Men Beyond Utility with Dr. John Delony

Good Inside with Dr. Becky

Dr. Becky

Kids & Family, Parenting, Education, Relationships, Society & Culture, Self-improvement

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Good Inside, Dr. Becky talks with bestselling author and mental health expert Dr. John Delony about the utility trap — the pressure many men feel to always be useful, fix problems, and provide solutions, often at the expense of emotional connection. John shares his own experiences as a dad learning to step out of “fix-it mode” and into emotional presence, vulnerability, and attunement. If you’ve ever felt stuck in the role of provider or problem-solver, or you’re parenting with someone who is, this conversation is a powerful invitation to redefine what it really means to show up.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So I'm on my book tour and this dad comes up to me after and he said, I just have to share the
0:06.6	story. He was, you were kind of like in my head this morning that tell me more. He goes,
0:11.3	it was this morning. I was trying to get my son out the door to school and he was being difficult,
0:16.3	right? He was delaying, wouldn't get his shoes on. And he's like, I really could see the way my dad
0:24.0	would have responded to me. I don't know if for sure it's a memory, but I could have guessed.
0:29.5	What's wrong with you? You're going to make me late to work. Let's go. A lot of yelling.
0:33.7	I would have felt scared. He's like, instead, I heard something you shared, you know, a few times that you could do.
0:41.4	And I heard myself then say this to my son that what I ended up saying was, you know,
0:47.4	when I was young, I also used to have some warnings when I didn't want to go to school.
0:52.9	And he's like, that's all I said. And I didn't expect it
0:56.5	to be magical in the moment, even though I kind of knew it would feel good just to relate to him
1:01.1	instead of yell at him. And he's like, and it turned out, he then just wanted to hear about when I
1:06.1	was four and five and how I didn't like to go to school as he happily put on his shoes and got into the car
1:12.3	and we finally got to school on time. And there was just so much in this in terms of what fatherhood
1:18.8	looks like, yelling, punishing, frustration, connection, presence, storytelling. And as I knew you're coming in today, I just, I, storytelling.
1:30.1	And as I knew you're coming in today,
1:35.2	I just, I couldn't help but think that I wanted your kind of perspective on how you think about fatherhood, your journey, what your dad was like,
1:40.8	just all of it in terms of that kind of arc.
1:54.6	Yeah. dad was like just all of it in terms of that kind of arc. I mean, I was raised. My dad was a homicide detective and a SWAT hostage negotiator in Houston, in Texas, right? So all of the Texas tropes
2:04.8	were there, right? And he was raised by a World War II vet who was raised by a man whose dad
2:13.6	died when he was 10. So like now that I'm older, I can look back and say, I'm doing
2:20.3	things very, very different and I can look back with compassion and say, oh, this is a guy
	...

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