and I both know from the work that we've done and the, you know, the realms in which we inhabit, that 99% of men walking the street are good men.
John Milham (Host) · 39:18
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 39:19
But it only takes one person. I remember one particular incident that was really tragic was the ABC journalist in Melbourne, Jill Maher.
John Milham (Host) · 39:26
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 39:28
Who was kidnapped on her way home from an event and found murdered up near Gisborne. Awful situation. They only found the guy because, you know, the camera outside the shop, they hadn't turned it off, and they spotted him walking in and chasing her around. But the upheaval that that created in the marches and, you know, in violence against women and all that stuff, which is absolutely valid. But I know many men who then recoiled from the work that they were doing because their attitude was, well, I'm going to be labeled by one man's bad behavior.
John Milham (Host) · 40:00
And of course, it's so, you know, you— yeah, you can understand the reaction. But it can become so unproductive. Right. Same with the awful story of the childcare worker and his crimes against the children. Yeah. The call post that was for all men to be banned from working with children. Yeah. Right. And I just think, like, what a disastrous outcome, not just for men, but for children and the community. Right? So I just— we've— yeah, it's interesting that we, like, in many ways, I think you touched on it earlier that really resonated with me, the sense that it begins with a sense of safety for men.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 40:50
Yes.
John Milham (Host) · 40:51
Right. And I don't think any of that kind of dialogue is creating any type of safety for men generally. So if we believe that men can go on a journey to improve their emotional vocabulary and their connection with others, then we're not creating the environment for that.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 41:07
No, because if we can create that, and when we do create that, men who then go to gatherings, groups, um, any sort of exposure to this sort of group work suddenly find themselves in a type of healthy brotherhood. Yeah, I talked to a friend of mine recently, John, who I encouraged to do some of this work for himself, and he was a little bit terrified. And I said, yeah, me too, my first ever Gathering in 2012 scared the bejesus out of me, but I was anonymous. No one knew me, so I could just try and be me. But I now use those events as a method of calibration. So I might have an opinion of myself in certain areas or areas I might need to grow, and I will keep putting myself out there. I'll run a content piece in front of 60 of my peers and deliver a process that I've never done before to calibrate. Can I do this? Am I capable of this? What feedback am I going to get? Are they going to tell me I'm a dickhead, an idiot, I'm an imposter? You know, what am I going to cop back and can I deal with that? And it's allowed me to grow my edges, you know, year in, year out, to finally learn to trust myself. And I think unless we're given the opportunity to test our edges in that way amongst men who are older and younger than us, who can call us out on our stuff, sometimes harshly,. And that might be what we need. But sometimes beautifully, gently, that moves the men around them to tears just to witness the unfoldment of that. And it's, yeah, it's such a rich environment for self-growth and personal development. And we need much, much, much more of it.
John Milham (Host) · 42:42
Interesting. You know, when you talk about being called out, right, of course, you touched on shame and shame as a massive element of men's misunderstanding about what's important in life. Why is it that men— accountability can touch shame but be useful when sort of criticism and general sort of, you know, feedback is touching shame and is, you know, locking a bad outcome in place?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 43:13
I believe it's all a measure of a man's self-worth. When I was starting my journey and very low self-esteem and very low self-worth, I was acutely sensitive and hypervigilant for criticism.
John Milham (Host) · 43:26
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 43:26
Because my father was permanently critical and I couldn't admit to mistakes because I didn't have enough capacity as a human being that if I had such low self-worth, if I actually admitted that I stuffed up somewhere, I didn't have enough in my tank to be able to give that little bit of myself away to go, you know, I made a really big mistake and I'm really sorry. I couldn't do that.. But as I gradually built my self-esteem and self-worth and got to the point where I felt I filled my own tank through my own journey, I've got no problem now saying to someone, look, I'm genuinely sorry, that wasn't my intention. And you've given me some feedback here that I really need to go away and think about. And I'm really grateful that you've had the courage to wake me up to that and perhaps one of my blind spots. And I'll go away and sit with that and do a proper stocktake on who I think I am.
John Milham (Host) · 44:14
Just going back to that very idea, right? Because, you know, as I mentioned, I think safety begins the process of giving us the space to make some changes, maybe to have some reflection. The other thing I would propose is identity. How do you know who we need to be, right? How do you know you even need to change?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 44:33
I believe life is a perfect mirror. I was coaching a couple at the moment and the man said to me, I've realized after 4 months of couple coaching with his partner and education, he said, I've realized that I'm much less judgmental now about my extended relatives, both on my side and my wife's side of the family. She said, yeah, I've noticed that you're much more judgmental. And I said to him, you do realize it's as within, so without. He goes, what do you mean? I said, when you started this process, your inner critic was running the show and your inner critic would come out and speak to people around you, your wife, your family. In a fairly poor way, that they're really upset with you for the way you spoke. But that's a measure of the way you speak to yourself internally.
John Milham (Host) · 45:18
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 45:18
So as you've now started to temper your inner critic and become aware and more respectful to yourself, lo and behold, your outward critic and outward judge is also diminished.
John Milham (Host) · 45:30
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 45:31
Life's a mirror. That's what I believe. And if life is showing me something, how could I put it? I may not like what I get. I may not want what I get, but I've come to realize I always need what I get.
John Milham (Host) · 45:42
So as we begin to, to look at the mirror, maybe accept, uh, unlike the evil step queen, you know, uh, accept the, the image we receive, um, and want to do something about it. There's a man standing there looking in the mirror going, oh, I'm beginning to see the need I now have enough internal safety to start revealing myself a little bit and taking some steps. What then? What happens at that point?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 46:15
I sort of call it the cycle of empowerment. On the one hand, we have to take stock and go, there's stuff showing up in my life. My intimate relationships aren't going well. You know, I'm not traveling well at work. I'm not doing well. I don't have a good friendship circle, whatever it is. But to take honest stock. I know for me personally, during that time in the early days of my life, I was very good at bullshitting myself. And I think in some of the work I've done with men, whether that's a male trait, I don't know, but I've had enough evidence from some of the men that I've supported that they admit, yep, I was bullshitting myself.
John Milham (Host) · 46:47
Yeah, I accept some degree of competency in that space too.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 46:52
And Jordan Peterson said in one of his speeches, to young men, which he didn't ever decide to pitch to, that's just who migrated to his talks. He said, wake up in the morning, sit on the edge of the bed and ask yourself the question, what am I doing at the moment that's really stuffing up my life?
John Milham (Host) · 47:07
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 47:08
And be honest with yourself and then change it. Make one incremental step just to change that and then change the next thing. He said, firstly, you have to learn how to take responsibility for yourself. So you need to learn how to cook and clean and shower and clean your clothes and basically take care of you first. Then you can take care of a relationship and then you might be able to become, you know, get it, have a job as well. And then you might, you might be able to become a parent. But we find, I certainly find in the couple work that we do, that a lot of couples who do the process work around reinvigorating their relationship and dealing with all the dysfunction that's emerged in it over time is that they're actually immature psychologically. So the relationship is immature. And through the maturing process, they start to recognize my 3-year-old, my 4-year-old was running the relationship because he would, she would come out and chuck an adult tantrum and all hell would break loose in the relationship. Well, so there's two 4 or 5-year-olds raising children, you know, and then it becomes systemic and just gets passed on generation to generation.
John Milham (Host) · 48:09
You know, I look around and I wonder about the maturing process you just mentioned, right? So many men— right, seem to be grown children, right? Is that an emotional measure? Is that like, have we not let go of mum? You know, have we— you know, what's going on? Why do we not take a step into that process of saying, well, I'm grown now, I need to take responsibility, I need to be able to reflect on myself, Honestly, what is that maturity?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 48:44
I believe it's initiated in Western culture through lack of rites of passage. I was reading Tyson Yunkaporta's book, Sand Talk, a few years ago, and I've put some of that in the book around adolescence. And he says very clearly that Indigenous cultures, adolescence lasts months. Yeah, well, but in our culture, it lasts 6, 7 years and in fact probably goes on. For men that don't grow up psychologically. Because what's the incentive to grow up? And how do you grow up? And when you're being shamed for being male, how is that an encouragement to go even deeper and become more vulnerable and heal? It's not.
John Milham (Host) · 49:28
Going back to— you talked interestingly about surrender earlier on, right? In that sense of surrender is not giving up, or it's not a sign of weakness, right? And we characterize it so often as the, oh, you know, like, you must, you know, a real man sort of, you know, dives in fearlessly into any situation and never lets go of, you know, once he grips onto something material or something worthwhile, he never lets go. And yet, you know, the, if you, the process of acceptance and surrender and being at cause, being at ownership of something, and then being able to move on, right? It's actually a freeing kind of process. Now, surrender means making room for something else, not letting go. Yeah. So how do we encourage men to see that act not as an act of losing, but an act of freedom?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 50:26
Through understanding that what we think we can control, we can't, and learning to allow things around us to be as they are. There's a wonderful man who's emerging on the world stage called Peter Crone. I've been watching his career develop for the last 4 or 5 years, and he calls himself, I think now, the Mind Architect. Interesting title, but if you ever see any of his work on YouTube, it's profound. Yeah. And he did an interview with a guy who I knew, um, several years ago, and this man had made a statement about something, and Peter Crone said to this man, you're saying that when your parents split up when you were 6 months old, that what happened was wrong because you want to get it right. And he said, yes. He says, what if it was right? And the guy goes, what do you mean? He said, well, do you know why it was right? And this man said, well, why? And Peter Crone said, because it happened. In myself, I went, ka-chunk. I went, oh my God, that is such a liberating concept that there's no point having regret. There's no point having guilt. They're useless anyway. If something happens, it happens because it happens and there's nothing we can do about it. So And I'm not talking that to dismiss or diminish anybody's, you know, difficult—
John Milham (Host) · 51:35
No, it's not a trite statement, is it? It's profound.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 51:38
It's incredibly profound. But when we have a death of a loved one or a death of a parent or whatever, we can look back and be filled with regret. And when my teacher died at 40, 41, I was a mess for 12 months and consumed with regret for the first few weeks until I had a dream and I don't dream that much. And in this dream, he came to me in the dream and he looked at me and he shook my hand and he said, I am beyond your regret, and turned around and walked away. And I woke up thinking, oh my God, I can live with this regret for the rest of my life for all the things that could have been. But he's just come and told me he's beyond my regret. Yeah. Why am I hanging on to it?
John Milham (Host) · 52:19
It's kind of like it's framing that level of attachment as selfish.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 52:24
Yeah, right.
John Milham (Host) · 52:27
That sense that attachment isn't helping anyone, right? Not least of all you, who are, who are insisting on perpetrating that level of attachment.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 52:35
And regret has its— regret has its benefit when we recognize there's something we could have done differently, and then we go, okay, from now on I will do something differently, and I can let go of the regret.
John Milham (Host) · 52:48
Yeah, often we hear, you know, regret, guilt, grief, sadness framed as something not to be desired. But of course, they all are very useful in that sense, right? They deliver a lesson or a message and allow us to grow from the experience.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 53:08
I had a massive reframe of grief because for that first year after he passed away, I was utterly consumed with grief and didn't know how to deal with it. And on the anniversary of his death, I was walking, I remember exactly where I was in Sydney, and I was walking down the street and I'm having this, as we do, you know, conversations with ourselves.
John Milham (Host) · 53:25
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 53:25
I'm recognizing it's the anniversary and I'm asking myself, am I ever going to fill this hole of grief? And this voice, you know, sometimes they come from outside of us and I learned to recognize when it's not my voice. And this voice just said, you don't. The depth of grief is a mirror and a reflection of the depth of love. And therefore, when it surfaces, celebrate it. And I went, wow, what an interesting perspective. So now when I feel grief of the loss of my dad or my mum or my friends or, you know, a dog, you know, pet, whatever it is, I don't try and feel embarrassed or ashamed or put a lid on it or try not to express it. I let it flow because that's a way of me celebrating the depth of the love I had for that person.
John Milham (Host) · 54:12
Yeah, I heard it. I was very interested in the idea that grief is an emotion that relates to the loss of what— of us, not from the loss of the individual who is no longer with us, right? Because it's our life that's been changed, right? They're beyond being impacted by our grief, right? So, you know, so we get to, you know, not learn from them anymore or not benefit from them anymore. Which takes me to, you are a couples guru. I can't think of anything more difficult than counseling couples.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 54:51
We're not counselors.
John Milham (Host) · 54:53
Right. Then offering insights, wisdom, or reflection for couples, especially given, like, I spent some time supporting through a group called Dads in Distress, right, supporting men who are separated. And it's such a challenging time for men. And I, you know, we talk about that surrender and acceptance and reframing, right, which is just, you know, the injustice, the sense of law, you know, like they claw onto what they had, they believe they have been betrayed by life and by other people and so on. And it's a very difficult place for men to get out of. Well, with your experience in working with couples, what are you doing? Are you preparing them for those kind of situations, or are you trying to get them to work to rebuild the relationship or create a new one, or what?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 55:57
We've developed some IP, intellectual property, around the fact that when we meet a person and decide that we want that to become a relationship of sorts. The first thing we're doing when we meet someone— ignore Tinder culture for now— but when we meet someone, we are assessing, do I know, like, and trust them? Are they values aligned? Like, there's all this stuff going on about we're assessing. And we go out on dates and we go out on experiences and we suddenly work out, you know, the red flags. Well, can I see a future in this? Whether we like it or not, that's what's happening and both parties are doing it. At some point, and that's developing a friendship initially, at some point the relationship then becomes a lover's partnership where we're now stepping into the sexual realm and exploring another aspect of the relationship. So we've now created the friendship circle and the lover circle. Based on that, we'll then might take the next step where we go, okay, move in together, get a house together, get a mortgage, have kids, you know, jobs, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we've created the third circle, which is the partner circle. And when the friendship, lovers, and partner circle are in balance, relationships work really well. But what happens over time is we forget about the friendship. And so the friendship circle starts to diminish. Meanwhile, the partner circle, kids, logistics, school runs, extracurricular activities.
John Milham (Host) · 57:17
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mowing the lawn and putting the garbage out. Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 57:22
And so our conversation with our partner then becomes logistical. And because the friendship circle has started to diminish, and here's a clue for men who may not know this, men need physical intimacy to open our hearts and connect emotionally. Women need to emotionally connect to want physical intimacy. So when the friendship circle starts to diminish, lo and behold, so does the lover circle. And we've discovered that couples keep a mental scorecard, not of date nights and movies and times and experiences that they spend together, but they keep a mental scorecard of the frequency and quality of sex, right? So when the partner circle has now swamped all this and the relationship's feeling a bit dry and disconnected— because it is— women want to go back and rekindle the friendship circle, or back around the loop, but men want to go back to the lover circle and rekindle the physical intimacy, and that's not going to happen. So now we've got the man and woman traditionally wanting to go in different directions. So we teach them how to get back into the friendship circle and rebuild the friendship, out of which the lover circle will organically reconnect and regrow. We don't counsel, we don't do therapy. What we do is we've spent 4 or 5 years from our own experience, our own intellectual property around this, but also trolling, um, the world for the best relationship education on the planet. And we put that into a 6-month, 6-module format where the front end is really heavy. And we warn couples who want to go on this journey with us, if you make it through the first 2 months, it's a downhill run. But these first 2 months are climbing Mount Everest. So you've got to be committed to do it. But when they do, suddenly their entire dynamic changes. The friendship circle gets rekindled. The lover circle gets rekindled. And they now start to build something really beautiful that their kids now notice often before they do. Arguments stop, conflict diminishes. And after about 4 months, they start to realize that they've spent so much work to now rebuild this beautiful container that we call the relationship field, that they're now so protective of it that the little things that used to trip people up and trigger people and the bickering that was going on is now stopped because they'll fight to protect this new form, friendship and lovers circle, equally. And so anything that tries to disturb the force is quickly dealt with and put to bed because we don't want to rock the boat.
John Milham (Host) · 59:49
Yeah, nice. The idea that if it's important enough to it, we work hard to keep it going or enjoy it.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 59:55
Well, name one thing, name one thing you've ever done in your life, John, apart from a relationship and raising children. Name one thing you've done in your life that you've never received an education on.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:05
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:00:06
Yeah, but, but we go into relationships. Firstly, we've asked hundreds of couples from stage work we've done and workshops, how many, how many people here want their relationship to be like their parents?
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:16
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:00:17
And the answer so far is zero.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:18
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:00:19
So then we say, okay, do you have a favorite auntie, uncle, grandparent, you know, that you could model? Yeah. And they go, uh, nah. Okay, so you come into a relationship with a model that you don't want. You've got nothing to model excellence to know what a good relationship looks like. So you do what everybody else does and you make it up as you go along. Because maybe television or even worse, you know, like, you know, well, TV is all about, you know, we do the dregs with The Bachelorette and those sorts of, you know, Love Island and the stuff that I can't go near because for me it represents the pits of the human condition. And so rather than getting an actual education on, well, what is the science behind healthy functional relationships. And we know what it is because behavioral psychology underpins it all. Yeah, we don't get any education how to do it. So then we say to couples who are then struggling a bit, well, here's the question for you. You've got kids. Yes. Do you want their relationship to be like yours?
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:13
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:01:15
No. And most of the time it's no, actually. So we'll have actually fix your relationship.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:21
Give them a good model and then help them, help them learn how to do it properly. Right.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:01:26
And break the systemic cycle.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:28
It's interesting, you know, Dr. Gottlieb, Robert Gottlieb, he talks about knowing he can pick whether a relationship will be successful after 5 minutes. Do you have that as well? Like, you know, do you have the positive to negative ratio or something like, do you see relationships that won't make it or will make it?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:01:48
Yeah, we have about a 90% success rate, but they bail by the second module.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:53
Right.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:01:54
Um, we met a couple last year in January. The part— the female partner, the wife, was of the view that it was done and they couldn't see a way forward. They were referred to us. Um, we got on our first call before they became a client, and she probably spent half the call in tears because all we did was normalize that at 20 to 22 year mark, most relationships— it's a, it's a, it's a transition point. Most relationships the shit hits the fan, right? We explained what was happening, how it was feeling for her. She went, oh my God, like, you're speaking my language.
John Milham (Host) · 1:02:27
Yeah, yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:02:28
By the end of the second module, she wrote us a beautiful email saying that she'd been to therapy and counseling, and she recognized that the documentation that we produced, which is significant amount of homework, was having significant impact on her. She was able to go home to her country of origin and have conversations with her siblings that she'd never been able to have, because she now understood the dynamic that was affecting the whole family. So the systemic nature of that And then by the middle of last year, they were out the other side. That couple running a business together with another couple then went into a very difficult business period. And they met us in September and said, had we not done the work, we were heading for divorce anyway. But had we not done the work and gone through what the business went through, we definitely wouldn't be together. She said, but what happened was because we worked so hard to become a team again, we faced the challenges as a partnership. And we protected our partnership through the whole thing. And she said, if anything, we've come out stronger because of the experience.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:25
That must be very rewarding.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:03:26
Man, I was in— they gave us a thank you card. I read it and she talked about the fact that she'd seen the generational impact on her children already. And I was in tears reading it because it's our mission. It's to help couples, you know, one at a time to have the best relationship possible so they can stop the hand-me-down psychology affecting their kids.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:46
Do you think we should be sending our young people like my oldest, who's just turned 30, he's married, 2 years now married. They've got a 6-month-old. They're wonderful. They are absolutely wonderful as a family. But you do worry, right? Because I know the hard yards ahead, right? The 20-year mark and the 7-year mark and the 12-year mark. Should I be telling him to sign up to something like this or to develop some relationship credit, to do the work on himself and the relationship?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:04:31
Well, it's becoming known as RIQ, Relationship Intelligence, and it's now starting to emerge on the planet because in the past, Esther Perel, famous therapist from Belgium, talks openly about the fact that in the past, empathy and good communication, all that were considered soft skills. And they were considered soft skills because they were considered feminine skills. But they're now recognized in corporate world. I mean, if you look at the— there's plenty of research on Google you can find about the psychopathic gradient of corporations. When they grade them psychopathically, many corporations in the world could be classified as psychopathic.
John Milham (Host) · 1:05:08
Oh, absolutely.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:05:09
Yeah, and so the whole concept of relational intelligence is now starting to emerge on the world stage where they're not soft skills, they're hard skills. Being able to relate to people and have good functional relationships and crucial conversations and all that stuff is a skill.
John Milham (Host) · 1:05:26
Well, it's part of Daniel Goleman's EQ 2.0, you know, that sense of being able— and I think it's part of maturity, right? Once upon a time, I think it was labeled common sense, right? And of course, we all knew common sense was highly uncommon, right? So, um, you know, now it's called emotional maturity, right? Like, you know, um, so, uh, yeah, no, relational maturity. What a— so we should be recommending and helping our young people take steps to develop a relational intelligence.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:06:00
Ah, cue. Yeah, absolutely. And we don't because the people who teach don't have much IQ. I hear the horror stories coming home from my youngest, he's in year 11, and it's like, wow. I'm not having a dig at teachers at all, but they don't know what they don't know.
John Milham (Host) · 1:06:18
No, and I find it interesting, the worst place, but probably the most significant source of information, but clearly the worst place is online, right? People are getting, you know, comparison, you know, through, you know, Instagram or TikTok or whatever. And I hope that freaks me out that that's how we're teaching young people to relate, right?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:06:41
So, well, there's also a fundamental societal dishonesty, John, that really pisses me off, to be honest, because I know firsthand of many situations where, you know, someone posts on Instagram about their 5-star lifestyle with their 5-star painted toenails on their 5-star holiday eating their 5-star lunch with their 5-star cocktail and their 5-star husband. Um, and I know what's going on behind the scenes, and it ain't that. And so when a couple then starts to experience some difficulty in their relationship, rather than going somewhere and saying, hey, we love each other, but this isn't working, because— and we know, we know we need some help to help, to help get it back onto an even keel— they look around them and all their friends are carrying the same facade. So they go, well, they're all doing okay, so it must just be me.
John Milham (Host) · 1:07:28
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:07:29
So I must be broken.
John Milham (Host) · 1:07:30
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:07:31
So I'm actually not prepared to go out and reach out because I don't have enough self-worth and self-esteem to support my brokenness, you know. And so nothing, nothing changes. We, we had one couple, um, he was 28, she was 26. I knew the guy for a few years before that. He knew about our work. They came and did work with us. 6 weeks after they finished the course, they got engaged. A year later they got married and we were invited to an elopement.
John Milham (Host) · 1:07:57
Wow.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:07:57
I spoke at their wedding, which is a very beautiful gift for me because of the impact that we'd had on them. And then they got pregnant on their wedding and they're now proud parents of an 8-9 month year old. And I think he's 30, she's 30, he's 32, I think. They are one of the most magnificent couples that I know because they now have the tools to build the vision of their relationship. And we say to couples when they first come on board, do you have a vision for your relationship? And they look at us like we're speaking Greek. It's like, well, you've got a vision for your business, so you've got a vision for your career. What about having a vision for your relationship? We'll give you the tools to build whatever vision you want.
John Milham (Host) · 1:08:44
It would be wonderful to see, uh, you know, because so much of, um, of that psychosocial challenge would be improved by better relationships back at the core, upstream from all of these hassles, including like, you know, young people getting a better view, a better model, more, more support, having, uh, male influence, right?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:09:07
Well, across the board, I mean, that people talk about work-life balance, and I very strongly say there's no such thing. There's only life balance. Work is a key part of it. But if you're not doing well at home, you can't get your head in the game when you're at work. Simple as that. You can pick someone coming to work who's doing it tough, even stoic men, because they'll get snappy or they'll, you know, be something about them. There's just not— it's a bit off. But they don't feel that they've got anywhere to go. And that's the tragedy. Tragedy of it all. And then that ends up in— can end up in a messy divorce, and then the lawyers make, you know, $100,000, $200,000.
John Milham (Host) · 1:09:46
And of course, so many people are at risk during that period of distress, right?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:09:51
Well, kids become collateral damage, and sometimes they become the pawns in the parents', you know, game. And it's just— and then those kids are traumatized, and they'll grow up, you know, it's just— I stand back and watch this mess play out almost daily, and it's an avoidable tragedy.
John Milham (Host) · 1:10:09
Focusing on men and their part in all of this, and of course the call to action is for men to take on the work, right? Which is a difficult decision. Sometimes it's a courageous one to maybe open up and know that the things we keep hidden You know, letting people see them is an act of courage, right? An act of faith. But I would encourage all men to do it. And I just wanted to ask you, why do you think it's good for men to do this?
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:10:48
I know it's good for men to do this because I'm one of them.
John Milham (Host) · 1:10:51
Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:10:52
Here I am, you know, yes, 30 years later,. But the initial 3 to 5 years of my journey is where my major growth and the 180-degree thing started. If someone had told me way back then that I'd be doing what I'm doing now, that I'd be a parent, that I'd be writing a book, that I'd be running retreats, that I'd be working with couples, I'd have said, yeah, what have you been smoking? Because there's no way. There's no way. I was never a writer, never a reader, knew nothing about behavioral psychology. Methodology. Um, and my life has only become incrementally, year by year, better and better and better as a result. And for me, it's— let's get clinical— it's a return on investment calculation, isn't it? You put the time in, you get the reward. You put the time in, you get the reward. So, well, if life gets better and you keep doing more of it— so, um, I, I used to get quite nervous before going to a gathering or an event or a men's group or whatever, thinking, oh, you What's going to come up? Someone's going to call me out. I'm an imposter. All that stuff. Now I really, really, really look forward to it. And every time I sit in a circle of men and stuff starts to unfold and unveil, I can't explain in words the depth of privilege and humility that I feel that I get to sit in that environment and witness this, someone's growth and revelation. And so it's become almost an addiction for me to want to keep doing because I realized a few years ago, John, that my purpose on this earth, I actually asked the question, I got an answer, is to serve. And as long as I'm in that role of service and at the same time taking care of me, I have a little voice in my head that every now and then goes, oi, what about us? What about us? What about us? I'm putting too much out, so I've got to pull back. But when I'm in that true role of service, Yeah, I absolutely love it. It's, it's why I'm here.
John Milham (Host) · 1:12:45
Well, I know that you have shared so much useful and wise information today with us, right? I know that because I'm— I feel like I've been, uh, I've been well served by you today. So I thank you for your service. Thank you on behalf of, uh, men out there who have benefited from your involvement. You've got the— you mentioned the book, so, you know, share with the listeners what they can look forward to.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:13:15
So the original book was called Man Unplugged: Exploring the Inner Man, and that's originally what that edition was about. It was about my personal journey backed by science and research and whatever, and others' work like Steve Biddle and Robert Bly and those guys. But the second book was a rewrite because I realized that I called it Man Unplugged: Secret Men's Business for Men and Those Who Love Them.
John Milham (Host) · 1:13:40
Right. Yeah. Lovely.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:13:41
And the reason was, is that I realized that if a man goes through a trauma in his life or an experience in his life, like 28 to 30 or his midlife, and he survives it, because we don't talk about it, he thinks that what he's learned is just related to him. So he keeps it secret.
John Milham (Host) · 1:13:55
Yeah. Yeah.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:13:56
So I want to share that that secret men's business is secret from men as well. And to expose it, but also for people like partners, women who want the best for their sons and their husbands to also read the book to give them an insight into what really goes on under the bonnet. And there's a chapter in there that's not new, but it's been refined, particularly on the man cave. And it's, it's for women to understand what the man cave is for a man. And I talk about the fact there's 3 levels to it. And hopefully that can encourage them to have a read because there's also a bit of humor in there as well. Um, the book's sort of split into 3 parts. The first third is why we are as we are. The middle third is pretty grungy because it talks about the statistics and health and, you know, suicide and all that sort of stuff and what's actually happening and my views as to why that's happening. But then the last third is, is sort of the way out of the, out of the darkness of that and what men can do and partners can do for men to support them to go and do their work.
John Milham (Host) · 1:14:55
And of course, you know, retreats, something, you know, getting back into nature, getting men out of their current pattern and into a new pattern. So, you know, how can they learn about that with you? Or, and obviously Googling other retreats are out there if in their local area.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:15:15
So manunplugged.com.au is my website. The old website is there until the new book gets released. The new website's built and staged, ready to switch over, but I can't release it until the book is actually physically available because it's obviously got a buy now button on there. But I'm also working with a publisher, standard distributor this time to get the book a wider readership. It's not about, you know, you make no money out of books. I know that. It's about me again in my role of service, getting the book out to much more people to try and make those systemic changes that I think need to be made. And I'm prepared to put my head above the parapet now than I wasn't all those years ago because I've matured a lot and been through a lot more. And I'm far more, I believe, in me and my capabilities than I was back then.
John Milham (Host) · 1:16:02
Thank you so much, John, for being here and sharing so brightly with the Kintsugi Heroes audience. I really appreciate it, mate.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:16:20
Thank you for listening to this episode of Kintsugi Heroes.
John Milham (Host) · 1:16:24
Thank you to Colin Lilly for permission to use Broken as our theme music for this series.
John Broadbent (Guest) · 1:16:32
If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Subscribe
Spotify
Apple