# BBP E44 |You're Talking To Men WRONG! | 4 February 2025

If you come and speak to me face to face, that's a very confrontational way to talk to another guy. Women tend to speak face to face, so guys want to be doing something. How you communicate with men, if you're a woman, don't—no, no, I don't say that. Men struggle with communication, so they make jokes rather than facing their feelings. See, that is still a form of communication, it's a communication style. Just because old love over there with blue hair doesn't get it, she thinks it's bullying. If you and I get it, \[ \__ ] her.

What advice are you giving to a woman saying, "I'm trying to talk to my husband, and I'm not getting through, he's a brick wall"? Maybe he's trying to make his life easier at the start off with. Do little, little things like make sure his dinner's ready, clean the kitchen—all the stuff you should do is—no, I'm just kidding. If you want to hear what a man really thinks, try wait 30 seconds. When there's a pause, a woman will just go, "I'm going to jump in here." No, no, no, no, no. Just pump the brakes, let us think.

Welcome to the Better Bloke Podcast, I'm Maddie, I'm Rob, and we're just a pair of average blokes on a mission to try and be a little bit less average. We're going to speak about all things highs and lows of what it feels like to be a bloke, plus speak to some legends along the way about what it takes to be a better bloke. Let's get stuck \[Music].

Welcome back to the Better Bloke Podcast, where today we are going to discuss how to communicate with men both from a man's perspective and for the women. Yeah, not only how to communicate with men but how men like to communicate—or not even how they like to, how they actually do. Because it's not really very logical compared to women. I mean, it's logical to me. Let's talk about it then. All right, where do you want to kick it off? Well, I don't like communicating. I know, yes, so spoken well for a guy that communicates on a podcast every week, but yep. What don't you like about communicating? It depends. I don't like being interrogated, if that makes sense. You don't like talking about your feelings. I think you like communicating. I do like—well, me, I have to communicate every day for my job, so it's one of those things that you have to be used to it or at least like doing it to an extent, which I do. Right, I think the common myth with men, which is kind of a myth and kind of true, is that they don't like talking about their feelings because of the big V word, vulnerability, right? And that is true, men don't overly love talking about all their deepest, darkest feelings and secrets and emotions. Sometimes because they're not overly in touch with them, they're lacking a bit on the emotional intelligence. Or sometimes because they just want to be seen as, you know, a little bit stronger, and opening up that sort of stuff isn't really in line with that. I think you can resonate more with that side of things rather than just not liking to communicate. Yeah, it's definitely not liking to communicate. Like, I do like to communicate, but I don't like talking about feelings.

Right, so looking at that, it's not so much always that men don't like talking about it. It's how they like to communicate with it. So how or where—where is also a big thing too. All those factors kind of play into it. So if you go up to a guy randomly and ask him how he's doing, you're going to get a very top-line answer. You're not going to go into some deep conversation about these things he's struggling with or even things he's happy about, but the more emotional side of it off the top of the line. It's got to be in the right place, the right time, the right tone; he might have to trust you. All these factors play into how you're going to get a man to open up.

It also comes down to that "how you doing?" That's such a throwaway line now. The whole "how you going?" That's pretty much like a hello now for a lot of people. Yeah, I know, I'm bad at it myself. Well, it is more of a greeting because if you responded with the actual answer, the person asking doesn't really want to hear it; they don't care. "No—how you doing?" "Not good, mate, I had a problem with..." "Shut up." "Yeah, I was meaning to say hello, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that's on me." Yeah. But that is also a valuable question. It is! If we look into the whole 'Are you okay?' thing, like, everyone makes a big song and dance about that about one day a year. But it is a valuable question to ask every day of the year. But with the blokes, you need to be in the right place to do it. So let's talk about that.

You also need to, if you're just saying, like, "Are you okay?" it's almost like it's being used just as a throwaway line. It's very much like that "how you doing". That's where I think we need to go further into details like you just said about how to do it, where to do it, when to do it; those are probably the biggest things. If you ask it, you got to be ready for the answer and the flow-on conversation to happen. So especially when you do it with mates. If you can get yourself into a place where maybe you know they need to talk about a few things, and you set it up to ask them properly "Are you okay?" you need to be prepared to think about what they say, let them talk about their things, and then work together on whatever it is they need.

Right, so let's talk about the place, because you brought that up. So something we've been doing a lot with the project is meeting guys where they are. Yes. Right, tell me about that from your perspective. So in their, so to speak, happy place, guys will feel much more receptive to actually having a conversation if they're in their zone that they feel comfortable in. It's like anything: whether you're a guy, whether you're a woman, whether you're a microwave—I don't know what you identify as in 2025, or be it whatever you want—but if you're in your space that you feel comfortable in doing, you're more receptive to actually being able to open up, whereas if you're threatened or intimidated or you're not really comfortable, you're always going to be that little bit hesitant to actually have a conversation that is probably hard to have.

This kind of throws back to having beers at the pub. Yes. Guys used to go down the pub all the time. It's probably less common than it was back in the '80s, '90s, even 2000s, because everyone's so busy, they got all these commitments, and it's seen as like taking a bit of boy time detracts from other things. But going to a pub in that environment, it's about having a beer and communicating, but it gives you the space to be able to talk to other boys. Yeah. Right, and that's similar to what we've seen at, say, Summertnats that we did earlier this year. It's a car event; people are there to watch very loud cars rip tires off. Yep. But when we were there, you know, people see the Better Bloke, the Blokes Advice, and know sort of we're in this space where you can come and talk to us about a few things. And they did because we're in their space, and they felt a little bit more comfortable, but they knew that hey, maybe these guys get this stuff. We had guys coming up to us while there's drifting happening, while there's all sorts of entertainment on, come up to the stall, and literally start talking themselves to the point where they got very emotional.

And to see that happen at that event was kind of mind-boggling for me. It's beautiful. You hate that, don't you? You hate that so much. It's beautiful. That's so gay. No, it's not. It was like it was something special for you! Awesome! You've got such a masculine, testosterone-fueled environment like Summertnats; you've got guys, as soon as they wake up in the morning, they're cracking tins. The burnout starts, guys are hitting skids, right? Like, it literally smells like fuel and alcohol. That's what the event smells like. But then throughout all this chaos and just excitement in the air, there were these little moments where guys would come up to us, and like... there was a few times where guys would just break down. They'll break down with some—we'd go for a walk with them because they just, they felt, they felt safe in that space. Well, it's not really a safe space; there's a lot of moving parts to Summertnats. But I think that speaks volumes to if you put yourselves out there in someone's happy place, so to speak, they're going to open up.

So the takeaway for that, for people trying to have these deeper communications with guys, is to get them into a space where they feel more comfortable. You've done a lot of this over the last eight years with Blokes Advice. What would be your advice to get your mate into that situation? What are you going to do? Well, it depends on what you and your mate share sort of experiences or bonds over. Just say you and I played footy together, and you were having a rough time, but you weren't quite open and just having a conversation. What I would do to you, I would go, "Hey, let's grab the footy, and we'll go down the park and go kick the footy," so at least there's something there that is bringing us two together, and we would literally stand maybe like 10 m away, and we just chip the footy to each other, pass the footy, and we'd have a conversation that way. Because we're doing something then too; it's not like we're just sitting down having that vulnerable chat or that chat where you're like, "Oh \[ \__ ], this is sort of uncomfortable," you're physically doing something that brings us two together.

Already that speaks as something that the men should sort of figured out, and that's men talk shoulder-to-shoulder, not face-to-face. Yeah. Women tend to speak face-to-face, so they go for a coffee, and they sit down, and they look at each other, and they're able to have this conversation back and forth with each other about all manner of things. Guys want to be doing something; they're very thing-orientated. Well, even with that shoulder-to-shoulder, like if you and I are talking like this, our feet are facing separate ways. If you come and speak to me face-to-face, that's a very confrontational way to talk to another guy. Like, it's maybe not intimidating, but when someone speaks to you face-to-face like this, usually they're speaking to you face-to-face for a reason. It's not a good way to approach a guy. I don't know if that's just the way that I think about things, but I think psychologically and socially this has been proven. So if you want to make a guy comfortable, you don't face up and lock that eye contact. It's good for respect and all those sort of things, love all that, but if you want to kind of take the edge off a difficult conversation, like you said, go for a walk, be kicking a footy, be working on a car together, don't even look at each other. You can talk while you're doing that thing. Why? And it's just a break of barriers so you can get into other stuff.

Well, funnily enough, Jess and I spoke about this a little while ago with sort of going through all the old photos of the barbecues that we've had, and we had this talk. She's like, "Oh, you know, how do you talk to guys doing all, like, just asking the questions that, you know, women are watching us communicate with these guys? What are the tricks? What's this, that, there?" I showed her all the photos, not one photo were there guys standing face-to-face, even when they were in a circle; everyone was sort of angled out and around and shoulder-to-shoulder, so to speak. There's probably an actual angle that's best for speaking to men at, but let's not get that scientific right now. We might do some more research on that. This is the thing, right, so she asked you, how do you do it? Yeah. But we don't really think about it. It's almost like a social norm that you figure out over time. Does that make sense? Yeah, it is. It's just something that just, it's—you learn it by doing it. Yeah. We're not intentionally going out there being like, we need to face this angle and we need to do this. And that's the same in the tone of the talk. So I sort of feel like at barbecues you would walk around with an angle finder and just... What's an angle finder? Is that a protractor, or is that a compass? Protractor's for drawing circles. Okay, so the compass must be for the angles. Yeah, but you need a protractor to draw the circle so you can get the thing out to measure the angle.

The thing out to measure the angle. I don't know, maybe we go in first and, like, put a bunch of spray paint on the ground. Yeah, just line mark, line mark a few—hey, mate, come over here, stand here. All right, I'm this way; this is our optimal talking angle. Yeah. And from this, we're going to be able to communi—now guys don't \[ \__ ] do that. We just do it. On the back of that, the way guys talk, especially in Australia, a big thing that we do is banter. Yes, banter. You love a bit of banter. Banter is what makes the world go round in Australia. An interesting definition for it was it's the negative expression of a positive emotion. We had this chat; we've spoken banter many times because much to what people think, we don't just come in here and go, "Hey, let's talk about this." This is conversations that Maddie and I have across weeks and weeks and weeks, and we go, "Oh yeah \[ \__ ], we've had this chat, let's actually talk about it." Explain to me what that is for everyone else listening. They're going to give you the exact same thing that I thought of, "Yeah, what the \[ \__ ] does he mean?"

Banter's an interesting one because the line between banter and bullying isn't that far ap—that's what the definition is for. Stay with me, all right? The line between banter and bullying isn't that far apart, and it comes down to intention and tone. So say a bloke has broken up, had a bad breakup, six months ago, 12 months ago, and now he's found a new girl. He comes to you and says, "I've found this new woman." You don't go, "My friend, I'm so happy that you found someone who sees you and loves you just the way I do; I'm proud of you." No, I'm going to go, "Oh, well it was nice knowing you." No man in the history of mankind has ever said that. The mate's going like, "Ah, another ball and chain, we're never going to hear from you again." But they say all that with a smile on their face. They're not saying it in a mean, sort of degrading way, and saying it with a smile lets the other person know, okay, that's their way of communicating. It's a friendly thing, and that's banter. It comes to intention, right, and that's how guys talk, and that's a negative expression—insult—of a positive sort of emotion.

That could almost be seen as like a coping mechanism as well, though, so to speak. Like the way that we, I guess, throw out banter or shade or chat, whatever you want to call it, over something that maybe we're not really comfortable in. Well, me saying that thing to you about someone who sees you and loves you like I do, that was in quotes on a podcast, and I still felt uncomfortable saying it. Like, when I hear someone say that, like man to man, I'm like, oh—ooh! But like, that's the damn thing, I don't know if that's maybe just like a cultural thing or what. Because I've got no issues in letting one of the boys know that I feel that way. I'm not going to \[ \__ ] do it, but like, I want them to know that I do feel that way. So banter is a breakdown of that because I think you don't always have to be very lovey-dovey with the boys for them to know that. Like, you could be throwing \[ \__ ] all the time, and they know that you got their back no matter what. Yeah. Phone call any time of the night, ride or die, that sort of thing. And I don't think that should be labeled under that tox—toxic masculinity or... bloke—I just hate that term. That's what people will label it as, or "men struggle with communication, so they make jokes rather than facing their feelings," but that... see, that is still a form of communication. It's a communication style. Like if I get it and you get it, there's no problem. Just because old love over there with blue hair doesn't get it, she thinks it's bullying. If you and I get it, \[ \__ ] her.

That is a way that we've seen over years and years: that BAs communicate. Blokes Advice, perfect example. We get, what, 10,000 posts every single year, eight years... let's say there's at least millions of comments? Yeah. Good proportion of that is banter. A great proportion of that is banter, and even in the banter, there's still gems hidden. They're almost like cryptic messages that, unless you're part of that community or that conversation happening, you're not going to fully understand the benefits of what that banter has. So, yeah, is banter for everyone? No, it's not. But the ones that do have banter between the boys, yeah, it's super \[ \__ ] important.

And a final note on banter: like I said, there's a thin line between bullying and banter, so especially for the guys that struggle with social cues a little bit, make sure you know the guy well enough. And don't, I don't know, push it to the point you're just being an \[ \__ ] because it is something you run the risk of doing. Yeah, and you probably get punched in the mouth. Yeah, and maybe you deserve it! Hey, your words, not mine, but definitely.

And while we're on that note of speaking about knowing, you know, your audience and all that sort of thing, we've had someone very special jump on board for Bloke of the Week this week. Do you want to let the audience know who's helping us out with promoting Bloke of the Week? Yeah, sweet. We got our first business supporting the Bloke of the Week giveaway, which is an awesome little segment we do highlighting guys doing good stuff or just overall, I don't know, awesome bloke stuff. And it's Cowboy Grooming Co. Now this is a small company, family-run business, exactly what we like. Aussie-owned, great products from down south, and they do beard oils and soaps and all that sort of stuff. And they've given us a little pack that we're going to add into the merch pack for the guys that win Bloke of the Week for the next couple of weeks. So let's take a little look at this: Looking good and feeling good. It's got "feeling better." It's very on-trend: "feeling better." I wonder— Yeah, "feeling better." It's got four different beard oils in here, yeah. Give that a sniff, mate. Tell me what you reckon. Let's get around it.

Tasty and delicious. Oh! What's that, the Deadwood? It's got some nice, nice earthy undernotes. I'm going to hit a bit in the mo. What are you doing? Is that hot? I mean, it's not my cup of tea for you rubbing your mo like that, but I'm sure it's going to look great. If you want to see Maddie rubbing his mo with beard oil, four different scents. There's a little comb, yeah. I like this. I was looking at this before. So this comb is engraved with "Cowboy Grooming." Very, very nice vanilla honey soap and orange and spice soap. So cheers to Cowboy Grooming Co. We're going to get that out to Bloke of the Week, so we should probably move on to who that legend is. Who is that Bloke of the Week? This week we have the one and only Heath Harris. Heath Harris. So why is Heath Harris our Bloke of the Week now? The BBA project is now a qualified with the PayPal giving fund, which means you're able to sort of do the fundraisers through Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and he did the whole for my birthday this year, I'd love to give support to the Better Bloke project. And he was the first guy to do that, so massive props for that, because what he was able to do is raise a bit of money for us, which helps us roll out some of these projects we're doing—the barbecues, working on stuff like this, the podcast, get us down south, which we're doing real soon, jump online, it's on the events page. So yeah, big props to Heath for that, and not only, he's been a valuable member and communicator within BA for what? The whole time? Yeah, the whole time. Yeah, like I can't even. Does it smell really good? It smells real good, but I forgot to rub it in, so it's dripping down my face. You got to massage it in. Oh, it's nice. It's nice. It's, oh, it's like. It's looking so shiny now and lush. I bet it feels good. We're not kissing. We're not kissing. No, not even for promo. So big shout-outs to Heath. And if you do want to look up Cowboy Grooming Co, look them up on Instagram or it's in the link to this. You can find all their stuff. It's a husband-wife team, so support that small Aussie local business rather than buying your \[ \__ ] from, I know, Myers \[ \__ ] them all, right? Like it's just a, a, a good crew.

Let's crack on with the podcast. All right, so we spoke about how men communicate, let's talk about how you communicate with men, especially if you're a woman. And now some people might think we don't have the qualifications to talk about how women should communicate with men, but surprisingly a lot of our followers are women, and a lot of the people that come up to us at events talking to us about this kind of stuff are women. I mean it's not surprising because this whole episode is about communicating with men, and we've said how \[ \__ ] men are at communicating with their feelings. So it makes a lot of sense for women to actually want to come up to us and say, "How the \[ \__ ] do I communicate with my man?" And what do you tend to tell them, Rob? Don't—no, no. I don't say that, no.

So there's a few different ways that you can communicate with your bloke, or your son, or I don't know, what else have you got? If they're a man, your brother maybe? Just a BL, a BL in your life that you care about, and he's struggling to open up. I get messages in the inbox all the time "I'm worried about my fiancé, I'm worried about my son, I'm worried about this." Women care a lot. They—women care so much, and they're very, very good at actually trying to get to the root causes of what the issue is, but they struggle, they struggle communicating that with us. Well, no, they don't. We struggle to receive their communication. Better way to put it.

So what advice are you giving to a woman saying, "I'm trying to talk to my husband, and I'm not getting through, he's a brick wall." Well, first of all, I want to find out what she's trying to communicate with, so give me an example. She thinks he's overly stressed, he's grinding away at work. Work. He's not talking about it, but she knows he's not happy, maybe she's worried he's depressed and he's bottling it all up. Women love to say guys are bottling it all up, which we probably are. That's what she's worried about, and he just will not open up to her. How's she supposed to get through to him a little bit? Well, is she being direct? To the point? Guys don't like trying to pick up on cues or subtle tips or hints or anything. Yeah, she's saying "What's wrong? Talk to me about it." And he's, he's not having it, he doesn't want it.

He's saying he's fine. Yeah, okay. That's the common response that every bloke is going to give. "I'm fine, I don't want to talk about it, it's all good, nothing to worry about." In reality, there'll be a shitload to worry about. There could be. So you just want to pick up on little things like maybe just trying to make his life easier at the start off with. You can't go straight in and try and communicate off the rip. Do little, little things like maybe just make sure his dinner's ready, clean the kitchen—all the stuff you should do is—no, I'm just kidding.

No, if you're trying to communicate with your man, and he's shutting down, shutting off, all that sort of thing, there's a good chance that maybe he's not ready to communicate, and that's completely fine. Like, you don't need to communicate every single time as soon as something goes wrong. Maybe try and set up, I don't know, some time with his mates, or sometimes a woman isn't—what a woman's communicating with the man isn't what he needs at that point in time. So, I know women want to help, and they want to try and fix things. As much as everyone says that's a very masculine thing to do, sometimes guys just need guy time, or in their environment, like we just said.

Yeah, to expand on that, I think a wife or a fiancé, the man will often see you as, you know, his girl, his queen, his life, and his role as a man is to be—not burden you with \[ \__ ], burden you with \[ \__ ], but also be a strong rock and a supporter. And showing you that vulnerability is going to deter from that. So in that sense, maybe he does need to talk about it, but maybe talking to you isn't 100% the right thing for him right now. I think a lot of guys are coming around to speaking with their misses more. Yeah.

But it's just those little social cues that women go about it very, very differently to how men do it. That's the biggest thing. I think what's powerful and important for women is to establish that it's a bit of a safe space for men. And saying "this is a safe space" is not necessarily doing that. No. If someone says, "This is a safe space," to me, I'm automatically going, "This isn't a \[ \__ ] safe space." Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm about to get grilled. I know. It's a lead-up of actions and you—like, you know, if you say to a guy, you know, we can talk about something, and he tells you something, and then you react poorly and it's damaging to him, he's not going to tell you \[ \__ ] again. No. Ever. Ever. You've broken that.

Um, so to be able to build slowly to have that trust and communication in a relationship is the end goal. But don't expect it's as simple as saying, "It's a safe space, let's talk about our feelings." It's building that up over time so he can actually trust you in that space, that he can tell you something that's a bit deeper and makes him look weaker in the moment, and you not see him as weakened. He's still your king, he's still everything. So I think making a guy feel that way is important for him to have that trust with you.

I think one of the biggest things, as well, that we've actually had a few chats with the women at these events that we've gone to is telling them to pause. Good pause. See, there you go, like, see, there you go, like. Pause. Guys will just want to not talk for a little while, they want to gather their thoughts, they want to hear about what it is they're talking about, where when there's a pause, a woman will just go, "I'm going to jump in here." No, no, no, no, no. Just pump the brakes, let us think, let us think, we need to get our \[ \__ ] together and go, okay, what am I actually trying to think about right now? That's a big tip for the women out there—if you want to hear what a man really thinks, try wait 30 seconds, 60 seconds, let him process it. Shut the \[ \__ ] up, in a nice way.

Perfect. I can out-pause you, I'm comfortable in silence. This would be a real boring podcast if we do that. It'd be a really, really bad podcast, we've been saying that for so long. That's the same with guys communicating with other guys, like honestly shut the \[ \__ ] up for a moment if you want to find out what the other person is thinking and feeling. Well, we spoke about that with Blair a couple of weeks ago with the way he communicates. He just, he said himself that he got comfortable sitting in that silence, which is—most guys are comfortable doing anything anyway.

But sometimes silence brings out the conversation, and that's what more people need to lean into if they actually do want to have conversations that can help. Be comfortable with that little bit of awkwardness for a few minutes. It's a good place to round out. So like we said at the very start with the question "Are you okay?" If you ask the question "Are you okay?" be prepared to shut the \[ \__ ] up and listen to the answer and let him get it out. And on that note, guys, if you want to find more about what we're doing with the Better Bloke Project, hit that link in the bio, betterblokeproject.org, all the links to our socials are there. You can find out where our events are, all the past podcasts, and you can also donate to us, which helps us keep going with our goal to \[ \__ ] off suicide as a leading cause of death for Aussie blokes. On that note, we'll sign out as we always do: Be better.

Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of Better Bloke. If you got anything out of it, show some love by dropping a 5-star review below. If you want to learn more about everything we're doing, head to the description, hit the links, and follow us on the socials. If you want to learn more about the project, head to betterblokeproject.org.