In part two of What Good Men Want, Iyanla and Coach Ken extend the conversation around masculinity, male needs, and male perspectives in relationships. Iyanla asks Coach Ken how women can spot when they have a good man, how to make men feel safe, and what are the reasonable and unreasonable expectations both partners should have when they are in a committed relationship.
Coach Ken also unpacks his vast knowledge of the nature and reasoning behind cheating and answers the question, is cheating ever justified?
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I am Yamla, your host for this journey. I was a hopeless loveaholic but just could not get my love to work. Then, after a series of heartbreaks and deep heartache, I finally got clear about what love is and what it is not. I want to share some of what I've learned about lover holism. Welcome to the R Spot, a production of shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the R Spot. I am Yamla, your facilitator, your guide, your coach, your partner on this journey to making relationships better. If you were with us last week, you know that myself and my guest coach Ken Canyon were talking about what a good man wants and we got some good, good, good insight. I got so much to ask him today. I'm not gonna review it, go back and listen to last weeks because we're gonna pick up from right there. What is it that a good man wants? And I've got some questions for you. Coach Ken. Thank you for being here with us today, and thank you for your relationship academy and the Kenyon methodology and all of the things that you're using to make relationships better. I want to start here today, and why are relationships so damn hard?
So I have a quote that I say, relationships wouldn't be so hard if we didn't expect them to be so easy. I want to ask you a question. You've been trained to do what you do and you're master at it. When people have a job, they get trained, they get coached on how to do their job right. But why is it that relationships are the only think that we get no training, we'll get no coaching, we'll get nothing, no mentoring or anything. But we just expect it to work because we feel a certain way now. And nobody could come to the our spot and do what you do because they've been trained, they've been mentor they could not do that unless But why is that relationships are the only thing Because we feel good, because we feel like I'm in love, because we feel a certain affinity for the person, it will just work.
But I've never had the tools.
I believe relationships of classrooms. And you don't go into a classroom to learn what you know. You go in the classroom to master what you don't know. So many of us don't even know ourselves, and we go into the relationship to learn more about ourselves. We don't know what love is. We go into a relationship to really learn about love. We don't know how to really accept nonjudgmental, positive, unconditional regard, because our parenting is conditional, our education is conditional, our pure relationships are conditional. So we don't know how to really engage in non judgmental positive regard. And the relationship is a classroom that we go together, and we think that it's got to feel good all the time, it's going to be fun all the time, and it's not at all. And so I think women, because we talked last week about women being done, I think women are tired or just done with carrying the emotional weight of a relationship. So how does a good man prepare himself? How does he get ready to really really carry some of that emotional weight.
But first, let me go back to help the women understand why men have the deficit. So nothing happens in a vacuum because some of the very women who are dealing with the deficit have perpetuated the deficit.
And I'm gonna tell you how. So I go show you.
So when a child a male child, especially a man of color, when he's six seven years old, between seven zero and seven, that's when his subconscious mind is being formed.
So when the.
First thing, he gets hurt outside and what do they say, shut us, suck it up, suck it up, don't cry down.
I'm just just saying that, suck it. And so the.
Boy registers that if I show my emotions, even women say it, if I show my emotions, then it's a sign of weakness.
It's not a good thing.
And so that little boy grows up never being taught how to be emotionally intelligent.
And he's twenty something years old, thirty something years old, and he's still.
Not He still has this condition that if I show my emotions it's weakness. Then he becomes thirty and forty and get in a relationship and he doesn't know how.
Nobody has ever told him, ever, ever taught him. So let's start there.
Just understand that a lot of us men, I was one of them, weren't taught that.
So now that can change, all right.
But the second thing is this is is you're right.
That's the one conditioning.
The second conditioning is this, and this is the part I tell you when you ask a little boy how many girlfriends.
You got at six or seven, and he be like, I got me too. Yeah, man, you the man, well.
His subconscious mind says, wait a minute, to have more girlfriends, to have more women, that is a good thing, all right, And so.
Now he grows up condition.
Now some women might say, oh, that's bullshit because of that, But I'm just talking about why do you think therapists go back to your childhood? Are yelling you done went back to Well, tell me about your childhood. Let's talk about that. Well, because you know that that conditioning of the subconscious mind, it's big. That's our proved computer program. Now that being said, the most important thing that a woman can do with a man who is even in condition trauma.
All of us have, god some trauma toxicity.
All of that is, we've got a get across that this man has to say. You know what, I acknowledge. I am conscious that I need help. I am conscious that I am not only conscious that I need help.
I do remember the willingness I talked about last week.
I am willing to change to get the help to understand who I am so I can become better and with a woman the way she talks to a man.
Because I've remember that.
We go back to what we talked about last week, her communicating that I think you need to be better. I think this will help you be better in our communication. And so starting from that point of view, because if you tell somebody you know your ass don't talk, you know you'll never communicate.
You know, I don't know what to say. I'm tired of it. You know what that does? You know, I'm telling it you.
Whenever somebody feels attacked, what do they do is attack back?
Two points you made here. They asked a little boy, how many girlfriends you got? Too good for you? Is it true that a good man can be in love with more than one woman at the same time.
I'm gonna kick it to you. Real. A man.
Can love two women, but he cannot love them the same. Now, listen to what I'm about the same. He will always love one more than the other, and he will be in love. I was one more than that. He cannot lead will. I found this out years ago, years ago, when I was in college. My ex roommate we'd be still friends today because I had a girl back home. I went to school to HBCU, and I met a girl up at the HBCU, and I was like, oh God. And I felt a sense of obligation from a girl at home because she had been with me, we had been to dinner.
I asked him this question. I asked him this question, can you love two women?
And he answered the question that way that I just answered, well, I didn't believe him. At the time, I didn't believe it. So I started doing my own research. I started, you know, as a coach in writing all these books. And what I realized is I realized this when it comes to emotional connection, When it comes to emotional connection, the way the brain works and all of that.
I want to get too deep into all of that, but I.
Realized something that yes, he can have an affinity for two women, but he will never love them the same that there is one woman that is going to get his heart, that is going to have a deeper connection.
That's just it.
And some people try to Some people say, well, I love both of them, now you Even on the show that I'm on, one dude said I want both of um. No, I said, you desire both of them, but you don't love both of them. Say he was like, yeah, you're right, I love this one more, but I still want the other one too because the other one provides a need for me. So that's where we go with that. In your that the reason why they want two or three is because each one of them provides the need that I perceived need that I have in my life, and I weigh that need.
Isn't it his responsibility to get his needs met. Let me give you a straight up example. I work with a couple and he there was a section you will need that he had and she was not willing to fulfill. She said, I ain't doing that. You know. They we worked through it. We were and she understood why he tried to coerce her, cajole her everything, and she said, I can't do it, and if it's going to cost us our marriage is just going to cost us our marriage, I don't want to do it. I ain't doing it. They were a really good couple. I don't know where this need came from. I don't know if he ate something or whatever. He just had, so, you know, they went on about their business about maybe a year and a half. Two years later, she called me and she was in this total breakdown because she discovered that he was cheating. He was cheating, and when she confronted him, he told her, yeah, because you just refused to do this and I needed it and I wanted it, and she's willing to do it and you're not. Well. She was devastated. She was devastated, and it was perplexing for me at first, you know. And I eventually told her, you're gonna have to make a choice. Either you're gonna have to be okay with the fact that he has this need that you're not willing to meet and she meets it, or if you don't want to be in a relationship with a man who has another woman, you're going to have to sacrifice the relationship. There's no other choice. Stay here and be. He's not going to stop that because she's fulfilling the need for him, and I believe that was his responsibility to get that need filled. Either lay it down or get it filled. And he was like, I don't know why, I just want it. It makes me feel good and bood about.
So I heard it the Yalla Vinzentne say something one time about someone I can't be with, someone who can't love me the way I need to be loved, and she said, if the person cannot love me the way that I need to be loved, I cannot be in this relationship. So the dilemma is you want the relationship, You're weighing the relationship versus this need. That So when it gets to the point where you have to weigh the relationship whether I'm willing to give up this for this need, then you're already at a point where if you're weighing those two things, then that need must be powerful.
Okay, now here's what I say.
I say, Look, if that need is your deal breaker, is something that you have to have, then have it. Then you got to do it. You must do it. But you must but you are You're responsible for fulfilling that need. But you're also responsible for telling the other person that I have to fulfill that need. See where he wasn't wrong in his need, that's his need. Here's where he went wrong. Way went wrong is he never said I have to have this need. I have to communicate this in a way.
He did say that. He said, I'm going to work with myself, but this is something I want.
That's what I mean in communication. That's what I was talking about. I'm sorry. I was talking about the need. I'm talking about communicating about the outside relationship. He should have communicated and said, if I cannot have this, then I've got to find a way to get it, or this can't happen this way.
He's got to communicate that.
That's way he went wrong, not because the need, but because he didn't He wasn't honest enough to tell her because he you know why, because then he didn't have to make a choice about the relationship with the need.
He didn't have to make a choice.
Really, it was really sad, but the lessons were more powerful for her to take a firm stand in her no. And in the end he was like, he said, I don't know what that was. I don't know why I was willing to leave my baby for that. He's I just don't even know. But when he got over there with the thing that was fulfilling the need and he saw what it was, he didn't want it. But anyway, let me ask you this question. In that situation, it came up too as a good man, can you have an expectation of a woman of your partner that you don't hold yourself to.
People do it all the time. Is it right to do no? People hold himself a good man? Yeah, he would do that too. I say, good man, do that, and I've coached good man who did that. And then I would say, wait a minute, hold up, now, let me get this straight. And when I say that, they look at me like I said, so, let me get this straight. You want her to do blank, but you are unwilling to do blank. Now I want you and I and I just sit back and get quiet, and you know what happens. I said, now, I want you to explain to me how that's equitable. And they can't, and LI said, I just want it. I said, well, that's the same thing. If she wants something, but she's willing she she wants to hold you to a higher standard, and she's willing to hold herself to that is not right. You can't hold her to a higher standard than you're willing to hold yourself too. It's kind of like, I'll give you a prime example. I have certain quirks about when I travel. Right, So when I travel, I don't like to come home and the house is a spotless I just got this quirk. It's like a thing with chaos. I just don't like it. So here's what it is. So when my wife travels, I make sure when she come home the house is spotless.
What am I doing?
I'm simply I'm not gonna hold myself. I'm not gonna hold her to a higher standard that I hold myself. And so now in our marriage, when I go travel, when I come home, I don't care what's going on the house, just just because that is something that I said. I want to show you this is what I want, but I gotta be willing to do it too.
We'll talk about that right after this break. Welcome back to the R Spot. Let's get back to the conversation. We are talking about what a good man wants. My guest has been with me two weeks, many hours, Coach Ken Canyon what you spoke about last week, that he's willing to do it first, he's willing to demonstrate how to do what it is that he wants. I want to I want to ask this question. Then I'm gonna my theory to you. One of the theories. And my assistant Zakiah wrote a book called What's Real, What's Not? In some place in Between, and in that book she says that, uh, a man wants to give you his heart, but he has to know he's safe to do so. I mean I believe that too. How does a woman make a good man feel safe? What? What?
What?
What is a man's concept of safety?
Okay, well I'm glad you asked that question. All right, So the first thing for a man to feel safe, I'm gonna start with. But I always say, let's plant the seed of safety. You tell him I want to create a safe environment for you. Notice what I just said. I just planted a see into his subconscious mind. Right, that's the first thing. The second thing is this is then, is that you demonstrate what safety looks like. Communication safety. I'm going to start it first. I want to start there because a lot of people listen for a safe place. Then show me what it looks like. Tell me something because I always tell people if you want to want him to share something with you of importance, and it hard to share something that you feel important that's important.
For you, show him what it looks like. The third way to create a safe place.
Huge never ever ever reaponize is something he tells you. You can if you tell if he tells you something and you bring that shit up at any point to see that's why you did such as such, he will never ever ever tell you anything again. A lot of times when we feel attacked, we just want to hurt the other person who want to hurt it. So what better way to hurt them is to bring up something that you know hurt them.
But the problem.
Is is you create an environment that will make him shut down. He will never trust you as a safe place ever again. And so that's that's how you create a safe place.
I think sometimes we miss cutes because other things aren't there. We're into the transaction. How does a woman know that she has a good man? How does she know that?
So I want to.
Start that conversation by saying this, if you don't know what something looks like, you won't know it when you see it. And so a lot of them may not know that that they have a good man because they've never seen They've only seen dysfunction, they've only seen toxicity, they've only seen an example of what isn't a good man. Okay, So starting from that perspective, here's how you start the process.
Go back to my definition.
I may not know what something looks like, but I know a good man wants to be better. A good man wants to be better than he is now?
Is he ambitious? Does he want to be better? Is he?
And I'm not talking about a person ambitious. I don't necessarily mean a person who wants a new job. He could go back to school. But he wants you, guys, to be better. He wants the relationship to be better. He wants you to be better in communication. He wants to do and so that's where we start, okay, because he has good intentions.
Notice what I said, he has good intentions. He starts there.
The second thing is the way a man does he empower you?
Does he empower you to be better? Does he inspire you to be better? Now?
A lot of women don't like it when a man tells them, Hey, I want you to work out, I want you to be a verger.
I want you to look good.
I want They may they don't like that, they may not like that, but look at it like this.
He wants you.
If a man says I want you to eat better, I want you to be healthy for both of us, well, he's attempting to inspire you.
I'm just using that as.
An example because I hear that a lot of times, and some men may be good men. But I want you to understand something because a man is not your idea. Maybe he was raised a certain way, but he has like you said, and I'm gonna say it here, he's a good man. His core value system, his core value system lines up with.
Yours, especially if he believes in family. He believes.
Let's talk about what values are, because I think women who haven't seen a good man also don't understand a man who has values.
Okay, So one of the ways that I help couples stay together is I identify your core values because a lot of people don't know what their own core values are. So me and my wife came up with ten core values within our relationship. I'm like, and what we did with those ten core values she had hers, I had mine.
And what we did was see which values merged together.
For instance, the core values are things are things that you, at your deepest level, believe in. Like I believe that I should be a good father, I should be a good provider. That's the core value of mine. A core value of mine is in my household. I believe we should budget. We got money because we run our household like a business. I believe that's my core value because years ago I went bankrupt. Okay, A core value I have is I let my wife be who she is. I don't support try to suppress her personality. My wife is a comedian, the travelers all over the country. I let her be who she is, all right, that's her core values. I'm loud, I'm upnox with sometimes, but you know what she tells me when I need to tell that that.
But she'd let me be me.
So the first thing people got to understand is you got to know your own values. If you don't know what you value, what your values are, your core values, the thing at your core, you want the thing that's your core.
Now we might want, you know, I might want a big house.
But at my core, I want a home inside where we laugh. That's my value. A big house is just see that's just the that's just the icing. But I want to home where I come home and I feel safe and we laugh.
A woman knows that she's got a good man if he's got values that matter to him. Now you say ambition, but I say a vision. If he can see where he's going and he's moving in that direction, Because you also get these men and got a lot of potential, which mean he ain't doing nothing.
Now.
I think that she can coax that out of him. I think that she can support him. But definitely you don't want to throw him away. You know, if he can just see hisself doing money he's doing for the next twenty years to get the gold watch and retire so he can come home and watch soap operas. You got to check and see if that really matters to you.
Yeah, correct, Okay, I get it.
I get it because I hear a lot of women say I don't want to build a man, and I don't want to build a man, And I simply say, going back to what you said, when you're in a relationship, it reveals to you many things about you, what you don't know, what you know, what you want, what you don't.
Want, who you are.
And if a man, some men might think he has vision, but he don't know that he don't until he gets in a relationship with you.
I want to speak to that for man, what a good man wants, and we'll talk about that when we come back. Welcome back to the rspot. We cannot leave here today without talking about what you do every week on MTV. Let's talk about Cheatah do good men cheat?
Sure, sure they do.
And the misnomer is is that that good men or good women don't cheat. Good men and good women cheat. Cheat is a byproduct of something else. See there is a byproduct of several things, depending on who it is. But yeah, there are good people who cheat, who make bad decisions to do that then for whatever reason. And I can give you a litany of reasons why men cheat, why women cheat.
I've analyzed it all. I can give you all of the reasons and all of that.
At the end of the day, people make decisions based on needs that they have at any given moment in their life. Okay, some men make a decision because they cheat because they weren't getting in attention any sex at home. Okay, they feel like lack of sex, then I need to meet this need. I'm not getting medic now at home. I make a bad decision and I go cheat with somebody. A woman feels like her guy is not talking to her. He's not, she doesn't have any intimate conversation.
All he want to do is.
John found get off and she's lacking that. So somebody at work wants to talk to her and find out about her day, who she is. She hasn't experienced that. Next thing, you know, she makes a decision. I'm in a relationship, I'm having an affair. So there are a multitude of reasons why people do these things.
But I want you to understand this is that at.
The core, at the core, there is a need or an expectation a person that has that causes them to do something to make that decision.
I get that you have a need. It's your responsibility to have that need met. But what about the breaches and the breakdowns and integrity. Is he still a good man? If he's going to lie and not listen?
But I'm going to say good man, good woman. I just say good man and good woman. Make bad decisions and exhibit bad being here and listen. I'm gonna be honest. Which a cheating is no level. It's good, it's not right, it's not anything. I will never justify it because if things were that bad at home, you should have left, you know, you should have or you should have communicated.
Now you bring.
Up a philosophical question. Really it's really philosophical. If he cheats, is he a good man? If a person so and so, I ask you, Guru, I ask you a question. If a person that has to feed their family, if they steal a loaf of bread out of the store.
And run out of the store, does the end justify the means.
In that case? Absolutely. I was in relationship with a married man. He was a good man. He was a good man, and he had good intention, but he had poor character. I justified my character lapsed because of my own shortcomings. You know, I can't have what I want, so I'm gonna take what's available, you know. I mean, I process this thing for years. Now, eventually he left her, we got married. But what I learned in that situation was two things. Number One, he can't give me more than I'm willing to give myself. If I'm willing to settle for the crumbs of him coming when he's you know, and if I'm willing to allow him to lie to her, to betray her trust, then I better be you know, damn sure that he's going to do the same thing to me, which he did, but he did. And the other so I had to get real clear about I'm not my sister's keeper eye and my sister so he's lying and betraying her. He's gonna lie and betray me. He's you know, breaching, He's in a breach of integrity with her and dishonesty with her and betrayal of trust with her. He's going to do the same thing to me. And was he a good man? Absolutely? Absolutely, a good man with a good heart, really dedicated father to the degree that he could be. With the back and forth and all of the hollering, conflameration, poor, poor, poor character, Okay, poor character.
Is there any ever any justification for cheating?
Well, I wouldn't call it cheating. Is there any justification for cheating? I don't think so? Tell me, because see, I'm a spiritual technician, right.
Somebody asked me that question. That's why I ask you. They ask the coach because what he's telling me, as he said, look, my wife, she hadn't given me sex and six months, And he said, is there any justification for cheating? So that's why I posed a question for you to you? And I told him, I said no, I said, because but you choked. You made a decision. You made a decision.
This thing.
You made a decision too. And I get it. I get it, it's something that you didn't like.
I got it just in.
That selfishness or just in that choice. Your wife hasn't given you sex for six months. This is your wife, and for her to withdraw or withhold from you, there's a problem. There's a situation that could infect the entire relationship. Rather go in the bathroom and meet with Madame Palm and her five daughters and then figure out how you and your wife are going heal whatever's going on. An absolute joy, coach, Can I thank you for just being authentic? Tell tell our Spot family where they can find you. I know you have the academy. Where can they.
Find Yeah, you can find me at coach ken k N C A N I O N dot com, Coach Kim Kenyon dot com.
Coach Kim Kenyon on every.
Social media outlet, follow me on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, all of them same handle, and yeah we are And then you can follow me. Watch our show Tuesday nights on MTV at nine o'clock, carding me at Come Faithful.
Yeah you're gonna see some all kind of stuff.
So one last thing you would like to lead the our Spot family with in terms of what a good man wants.
Here's the thing I want to leave you with. This were every human being is a flawed individual. We come to a perfect we come into an imperfect world, and we're imperfect. And I will say this is that what helps me to be better, live better, do the work I do is to understand that I'm.
That I'm not perfect, but I am doing every day.
I feel like God helps me to perfect me, to be better every single day. And that's all I want to do. I want to be better. And the last thing I want to leave them with this is the one thing I want to leave you with. Perfection is the enemy of progress. Focus on progress, not perfection, because you're gonna never be perfect.
And I say this, you know, I know it's there, but I want to state it so I can be really, really clear. For me, A good man has an honorable, intimate, consistent relationship with the God of his understands the God to whom he is accountable. So that means he's got a scripture. He's got to treat this, he's got a Koran, he's got something that he is going to evaluate the sets and measure his behavior by. Because a man who is not a comptable to somebody is a danger to himself and everybody else. He got to know God. He got to know God, some God, somebody. I don't care if it's a tree or rock in the park, something greater than himself. I want to thank you, Coach Ken for these two episodes. I hope my Our Spot family, I hope you've heard something, gotten something, wrote something down and really take it to heart. You know, I think it's time for us to be kinder, gentler with each other. As Coach Kin said, nobody's perfect, and you do have significance, and you are valuable, and you've got to be willing to do the work we here at the Our Spot. My commitments to us is to give us the tools we need to do the work to build healthier, more peaceful, more loving relationships, first with yourself, with the God of your understanding, and then with other people. That's the vision and that's what we're doing. So I will be back. I'll see you next week. In the meantime, stay in peace and not in pieces.
Bye.
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