I Love You So Much
Two Divorced Dads Try to Do Better
PHOTO BY MARTHA HARMS
Remember the days of the cliché male midlife crisis? Affairs with secretaries, hair plugs, impulse buying a red sports car? As we approach Father’s Day and midlife, I am watching my male peers attempt to break through the stereotypes and tune into deeper, more honest conversations about the next chapter in their lives by seeking authentic friendships and embarking on therapeutic practices and genuine expression.
Divine masculinity is not a new concept, but it is making a big ol’ comeback in the world of new age reels and unsolicited advice for those seeking a conscious union or relationship, both with others and definitely with ourselves. The transformation happens within whether we want it to or not. In my experience, one can resist or suppress, or we can meet the transformation head-on with help from alternative or traditional therapies, a spiritual and/or creative practice, and true community.
These days, you can’t swing a pickleball racket without hitting yet another podcast where men rant about politics, share biohacking advice, or criticize feminism for destroying traditional values and the ideal, complacent woman.
But what if two straight, cis men started a podcast that dives into the complexities of masculinity? What if they asked real questions, tried to get vulnerable, admitted what they don’t know, and explored it all with gentleness, humor, and an exciting weekly guest?
Enter I Love You So Much, or ILYSM, a new podcast from Tiny Legends Productions that premiered on June 11. It’s hosted by actor Tyler Labine and writer/entrepreneur Reed Fish, both Ojai residents and two divorced dads trying to do better.
I sat down with them recently to discuss their developing friendship, how the show came to be, and thoughts on how to avoid being a toxic man…
Jessica Pregnolato: How did each of you end up in Ojai?
Tyler Labine: The path to Ojai was a real murky one for me. I was in a marriage that wasn’t working very well, and we decided we would have a third kid, and that would make the marriage better. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t. We came up here to the Ojai Valley Inn, my wife and I, my ex-wife now, and we sort of fell in love again. And then I was going to start shooting a show in New York, and my wife put a bid in on the house up here without telling me.
Reed Fish: Oh, I didn’t know that.
TL: As soon as we decided to move to Ojai, everywhere around me, every sign pointed to Ojai. It just seemed magical. And then we moved up here and loved it, the marriage dissolved, and we both decided to stay. And we have three kids at Oak Grove.
RF: We moved to Ojai about 13 years ago. I had met Chris Bailey and Carolyn Glasoe in New York City when I lived there for a while. They were house swapping from their place in Ojai for a couple of years, and I got to know them, and my ex and I would come up to Ojai at their place on the weekends sometimes. We thought this could be a cool place to live. And we did our time in Los Angeles. Then we sold everything we owned and traveled around the world for a year, and when we got back, we didn’t want to live in LA again. We just made the jump!
It was a tough transition. Ojai can be a tough town if you’re not generationally wealthy, which we’re not. We kind of had to figure it out, and we did. We built our own business doing media and focusing on real estate marketing. It’s been a long road, and not without its challenges. We ended up splitting up after a while. I don’t know if Ojai contributed to that, but maybe it did. It’s not easy. Like Tyler, we’re kind of an island with no family support. So, raising a kid in that environment is challenging, just time-wise and energy-wise. It’s hard to keep an even keel through all of that. But Ojai has been amazing. I love it. I’m here to stay.
Since we’re reporting for the Ojai VORTEX, and Ojai is known as a spiritual mecca, how does that show up for you? I’m assuming you didn’t really come from that.
TL: No. I wasn’t, like, anti-spirituality, but definitely more agnostic. And then we started coming here. It’s pretty easy to fall in love with Ojai…and the way it presented for me was a deep feeling of connection. I’ve been living in California for twenty-seven years. And I’ve always felt transient, but up here, I was like, whoa. This feels like being in my bare feet at my cottage when I was a kid or something. I just felt this real connection to the land here, which I know isn’t ours, so it’s kind of ironic. But I felt a history here that felt very welcoming; it was all this permissive energy. It just felt meant to be. And I’ve never felt that way about anywhere.
RF: Ojai is not as woo-woo as it used to be. I’m not a very woo-woo person. I’m adjacent to a lot of it, and I’m not down on it, but it’s just it’s never really spoken to me.
Do you feel you have a healthy skepticism that you engage in?
RF: Nothing I have is healthy (laughs). Yeah, I absolutely have a very healthy skepticism, but at the same time, I’m not trying to change someone else’s experience of it for themselves. I can just be skeptical about it for myself.
Tell me about how you guys met and how the podcast originated.
RF: We’re dads, and we met at a kid’s birthday party. There were kids bashing each other’s faces in on a trampoline, and we just found ourselves facing each other. I just remember making Tyler laugh.
TL: Which is not easy to do.
RF: My experience with Tyler is he’s actually very forward about friendship. He’s very, like, hey man, you seem cool, I’d like to hang out with you. And he said that to me multiple times, and then we finally did hang out two years later. But in the two years, he was still on [the TV show] New Amsterdam at the time, and he’s here for a few weeks during the summer, and then he’s here over the weekend. It’s not well set up to start a friendship with somebody in a deep way. I know every time I’d see Tyler, he was always, “I want to hang out,” and meant it. I say that a lot of times, and I do kind of mean it, but then I never follow through. So, I really credit Tyler with trying to form that friendship. I think I was, I don’t want to say intimidated because I was just telling Tyler I forget that he’s famous. But he’s successful in this industry that I’ve wanted success in. I wouldn’t feel sheepish about calling him up, but there’s always a little bit of a status thing.
TL: You told me about your movie, I’m Reed Fish, with Jay Baruchel, who’s a Canadian friend of mine. I think that at that stage of my life, the divorce had happened. I was in this place where I was like, I don’t know who I am. I know that I have lost everything in this moment.
And I was just saying to Reed that men, as we get older, I think, are very quick to just kind of give our male friendships up. And I don’t know why. It’s a thing that men do. It actually shortens our lifespan. I thought, ‘I need to learn how to ask guys to be my friends.’ In my forties, it was a weird thing because I felt very alone.
I also was sort of the identified patient in the divorce. The details of our divorce were not things I was very proud of. And so, I just felt like a total outcast here. And Reed just approached me and talked to me and made me laugh. I was like, this is one of those moments where you just say what you’re actually thinking. I’m a sober person too, and I was really practicing just saying, like, hey man, you want to be my friend? Which is so intimidating as a man, you know, which it shouldn’t be. But it is. Making friends before was hard, but with Reed, it was very intentional.
RF: I think it comes from both sides. I think we felt a connection early on. But then, when I think about my friends and my friendships, like, I feel close to Tyler, but he’s not someone I’ve actually spent a lot of time with. And I think so much of our friendship has been, you know, five minutes at school drop-off. And we’ve hung out a handful of times. And now that we’ve been talking about the show, we’ve actually been interacting more. I still feel close to Tyler, and obviously, we’re doing this thing together, and I think we both see this as an opportunity to get to know each other in a deeper, different way and actually spend time together.
TL: I think part of the healing for men is learning how to be friends with other men and being vulnerable, so we’re gonna get to know each other really well.
RF: I think it’s so situational where you can really connect with somebody, but then your kid goes to a different school, and then you never talk to them again. You hang out with your work friends, and so now we’re going to be work friends.
TL: So now we have a permanent record.
RF: Yeah, for better or for worse.
TYLER LAUGHING
Some themes you want to hit upon in the podcast are divine masculinity, divorce, and dad-ism on ILYSM. Am I right to say that about the divine masculine?
TL: Define divine masculine.
RF: That’s a little woo-woo for us, Jessica.
Is that woo-woo? You just summed it up in a sense. Being a man and being vulnerable and opening up and being in touch with your sensitivity, and being open to communication and evolution and therapy…
TL: I think one of the biggest questions we want to talk about on the show is toxic masculinity. We all agree that it makes us feel gross, and when it crops up in a room, you can feel it right away. But my friend Steve (Mallory) asked me, ‘What is the opposite of toxic masculinity?’ and I was like, well… it’s masculine, no, it’s not just masculine…
RF: It’s non-toxic.
It’s divine masculinity.
TL: But to define divine masculinity, that’s the journey. What does that mean?
You both have had your lives sort of fall apart. You’ve both been through divorces, which is like a death. And you’re both fathers, which is massive. So, who or what are your examples of the kind of men you’re trying to be or expand into?
TL: I think the examples of people, of men that I can look up to, all of those that I thought I had, everything that I was shown, what it means to be a man growing up, especially in the 80s, and my own father and everything, now I look at them like, OH MY GOD. It’s these new discoveries and my friend Steve, who I want to have on the show — I just love him. And the way he parents, it’s just so, I guess, ‘divine.” But he’s the one who brings these questions to me often, like, ‘What is the opposite of toxic masculinity?’ He’s a real fluid thinker. I’m just looking for other men, like Reed, who I can meet, who we can just be like, ‘Hey man, do you want to have like a real, no bullshit conversation about what we can do better?’
RF: And reflecting on your question, who are the role models? It’s hard for me to put faith in any kind of public figure because — is it a show? You just don’t know. I think about the men in my life, and I think about my dad. And I think as my dad is getting older, and he’s so good in this way, and I want to model that. But then there are about 374 other things that are just the quirks of my dad or just the quirks of his generation, where I don’t want to do that. I think what I’ve been trying to do is almost just piecemeal from people, and especially with the older generations, even the ones who, ‘Oh, I really respect that guy, and he was such a great dad to my friend,’ and whatever. He was still a baby boomer and maybe held on to some of these other things. ‘You know, maybe he wasn’t a super racist, just a little bit.’ So, you have to do that, and the truth of it is that none of us are perfect. We all have moments in our lives that we regret, or we weren’t at our best, and even the best man has those moments, so we have to be cognizant of that.
But I just try to pull from other dads I see in our community, and I have friends that I think are wonderful, and I try to be like them.
And what does doing the work look like for you? You both mentioned therapy. What kind of practices are you doing?
TL: Yeah, the work for me began with getting sober, honestly. I’m not suggesting that’s what everybody needs to do. That was killing me. And then one of the biggest things is that I joined a men’s-only meditation group for alcoholics, and it was just this eye-opening moment in my life where I was in rooms with dozens of men meditating together and holding each other and talking to each other in ways that I’ve never talked with other men before. We don’t do this. We don’t get to do this, or if you do, it’s uncomfortable for some reason. You’re worried about what other people are going to think, or you have to posture in front of other men. We put on this show all day, every day, and I didn’t even know it.
I think forming friendships and vulnerable communications with men was a huge part of where the work began and continues to be. And then, I went to a therapist twice a week for two years, just like a regular psychologist, and then I went into EMDR with a great doctor here named Gina Minardi, who just quit her practice to write her book.
And then I do NET, which is Neural Energy Transference, and it’s pretty woo-woo, like we sit there, and she resonates with me. It works, you know. It’s moving these things. At the very least, I’m trying. I’m trying something to be better. And it’s not because I just want to be better. I want people around me to feel better. I want my kids to feel better around me.
Reed, what’s your practice?
RF: That’s the great thing. Tyler and I are not exactly the same. He really works at things, and I just kind of surface things. I’m more of the surface guy. I feel like I dipped my toe into the therapy world. I’ve been seeing my therapist for, like, a year now. And I feel like it’s the therapy that’s right for me. I feel like when Tyler talks about his therapy or I have other friends who talk about their experiences…they sound different than mine. But I think mine works for me because I’m not spending a lot of time in the depths, and I don’t want to. And I joke about being ‘surface-y,’ and that is a joke, but at the same time, I’m not sure what to do with those deep wounds or what those deep wounds are.
I think one of the things I’ve been working on is just trying to be better in a day-to-day way. How do I get better at accomplishing tasks that I want to accomplish? How do I show up for friends in a healthy way? I think it’s less about a complete internal transformation than it is just making my life work better. I think what’s going to be interesting about our show is that Tyler really has all that stuff, and I think it’s going to force me to kind of confront that in myself a little bit more, or at least talk about why I don’t want to confront it.
TL: I genuinely feel like I’m just, like, a couple years ahead of Reed. It reminds me of where I was a few years back, like, five years ago. I didn’t want to look in here, you know? Although you don’t feel like a guy who’s afraid to reflect…
RF: No, no, I don’t think my lows were as low as your lows. And so I don’t know that I have, from what I’ve heard from you, the demons that you have. I don’t know that that rears itself for me in the same way. I don’t think it’s necessarily even easier or not as deep or anything; it’s just different.
I want to understand the lessons and gifts and challenges of being a father right now and how that helps you reflect and go into the depths.
RF: I think about how fatherhood changed me. It’s changed my day-to-day life, and of course, it has put someone else as the most important person in my life. And I just remember, you look at your parents and think they know everything, or they’re this way, or they’re that way. And good or bad, you just see them on a pedestal, and you also see the worst qualities about them as well. But I think lately I’ve just been realizing that, oh wait, I’m 51. I’m still feeling this way and doing this thing. And my parents didn’t know what they were doing. Even though I think you can see it from the outside, and I knew that my parents are just people. I think as my daughter’s getting older, it really changes my view on them. Because you realize — I still don’t know what I’m doing at all. I do, I guess, but I think it’s allowing me to give my parents a little more grace about the issues that I have.
TL: Definitely, being a parent helps you look at your own parents in a new light. I’m a lot more forgiving of my dad for some of the things that he said and did. But in regard to the journey of becoming a better person and a less toxic man, being a parent has been really challenging. I think there are a lot of things that we learn from our parents in a generation that felt like, well, that’s what you do when you’re a parent. But it kept me from knowing my parents. It kept me from knowing my dad at all, really. He was just this thing to me. I love you, but I don’t know you.
So, I think transparency has been the biggest sort of...compliment to this portion of my parenting journey. After the divorce, I was like, here’s what I want to show you guys, genuinely, about myself, without exposing them to too much. I don’t want to be bullshit with you. We all celebrated my seventh sobriety birthday last year, and it was the first time I brought them into it. I’ve explained it to them, and then it turned into this great conversation about, like, I’m a resource man; I did all the research for you. If you have a question about a drug or anything, I can tell you. I’ve learned a lot about parenting from my parents, and I’ve learned mostly what I didn’t want to do, but I didn’t know how to do it. I had no idea. Getting sober and going through a divorce was an opportunity to be a real person to my kids and not lie about anything else ever again. So, yeah, that’s what it’s been for me, is not being bullshit with my kids. Even when it’s really hard, and I don’t look as cool to them, or I’m falling apart a little bit. As long as I’m not asking them to emotionally take care of me. I think that’s a fair exchange, you know?
REED, CRYING
How do you like being single dads? Is it easier or more challenging?
TL: Yeah, it is easier. My ex and I went through co-parenting counseling when we got divorced because we both think staying in a marriage for your kids is a terrible idea. But the way you get divorced, you really have to do that for the kids. Figuring out the logistics of the divorce and who stays where and custody...we were like, ‘Oh, shit, we’re in for a journey. Let’s at least get on a team about that.
Once I got out of the marriage and got my own place, learning who I was as a parent on my own...there are days where it’s really overwhelming and totally terrifying, and then other days I get to decide what’s going on here. I get to make some rules. And the relationship with my ex and I got so much better. We are on the same team, and we really support each other, and we help each other. I think every married couple should have a one-week on, one-week off with their kids.
RF: I do think it can be easier when it’s just one parent and where there’s just one voice. Even when you’re on the same page, you still have a different style, or just a way of, you know, you might think an extra snack is fine, and they might not, and vice versa. So I think it can be easier to just be unified, but then there’s the downside, too. You don’t have anyone on them when you’re on to make dinner, while you’re cleaning up, or vice versa. But then you have them to yourself. I think I’ve been able to be more present for my daughter in the week when I’m with her than I ever probably was when we were co-parenting. And then we have a week apart, where I think both the child and the parent can kind of come in fresh after a week.
Is it also about getting more time to yourself, to self-reflect, to take care of yourself, and work with these new tools? Because you both were in long marriages, where you didn’t have that time for yourself.
TL: It’s like getting reacquainted with yourself.
RF: Yeah. And I’m still doing that. I’m sure our exes lost themselves in it, too. There’s just so little time. And you have the financial pressures, and everyone’s working, and kids are just relentless. And so you do lose yourself. I realized that over the last four years, I’ve watched, like, six movies. It’s been great since we’re doing the podcast, and we’re having the guests that we’re gonna have on, and I’ve gotten to research and watch things. I love watching this stuff, and that’s really been great to rediscover that I actually like consuming art.
Many of us are fighting patriarchy and fascism right now. Some men want to do better and want to expand. What could be helpful for men in this current state and time, where we can build more empathy and normalize sensitivity and vulnerability?
RF: That’s the whole point of the show…what can we do? And I think what we’ve come up with is that we can be examples. And I don’t want to say lead by example, but that we can be examples of people who are trying to get better, right? And we are not putting ourselves on a pedestal in this. We are never claiming to be perfect. We are never claiming to be evolved or anything else. We are inviting our audience with us on a journey of getting better, being more empathetic, and being a better person and a better man.
I can’t speak for Tyler here, but I’ve been feeling pretty helpless on all the stuff that’s going on. It just feels like there’s nothing you can do. And I kind of decided right after the election that what I would do is just try to show up for my daughter, and not have them steal my joy, and still be positive about the future. I think the decision to do this podcast is an extension of that. That we can have an hour every week where we can laugh and cry, and we can feel hope, and feel we can make ourselves better. Because when we make ourselves better, we make the people around us better. And we make our community better. And that’s how we embark on change. And that’s how we make the world a better place.
TL: There’s a term called Bada Sava. Do you know that term? It’s like a ripple effect. I really believe that it’s as simple as being polite when you order your coffee. You don’t know what that’s going to do to that barista, and what that barista is going to do to the person that they meet after that, and so, yeah, this ripple effect. There is homework that you can do. I’m reading a lot of books on white fragility. Being a white, privileged cis man is kind of an ugly thing right now, but it doesn’t mean that I have to subscribe to it, you know? So, I feel like that’s the dividing line. Do I want to dig my heels in like I’ve done most of my life, or do I want to be accountable for the stuff that, maybe, it’s not my fault per se, but I’m definitely participating in?
Even Reed and I — just having this podcast — it isn’t going to be about us trying to preach or anything. It’s just going to be about being vulnerable, and let’s figure it out together.
RF: What we’re asking of ourselves, and I think what we’re asking of our guests who come on, is to be vulnerable. Because when you show your vulnerability, that is when not only can you grow, but that’s when you form connection. You form connection with your friends and I think you form connection with the audience because they see when you can show your vulnerability. That will resonate with someone because a lot of people have that same vulnerability, and if they can hear you going through it, then that has a chance to actually help them.
TL: Well, our producer, Stella, she thinks it might be a movement. And I was like, oh, that sounds pretty grand, but maybe it is. A movement can just be that, can just be a movement, like we’re moving in the right direction, but it does require a certain element of momentum; having visibility like this might be good.
RF: Our show is not specifically targeted for men, and I think it should hopefully allow appeal for all genders. It feels like the pendulum on media that is targeting men is so toxic and so gross, and the pendulum has flown so far that it has to come back. It just feels like it has to. And we want to be there to help it swing.
Any other goals with the podcast?
RF: When you’re embarking on a project like this, you’re envisioning all these different outcomes. And what is the biggest outcome, like what’s your stretch goal? Do we want to have a segment on The Today Show every week? Or do we just want to influence and have a core 500 fans that are really devoted and we really interact with them and change their lives? There’s no one thing that is correct.
Which guests are you really excited about?
TL: Our first guest is Will Forte. He’s an old friend. Then we have Fiona Dourif, who’s starring on The Pitt right now. Mireille Enos, who I just did the fifth season of For All Mankind with, she’s the star of The Killing, Hannah, World War Z. She’s amazing. The thing I’m the most excited about with those guests is that they all have really cool points of view.
RF: In my experience in talking about this show, when you talk about what the idea behind it is, people are interested. People want to be a part of that. I think people so much want to be putting goodness into the world that they want to come on and lend a hand. It’s been beautiful to see the reaction to it so far.
Can you talk about the title? How did you come up with I Love You So Much?
RF: I saw a friend of mine post a story on Facebook about their kids. And it said, ILYSM (I love you so much). And I was like, oh, that would be a perfect title for this podcast. Because it has that kind of Instagram/hashtag kind of thing to it. But what really made it was that this is about fundamentally two friends sitting down together who are men. And we can tell each other that we love each other. And we can tell people around us that we love each other and, in fact, that’s what we want to put out into the world.
TL: We were talking about it at the club that one day. You’d come up, and we were just, that’s it! We just want to talk about being better in love and just being people who love and know how to be loved. It turns out you can talk about it forever. There’s a never-ending, evolving conversation there, right? So, it’s a great concept. And this is definitely not just for men.
RF: Yeah, it’s not a bro podcast. And everything we talk about, actually, is trying to straddle the traditionally masculine and the traditionally feminine.
TL: Even guests. We really want to have an even mix of male and female guests. And not just actors. I want to get my therapist on there.
Is there a guarantee of funniness?
TL: Yes, at least one laugh per podcast.
RF: I just don’t think we can do something that’s not funny.
TL: Also, you can’t be precious about it. I know there isn’t anything more precious than love, but you can’t present it that way. I think a good dollop of humor goes a long way when you’re talking about something that’s as impactful as this. I can feel it now; there are going to be some real moments in the show where it’s very reverent, but then you can pop out of it with a joke.
RF: The real watch will be, does Reed cry every episode? Or does he cry every other episode?
TL: Yeah, we’re going to run this show on tears, man. It’s going to feed the cry machine.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
