Submind YouTube summaries
Thumbnail for Why do divorced dads all do jiu jitsu?

Why do divorced dads all do jiu jitsu?

Watch on YouTube

Video summary

The podcast explores effective and ineffective strategies for navigating breakups, emphasizing that immediately diving into a new relationship without pause is detrimental because individuals are still processing significant grief and trauma. The host draws parallels between ending a marriage and death, suggesting one must move through the stages of grief—bargaining, sadness, anger, and acceptance—as outlined by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross before reaching true resolution. Recovery does not begin until the legal divorce is finalized; only then can individuals truly start to bury their past relationships and allow themselves to grieve properly rather than pretending everything has moved on while still in pain. To aid this recovery process, the speaker advocates for engaging in physical practices such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), yoga, or martial arts like Okinawan Goju-ryu karate and Muay Thai kickboxing. He shares his personal journey of returning to BJJ after a divorce, noting that it serves as "cardio for divorcee ball stuff" by fostering deep trust with strangers who agree not to harm each other during training. This physical intimacy creates a unique microculture where men can break social boundaries and form lasting friendships through shared adversity, providing a healthy outlet for stress and helping individuals maintain their bodies while reconnecting with aspects of themselves they may have neglected during difficult relationships. Beyond individual practice, the importance of community is highlighted as essential to countering the isolation often felt after leaving an unhappy relationship or ending a long-term partnership. The speaker recounts his experience raising two young boys who were five and seven when he divorced; once they left for school, the silence was deafening until he established new routines around caregiving, such as making their beds and organizing their rooms to prepare them for return. These acts of service helped him transition from a state of forced happiness in an unhappy marriage to authentic joy with his children before eventually focusing on self-discovery when they were away again. The discussion further expands on the universal need for connection through something or someone to love, whether that be children, pets, friends, or spiritual practices like meditation and religion. The host reflects on how falling out of love can feel as sudden as hitting ground after a slow deceleration from high above, serving as a wake-up call about life's fragility. Despite the intense emotional turmoil experienced during his own divorce ten years ago with his college sweetheart, he now views these experiences as formative and rich in human emotion, noting that only unfulfilled love can be truly romantic because it encompasses the full spectrum of connection and disconnection. Finally, the conversation touches on the value of therapy for gaining perspective once life's immediate crises have subsided. Having spent fifteen years with a therapist who knew his entire history, switching to a new provider forced him to provide a "Wikipedia page" summary of his life, reducing epic tales to mere sentences and offering fresh context for blind spots. This shift allowed him to focus on personal growth rather than crisis management, reinforcing the idea that while divorce feels like falling off a roller coaster until one hits bottom, it ultimately offers an opportunity to learn from past pains and build a stronger sense of self through structured physical activity, community connection, and professional support.
Read the full video transcript
Give me the worst and best ways that people get over breakups. >> [gasps] >> I mean the worst way is to just immediately dive into another relationship without any pause. You're an advocate of a breathing period. >> Yeah, or if you're going to, you know, if you're going to do the the best way to get over someone is to get under someone. If you're going to do that, like see it for what it is and say it. Like really be candid that that's what you're doing. Like like don't lead people on, don't mislead, and certainly don't lie to yourself. The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves. So I think, you know, just jumping into another relationship very quickly and a very serious relationship, I I think is a a terrible way to get over a breakup. Um Why? Because I think you you A, you're still processing a tremendous amount of grief and trauma and loss. I I think that you have to move through the stages of grief. I actually think like you could look at like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of death and dying and grief and you could apply those to cuz all that's happened is a marriage has ended, a relationship has died. So you have to treat it like a death. We have to have the bargaining, the sadness, we have to have the anger, we have to have each of those stages before we can reach acceptance. You don't just get to skip. So I think you have to process those emotions and I think that takes a little bit of time. I also don't think your divorce you don't start to recover from your divorce until your divorce is done. So a lot of people are like, "Oh, we moved out months ago." Or "Oh, we've been going through this for ages." So now No, when it's actually done and you get the piece of paper that says you're officially divorced, that's when it is done. The line begins. That's when you buried the dead body. Like saying that oh no, this person died last week and the funeral's next week, but I'm over like they're dead. No, okay, when you see them lowered into the ground, now we've started the grieving process. >> Wow. So I think that's a piece of it. >> Mhm. I think the best way I I mean I I believe that the people that that A, have some body practice is really important. I know that's going to sound really bro-ish, but I really do think that there was tremendous value in A body practice can be I think it can be yoga, it can be Listen, I I I trained martial arts from the time I was 7 until I was in my 20s. I trained Okinawan Goju-ryu karate and Muay Thai kickboxing, and I gave it up. I stopped. I started running marathons, I focused on that. It was more friendly to the, you know, raising kids and things like that. When I got divorced, I went back to martial arts. That's when I took up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Because I I actually I actually took up, well, you know, Craig Jones actually said in an interview recently, like he he he was sort of slagging on somebody, it might have been Gordon, and he said like guys, like come on. Like this is this is like, you know, cardio for divorcee ball stuff. Like and I I thought, you know what? Thank you for saying that out loud. That's exactly what it was for me. >> to Creed, you're drinking white monster, and you're going to go and try and do oxygen tank. >> going to do struggle cuddles with a bunch of men. That is essentially the minute you've sent a 6-minute round with somebody, you're now sitting next to them with your arm around them and you guys are best friends for life. Because there's this feeling of physical What physical intimacy do men have who aren't homosexual with other men that you you break that physical boundary, you spent up There's tremendous trust in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I am trusting that when I tap, you will stop and not snap my arm, or you will let go of my carotid arteries so I don't die. Like there is something really lovely about a stranger that I believe that promise and you can believe my promise to that. >> Yeah, it's a a microculture. It's very interesting. So I think there's tremendous value in a physical practice or returning to some spiritual practice, whether it was meditation or some religious thing I've seen people go back to. I I think that that again, they're really the same thing, which is to say reconnect connecting to another person while you are navigating a breakup, I think is ill-advised, whereas connecting to aspects of self that you may have let go of in the pain of your difficult relationship that you're exiting or becoming a beginner at something or like if there was a sport you enjoyed reconnecting to that sport. I think A, there's tremendous value in having a physical practice. I think that there's tremendous value in sweating and going through all of that and overcoming physical adversity, maintaining a strong instrument and being physically healthy. A lot of my clients, you know, they they drink more than they should cuz they're going through something stressful. So, finding healthy outlets for that I think is really important. And also too, just improving that that it creates a sense of community. I think you start to feel really alone when you're in a bad relationship. And then when you're ending that relationship, it's like, "Okay, well, now I'm ending this relationship and I feel really alone cuz I'm actually alone." And so, there were times when I mean, all my kids were five and seven when I got divorced. And I remember when they were there, it was the most joyous lovely feeling cuz now I had them there, but I didn't have the uncomfortable feeling of, "Oh, I'm with this person who I'm not really in love with." And like I have to sort of pretend I'm happy, but I'm not really happy. Suddenly, I could just be happy. I was with my kids and I was having And then they would leave. And the silence was deafening. I mean, it was a three-year-old and a five-year-old, like little kids. Like little kid, they're so loud. They're boys. They would And then they were just gone. And it was just this feeling of like, >> [gasps] >> like it's so quiet, you know? And they'll be back, but God, it's so quiet. And the greatest thing I did for myself, and I I don't know what pushed me to do it, is I just started to create like routines. Like we live in a world of symbols. And what I would do is they would leave and I would make a point of doing all of the laundry of their clothes and washing their sheets. And then I would make their rooms. Like I would put their beds back just right and I'd put their clothes in the drawers and it was ready. It was ready for when they were back. And something about reconnecting like caregiving in that way and then reconnecting to No, no. The stage is set and they'll be back. And then I gave myself permission to go, okay, now they're not here. You go be you now. You go figure out what that is, who that man is because that's someone they're going to be watching and going, hey, who is that man? What does he do? You know? And so that gave me a tremendous strength and it really helped me navigate that challenge and I think that that is the kind of thing that that people can do. And again, this is not exclusively male. I think women can do the exact same thing. I think that, you know, when your children go back to the co-parent or when Again, even if you don't have children, if you, you know, if you return or get a pet. Like having a pet, having something my mother used to say to me, you need someplace to go, something to do and something to love. And if you're missing any of those three things, you're going to have unhappiness, right? So I think that having something to love is really, really important. If it's children, great. You have your children. If you don't have children, have a pet. If you don't have pet, have friends. Like but but connection. I think I think we're social creatures and I think we just have to find that connection cuz what is divorce but a deep disconnection? You know, and it's a disconnection that may have happened over a long time. Like we fall in love so fast. So fast and it's so powerful and amazing. And then we fall out of love like the way we go bankrupt, very slowly and then all at once. And and and and it when it goes like it it there is this part of us that sees it happening and just goes, oh, no, is this really happening? And this is one time that comes to mind for me where I actually remember this deceleration. It felt like falling off the edge of a roller coaster and it was very slowly and then >> [sighs] >> Oh, [ __ ] Yeah, and falling feels like flying for a little while. Yeah. Then you hit the [ __ ] ground. >> Until you hit the ground. And then it's a real wake-up call and and but again, like I See, I I and again, I think it's a function of age. I look back on the loves of my life. And I look back on even like the great pains of my life, you know, losing my mom to cancer, you know, all of all of the hard things. And I I realize like just how much was in there, like emotionally, like how much material was in there. And and I I have to tell you like the the journey of that is I've learned so much from all of those things and I feel like they were all so formative of me and I also just I I I don't know. I I love stories that that have that full range of human emotion and there's something about you know, the the There is a a saying that, you know, only unfulfilled love can be truly romantic. Like that there's something about the the riding the whole spectrum of connection and then disconnection and then But you know, it's very funny. I I I've been in therapy for many years. And sometimes, you know, you're in therapy, it's cuz your life's on fire, you know, like your marriage is ending, your mom is dying, whatever it might be. And then there's times where you're in therapy where you're like, "Hey, this is about just like trying to see my blind spots, trying to get better at being me, seeing connections I might not have seen." And I have to say like that that there is um in in my view like tremendous value in I had to switch therapists. I'd been with a therapist for like 15 years and he he retired. So I had to find a new therapist. And the funniest moment was in that early cuz having the same therapist for 15 years like they've seen you through a lot of things. They You don't have to fill in the blanks. They know your whole history. And all of a sudden there's a stranger across from me. And I'm about to talk to them about me and I'm like they have no context. So you find yourself sort of giving like the Wikipedia page of your life. And as I was doing it I remember thinking like oh there are things that felt like epic tales that are now three sentences. Yeah, I married my college sweetheart and we were married for about 10 years and we had two kids and then we got divorced and it was relatively friendly. That's it. That's all that was. But when it was going on, the world was ending. Were my kids going to be okay? Was I going to be okay? Was she going to be okay? Like what what was this going to do? Like who who were going to be our friends and who were and who was going to be team her and team me even though there weren't teams and how would we explain that to people? And now you look at it and you go like oh, it was just a thing. If you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus, and your performance, but most people have no idea where theirs are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting a blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function it's just $499. And right now you can get $100 off bringing it down to $399. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that $100 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com / modern wisdom. Thank you very much for tuning in. Ooh, a tasty morsel of a clip there for you. Well, the full episode is available right here. Come on. That's it.