Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Feel Good Podcast aims to unpack what it means to be a man in the modern world. In each episode, we explore the evolving landscape of masculinity through open, honest conversations with guests from all walks of life, from sport and the military to leadership, mental health and the arts.
We challenge outdated narratives and dig into topics like emotional resilience, connection, identity and purpose. Our aim is to create a space where men can reflect, feel seen, and start to ask deeper questions about who they are and who they want to become.
Whether you're curious about redefining strength, navigating vulnerability, or simply looking for more meaning in how you show up day to day – this podcast is for you.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Feel Good for Men Who Want Change, the podcast for those who feel left out or left behind and want to grow. We explore, as you know, healthy masculinity through open and honest conversations that don't preach your shame, but really invite reflection and action. Now in this episode, we're exploring a topic that you might have seen in the headlines or heard on Instagram, which is that of the manosphere and how men can get sucked into it and what we need to do to stop that happening. I'm speaking with Will Adolfi, a BACP registered psychotherapist and coach and managing director of Empath, which is a schools based organisation that helps students, staff and parents navigate masculinity, mental health and emotional literacy through talks and workshops. And Will has recently advised the Prime Minister and Health Secretary on the men's health strategy.
Tim Barber:And you'll hear us refer quite a lot to a film and some research that was done. And that was part of Movember's groundbreaking masculinity research project, all of which will be included in the show notes. Now, as you'll hear, Will shares a lot about his own journey, how he slipped into the manosphere, how it's so compelling actually, and how part of the challenge with it is that it gives young boys and men what they need, but ultimately leads them down darker paths of misogyny and harm. He's doing a lot of the work now that we need to happen to stop that being the case for all of us moving forward and our sons and I'm sure you'll take a lot from him. He's doing a lot of preventative work these days to ensure that young boys who are growing up in the online world can avoid some of the traps that he fell into and as you'll hear there's a lot of hope for those boys that they can find an emotional connection that perhaps evades some of us.
Tim Barber:So tune in, enjoy, and let me know what you think. Welcome to the podcast.
Will Adolphy:Thanks for having me.
Tim Barber:No worries. And look, mean, there's there's there's loads to there's loads to go after and people will have heard in the intro a bit about your work, which we'll come on to. But I guess before we talk about the topics that are covered in the in the film and the work you're doing now, Tell us a bit about your upbringing. Like, where did you grow up? What shaped your sense of masculinity in those formative years?
Will Adolphy:Grew up in Surrey, and I think James Bond comes to mind when you say what shapes masculinity. Yeah. I watched, was obsessed with the James Bond films and used to kind of wear a tuxedo galavan around my kitchen, dreaming chicken, not sod. You know? Yeah.
Will Adolphy:Very good. Really had me hooked. And it's hard to really know, isn't it? Still looking back, getting curious, like to know fully where I learned the messages about what it means to be a man, because a lot of it flies under the radar, I think, of my conscious mind. That's a notable one.
Will Adolphy:And then, obviously, seeing my dad so distant at work, work deals, on the phone, feeling the stress. My mom being at home the whole time as a housewife and a mom, being so immersed in kind of taking care of us, doing everything for me, ironing, cleaning my bed, cooking me food. These are the things that come up when you say that, and then I think about how I was when I was nine years old, this kind of sensitive soul, still am, of course, writing poetry, wanting to give to charity, just very sensitive to the world around me and warm hearted. Then how that evolved as I remember being around sort of 13, 14? And perhaps that sensitivity making me an easy target, but just feeling the wrath of judgment at school, not necessarily fitting into what I now see as a box.
Will Adolphy:And what can happen when we don't fit in? You know, I was a kind of in betweener, I'd say. So I had one foot in the box, doing my best to adhere to it, and one foot out where I felt, you know, I did ballet. I wanted to be an actor, drama kid. And at some point, I unknowingly felt in order to get ahead, in order to survive, in order to not be so impacted by what was happening, because I was so deeply impacted.
Will Adolphy:And I remember one key moment, actually, my mom. Haven't had this chat with her yet. I will. I will talk to her about this because we have a a lot more open relationship these days. But at the end of her bed, I was crying, and she really did her best to try and support me.
Will Adolphy:She could see that I was struggling so much at school with what was happening. And she said, you care too much. Try not caring so much. You know? And I don't blame her for this.
Will Adolphy:That's what she knew. It got passed on to her. She was trying to support me the best way she knew. But from that moment on, I became the whatever, I don't care man. I was like, okay.
Will Adolphy:I'm gonna I'm gonna do that, mom. Something would happen. Yeah. Whatever. I don't care.
Will Adolphy:I don't care. And there's still a moment or two as a 31 year old today where the whatever I don't care guy comes up, you know, occasionally. Whatever. I don't care. And I go, something's going on here.
Will Adolphy:You do care about something. And he's like, no. What do you mean? No. I don't care.
Will Adolphy:It's like, yes. Something's happening. Yeah. But does resonate with you as well? That kind of whatever I don't care guy stuff?
Tim Barber:Yeah, 100%. A lot of what you just said resonates with me. I mean, the reality is when we say that we do care, otherwise we wouldn't say it, right? And so there's an instant problem of, you know, of covering and burying something. That absolutely resonates with me.
Tim Barber:And look, you know, I had a, I mean, this isn't about me, but I had a similar conversation with my dad actually when he left. My parents are divorced, when I was a young boy, he said, You're the man of the house now. You know, and I absorbed that, right? And that was my version of that. And I think, you know, the emotional maturity that many men have often can be traced back to something, someone, some collection of formative moments when we were when we were boys.
Will Adolphy:Yeah. And that pressure, you know, you're the man now, don't care too much. It's all for me. It's like, how can I stand up and perform? That's kind of what I feel now.
Will Adolphy:I look back and I think, oh, yeah, it was. It was about putting on a face. It was about pretending to be someone I'm not. And I did a lot of that. I did.
Will Adolphy:I did because I felt like I needed to in the environment I was in. And there were some tough times. There were some, you know, school I look back at school. Was with my school friends the other day and they, you know, they've said how much they love school. I'm like, it's difficult for me to talk about because yes, there were moments that I have such fondness of, you know, there's nothing quite like a group of friends that I had, know, that sense of feeling like a family with my friends.
Will Adolphy:That's something that I remember fondly And at the same time, I just remember such deep emotional pain and loneliness and sadness. Yeah, there was a lot going on. I mean, I had 19 surgeries by the time I was 12, so I had medical trauma as well. I also come from a divorced family, there so was a lot of alienation at home. I asked my dad and my mom if I could move into his old office at the end of our garden, which became the kind of love shack, quote unquote.
Will Adolphy:But yeah, in truth, it was me masturbating, gaming, and smoking weed in And that that's what I did. I kind of alienated myself. And I always tell this story just to try and give people an understanding of how dissociated I was from reality. I always just used to go in my room and just do my own thing and hide from my life because that's how I coped. And this is when I was 14 to kind of 18, was in this room.
Will Adolphy:And one day when I'm 17, I think it is, my parents have just separated, and we're going out for a dinner with my dad and my brother and my sister. And my brother is talking, so he must have been about 15 at that time, and he's talking about going to Reading Festival, I think, because we were at that time. And I look at him in the eyes as he's speaking, and I have one of the most surreal moments because I'm looking at this boy, and I haven't looked at him in the eye for years and he's grown up. So one part of my brain is going, this is my brother, and the other part of my brain is going, is a stranger. I don't know who this is because I hadn't looked at him in the eye.
Will Adolphy:I hadn't connected with him. I hadn't said a word to him, I hadn't been in his presence in the way I was. And that just really shocked me when I thought about that. Was like, wow, I really did retreat because that felt like the best option at the time and I needed to do it to survive. But of course, I now know that it led to a whole host of emotional problems as I got into my late teens, as I got into my early twenties, and that left me in a very vulnerable state.
Tim Barber:And we'll come on to, I guess, because one thing I'm interested in is how your work now allows you to reflect back on your own upbringing and time in school. But at that point, did you then sort of go to university, into the world of work? And what was the transition from there into, I guess, the topic of our conversation, you know, your transition into the online world of the manosphere?
Will Adolphy:Yeah, I mean, so in my early twenties, late teens, I kind of was watching a lot of online content. That's when a masculinity influencer became a farthest picker to me. And I went down a kind of red pill route and definitely had that whole experience, which I'm sure we can go into. But then, so I did go to university and that kind of happened after university and then just reached a point of complete desperation by the time I was about 26, where I had a breakup. And a breakup from in a relationship is often a point of crisis that so many men, we don't see it as an opportunity.
Will Adolphy:We see it as a tragedy, as the end of the world at the time. It can really feel like that, but it's actually one of the greatest opportunities that we have. And the way I describe this is I now see the initiation into emotional maturity or manhood as leaving the village of comfort. That's the first step. And the village of comfort for me was gaming addiction.
Will Adolphy:It was my girlfriend at the time who I had unconsciously projected as a mother object, someone to save me from my loneliness that I mentioned earlier as a kid, just the deep loneliness I had. It's so common in our culture to develop this idea that there is a woman or another person, might be a man, depends which way you're inclined, that will save us from the predicament we're in, that will soothe the deep loneliness that we have inside. And it's the same as addiction. Addiction is kind of a substitute for that as well. Gaming, just easing that unease, that loneliness, alcohol as well.
Will Adolphy:I went for a period of, you know, weed, drugs. All of these sorts of things were my village of comfort, and there was no guidance, no guidance that was helping me on a path towards emotional maturity on an embodied level. So I remained very stuck in the village. And of course, within our culture, there's a lot of companies profiting of keeping people stuck in the village as well. So it's not as simple and there's little guidance.
Will Adolphy:So it's not a simple thing because the other stories around me at that time, what I was consuming online, which was essentially making it seem very tangible and prescriptive, you know, go to the gym to get big and ripped, build a business into a huge success, find an attractive girlfriend, and you will feel better about yourself. And on the one hand, that was true for the briefest moment in time. And on the other, it actually didn't build my self worth up. So in the long run, I ended up getting swept away from an eventual storm, a challenge, and I felt like I was back to square one. So yeah, that started to happen when I was 26.
Will Adolphy:I found that route to emotional maturity through a program, a recovery program. I put down the comforts, turned away from my girlfriend at the time for the first time ever towards facing myself and feeling the feelings and doing something which initially felt feminine, quote unquote, but has been the bravest, most courageous thing I think I've ever done and I've ever witnessed people do because I'm fortunate now, but I spend a living witnessing people face themselves. My goodness, every time it happens, it's like the first time it's happened. It really is something.
Tim Barber:Yeah. Well, and kudos to you for doing that because, you know, I guess part of the perniciousness of where you found yourself was, I can imagine from the outside in, lot of the things that you were soothing yourself with were ironically socially acceptable, right? I go out for a drink, I'll smoke a bit of weed, I'll play a bit of computer games, and well I guess, one, people don't know the extent to which you're doing those things. Two, from the outside, those are all, you know, they're severely innocuous past times.
Will Adolphy:Yeah. I mean, I had to examine my relationship to those things because I had reached a breaking point, because I couldn't tolerate how unhappy I was anymore. So I stopped coping and ended up descending. Lots of people, particularly men, we cling on to cope and not hit rock bottom because we really don't want to accept how unhappy we are. And this is universal, I think, as well, because it's hard to let that in.
Will Adolphy:To really fully acknowledge how deeply unhappy I was was one of the most freeing things I've ever experienced. I remember calling up my mom and going, I'm so unhappy. And she was like, Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I was like, No, this is like, I feel relieved because now I can do something about it. Now I feel motivated.
Will Adolphy:And this is the thing I've learned about you know, negative emotions, quote unquote, which is that they carry so much wisdom and guidance in them. And I had done my absolute best to ex well, I was externalizing my attention the entire time because that's that's what we get taught to do, and there's so many things pulling away our attention. But internalizing my attention and building a relationship with myself has been what has allowed me to now step into the arena and do something that is incredibly scary still. Sharing my story with the world, with schools, young men, going online, releasing things, having people challenge me, having people get triggered by what I'm saying. These sorts of conversations, it's like, God, I'm terrified.
Will Adolphy:But part of me really doesn't want to do it. Part of me wants to go back to the village. I'm still feeling that. But I have enough, I guess, enough confidence or assurance in myself, self worth in myself, which has been developed through this whole process that allows me to not feel so wobbled and overwhelmed by shame. And I'm so grateful for that because it means that I can get involved in the conversation and, yeah, hopefully be of use.
Tim Barber:Yeah. And I'm sure you are. In that that vein of thinking, is there a sort of practice or intervention point where when young men are in their formative years, you can sort of find them at the fork in the road and instead of going down the path that you went down, they can go down another. I guess what I'm asking is, is something that we can name and point to that is missing for men who end up in that place that we can start to address much earlier on?
Will Adolphy:One word comes to mind, I mean, I think from a very young age, we treat girls differently, and we treat boys differently. There have studies done, a mother in the you know, a baby in the womb. If it's a boy, the words used, the way in which we respond is already starting, that socialization, from before that baby's even been born into the world. Yeah. That messaging of kind of disconnection from as a boy disconnecting from my feelings, I think that starts to happen roughly around the age of probably about, you could say 10, 11, and then obviously grows more and more as you get.
Will Adolphy:Most boys, if you think back to when you were seven years old, the best mate that you had, and I wonder if this is the same for you, but the closest I've ever felt, obviously it's changing as I go through this process currently, but was my best mate back then, Joe, seven years old. We just the closeness emotionally I felt to this boy. It it breaks my heart in some ways because at some point that became no homo. Right? No homo.
Will Adolphy:There was this thing.
Tim Barber:Yeah. Yeah.
Will Adolphy:A homo, bro. And slowly but surely, and then when we get into kind of thirteens, the teens, 14, you can start to feel and see notable mask wearing and bravado. I'm not saying every boy does this. I definitely did it. And I see it in every school I go into.
Will Adolphy:Yeah. Every school. Right?
Tim Barber:Yeah. Agrees. Yeah. I think I think most people, you know, particularly people who've grown up in The UK will recognize in, if not them, the men they grew up around, some version of that for sure.
Will Adolphy:Yeah. And so we can think of that as the man box. Have you heard it? I'm sure you've heard of the possibly the man box, that idea of the the box, this kind of rigid sense
Tim Barber:Yeah.
Will Adolphy:Of masculinity. Yeah. It holds all the rules that we may feel we need to follow. And when we think of it as as kind of like this ideal that we're still collectively socializing boys and men in, it really helps me to understand that it's a culture that still exists and is still getting reinforced. And I still see that at schools.
Will Adolphy:But that initial what we're experiencing, that closed offness or that bravado, that could be scary to people. It could be scary to other boys in the year. It could be scary to teachers, particularly female teachers. It's scary to parents, scary to people walking by on the street. People get scared of groups of men, groups of boys.
Will Adolphy:And I feel that now when I'm walking around in a group of men, I have this kind of awareness. I'm like, wow, what's this like for other people? Because they don't know us. They don't know that I know these guys. I know we're safe, but they don't know that.
Will Adolphy:And so if I raise my voice, what's that like? And, you know, it's just for me that starts very early and disconnection is one of the consequences of this disconnecting from my emotions like I did, whatever, I don't care. That's me disconnecting from the parts of me that I'm denying now because they don't feel accepted in the world. You know, my grief, my sadness, my fear. Somewhere along the line, we get the message that that's not wanted or that can't be dealt with in the world.
Will Adolphy:So it's that cut off. So what do we need? Well, we need to model letting those parts in without losing what we're afraid to lose, which could be what some people call masculinity, right? This sense of I feel like I have to exchange one for the other. And so my work at school, I work for Empath, the company I run, is to model that.
Will Adolphy:So we're there to literally say, Hey, I can stand on my two feet here and say, it can be even as simple as I'm a Chelsea fan. You know, sometimes I pop that in. They're like, Oh, He's not against being a boy or like, He loves football. And then I can say something like, yeah, when I was 15 years old, I punched myself in the face when I was in Malia because I wanted to get attention from a girl that I liked and she wasn't giving me much attention. I can tell that story and I can stand there and go, I did that and I'm owning it.
Will Adolphy:And if the boys engage with that, they can actually see and feel and kind of get a sense of what it's like to be honest, to own something and still be someone who is a boy. So I feel like that's one piece of the puzzle. I don't know how that all sounds to you.
Tim Barber:No, I mean, look, it's in some ways a bit of a trick question because as you will know better than many, this is just a big cultural soup, right? And there's so many different things to it. But I think there's two of the themes that I think I picked up in your answer there that are on my mind a lot at the moment are role modeling and emotional connection. So one of my episodes coming up is with Claudio who's doing a lot of work to get young men early years education in teaching roles, because the number of teachers in early years education, so nursery before school, is 3% in The UK. And it gradually climbs until you get to university where there's a male majority again.
Tim Barber:But the point is in those early formative years that you were talking about, there's very little role modeling and gender norms are being formed about what roles in society women play and what roles in society men play. And so that is, you know, a small example of a way this plays out in our culture that women even think about. But, you know, the percentage of nursery staff that are men, for example, is a massive contributor too.
Will Adolphy:I'll just add to that, because whilst I recognize and resonate with what you're saying about how we need more men in that kind of sector, for example, nursery teachers, just teachers in general, For me, there's another piece to the role modeling, which I think is essential because we can have more men in these domains. But as men, we may have internalized that man box culture. It's living within us. And there's no shame in that. There really isn't.
Will Adolphy:It's just part of being a human right now at this time. And at the moment, the conversation's been like whenever I mentioned that, that we might have that in us, it kind of activates people. It can activate people in a way of like getting defensive around men and being a man. I get that. I really do.
Will Adolphy:There's been a lot of attack and judgment on masculinity. I'm not coming at it from that angle. I'm coming at it from a place of curiosity to say that even though we if we have more men, there might still be this rigid sense of what it means to be a man.
Tim Barber:Yes.
Will Adolphy:And that to me is at the heart of everything because the landscape has changed, but we're still giving boys the same map. And the map is leading us into places that no longer work. You know, you used to be able to my dad used to be able to get the car, get the family and do all of that. And that would be enough. You'd have a sense of a role in society.
Will Adolphy:You'd be doing a job you probably didn't like, but you got on with it. You had a drink in the evenings, at the weekends. You know, I'm just speaking about my dad's story here that we've unpacked together. And that was enough for him at that time. That doesn't work anymore for a lot of people.
Will Adolphy:It didn't work for me. The gender landscape has shifted. Women are in the workforce. That's one aspect of it. And it shifted for good reasons.
Will Adolphy:It's needed to. It's needed to evolve. There's been a lot of stuff that has been really harmful to a lot of people, and that's great. And we need to evolve with it, this idea of kind of what it means to be a man. And so, more teachers.
Will Adolphy:However, if that we also need to be thinking about shifting our understanding of what it means to be a man and just opening up and starting that process. And I don't have the answers there, but I know that it's a process that requires investment on a societal level and on a level where we can provide spaces to facilitate those conversations and actually listen. Listen to boys, listen to their struggles, listen to what it's like to be in a world right now as a boy with everything that's going on, with everything that's changing, and give them permission to actually share that, vocalize it, and feel like they are heard and they are seen just like every other gender deserves that as well. And so bringing that all together so we can evolve. I think that to me is the most important piece.
Will Adolphy:It's evolving the manbox.
Tim Barber:Yeah, yeah. No, fully agree. I'd love to talk about one of the things that sort of get in the way of that and perhaps providing an unhelpful script, which I guess the shorthand phrase that's doing the rounds is the manosphere. Don't know whether you agree we're still using that or not. I mean, we were at an event together a couple of weeks ago where that was the headline.
Tim Barber:But I guess for those who aren't as immersed in this world as we are, and I don't know, perhaps they see some headlines or that kind of thing. Could you just give us a bit of an overview of like what we mean when we say that? What was the subject of the Movember report on young men's health in a digital world where the short film was made about your experience, which I'll include. Just paint a bit of a picture of what's going on and what do we even mean when we say that.
Will Adolphy:Yeah, okay.
Tim Barber:That's an easy layup for you there, Will.
Will Adolphy:No, it's good. I've been thinking a lot about this. So I actually had a post recently on LinkedIn called Should We Stop Using the Word Manosphere? And I raised a lot of stuff, and I'm just going try and communicate it now because it got a lot of traction. A lot of people resonating and a few people kind of activated by it and worried about what I was saying.
Will Adolphy:So I just really want to clarify. So the term manosphere was first kind of born into the world in the kind of 2010s. Okay. And it was used originally. And if you Google Define It today, it will talk about four core communities.
Will Adolphy:Right? And your listeners would have heard of some of them. So INCELS, which is obviously what adolescence was exploring. Red Pill, kind of men's rights activism, pickup artists, and MGTOW, men going their own way. Okay?
Will Adolphy:And these communities, they do have notable misogyny throughout them, but it's very hard to define because they're a collection of spaces. They don't all agree with one another. But what tends to tie them together is kind of more, I would say, which is more prominent, which is anti feminism and anti wokeness. You can kind of feel that. Sometimes it's more notable.
Will Adolphy:Sometimes it's more subtle under the radar. And then in the case of incel dom, you have more notable misogyny and acts of violence, and sometimes that can actually make its way into real life violence and murder. So it can get very serious and very dark. And at the same time, things have evolved since February. Things have evolved rapidly.
Will Adolphy:You had the rise of someone called Andrew Tate, who I don't even need to introduce. Everyone knows who Andrew Tate is, who in 2022 got about 16,000,000,000 views on TikTok and during COVID was spreading like wildfire in a way that we had never seen before. And all of a sudden, you have boys doing these symbols, this kind of hand gesture, which is an Andrew Tate gesture in workshops, in classes, and everyone was like, wow, what's going on here? And we started to get alerted to the fact because of someone like Andrew Tate, who's such a provocateur and says things that seem so overtly harmful that it was like, oh my god, wow, what's going on? A lot of the boys seem to really be looking up to him.
Will Adolphy:And that sparked a lot of conversation that is still going on today. What I say is different is now the term manosphere is kind of being used to describe loads of things. There's not a specific criteria. Is Joe Rogan a Manosphere influencer? Is Jordan Peterson a Manosphere influencer?
Will Adolphy:You have different outlets calling them certain things, and so it's not clear. And so one of my kind of things that I want to be conscious of is manosphere has become very negative. It's become a negative term because when we think of manosphere, think of adolescents, we think of these core communities, we think of misogyny, and that is a crucial aspect of this. However, it doesn't tell the whole story. There is a wider lens that I think we need to have if we want to look to addressing what is happening and actually come up with solutions.
Will Adolphy:I got entrenched in the manosphere, quote unquote. A masculinity influencer became a father figure to me, and it started off as self help. My mental health was in absolute tatters. And all of a sudden I found someone who was saying there was nothing less valued than young men. I felt seen.
Will Adolphy:I felt heard because I was hearing a lot of anti male rhetoric at the time that colored my experience of the world. And then this person was making me feel seen. I got guidance. I was hitting my business goals. I felt like I was out of the ditch I was in.
Will Adolphy:And alongside that, there was anti feminist sentiments happening. There was a kind of rigid worldview I was developing. It was us versus them. Views started to become distorted. You know, the world hates men.
Will Adolphy:I firmly believed that. It was very rigid, and I was, you know, I was in the fight against it, and I felt terrified as well. I didn't wanna have any conversations. Now I didn't make it further than that, really, and there wasn't any violence in my life. There wasn't any extreme hatred.
Will Adolphy:I resented the world. I resented myself, And that did make its way into my relationships with women I was dating at the time. Of course, did. It did. It kind of brought this kind of high value system into my life.
Will Adolphy:So I was subtly devaluing a woman I was dating once. I remember this. Because she didn't match up to this kind of version I had of being a success. So that's just one way. What I had learned and internalized kind of impacted the way I saw the world, saw women.
Will Adolphy:So there was a lot going on. And ultimately, at that time, I was in a very vulnerable place because I was getting guidance and I had a mentor. I had someone to look up to, and I'd never had that before. So there was a lot going spectrum of responses. Some boys are getting hooked in like I was, but they're not going down the kind of more extreme places.
Will Adolphy:They're not a part of these core communities. They're watching content that's part of a wider ecosystem that still feeds those ideas. So and there's also boys that are watching stuff passively.
Tim Barber:Yeah.
Will Adolphy:And the danger in kind of framing boys watching online content about self help or fitness as manosphere content, which can happen, is that it means that we lead with judgment and we lead with this sense of worry and urgency of like, that's toxic. You need to be careful. And I work with so many parents who ask me, who's the good guys and who's the bad guys? And the truth is, who knows? At times it's obvious.
Will Adolphy:You can look at Andrew Tate and you can go, okay, that's probably, yeah, maybe you could use him for gym motivation. But if you're a parent, you probably don't want your child watching Andrew Tate. I get it. But it's a lot blurry. There's far more than Andrew Tate out there.
Tim Barber:Yeah, yeah. I remember being in a room at a business conference where this topic was being discussed. It was sort of a round table. And even me as a 38 year old male, people were talking about, you know, de platforming Joe Rogan and these idiots who listen to him. And I was like, well, I don't agree with everything he says, and I don't agree with, you know, some of the guests he has on, but like, you have to appreciate the breadth of his audience and the topics that he discusses.
Tim Barber:And if you like hunting and martial arts, for example, you might be a fan and be able to say, Oh yeah, but I'm not going to listen to that one where he's, you know, promoting and platforming a climate change skeptic, for example. And I think after the session, a couple of guys came up to me and were like, oh, I'm glad you said something actually, because I almost don't want to admit that I listen to that stuff now. And there's this risk, these are guys in their 30s and 40s, right? And as you say, there's this risk, because if we label everything, you just you know, the risk I imagine you'll know better than me is that you continue to push boys and men further down the rabbit hole.
Will Adolphy:Well, you just said it right there. That guy just that really jumped out. I almost didn't wanna say or admit that I watched that now. This is a grown man. Did I hear that correct?
Tim Barber:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Will Adolphy:You said that. Yeah. So imagine now amplifying the insecurity and the fear of judgment by, I don't know, ten, twenty, a 100. You're a 14, 15 year old boy. Yeah.
Will Adolphy:If you get any elk that you're gonna be judged, your parents are concerned that you're gonna be radicalized into a misogynist. That does happen. Again, as I'm having this conversation, I just wanna clarify. I understand that that happens. And in inviting and widening the lens, I'm not talking about removing or denying the harm.
Will Adolphy:I'm talking about understanding how we can talk about the harm in a way that makes it visible and understandable to young boys and men. That is at the heart of prevention. So I'm not working against feminism or the effort for women and girls. This is in essence going to benefit women and girls because I am someone that was on that pipeline myself. I can see how there are, in some cases, how it goes further and it gets more extreme and it can lead to that.
Will Adolphy:But it didn't for me because I was able to have conversations where I didn't feel judged. And in not feeling judged, I expressed, yeah, this is what I'm watching. I'm doing this. I'm watching that. And I started to be able to process it because when I was in my room watching it by myself, I wasn't having any conversations.
Will Adolphy:I hadn't actually I had kind of half baked views and opinions because I wasn't having conversations. I wasn't reflecting too deeply. I was absorbing this information passively for a number of reasons. The algorithm was feeding it to me. It was a source of distraction from the pain I was feeling.
Will Adolphy:It was addictive. I felt seen. I felt heard. I was getting guidance. I also found it entertaining.
Will Adolphy:There's a variety of reasons to be hooked on it. But that is really important for us to recognize because I often find I'm living in this tension between an academic world that really wants to name harm with clarity and the kind of felt reality of so many boys that often feel suspicious, judged and dismissed. And it's like we need to hold both. We need to be able to kind of learn how to name systems of harm, like the man box, for example, in a way that still keeps the person's humanity intact. And the words we use are really important, which is why I raised that question.
Will Adolphy:Should we use the word manosphere? Just like the term toxic masculinity had the opposite effect of starting conversations around the harmful aspects of masculinity. It became something that felt judgmental. And so although it may be intended in different ways, and I see this language all the time in the media, the media just ran a campaign called, yeah, we're now going to run anti misogynistic or anti misogyny classes to tackle toxic masculinity. I mean, that whole sentence is just completely rooted in this problem oriented way of looking at things.
Will Adolphy:It's looking at the harm and it's bringing in that judgment. And so it just doesn't work. And it's always written by people that I sense. I could be wrong here, but that haven't been in a classroom and attempted to have conversations with boys about this stuff. Because as someone who has done that so many times now, I can tell you it is bloody hard.
Tim Barber:Yeah. It's
Will Adolphy:really hard. If you go in there in a lecturing mode and you start talking about patriarchy and misogyny and how we need to be better, we need to do this, you need to consider this, The boys, in my experience, will shut down, disengage, huff and puff, do a bit of this. Not all boys, mind you. Now to play devil's advocate, okay, but it's meant to be uncomfortable. That's what I hear a lot.
Will Adolphy:I'm just trying to think, evaluate. Okay, Will, it's meant to be uncomfortable. Change is meant to be uncomfortable. And to that I say, agreed. It is going to be uncomfortable.
Will Adolphy:But if we're so uncomfortable that we're disengaging, that's not useful either.
Tim Barber:Yeah. And the other thing is, know, in my experience, you don't shame people into change either. Right? You can provide them with knowledge. You can give them a path, but like people aren't going to change from a position of defensiveness and shame.
Will Adolphy:Right. Agreed. I think that that only gets me it's only got me so far when I shame myself into change. Yeah. I think in the long run, just from my own experience, what has helped me is just to gain an understanding of what I'm caught up in, to have empathy for myself.
Will Adolphy:And then actually, when I received empathy and was able to offer it to myself, that's when empathy opened up for other people. And I started to realize that I have something very similar in me that I wanna be seen and I wanna be heard. I remember, you know, during my journey, because I'd never been friends with gay men before. I'd never met a non binary person before. This happened in my journey of recovery in this support group.
Will Adolphy:I remember going up to this non binary person and when we were becoming friends, said, I'm really scared to misgender you. Really scared. I feel like that you're gonna hate me or, you know, because I'm a man. And they basically said, that's interesting because I'm scared that you're not gonna like me because I'm not a man. And I was like, wow.
Will Adolphy:And it was just this pin drop moment where I thought, oh my god, we're both scared. And we hung out in our fear, and I just watched it simmer away. And I realized that the online world was definitely exacerbating and allowing me to feel more distant and, you know, more different, let's say, from a person that had this word non binary that they were identifying as non binary. That word itself became a kind of like, ah, you're a part of a tribe that doesn't like my tribe. And it was just so tribal.
Will Adolphy:And that's why I try to help people understand here that it's not rational. We're talking about something very tribal. Like when I developed an attachment to this masculinity influencer, he filled a void in my psyche that was so emotional. He worked its way into every conversation I was having with people. You know, I was learning everything he was saying, reading the book, watching the podcast, painting of him on my wall.
Will Adolphy:He was my dad. And so if you came and wanted to have a discussion about how he was toxic and how you disagree with what he's saying, oh my God, instantly I felt so threatened. Because it wasn't about even if you had some really good points, I felt like you were threatening this attachment that I had.
Tim Barber:Yeah. I do want to come I mean, there's so much you've said there that we could go after, I want to put a pin in the work you're doing with Schools Next just to paint a picture of, you know, what is going on out there. But before we move on, I do also want to acknowledge something that is clear in the film and in the reports and from your own story is that partly how people get hooked on this is that it works. It serves a purpose, right? Up to a point.
Tim Barber:I mean, you say that you'd built a house without any foundations, right? When it was challenged, it came crumbling down. But like the advice often comes from a good place, you know, like how to get fit. I think everyone would agree it's good to be fit, you know, how to be successful, etcetera, etcetera. And they're up to a point, people like men and boys are getting what they need from it.
Tim Barber:And Richard Reeves, I don't know if you saw, who wrote of Boys and Men, he wrote a substack lately saying actually, you know, men and boys are feeling positive about how things are going. That's sort of separate from like, you know, what they're absorbing. But there is a feeling, I would assume at the start of this journey of positivity of like, finally, some good advice, a welcoming space. And I guess that's the insidiousness of it is that it works up to a point. It makes you feel good up until the point.
Will Adolphy:Yeah, I remember feeling great. Yeah. I mean, and this isn't the online world, the manosphere. I'll keep using that term because I know it's where we currently are using it, but I'm just bringing that awareness that I have to it. But the manosphere, it exacerbates existing or it highlights, amplifies existing cultural ideas around what it means to be a man.
Will Adolphy:Like these ideas predate the manosphere. Obviously, there's other stuff and other language and other things that get added through the online medium, you know, trolling all of these forums and anonymity and the memes. Yeah, that's all there. But the ideas that I ingested around what it means to be a man, how to hold myself, how to move through the world, how to feel better about myself by taking care of my body with fitness and getting big and building a business and running a business and earning money and attracting a fit girlfriend, all of that stuff. I mean, most men will be able to relate to wanting those things.
Will Adolphy:I mean, every time I do a workshop with the boys and I say, these are my three goals in my twenties, get big and ripped, build a business into huge success, get a fit girlfriend. They all go. Some of them might nod. They did all that. Yeah.
Will Adolphy:It's like, yeah, can understand why I've got this because this isn't just about what it means to be a man, but it's our capitalist society. There's something quite capitalistic, if that makes sense about it. And it really does feel like that is going to reap the most immediate reward. You know, so many of us now have kind of lost motivation to go down the traditional economic school route of, you know, getting a job because it just feels like there's no hope with that. But if you build your muscles, maybe build a business, get into some crypto, whatever it might be, and you attract a fit girlfriend, feels like, yeah, immediately I'm going to start feeling something immediately.
Will Adolphy:And it's prescriptive. That's tangible. I know I can go to the gym. I just buy the membership. I do this.
Will Adolphy:I do that. Right? Build a business. I can find a course. Whereas what's the alternative?
Will Adolphy:The alternative is a lot less clearer. The alternative at the moment, from what I can see in conversations with boys, is meditate and then maybe see a therapist.
Tim Barber:Yeah. Yeah.
Will Adolphy:It's like, you don't know what the pathway is to emotional maturity because it's harder to sell. Emotional maturity is harder to sell because in the short term, it sucks. You're feeling feelings. You're facing yourself. You're putting down your phone.
Will Adolphy:You're getting outside. You're opening up to someone, taking a risk. You're getting hurt in the process. It's messy and it's not as tangible and prescriptive. Obviously, this is at the heart of my work, which is how can I sell, let's call it emotional maturity, promote it in a way that is understandable so it motivates boys and men to go down that path?
Will Adolphy:Because the truth is the benefits, oh my God, man. I cannot describe to you the benefit of feeling emotionally stable. Like I used to have panic attacks every day. I used to wake up in the morning and feel like, oh, another day. Am I gonna have a panic attack?
Will Adolphy:How am I gonna get through this? I haven't felt that way in five years, six years now. You know, I cannot describe to you how grateful I am for that. The capacity to feel joy has come back. You know, these are all just a couple of things.
Will Adolphy:And, you know, having friendships that I feel are genuinely close again. You know, we spoke about only feeling that closeness when we're like six years old. I've felt that closeness with my friends in small pockets and to be surrounded by friends like that is insane. My dad, my dad, the relationship I have with him now is I cannot describe to you how different it is. I just uploaded a WhatsApp voice note on my Instagram.
Will Adolphy:He sent me this voice note the other day. It was just him checking in. Something like, Hey, Will, it's just dad. And I was like, Okay, here we go. Some sort of logistical thing.
Will Adolphy:Some reason he's calling me. And he didn't come. He just goes, Just checking in. And yeah, that's it really. Just wanted to hear how you are.
Will Adolphy:All right. Love you. Bye. And I was like, you know, and I just continually am amazed by how things are changing between me and him and how we are more connected. And it's learning that language of connection.
Will Adolphy:And it starts with connecting with the self. But it's just, yeah, it's a fucking tragedy. I really feel like it's a fucking tragedy that so many of us, we learn to cut ourselves off from all these other aspects of who we are. We Yeah. Never explore.
Will Adolphy:We never go through that process when you're a kid where you should be exploring, trying out Dungeons and Dragons, wearing pink leggings and having a dance. These are just ways that I've explored. Recent, friend, one of my best friends, he bought me a dress for my thirtieth. He bought me a dress from Zara. And I mean, look, rationally, I'm saying I want to explore.
Will Adolphy:I want to explore. I do want to explore. I've still got such a big block in exploring myself. I'm doing this more and more, but this was one of those moments he goes, come on. You know, he was trying to challenge me to explore, right?
Will Adolphy:Step outside the man box. And I just was like, really? We want to put on these dresses? And he went, yeah, yeah, gone. And I was like, all right, I'll do it for one song.
Will Adolphy:Okay? Yeah. So I put on the dress and I'm telling this story to my dad. My dad's just like looking like he's got, you know, covered in bird shit or something. He's like, why?
Will Adolphy:Why are you doing this? My dad's in his sixties. But it was amazing. We're having this chat and I'm telling him, I'm like, dad, for me, was just about challenging that internal barrier that I think cuts me off from just fucking expressing myself and having a laugh. We're on this rock hurtling through the cosmos here for a finite period of time, why don't I just wear a dress and just have a laugh?
Will Adolphy:So I did it for more than one song. It was a few songs and it felt great for a few moments and then I felt awkward and I was like, right, but that's enough for today. I took it off and I still got that dress and who knows, it might come out again at one point. But that's just an example of me of asking myself, God, how much else am I cutting myself off from exploring and expressing and ultimately feeling alive, bringing in that aliveness. Because I've relied so long, Tim, I've relied so long on having a woman being in a romantic relationship to provide me with all the aliveness of a lifetime, to provide me with that life force of like, yes, I can't wait.
Will Adolphy:And don't get me wrong, that is an intricate part of being alive, I feel, you know, love and being in a romantic relationship, but it can't be the only thing I'm relying on. That's what I realize now. Because just never can provide me with the aliveness I'm talking about. Yeah.
Tim Barber:Yeah, no, that's I mean, look, that's beautiful, man. And yeah, even the karaoke in the dress is one I wish I was there for. But you're right.
Will Adolphy:Well, maybe one day, bud.
Tim Barber:Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's probably a good segue into sort of how you're spending your time now then, right, given the tragedy of connecting that you've outlined. We've mentioned empath a few times in the conversation. What are you doing now? How are you spending your time?
Tim Barber:And what are you seeing as you go out and challenge some of these narratives that we've discussed?
Will Adolphy:Well, I'm going to be really honest. I feel cool to kind of just mean, yeah, usually when I do these interviews, I kind of give the kind of professional will version. Right? And I don't know why, but the vibe that we've got going on here, I'm just going to be honest. I'm going to tell you a bit about that, but also just where I'm at, like spiritually, emotionally, while I'm working on what's coming up for me, because I think it's all a part of it, you know?
Will Adolphy:So within my work, I am running Empath and we're starting to get more and more work in schools delivering workshops, talks, staff CPD on understanding the manosphere, approaching conversations with boys, workshops on empathy, masculinity, mental health, and we're just constantly evolving these. I'm getting more and more facilitators. So if you are interested in this line of work, do reach out to me. That goes to you. That goes to anyone.
Will Adolphy:Yeah. Great. So that's more and more works coming in there. And then I'm also writing a book. I'm in the process of writing a book on the masculinity crisis, how to understand the manosphere, what is going on, and approach conversations with boys and men.
Will Adolphy:I'm also interweaving my own story of being online, of going into schools, and I'm interweaving it with lots of professional and expert advice and stories. Yeah, so that's a big project I've got going on at the moment. And then, of course, I'm a psychotherapist as well, right? So I work with men and women, and and that is my bread and butter. So that's kind of me in a nutshell professionally.
Will Adolphy:And my goal, I guess, wrap that up, my my intention there is to quite simply offer people a roadmap to emotional maturity if I had to condense it. And I've also got an Instagram account now, and I'm just putting bits and bobs out there like that and just continue to share what has brought me to where I am now. But where am I? Am I happy? Okay.
Will Adolphy:Because, all right, Will, you've gone on about emotional maturity and you're presenting it as if you're this emotionally mature person. Yeah. And the truth is, obviously, I'm 31 years old. I'm young. I'm still very much going through this initiation, you could call it, into emotional maturity.
Will Adolphy:And there are parts of me that feel really at peace with me, that feel proud of me, that feel at ease. And there are some parts of me that are holding pain, lots of pain still. And particularly when it comes to being in a romantic relationship, and I'm finally in a position now where I'm ready to face that. And I'm talking primarily about anxious attachment, and I've got a lot of that within my system. A lot of just yeah.
Will Adolphy:A lot of loneliness, a lot of grief. There's a boy in me that's just fucking hell, man. He's been needing a lot of love. A lot of love. And as people know, you know, when we go dating, it can open all of that up.
Will Adolphy:It really can. And I've never really felt able to work through that and take responsibility for it myself. I've always unconsciously kind of given that responsibility to the person that I might be engaged with romantically to kind of soothe that boy. For the first time now, with all the tools that I have, the awareness, the support I've got, and just my capacity to in source, to offer myself compassion from the adult part of me in that moment where I am freaking out, has been incredibly valuable and challenging. And so that is something within my life now that I really would like.
Will Adolphy:You mentioned that you've got two children and that fills me with just real warmth and also sadness and longing because I'm like, that's the next step for me, building a home with someone where I can build a family. And yeah, my goal is to be a good dad. That really is something that I think trumps everything. I just heard Scottie Scheffler, number one golfer in the world, say this in a press conference a day or two ago, just I'd rather be a good dad than a good golfer. And that made me cry.
Will Adolphy:It really did bring tears to my eyes because I've always seen myself as a dad, and that is something that I long for. So that just gives you an insight into, yes, I'm stable. There's so many wonderful things going on in my life with my friends, my family, my work, and I'm deeply unhappy in certain ways as well. I say deeply unhappy just because that longing is deep, that longing for community, for intimate community to feel a part of something. I've moved to St.
Will Adolphy:Leonard's by the sea, a small town, and I'm building that community here, slowly but surely. I'm building it, and at the same time, I'm building it whilst still longing for something else. Maybe that longing won't ever go away. Maybe I'll have a family, I'll have some kids, maybe you can actually feed back to me on this if you have anything to feed back. Because the grass is always greener on the other side, possibly.
Will Adolphy:Yeah. But I also do still want that stuff. And so that's what I'm sitting with at the moment.
Tim Barber:Well, I mean, you've role modeled some amazing self awareness and vulnerability in sharing that, and thank you for doing it. I just offer back to you that given everything you've gone through and the work you've done, you're building the house on solid foundations this time, right? And to hark back to the phrase you used before in the film. And wherever that gets you, you should take pride and comfort in that. Because there are many men, trust me, that I've worked with in my coaching or I know from this work, who maybe they have the kids, maybe they have the community, but that house is on shaky foundations.
Tim Barber:Part of all of this is that sometimes that house just about stays up for a really long time, and sometimes it comes crumbling down, we can never know, right? We can only do what we can to what we're building for ourselves.
Will Adolphy:Yeah, Yeah. I'm grateful. I'm definitely grateful to feel that more stability. And some days, you know, some days it definitely doesn't feel stable. The truth is, while I'm going through those kind of unstable moments, there is this undercurrent of just trust that it will pass.
Will Adolphy:And I never used to have that, you know, trauma. One of the things it does is it kind of warps our sense of time. And when we're submerged in, you know, a past wound, it can really reduce our capacity to see that this is just a moment. This is a moment in time. It will be over.
Will Adolphy:It feels like it's gonna go on forever. And I just have so much empathy now. That's what I will finish by saying is just that I really do feel like whatever has happened to me, however I've got to this point, I was someone that really didn't have empathy for or didn't have the capacity to be empathetic towards the struggles of other people when I thought the struggles of men and boys just really wasn't being acknowledged or seen. Whereas now it is very different. And on that aspect, I just have so much empathy for everyone, honestly, for everyone involved.
Will Adolphy:I can look at women and girls and go, oh my goodness. If I have a daughter, man, I can understand why people would be scared. I get it. I get why parents are scared. I work with so many parents, and I really do understand that.
Will Adolphy:I can have so much empathy for how much we need to support boys and girls and and also any other kind of gender, sexuality, the more I've become friends with people that have these different perspectives. I'm friends with someone who's trans, non binary. I've also got a friend that's gay, a couple of friends that are gay, got really close to them. And that's been so interesting kind of exposing myself to different experiences because it makes it more real. And when something's real, when someone's there telling you what it's like to be them, you can't not have empathy for them.
Will Adolphy:But it happened because I knew I wasn't going to be judged in this environment. That kind of space that we connect with people is so important. Then vice versa, that empathy is, of course, there for boys and men. I know exactly what it feels like to to have that resentment towards the world and to feel disconnected. Yeah.
Will Adolphy:And parents and staff, we are all in this together. We really are. And it can feel like we're not. It can feel like we're up against it. It can feel all these things.
Will Adolphy:But I am very hopeful. Maybe I'm a romantic optimist. Call me that if you like. But I do see that it is possible in those moments where I go into a school and a boy comes up to me after a talk and he looks around really sheepishly. I can tell him just being there is him stepping out of his comfort zone.
Will Adolphy:Yeah. And then he might come over to me and he'll look down on the ground and he'll say something like, thank you. And I'm like, wow. Yeah. I can really feel that thank you.
Will Adolphy:And then they might say something like, you know, when you were talking about going to the gym to build self worth? Yeah. I'm doing that right now. How do I build self worth? And it's just like, you know, I feel so moved by that.
Will Adolphy:I'm a sensitive guy. I'm so moved by it. And I can tell something real has happened, you know? And and I saw her say to the boy, you are building self worth right now by sharing this with me because you're opening up and you're showing yourself that you're worth caring for by getting that out there. And in this particular occasion, the boy just had a real smile on his face with shook hands and it just felt like something real had happened.
Will Adolphy:And when I see that fairly regularly, regularly enough for me to continue doing the work. Yeah. Because it, you know, you need to know that you're heading in that direction. It just brings me with so much hope. This is possible.
Will Adolphy:We are talking about it and let's continue the conversation.
Tim Barber:Amazing. Well, look, I will call you a romantic optimist and I do that in the most positive way because I think we need all voices in this and we need optimistic voices just as much as we need others. So yeah, as a parent of a boy and a girl and as someone trying to contribute too, I just want to thank you for, you know, channeling your experience into something positive to impact others, and yeah, for doing the work that you're doing, and of course, for coming on the podcast today and being as vulnerable as you have. Is is there anything that you'd wanna draw anyone's attention to in terms of your work or how to connect if they've enjoyed the conversation we've had?
Will Adolphy:Thank you, Tim. Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate this. You can go to my website, www.willadolfi,ad0lphy,.com. There, you might wanna watch the documentary I did that you referred to or that thing.
Will Adolphy:Might be in the show notes or Yeah. It'll be in the
Tim Barber:show notes. Yeah.
Will Adolphy:Great. You can also just check out my my writing. I have a Substack. It's on my website. I've got a book coming out and an Instagram psychwill.
Will Adolphy:Yeah, reach out. Anyone if you want to connect. I'm always open to hearing your perspective.
Tim Barber:Yeah. Good stuff. All right. Well, I'll put all of that in the show notes. And, once again, well, thanks for everything you've shared today, the work that you're doing and yeah, keep up the good fight,
Will Adolphy:Thanks, dude. See you later.
Tim Barber:Alright. Bye. Bye. So there you go. What an amazing conversation with Will.
Tim Barber:He was such a good sport in sharing so much of his own story. I think, as you rightly said, too often we can make this feel academic with research about boys feeling this or young men finding that. And when you actually hear that story brought to life, you see how easily it can happen and how far down a negative path it can take people. I'm super happy that he's chosen to spend his time doing the work he's doing. And everything that we mentioned will be in the show notes if you want to get involved in the work that he's doing with Empath as well.
Tim Barber:So as always, if something in that episode resonated with you, please do like, subscribe and share it with someone else who might need to hear it. That's how this movement will grow man by man, story by story. As always, work hard, be kind and I will catch you on the next one.