I never told anyone about it. I never talked about it. There was no like, here's the hotline to call if you're a man who's been raped.

You know, as a middle school, high school kid, just trying to fit in. No one's ever going to know this about me because they would never be my friend.

Welcome to the Art of Charm. I'm Jordan Harbinger and I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo.

On this episode, we'll be talking with my friend Lewis Hous. He's the author of a new book called The Mask of Masculinity.

These masks are really fascinating. The idea of these masks, these social masks that men wear. I mean, I guess they're not all social, Jason, but these are essentially these false identities.

These personas that we as men and this is specifically geared towards men because Lewis speaks from his personal experience here today.

These are personas that we put on in order to protect ourselves from being vulnerable and open.

And these include things like being stoic, not having emotions, being athletic, distinguishing ourselves on the field or on the court or material wealth, an alpha male mask, an aggressive tough guy mask.

You get the idea. There's a lot of us that make jokes about everything because we're afraid to open up. There's a lot of us that pretend to know everything because God forbid we should not know something that would make us less than.

So we're going to explore these masks here today. We'll also discuss some of the reasons why we wear these masks and we'll explore ways in which we can become more aware of these masks and what we can do about them once we're able to fully spot ourselves hiding behind them in the first place.

And I know Jason, we kind of dove into this one because Lewis and I have been friends for so long. Was this something that was familiar to you or Lewis and I, the only guys that tend to wear masks here?

Oh, no, no, I'm pretty sure for 20 years, I wore the big fat jerk mask. Yeah. To protect myself and my ego to get through the day. Yeah, I think we all wear these masks and I'm waiting for the book about the masks for women here. Cause again, this is geared specifically towards guys, but I think women will find a lot of value in here as well.

Because women see these masks, they just don't necessarily know if it's a mask on the guy in their lives and they probably see these masks cause a lot of problems in their relationships with the men in their lives as well. So men or woman, you will learn a lot about the personas that men wear in order to protect themselves, ourselves here during this episode. And don't forget we have a worksheet for today's show.

And be sure you understand each of these masks here in the takeaways from Lewis House. That link is in the show notes at the art of charm.com slash podcast. All right. Here's Lewis House.

First things first Lewis. Thanks for coming in, man. I appreciate it. It's been a long time. It's been a while, man. I appreciate you and so many people continue to listen to the interview that I did with you a while ago. I don't know if you see the tweets every single week from talking about it. Yeah. I don't know if that's you or you have an automated bot who's responding to all them, but no, it's me.

What that has done has made me really wish I wore a different shirt to your house to record that show. I'm so sick of seeing that red shirt. I'm never going to wear it again.

So funny. Yeah, man. It's always good to connect. You're someone who knows probably more about this topic than anyone that I've, you know, talked to or interviewed with her has a show. So I'm excited to hear your thoughts on everything that we're covering.

The idea of a social mask or any kind of mask that we put on any kind of persona that we employ. It's so not relegated to men only, but as a guy, I can only speak from my own perspective with any sort of authority. Same with you, right?

As far as the listening audience knows neither you or me has ever been a woman, right? And probably won't be any time in the near future.

So the limits of our experience are such that I can look at these masks and then put them through the past is of my own childhood and adulthood for that matter.

It's a little depressing because at first you go, oh, yeah, I wore that mask. Oh, I wore that mask. And then you just go through all of them and you think, who am I?

I'm a douchebag. Yeah. What the hell? I'm a terrible person.

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