Lion Counseling Podcast

🎙️ Andrew Tate Says Depression Isn't Real. A Therapist Responds. | Lion Counseling Podcast #72

Andrew Tate says depression isn’t real.
He says what’s useful matters more than what’s true.
And he says men become weak when they spend too much time at home with their families.
But is he completely wrong?

In this episode, Mark and Zack react to Andrew Tate’s interview with a psychotherapist and break down the psychology beneath his worldview: mental toughness, trauma, denial, father wounds, success, attachment, masculinity, and the hidden cost of building your entire identity around winning.

✅ Why Andrew Tate’s message resonates with so many young men
✅ The difference between mental toughness and denial
✅ Why “I don’t believe in depression” can be both powerful and dangerous
✅ How trauma can hide underneath extreme confidence
✅ Why high-achieving men often avoid the parts of themselves that need healing
✅ The difference between therapy and emotional substitutes
✅ Why father wounds shape a man’s view of strength, success, and legacy
✅ What avoidant attachment can look like in powerful men
✅ Why being a provider is not the same thing as being present
✅ How Christian men can think clearly about ambition, masculinity, and the soul

🎙️ Book a Clarity Call with Mark or Zack:
https://escapethecagenow.com/contact/

🎧 Listen Audio-Only:
https://lioncounselingpodcast.transistor.fm/

📘 Get Mark’s Free E-Book:
https://escapethecagenow.com/subscribe/

📚 Mark’s Books & Resources:
https://escapethecagenow.com/books/

🌐 Lion Counseling:
https://escapethecagenow.com/

Click here to watch a video of this episode.’
About the Lion Counseling Podcast
The Lion Counseling Podcast helps high-achieving men break free from trauma, anxiety, addiction, marriage struggles, and the patterns that keep them stuck. Hosted by Mark Odland, MA, LMFT, and Zack Carter, the show explores trauma, EMDR therapy, faith, masculinity, leadership, relationships, and personal growth.

What do you think: is Andrew Tate exposing weakness in modern therapy, or is he confusing denial with strength?

#AndrewTate #Therapy #Masculinity #MensMentalHealth #Trauma #FatherWounds #AttachmentTheory #ChristianCounseling #EMDR #LionCounselingPodcast

Creators and Guests

Host
Mark Odland
Founder of Lion Counseling, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified EMDR Therapist
Host
Zack Carter
Zack Carter is a Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling LLC.

What is Lion Counseling Podcast?

The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the Lions they were created to be. It exists to help men obtain success, purpose, happiness, and peace in their career and personal lives. The podcast is hosted by the founder of Lion Counseling, Mark Odland (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified EMDR Therapist), and Zack Carter (Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling). In their podcasts, they address a variety of topics relevant to men, including: mental health, relationships, masculinity, faith, success, business, and self-improvement.

Mark Odland:

Welcome to the Lion Counseling Podcast. For years, we've heard strong opinions about Andrew Tate, both positive and negative. Recently, we came across a long form conversation between Andrew Tate and a therapist. And instead of debating who Andrew Tate is as a person, we wanted to analyze some of the philosophies and psychological ideas discussed in the interview. Zack, why don't you get us started on the first clip?

Mark Odland:

Dive right in.

Zack Carter:

Can do.

David Sutcliffe:

Does it make you nervous that there may be things that you don't know about yourself that I'm gonna try to reveal to you?

Andrew Tate:

I know everything about myself, my friend.

David Sutcliffe:

You know everything about yourself.

Andrew Tate:

I believe that I have a intimate grasp of all the things about myself which matter, which allow me to compete. Right. So there may be things I don't know, but I'm not sure if I particularly need them. So I'm not that interested.

David Sutcliffe:

Right. What's what's useful is more important than what's true. Absolutely. Right. You've developed a framework of thinking about yourself and thinking about reality that's been incredibly effective for you.

David Sutcliffe:

Completely.

Andrew Tate:

Right. What's useful is more you nailed it. What's useful is more important than what's true. This is an old argument of mine, but I think we discussed it in the last podcast and I'll say it again. When I say I don't believe in depression, nobody convinced me to can convince me to believe in depression.

Andrew Tate:

That's not a matter of discussing whether depression's real or not. That's a matter of me accepting that my mental model for going through life is more is more effective if I don't believe I can become a depressed person.

David Sutcliffe:

Yeah.

Andrew Tate:

I don't believe in depression so I can't be depressed so that allows me to be more effective. It's not a matter of sitting there going, well, maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. I don't believe in it, so I

David Sutcliffe:

can't catch it. Shape your own reality through the conviction of your thoughts, your beliefs, and the words that you use. Why else?

Zack Carter:

Alright. Initial thoughts.

Mark Odland:

Fascinating. I mean, for those who don't know, Andrew Tate, he was the, I think, the most Google searched man in the world maybe a couple years ago. And very successful kickboxer, professional fighter, went on to be this YouTube sensation. And, some labeled him as the epitome of toxic masculinity, and others saw him as a model, right, of how to up your game, how to compete in the world, how to be a a tough guy who had the cars and the girls and all this stuff. Right?

Mark Odland:

So, I mean, just really interesting person. I would just say my initial reaction, Zach, is twofold. One, there's something powerful about how he addressed the depression issue. And in a world where so many people have inadvertently bought into the idea of embracing a victim mentality, which disempowers them, makes them feel like life just happens to them, for better or for worse, he has constructed this mental model where he happens to life. He exerts his will upon the world around him and makes things happen.

Mark Odland:

Right? And so there can be a lot of empowerment there. But the other thing is if I he was in my office, and he said, I don't need to know about my past. I don't need to know about the hidden parts of my personality. I would be suspicious.

Mark Odland:

I'd be suspicious of why are you unwilling to go there. And I'm not so sure if I completely buy into the use will be more important than true piece, but I don't know. There there's how about you, Zach? What what's what's coming up for

Zack Carter:

you when you hear this conversation? It's so tricky. So I listened to this interview about a week ago. I've been munching on it for about a week because I think it's such an interesting perspective. There's some, like, knee jerk reactions of me wanting to argue with them, but it's worth thinking through.

David Sutcliffe:

Yeah.

Zack Carter:

So a couple lines make me think of this particular what's useful is more important than what's true. So that sounds like fake it till you make it. Right? And so there is some benefit to the fake it till you make it mindset. And we wouldn't be in psychology and therapy if we didn't believe that if you change your mindset, you will get better.

Zack Carter:

That's the whole reason we do what we're doing is what can we do? Can we reframe? Can we argue the belief that's holding you back? What can we do to change the mindset to something that's healthier? And that's literally our job.

Zack Carter:

At the same time, let's say we put depression to the side and we say PTSD. I don't believe in PTSD. Therefore, I don't have it. Yeah, but dude, you're having nightmares. You're irritable when loud noises happen.

Zack Carter:

It sends you to another place, so on and so forth. Yeah, but I don't believe in PTSD. Good prescription precedes good treatment. And so we need to know what's going on ahead of time in order to treat the problem. So that's not an exact answer, but that's what's going through my mind as I think through what he said.

Mark Odland:

That's, yeah, that's valid, Zack. Because where does this kind of empowered way of thinking where you can just, like, exert your will over this, not succumb to this idea of I'm sick, which can become pathological. But where's that line where you are experiencing actual symptoms? Right? Let's put it outside of psychology and put it into the medical realm.

Mark Odland:

If he literally broke his he was in a Romanian prison with his brother Christian for months. If one of the guards smashed his leg with a crowbar, and he had a bone sticking out of his his leg. And he were to just grit his teeth and say, I don't have a broken leg. I don't have a broken leg. I don't have a broken leg.

Mark Odland:

Dude, it's not gonna heal right. It's gonna get infected. It could kill you. It might feel useful to believe it's not broken in that moment, but, actually, what's true matters more in that moment. Your leg actually is broken.

Mark Odland:

So the useful true thing, for me, I I think it has something to do I mean, I think it's your vantage point and your time horizon. What's useful can be very true can very true. What's useful can be very helpful for what's right in front of you. And if you stack up enough of those of enough of those moments across time, it can lead to a successful life, especially when it comes to competition like he's talking about. But if it ends up looking like denial, then there's a blind spot there.

Mark Odland:

Then what feels good in the moment or what feels useful in the moment at the expense of truth might actually be a disaster in your near future or on your long term time horizon. So I I appreciate you bringing up that that reality about, like, the PTSD symptoms because we we see that a lot with our clients. Like, we simultaneously appreciate that mental toughness, not being a victim mentality. And at the same time, if you're really going through something, you gotta face it. Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

Yeah. Yeah.

Zack Carter:

And this is why he's so compelling is that it's not the things he says is not a 100% false, but there's also like something slightly off. That's kind of the sense I get with a lot of what he says is that, man, and it's working for him. And so that's a good argument he has a lot of

Mark Odland:

times.

Zack Carter:

It's like, look at my life. It's working for me. He has been super successful in lots of different areas of life. And so yeah, man. So I'm not saying what he's saying is 100% false.

Zack Carter:

I'm just saying, hey, we to look at both sides of this and understand both aspects that maybe sometimes it's helpful in the moment and then sometimes it's really harmful in the medium to long term like you said. Alright. Let's load up clip number two. Let's do it.

David Sutcliffe:

I didn't know how to answer that question. I don't think I exploited the men.

Andrew Tate:

I think I exploited maybe I did exploit the men, but let me change my answer. I don't think me not exploiting them would have prevented them being exploited. I think these men were out

David Sutcliffe:

to be exploited regardless, whether I did it or not. But you can see how that sounds cynical to somebody where you say, Well, they're going to be exploited anyway, so I'm going make money off them. Once I make money off them and I get this platform, then I'm going to champion them.

Andrew Tate:

Completely. I guess that's one of most logical arguments against me I've heard. Then we have to argue whether I was really exploiting them, which is another argument, right? Because a lot of these men, the only reason they didn't kill themselves is because they had an online So I actually think that webcamming and girls as a whole is closer to therapy than it is porn.

Zack Carter:

Okay. So just a little background. So I don't know a ton about Andrew Tate, but my understanding of what they were talking about is how he had a business, how he made so much of his money was hiring online prostitutes or webcam girls or whatever we want to call them, had this big business made lots of money. And so it sounds like what they're saying is the argument against him is that you exploited men who paid you money for fake girlfriends, essentially. And his argument is, well, I probably helped many of them not commit suicide.

Zack Carter:

And I made lots of these women millions of dollars. I don't think I played that section, but he eventually says that. I've made tons of women millions of dollars. So what do you think? Is pornwebcam girls similar to therapy?

Mark Odland:

That sounds like a trick question, Zach. No. You know, obviously, it's not therapy, and, it's hard to know how to how to go at this. There's a therapeutic way to approach it. You know, we have a lot of, guys who come to us for faith based counseling, so there's kind of a theological lens around what's within our value system with what's right and wrong too.

Mark Odland:

But if I just set aside the reality that, yeah, that from my my my my perspective as a Christian, yeah, that's that seems sinful. That seems like not a great idea. It seems like the potential for exploitation all around. At the very same time, paradoxically, could there be some truth in what he's saying? That there are a lot of lonely people out there.

Mark Odland:

A lot of lonely guys who don't know how to navigate this world, who don't know how to get a girl, who have been burned in relationships, who are depressed, who are suicidal. The suicide rate for men is much higher than women, not in attempts, but in actually succeeding in accomplishing the task. And so, even though it was a suspended disbelief and and probably a lot of these guys knew deep down that, hey. I'm paying for this. This is somewhat of a fantasy.

Mark Odland:

It was also a relationship with a real person who was talking about them and seeming to care about them and having conversations with them and making them feel important, making them feel seen and under like like I matter. Right? And and that was a real emotional experience for them. Does if that's true, does that justify what he did? No.

Mark Odland:

I don't I don't I don't think it does, but it also might be have some truth to it. So, I mean, that's that's my gut gut reaction to it, Zach. Yeah.

Zack Carter:

You're being way more generous than I'm about to be. Okay. Bring it. Bring it. I like the generosity.

Zack Carter:

I'll munch on it.

Mark Odland:

So

Zack Carter:

they're completely different things. Therapy and hiring cam girls are not even in the same vicinity. What's interesting is I don't know if I think I mentioned it on one of our episodes that like, I mean, aren't people paying to speak with us to have an emotional connection to us? Right. Isn't that a false relationship?

Zack Carter:

And the difference is that the cam girl, her goal is to take your money and to keep you coming back. It is not good for the cam girl for you to get into a serious committed relationship and then stop her services. The goal going into a relationship with a counselor is eventually you're going to leave. And we're going to help you figure out what are the underlying issues that are holding you back in your life, overcome those issues with some help, and then send you off with the tools to make sure you can take care of yourself. One is very surface level.

Zack Carter:

One is a drug. You could argue the same thing about heroin. Hey, look. These guys would have killed themselves if I didn't sell them heroin. Okay.

Zack Carter:

Did you really solve their problem or did you just now kind of create another problem? Because now these guys, if they go into their marriage and their wives don't look as beautiful as these women, their wives are not willing to do the things that these women were willing to do. Now these men have a comparison point of, well, why doesn't my wife do this? Well, why can't my wife look like that? And so, yes, sort of.

Zack Carter:

It kind of numbs out. I won't say it solves your problems in the moment. It numbs out your problems at the moment so you don't feel it. Like you said, you may feel an emotional connection, but there is not one. That's not a true emotional connection.

Zack Carter:

And with therapy, we're actually solving underlying problems versus numbing them out with beautiful women. So that's kinda my take.

Mark Odland:

Well, I think we have something to add to your, therapy bio, Zach.

Zack Carter:

Not a cam girl. Zach Carter, master's degree

Mark Odland:

in counseling, not a cam girl.

Zack Carter:

Not a cam girl. Definitely not. That was a past life, but we're not gonna get into that. Alright. This next topic that I'm about to play had me munching, man.

Zack Carter:

This guy is super interesting.

Mark Odland:

Oh, yeah.

Zack Carter:

If if if nothing else, he's interesting to listen to and to, like, think through the topics that he presents. So here, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna Everything.

Andrew Tate:

No. I don't think it's emotional. I think it's purely logical. I'm thinking about my day. Every single thing I do are the things I am absolute best

Mark Odland:

at. If

Andrew Tate:

I I'll put boxing gloves on after this and I'll go fight and I'll be everybody. I'll destroy everyone. And I think I only enjoy things that I'm good at. Mhmm. And I also think that if I have x amount of hours in the day, the way I can be the most competitive, most fearsome predator is to spend all of my waking time doing things I'm the best at and leave things I'm not good at to the other people who perhaps are good at them.

Andrew Tate:

If you're an accountant, and you wanna become as rich as possible, then what you do is as many hours as possible accounting.

David Sutcliffe:

But you're rationalizing. I

Andrew Tate:

am. Correct.

David Sutcliffe:

So let

Andrew Tate:

me rationalize it. I'll rationalize it.

David Sutcliffe:

Yeah. But that's what you do. That's it. That that can be a defense. I mean, rationalization is a classic defense.

Andrew Tate:

Yeah. But that's my rational. And you're really good at it.

David Sutcliffe:

But rational. But but it's like a sword you have that's super sharp and you wanna use it all the time.

Andrew Tate:

All the time.

David Sutcliffe:

Yeah. But what if you?

Zack Carter:

So the main here. Alright. So the main thing I'm curious what your thoughts are on is, is he right? Should we spend all of our time only doing the things that we're good at?

Mark Odland:

Short answer, I would say no. I think there is something to be said a while back. A personality assessment came out called strength finders. Right? Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

And people loved it because it's like, oh, man. This feels good. Did not beat myself up about all these things I'm never getting better at. And there's some there is some wisdom in not hitting our head against a wall, exerting the majority of her energy on something that's unlikely to change substantially. That being said, man, every day I'm working with these high performing guys who are in one way crushing it in life, but then other things in their life are starting to fall apart.

Mark Odland:

And it's because it's because they haven't faced the things they're not good at. And the things that they're not good at have to do with their trauma. It has to do with their wounds. It has to do with their addictions. I know you see this too, Zach.

Mark Odland:

And so I would, modify that and say, I don't know. I don't know what the magic number is. But, like, okay. Spend 80% of your time focusing on things you're good at, but have the courage to face the things that are under the surface that could be impairing you, that could be holding you back. I think he's doing a benefit cost calculation.

Mark Odland:

Mhmm. And in his own way, he's just like, you know what? There could be something good down there. It's not worth my time. Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

You know? And so for a guy like him, right, I mean, he's he's a exceptional striker. Right? He's a kickboxer. He said, like, he spars.

Mark Odland:

He destroys people in the gym. Does he practice jujitsu? I don't know. If a guy took him down, who knows how to grapple, could he defeat Andrew? Could that put his whole predator mindset to the test if he is I mean, that UFC two fifty is coming up at the White House.

Mark Odland:

I mean, it sounds ridiculous at the face of it, but it's this epic challenge, epic battle, epic puzzle of who's gonna win, this strategy or that strategy, this mindset or that mindset. The other thing I'd say is his predator mindset. It appeals to guys because we have that inside us. Right? And no matter what other people say about us feeling our feelings and it's good to show weakness and all this, We live in a very competitive world, especially for guys.

Mark Odland:

And as men, if you don't succeed in the world, if you don't make a decent income, people look at you differently. Women look at you differently. Right? There's some there's some things built into the cake here that guys have to contend with. But, if your highest goal is success to be the apex predator to be the alpha, well, that could come at the expense of other values.

Mark Odland:

Right? And and, again, for our Christian guys, there's obviously conflict. I don't know this, but but I've for sure, but my understanding is that at a certain point, Andrew converted to Islam. Mhmm. And in his words, it was because he saw Christianity getting soft.

Mark Odland:

And Islam seemed like the apex predator religion on the market. And so he actually put into practice his useful over true mentality, perhaps. I mean, I I'd have to ask him directly to know, like, if that's really the case, if he actually believes it, or if he just thinks it's an extension of the operating system that is most likely to to help him achieve success in this life. So

Zack Carter:

Yeah. That's that's interesting. I I know where where my mind goes is for my clients that don't feel like they're good at anything. Yeah. And in order to find the things you're good at, you have to fail at a bunch of different stuff.

Zack Carter:

And so there are a few times I don't know if we'll be playing any clips, but he talks about Andrew's Andrew's like, I never fail. Like, I don't fail at all. That's that's very interesting. I would be curious on how he defines failure. I don't keep up with mixed martial arts, but, like, wasn't wasn't he, like like, okay?

Zack Carter:

Like, went professionally, and he got, like, beat a bunch of times or or no?

Mark Odland:

No. He was really good.

Zack Carter:

He was really good? He was

Mark Odland:

really good. Yeah. He was he was actually really good. I think he was a champion in whatever league he was in. Okay.

Mark Odland:

At one point. And it it in a way, it does this is the skirting the line between denial and mindset, what you brought up before, because some consider to be the greatest jujitsu fighter ever, Hicks and Gracie from from the original Gracie jujitsu family. He said that in his family growing growing up, it wasn't winning and losing. It was winning and learning. Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

They refused to even embrace the word lose. And in a way, it was good because it's like, hey. You lose the tournament? Cool. Let's go out for ice cream.

Mark Odland:

What'd you learn? Mhmm. So there's something really healthy about that, about not being shattered by defeat. Yeah. But if that goes into denial, like, I never fail.

Mark Odland:

I never make a mistake. I mean, I don't know if that's what he's really saying in these other clips, but yeah.

Zack Carter:

Yeah. Well, and and there's stuff that I've we're not including today where, you know, he talks about when he's with around people, they'll make a comment. If he disagrees, he tells them the right thing. And he's like, and I'm always right. And yeah, that's a problem.

Zack Carter:

That's a problem. And he could say, well, look, man, Zack, you haven't made as

Mark Odland:

much money as me.

Zack Carter:

You haven't been with as many women. You don't have the kind of cars that I have. You're not as famous as I am. And that's his proof. So this goes back to the original argument of what's useful is better than what's what's true.

Zack Carter:

So even if I'm saying a true thing, he can ultimately say he can just he can push aside any comments about him because, like, ultimately, he's been hyper successful, so he knows best.

Mark Odland:

Yeah. I mean, that's right. And and there's that whole idea. Right? Like, watch Shark Tank, and there's this whole thing proof of concept.

Mark Odland:

And and you you alluded to that earlier. Like, he's constructed this life that if this is all there is and it's survival of the fittest and cutthroat and competition, he's actually created a model that's pretty appealing Mhmm. And pretty successful.

Zack Carter:

Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

But then if there's another value system in place that says things like, yes, there's that, and you can gain the whole world at the cost of your soul. That the first will be last, and the last will be first. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, the rest of these things will be given to you as well. So there there is something to be said where I mean, I don't know. It's it's it's attention, I think, for us as guys.

Mark Odland:

Right? Because, we want our values and our our morals to guide us, but then there's this competitive desire inside us to achieve and to succeed and to do well. And, man, that he taps into that part for us as guys, and especially a lot of young guys who are trying to figure it out. And they've been given mixed messages about masculinity for all these years and what actually works. And this guy comes along unapologetic, and they see the fancy cars and the women and the money, and they're like, yeah.

Mark Odland:

That sounds awesome. I want that.

Zack Carter:

Yeah. Yeah. And I and I think I think he's very blessed that he found the thing that he was good at. So he's been able to consistently, like, find the things he's good at and then do really well in them. And but that's not a that's not a a great model for most people.

Zack Carter:

So there's a a famous game. I it might be Chinese. It's it's Asian of some sort called Go. And they say the best way to to learn how to play Go is lose your first thousand games. And I like what you said about learning versus losing.

Zack Carter:

I'm open to that. Like that, I'm actually I like that reframe. That's a really good reframe that I didn't lose. I learned. If that's the mindset that Andrew Tate is he didn't say that in this particular video.

Zack Carter:

But if that's his mindset, okay, I've got less problems with that. But to say that I never fail is very tricky. And a lot of it has to do with what we talked about earlier, that he avoids the things he's not good at. So he can he can somewhat truthfully say he never fails because he doesn't try the things he's not good at.

Mark Odland:

Yeah. And then from that, you know, my my lens as a trauma therapist, I'm so curious. I would wanna know what his earliest experiences of failure were, what that was like for him. You know, we hear that Michael Jordan hated losing more than he liked winning. Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

And he became a really hard teammate to play with because of how intense that guy was. Right? And whatever he did, it was his poker, if it was golf, it was a basketball game. He was an intense guy who hated to lose. Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

And that made him Michael Jordan. That operating system worked for him. But from a trauma perspective, I would be so curious. I'd be so curious about what is that emotion that's so intolerable that you have to construct your whole life around avoiding it.

Zack Carter:

Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

And where did that come from? What were those traumatic experiences? I mean, that's an interesting, thought experiment. Right? If Michael Jordan did EMDR with me before he graduated from college, would he have lost his fire?

Mark Odland:

When he he might have had healed, he might have had healing and healthier relationships, but he might not have risen to greatness the same way. I'd like to believe he still would have, but I don't know. Yeah. Running from our past and from our insecurities and from avoiding the worst feelings that we had from our childhood can become a very powerful motivational system for people. Mhmm.

Zack Carter:

Right. But then a lot of those guys show up to our doorstep because everything outside of what they're working on. So their career is amazing, but everything else is just in shambles. They've got addictions, their family is falling apart. And we saw that in Michael Jordan's life that he did end up getting a divorce and needing to be remarried.

Zack Carter:

And I think Michael Jordan's amazing. But we did see that there's a lot of things that he got hooked on gambling. Like, there's a lot of things that became a problem in his life due to that hypercompetitive nature. So kind of a double edged sword.

Mark Odland:

Yeah. And then it's to be careful what you wish for thing. Right? For the guys who achieve the pinnacle, they've got this they've got the fame. They have the nori notoriety.

Mark Odland:

They have the money. It comes with a whole set of extra problems you never had before. Mhmm. Now you're paying for security. Now you don't have privacy.

Mark Odland:

Now you don't know if people are with you because they like you genuinely, or they just wanted something from you. Yeah. Is it actually a net happier life or not? I mean, that that actually is still a legitimate question to ask. You know, there have been studies, right, that once you achieve a certain income where your basic needs are met, money does buy happiness up to that point.

Mark Odland:

But then anything over the top of that, it kinda depends. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Zack Carter:

Cool. Well, I've I've loaded up our last clip. Alright. And so you're like, man, I'm super curious about what happened in this guy's past.

Mark Odland:

Heck yeah. I'd love to

Zack Carter:

dig into that. They've got a clip on it. They're ready

Mark Odland:

to dig into it. Here we go.

Andrew Tate:

They do something important. For sure. Or I'm gonna go do something important. And he could sit around and do nothing by himself.

David Sutcliffe:

For sure. But you can also imagine if you saw if you if you had sons and you saw them once a year, that would have an impact on them. Like, would you how would you feel about that if you had sons and you only saw them once a year?

Andrew Tate:

I think I'd miss them, of course. They'd miss me.

David Sutcliffe:

I bet I bet your dad missed you. Oh, completely. Absolutely. I bet he was sad there. Oh, completely.

David Sutcliffe:

And I wonder if he had self judgment about it. I wonder if he questioned himself. Well, I think as a man because you would I don't think would you do that?

Andrew Tate:

Well, as a man, you have to make a choice. And I think it used to be more binary than it is today because of the nature of money and empire and how things work. But as a man, you have to make a choice. You either go to war and come back with stories, or you sit at home all day and be a second mother and then you're not a man. You have to find the balance between the two, right?

Andrew Tate:

My father was away a lot, but he wasn't away a lot because he was doing nothing. Right? So if you have a soldier as a father, okay, he's not there, but he's doing something. He's coming back with a story, and I think that that was typical in a lot of households for a very long time. Maybe it's changed a little bit in modern times, but typically the man went away, did whatever he had to do, and then came back with a story or a hunt or whatever.

Zack Carter:

For sure.

Andrew Tate:

So that's how I saw my father living his life, and that's how I want to live my life. Mhmm. I will do the same thing. I don't think I would be the same man if I decided to say, okay, I have a son now, so I'm just gonna stay at home. Mhmm.

Andrew Tate:

And I think that I need to be a kind of man my son wants to emulate, which means I have to be a hero, and I don't think you can be a hero sitting at home. So I think that I need to yeah, he needs time, of course he does, but he also needs an example set, And that example must be set out there in the harsh, brutal realities of the real world. So, yeah. It's time. You could now the argument is quantity of time versus quality of time.

Andrew Tate:

And I would argue that the quality of time I will give my sons is gonna be much higher than You would want to give them that. Oh, completely.

David Sutcliffe:

You'd want to give your sons more quality time than you had with your father.

Andrew Tate:

I'll give them the exact same amount as he gave me.

David Sutcliffe:

Will

Andrew Tate:

you? If I'm happy

David Sutcliffe:

with Would you not want to give them more?

Andrew Tate:

I may want to. You wanted more. I didn't say I wanted more. That's smart. Didn't say I wanted more.

David Sutcliffe:

You didn't?

Andrew Tate:

No. You must have. No. I'm saying that.

David Sutcliffe:

Who wants time with his daddy? How can I mean, it has to be true?

Andrew Tate:

If I wanted, I could have earned

Zack Carter:

it anytime I wanted. Well, may may are you sure

Andrew Tate:

about that? I'm pretty sure.

David Sutcliffe:

Yeah. He I mean, when we go I mean, I don't know if we need to read the tweet,

Zack Carter:

but it's like your mom was pretty upset with him. So there was

David Sutcliffe:

a he was like, I'm not coming back here. I mean, what was

Andrew Tate:

it just about you? Was about your mother. Oh, completely. And I think my father sacrificed his marriage for us boys. Mhmm.

Andrew Tate:

He sacrificed his marriage and his relationship with my mother to ensure that us boys were taught the way he believed we should be raised. Mhmm. My mom was very unhappy with things he did, which he insisted on doing anyway because he saw his legacy in us as more important than his marriage with my mother. But I'm not saying, look, if my son calls me and says, I'm really upset, need to talk to you, I'm not gonna say, no, you can't talk to me. I'm not psycho, right?

Andrew Tate:

I understand all of these things. Just saying, obviously, we're talking about a very general scenario. The general scenario is, I'm a man, I'm away at war, I come home with a story, or if I'm spending time with my son, I want us to be building him as an individual. I believe that the mother does a lot of the day to day keeping the child alive, changing diapers, feeding them, etcetera. And the man is the one who instills a lot of the mindset.

Andrew Tate:

And the man is the one who grows them in very important ways. And I think to do that, I need to be a man of genuine capability. And I would argue that the two hours a month or two hours a week or whatever I spent with my father, him being the man he was Mhmm. Was worth more than the two hundred hours a month that most men spend with their fathers. That's why I am the man I am.

Andrew Tate:

Yeah. So there'll be some fathers who sit and say, could never do that to my son. Well, what can you do? You can go do fucking basically nothing with your life, pay your taxes, come home, be bitched at by your wife, be quiet about it, and be with your son all the time. Sure.

Andrew Tate:

You win in quantity of time. But who you are as a man and with the lessons you can really teach, you lose in quality of time. I

Zack Carter:

All right, Mark. I saw you squint and lean back a couple of times with a couple of things he said, especially during the sacrificing marriage for my kids. I think that was one of the times you you looked like you had some thoughts.

Mark Odland:

Oh, I got a lot of thoughts. And as you said, he's such a complicated I mean, interesting guy. It's not that he hasn't he hasn't he's thought these things through. I mean, he really has. And, but I think blended in with some of his robust philosophies, I think there is some rationalization.

Mark Odland:

And that guy that that therapist was pointing it out, and he saw it. And Andrew admitted some of it too. I mean, that was a really interesting thing when he said, I will give my children the exact amount of time my father did. That's a genius psychological protection, Because what that means is if he does exactly what his father did, then it gets him off the hook of having to make any judgments about whether he was better or worse than his father, whether whether he wanted more of his dad and didn't get it, whether he's giving enough to his sons. Because we see this a lot with the guys we work with.

Mark Odland:

Right? When they do because the truth is even good dads tend to leave some father wounds. That's that's a term that's been thrown around. But, like, even really good dads, it's for boys, a lot of times we can't get enough of our dad growing up. We want them to be the hero.

Mark Odland:

We want time. At the end of the day, almost every little boy wants to hear two things from their dad. I love you, and I'm proud of you. And it's not just quality time is important, but so is quantity time. And the the I think the flaw in his logic and there's some good things about what he's saying.

Mark Odland:

I think men do have to stop feeling guilty all the time for being a provider and and making sacrifices. Right? That there's something to that. But the flaw in his logic is it isn't binary. You know?

Mark Odland:

Right? It's it's not it's not either how do you frame it? You're out fighting a war and coming back with stories.

Zack Carter:

Back with stories.

Mark Odland:

Mhmm. Or you're a second mom laying around and being a bum.

Zack Carter:

Yeah. Cycle or nothing thinking.

Mark Odland:

Yeah. And he said, like, oh, it's not as binary as it used to be, and then he bulldozed that and went back on to it's binary.

Zack Carter:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Odland:

And I think the flaw in his logic is if you look at most of our ancestors, it was not that. It was the dad did have a war to fight, or he did have food to go out and hunt and kill and come back. But guess what? The boys went with the men. They were they were apprenticed.

Mark Odland:

They spent far more quality time with their fathers than they do in modern society. And so there was a model of there were rights of initiation, rights of manhood. There was learning by being with your elders, and then you came back and there was still kid stuff going on. But, I would argue this is more of a modern model of the guy has to go off and have nothing to do with this kid and come back for two hours a month. Come on, man.

Mark Odland:

Like, I mean, if you have to, if you're drafted, or if you sign this is this is a self imposed war that he's choosing. And I'm not here to to to judge Andrew or to say, like, maybe he has a great relationship with his kids, and maybe his kids do see him as a hero. But I would suspect, and the therapist was hinting at that, his kids probably wanna see their dad more. Yeah. And and and if his dad's around a little bit more, to do more hands on teaching, not and and and training Hill's kids, not just through the stories and not just through being a hero, but, like, I don't know.

Mark Odland:

That wouldn't make him a second mom. That'd make him a extremely tough dude who's accomplished a lot of things who also has the luxury and the privilege of being able to spend more time with his boys or his kids. Right?

Zack Carter:

Mhmm. Yeah. So my mind goes to a story. So my wife was very my birthday was recently and my wife surprised me with a cruise. Very, very sweet of her.

Zack Carter:

Nice. And we're on this cruise and we've talked to the people that work on cruises in the past. And we know that if you work on a cruise, you're gone for months at a time, three or six months at a time. And we have this one and a half year old daughter, and the crew just lost their minds over our one and a half. They just they wanted to hold her.

Mark Odland:

Yep.

Zack Carter:

We would be eating, and they would, like, grab her hand and walk her up and down. So they would, take her from us. And initially, the first time we were like, excuse me, like, what are you doing? This lady just like, took my daughter, dude, took my daughter off and I was like, what? What is happening right now?

Zack Carter:

Fortunately, she brought her back but yeah, they all were just like really connecting with her and we got to talking with this guy. He's like, how old you how old your daughter? We're like a year and a half. He's like, yeah, I have a one year old son. Like, oh, when's the next time you're going to see him?

Zack Carter:

And so this is we're in June. He's like, not till October. And I hope one day he understands. Yeah.

Mark Odland:

That's rough.

Zack Carter:

That is rough. So just like you said, for the guys that have to go to war, for the guys that are from countries where they would be in poverty unless they work on a cruise ship. That guy desperately wanted to be with his kids. What it sounds like is happening with Andrew Tate is what we call avoidant attachment. That Andrew doesn't want to dig deeply into close connections with kids or with a wife like Andrew.

Zack Carter:

I think he has like multiple women. I don't know if he has kids or not. I think he was saying, I don't have kids yet, but if I did

Mark Odland:

I think he does, but yeah.

Zack Carter:

He does? Okay. And so there are a lot of signs, even in the mentality that he presents of avoidant attachment where two hours should be good enough for you a month. And he says this about at one point in the video, he also says about the women he's with. He's like, I'm like the president.

Zack Carter:

Do you need every day with the president? You don't need it every If you just have two hours a month with the president, that's huge. So my women don't need me to be around. I can be around briefly and they're satisfied. Where my mind went is, yeah, they're also avoidant attachment.

Zack Carter:

Like if they also have that avoidant attachment, yeah, they don't want you around all the time. They want you briefly, they want your money. And then when you go off, they get to do their own thing. So a lot of his philosophies smell like avoidant attachment to me. So Yeah.

Zack Carter:

That's my last thought. Any last thoughts before we wrap on your end?

Mark Odland:

I think there could be something there. And he might be like, whatever you call that, it works for me.

Andrew Tate:

Mhmm.

Mark Odland:

And I'm like, yeah. In some ways, it is. But, it's a gamble. It's a gamble to know that you for sure have the answer on and he to his credit, he really does care about legacy. And so I would just invite him as a man who's accomplished a lot to to face the cognitive dissonance and the anxiety of what if my parenting strategy is what if?

Mark Odland:

What if it were a little bit off? And what if my kids need a little bit more of me? And what if I need a little bit more with them too? Like, I don't know. And that's just that would just be the question that I would I would be curious about.

Mark Odland:

Because I don't know. I guess I have a deep bias that kids need their dad, and, the kids end up in prison, it's because they don't have a dad. There's a lot of research on this stuff. So, well, all that being said, this is a thought provoking conversation. I'd love to hear, any comments that you guys have.

Mark Odland:

You don't have to comment about whether or not you'd like to see Zach fight Andrew Tate, therapist versus fighter or not. But you could. You could. What do you think, Zach?

Zack Carter:

I I I just wanted to also comment that I'm also not gonna leave links of my webcam days. So that as well is not I'm not open to discussing. Okay.

Mark Odland:

That's good. Now people will be on a frantic AI search for those links. Hopefully, there's not a Zack impostor out there who else has a beard. That would be awkward.

Andrew Tate:

Oh, no.

Mark Odland:

Well

Zack Carter:

So I can subscribe you guys.

Mark Odland:

Yeah. Like and subscribe. But joking aside, obviously, we get into psychology here. And, if anyone wants to go dig a little deeper, wants to, isn't convinced that they have it all put together and are right and never depressed and never anxious and never traumatized and never have any dad wounds, if you think there's room for improvement, even if it's only 5%, hey. That's what we do.

Mark Odland:

Escapethecagenow.com. Book a clarity call with me or Zach, and we'd be happy to talk it through and see if it might be a good fit. Until next time. Thanks, everybody.