 George Bruno with the 21 report. We're at the 21 convention the final event of the decade, and I'm talking with Texas Dom welcome Thank You George glad to be here You were on stage. I was let's talk about that. That was yesterday not today. Yeah, what did you talk about? I talked about Dominance and submission. I talked about long-term relationships marriages. I talked about gosh people's fantasies Dealing with the fantasies dealing with shame dealing with repressed desires That type of thing does everybody experience that I think everyone has desires. Yeah, they don't deal with them all the time Right, right. What do we do if we have desires, but don't act on them? well, eventually you get either either they get bottled up inside and You don't do anything about it eventually You're you're not feeling congruent your actions and your thoughts are not are not aligning upright a lot of times that can lead to depression Yeah But in a perfect world if you're with somebody else you start talking about your desires with that person and the two of you Come to some sort of an agreement on what what you can do to help each other out with those type of things. Yeah Is it easier to deal with? Obviously if both people agree on things you move forward What happens when you disagree on things? Depends on what the big things are right? Are they big things? Are they little things? Are they sex things or are they finance things? You know at the end of the day in our world one person has to make the final decision Yeah has to be the final arbiter. Yeah, but the big decisions sure in that case. It's me. I'm the leader She's the follower. She's happiest when she follows and I'm happiest when I lead Yeah Sexually that might be a little bit more of an impasse because it has to be consensual sure and you have to both be on the same page, right? She's happiest when you lead Absolutely, let's talk about it. It took a while to get there. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so we was did that happen overnight. Did you just make that decision was it? Yeah, well, no, I've been I've been making the decision to lead for 30 years Yeah, right, and she just made the decision to follow completely I don't ten years ago or less We were we were pretty miserable We were roommates at that point, you know, we were trying our best. We loved each other The love was always sitting in the corner somewhere it never really left but She was fighting for control. I was fighting for and she has to have control in her business She has to be she you know She leads her business and she's a force to be reckoned with yes But what she figured out one day Was she wasn't happy? She knew I wasn't happy. We both were thinking divorce at some point It didn't really talked about it hated you didn't want to use the D word as we call it, right? but What ends up happening is that she started searching for her own happiness Genius she's watching TV and she sees a one of these off-cable channels. There was a Series devoted to Christian submissive women it only made it about four or five episodes I'm told because it didn't meet the mainstream criteria of the feminist agenda and it got yanked And then she started searching online and she realized she came to me that one day and said I was thinking she was gonna say it's time for the divorce, right? And she said no, she said I think I would be happiest if I was a submissive wife Instead of trying to be in control all the time instead of fighting you know head-to-head always bickering type of thing about who's gonna do what and I Had no idea what she was asking me But I immediately agreed to it thinking to myself. I can do whatever. I don't want this thing to end So we ended up actually when she was heading off on a trip and I was going somewhere And we had about ten days apart for me to research what she had asked me and for her to do some more thinking and all that and we came back together and It was good. I mean we were driving to the airport I about drove off the road When she when she mentioned this to me and the plan was just to pull her right up to the gate You know drop her off at the end check the bags outside drop off the room mate and send her off, right? Yeah, and I slowed down. I knew I had time. I always leave early to the airport. I'm that guy, right? I slowed down took my time getting there parked the car walked her inside There's a coffee shop outside of the gate It'd be before security and asked her for a cup of coffee and we had a date Right then in there and talked and talked and you'd been married a number of years at that point 20 something Right, and it was all headed down the tubes. You don't hear about Yeah, much about married people having dates and they should They should have as many as they can because you don't know if you're gonna be here tomorrow Yeah, right, but yeah We sat there at that at that coffee shop and talked and talked until the very last possible moment to get her through security And we ended with a kiss That was the most passionate kiss that we had probably had in ten years. Wow, and it was like, okay I think this might work. Yeah, I had no idea what I was agreeing to. Yeah, right, but It's worked out. Wow what The word roommate we were just roommates Wow past each other in hallways Share to bed Well, sort of yeah. Yeah, you know, how do you go from roommate back? How do you go from lover to roommate back to lover? I mean, I know you described the process What has to happen inside you for that to happen? You have to communicate you have to listen you have to You have to try to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Yes for give Right, because you know everybody's made mistakes. Yes, and you have to say, okay It's it's time to start being honest with each other and Start to trust each other again And you know trust takes very little time to blow and a lot of time to rebuild Yes, and so we're on the path now to Rebuild the trust rebuild the relationship and communicate and talk so Wow You don't hear a lot about older couples doing this mature couples doing this usually most people just cash in their chips Who's old? What are you talking about? Yeah, I have no idea. I'm just hypothetically speaking. I'd like to think I'm mature But yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know You know, it's so easy these days just to say to heck with it the kids are out of the house Yes, you know, we're living here with the dog who gets the dog will sell the house or it's just it's easy it's become a society of Just easy takes path at least resistance. Yeah, you know and sometimes things are worth sticking out You've got all these years invested. I mean this woman saved my life twice literally saved my life And she's the reason I still have a leg Chopped my leg off. She talked him out of it type of thing, right? Oh you go through so much together and you and you grow from these two kids that don't have any business being married They're what they're doing and they're making babies and they're and they're struggling through and they're struggling financially And you can you get through all this hell? together and Then you and then the kids are gone and all of a sudden you're looking at each other and it's like what do we do here? They have this thing they call it the the great divorce Right and that's that's where a lot of people are they They get to that point and they just split and there's you don't have to do that. Yeah And it's tough because you look at people that are divorced and they're they're out looking for other people You know in our age bracket Yes, and it's so it's an interesting marketplace from what I can tell I again. I've been married 30 years now so But I did look around for a while there and I have friends and it's it's brutal out there right I was talking with Ken Curry yesterday about this and They Experienced their emptiness. They you know married 35 years. They got their empty nest and there was a juncture. I mean You what you go from? Being parents. Well, you never stop being parents to your kids. Sure speak, but you know, you're having dinner looking at each other instead of dealing with the kids and That can make or break it and and for them Fortunately They made it. Mm-hmm What is it about empty nest that makes people reassess their marriages? I think it's you've spent all this time Focusing on your children. Yeah t-ball girl scouts Soccer everything that you do for these kids and you get them through high school and you're Pushing them out the nest and you don't really want them to leave but they know they got to leave and then You didn't spend enough time Taking care of your marriage along the way. You focused everything on the kids. The wife quit being The lover and became the mom Then she starts to look at the husband as being another kid In the house and then there's no there's no spark anymore. There's no flirting. There's there's no date night Yeah, right and so once it's gone If every all your focus was on object a object a is no longer in the picture. Where do you put your focus? You know, maybe you got a dog, right? So it gives you something to talk about. I just think that it's just vitally important that You take time to communicate about your relationship and figure out. What's the next step? Where we go next and do it together and formulate that plan together, you know instead of Going off in your separate ways Do you have dinner together every night? Every night. No, I travel a lot for work. And so that's that's impossible But when we're home together we travel as far as getting on a plane getting on a plane Heading out being gone for three or four days in a row that type of thing But I come back and then we spend time together, you know, we do our our darndest to You know to stay on track. Um dinner together. Yeah as much as possible What is an important thing in your relationship? Is it Sunday mornings drinking coffee reading the newspaper? Is it What is the what is the one thing you look forward to and that you miss? We have when we when we changed our lifestyle and fixed our our Problems we always have problems, right? There's always gonna be ebbs and flows There's always going to be give and take and there's no perfect relationship and when we got on track back on track We dedicated some time in the morning over coffee to communicate right to sit back and say not The water pipe is busted not, you know car payments do where we at not what's going on at work Not the kids not the grandkids us How are we doing and we would talk about our relationship? and It's if you don't let problems fester And and grow bigger than they really are if you can intercept things that didn't quite go right maybe the day or two before And fix them or at least discuss them and come up with an alternate plan for next time If you can get that done early on It doesn't fester And so that's that's the time I cherish the most morning coffee So we sit there and communicate and poor thing because I wake up an hour or two before she does And I've already had a lot of coffee. Yeah, so I'm ready to go. Let's talk. Well, there's times when I'm tweeting something pretty early in the morning Yeah, and I know and you're responding to it. Oh, yeah, I'm up and and I know you are at a time zone that's different than mine Yeah, you know and uh, and you're up you're that's a curse, right? Yeah, you can't you can only sleep so many hours Yeah, right. I think the other thing I go to bed earlier than I used to now So it's uh, you know, so and that's the other thing that I think it's really really interesting when couples get older They tend to not go to bed at the same time anymore, right? If you go to bed at the same time your percentage Of having something good happen in the bedroom probably going to go up If you're both getting in bed at the same time If one of them gets in bed an hour and a half later the other person comes in Right tries to sneak in wakes that person up now. They're kind of grumpy. Yeah, right? You want me out? I kind of think so interesting little trick I've done a lot of studying on relationship styles and relationship improvement and I came up with a thing called relationship fasting and it it's kind of like the relationship version of intermittent fasting where you have a finite period together and then a period apart and that and that happens uh By default with a lot of couples where one person travels right is on the road a lot for people who just do a nine to five um And they're just on each other's Case all the time. They have to learn to kind of separate a little bit Maybe she has a craft room. He's got a workshop or a study And you kind of go to your corners do your own thing then come together I have found like one of my clients a guy that I cut his hair He became a a flight attendant He's our age. He became a flight attendant about 20 years ago and He's uh, he does uh transatlantic travel. So he's literally, you know flying to the uk europe four days a week Lives in new jersey and four days a week. He's gone. I said How did that? Uh, what effect did that have on your marriage? And I was expecting something completely different. He goes it saved it Yeah, I could see that I said I could see that tell me how that happens And he says well the three days a week that we're together We are truly together He says my desire for her grows After about the third day of being away. I can't wait to be with her He says and then at the end of three days of being together. He says I know I got to go back to work and get back up in the air and uh It made a big difference In their relationship It sounds like that's what you're experiencing. Yeah, and it's funny because early on in our marriage Well, the middle part of the marriage when things were just you know kids and everything that's stress and everything hit You know, there'd be times where she'd look at me. She's like, when are you traveling again? Right, oh interesting and and I needed a break. She needed a break and we needed to go a separate ways a little bit, right And now it's it's it's just the opposite now, right? It's like, okay. When are you gonna be home? When are you coming back? Yeah, you know, so she'll make she'll have a plan and we have Little rituals and things that we do and when we get back together again and that type of thing and It's meaningful and so we're we are We're much more happy Now together when we come back on that and yeah the race People talk about that a lot guys that travel a lot. We'll talk about that. Hey, we got I retired And oh my god, I'm around her every day Yeah, no, what am I doing? Oh, Jesus. It's like it's like a different version of Emptiness syndrome now now we have to just look at each other every night for dinner Yeah, so they have to like you said, they've got to have a shop. They got to build things. They got to go do stuff Yeah, you know Yeah What if you worked a nine to five and we're home by five thirty every night? I have no idea what that would be like Yeah, I literally don't have a clue. Yeah, people do that. Yeah, I had to work in a cubicle one time I'm in sales and they I happened to live in the same town where the company was located And some something had happened inside sales They needed someone to come in and manage this group for a while until they hired somebody else And so I came in and stepped into that role. Yeah It was a very short period of time because I couldn't wait to get out of it. Yeah, you know, I got to be out Moving and I just have no idea what it'd be like to do a nine to five. Yeah, I don't know Interesting. I don't know Wow, I'm not sure I could do it. Yeah Well, you've cultivated something nice and I think it works for you some people I think You know when I asked my client, you know, what did that being away for four days a week do for you? I was almost expecting him to say You know He ended up having a girlfriend in Europe and you know, you know, like whatever but it really it was the opposite I think you hit a word we cultivated and we cultivated our life together You know, I like that word We we are both having to add to the soil We're both having to make sure things get watered I think that's the secret one person can't do all the heavy lifting Right in the relationship you both have to kind of have a goal and want to be together And you see one person trying to trying to save like a bad marriage or whatever And one person is just going way out of their way and the other one's already checked out Right and it's just a matter of time almost so unless the one that checked out finally realizes They come to their senses and decide to jump back in but when both are cultivating and both are nourishing watering Making sure the sun's coming up. Yeah type of thing. It can work. It can grow Wow I love it So well this went in a completely different direction. Yeah, it usually does no doubt and I Wow, this is going to help a lot of people This is going to help a lot of people watching this video You know, I talked about our lifestyle and it's an alternative universe to some people You know, the whole dominant submissive thing and and that's fine, right? It's just and it's not the crazy kinky sex that people all think it is, you know It's this this incredible relationship that just continues to grow Through good times and bad times. You still have bad times. You still have challenges still have health issues But and and the sex part is awesome. It's amazing But it's the icing on the cake and people get into this thinking. Oh man, sex is going to be great. Yeah, it is but it's not The long-term benefit. Yeah, right and so our our thing is just to be able to Say this is an alternate way to live This is the way your grandparents lived. He was in charge. He was head of household Grandma made sure the meals were made and and he made grandpa made the decisions Yeah, so the younger generation, you know, maybe your great grandpa, right? But or maybe your parents still live that type of lifestyle But my message to anyone out there is to say look, uh, there's nothing wrong with being in a relationship It's very uh, satisfying if you if you pick the right person You know vet carefully. We always talk about that make sure you're not, you know, uh, marrying a terrible person, but uh, you know, it's just one of those things that You can make it if you want to if both people are willing to put in the work And we just found a way of doing it what works for us may not work for anybody else. Right, but it does work This is this is the thing. I quoted the uh, there was a study on on from the kinsley institute on Americans and what their sexual fantasies were and all this stuff and I quoted some stuff yesterday out of this book It's a great book And the thing about it is that people are all thinking about how to keep things spiced up in their lives How to keep things spiced up in their bedrooms how to not let that spark die And if both people are actively pursuing Keeping the spark tendered Right, not letting it the flame completely die out. Yeah, sometimes it's roaring and sometimes it's tiny But you both have to keep adding fuel and adding air. Yeah, right. I like that. That's it So that was all about engines need uh, well fuel and spark gotta have it. That's it. Yeah, yeah, and they can't operate without And speaking of sparks we talk about the the masculine and feminine energies coming together Is what makes that spark? Yeah, you know, that's the spark of attraction that happens, right? It's two ends of a magnet opposite ends that come together And when men are allowed to be men And women are allowed to be Feminine women and not be forced into Some role that corporate america has told them they have to be into or the feminist agenda has told them they have to be into And and you got all these women that are so unhappy But women that have decided. Hey, you know what? I'm going to buck the system I'm going to start wearing my dresses again. I'm going to start being a feminine woman again They exude this beauty That is a feminine energy And for the right man with his masculine energy That's magic when they get together, you know, there's desire And so when everybody's trying to be equal and everybody's trying to do that, you know, everybody's oh, yeah We're a team and we do everything equally and the spark dies and if your spark has died Figure out what's going wrong Look in the mirror. Yeah, right and then just try to figure out how to be more masculine Have her be more feminine Right just seemed like common sense, but They got it a hundred years ago. Yeah, everybody figured it out way back in the back of the day So where do we go wrong? All things become new again Yeah Interesting. Yeah, now it's viewed as some sort of a crazy alternative lifestyle. Yeah and back then it was just how people lived It's how people live, right? Going from lover to parent To roommate and back to lover A conversation with Texas Tom. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Enjoy being here What was your experience so far with the 21 convention? Oh, I was dead. I was dead Professional all across the board really good energy with a lot of people and uh, I just like it's a very positive Positive direction. This uh, George, this is this has been a first-class event. It's fantastic. You guys run a really tight ship I've been to a lot of conventions over the course of my business career And I can tell when things are well run and when things aren't and this is a very well run operation I was very impressed. It's pretty incredible to see where Anthony's brought it Especially from last year which is my first year here and to see the the upgrades he's made it's been incredible I've got my notebook and with every speaker. I've written down about two or three lines Under each of the speakers of just just the key prime stuff that I got. That's good. That's great. It's very surreal Man, I'm really enjoying it. I'm happy to live in such an era Where is such a thing like this is possible? I have never seen a group of guys like this a group of 200 men were focused Squared away and working on their values just never met a bigger group of wonderful guys It's kind of neat because I've been to a fair amount of conventions in my day But you never see one where the guys like uh here you can just see ed latimore talking to tanner about boxing Yeah, you just sit down and then you tell your boxing experiences everybody's kind of pinging off each other Yeah, it has been fantastic And it's been four days of guys all on the same page working in the same direction fascinating meaning some of the people Hearing their stories. Yep. You got people traveling from other parts of the world to come here just to see some of the speakers That's amazing. I think it's impressive. Everybody here is very serious. Yeah, they're taking it, you know, close to their heart What a great convention. Thanks, george