Build a rich, deep gay relationship through differentiation

JOE KORT 0:05
welcome everyone to smart sex, smart love. We’re talking about sex goes beyond the taboo, and talking about love goes beyond, beyond the honeymoon. My guest today is Tom brew it, a therapist, trainer, consultant and author who works extensively with the queer community. He’s the founder of queer relationship Institute, which provide which provides therapy for queer folks and training for therapists who work with queer relationships. His book, The go to relationship guide for gay men, from honeymoon to lasting commitment, provides the tools to build a rich, deep gay relationship. Today, Tom is going to talk about his new book. Welcome Tom, thanks, Joe. I’m so excited to be here, and I’m excited to have you here. I’ve been watching you on Tiktok and Instagram, and watching your practice grow, and then this book coming out, so I’m so happy to talk to you about it all.

TOM BRUETT 0:53
I’m really excited to be here. All right. Well, let’s just get right into it. Why did you write this book? I wrote this book because I was kind of tired of recommending books to clients that were incredibly heteronormative. There’s a lot of really great books out there. I mean, you’ve written a book on gay relationships, but there’s very few actual books out there on gay relationships. And I think we just get more out of a resource when it’s written for us. There’s case examples that have us, you know. And so I really wanted to create a resource that people could look at and work on to improve their relationship. That’s great. And Tom, can you tell us a little bit about the book? It has a developmental model built into it. Is that? Right? Yeah. So the developmental model, my mentors, doctors, Alan Bader and Peter Pearson, they founded this model of couples therapy that’s basically three pillars. So there’s attachment science, there’s neurobiology, and then there’s differentiation theory. And so the differentiation theory, I think, is what sets it apart from a lot of different models out there, because it’s really about, how can you connect with your own wants, feelings, wishes, desires, and then tolerate the anxiety that comes up in a relationship when your partner inevitably wants something different, right? Right? Right? And so, right, the whole differentiation, did you do? You know who David schnarch was? So David schnarch was, you know, the big He didn’t create differentiation. I think he’d see borrow from Bowen’s work, didn’t he? Yes,

JOE KORT 2:13
yeah, but he would be like, God, love him. He’s now deceased, but he was probably one of the most undifferentiated humans you would ever meet, even though his work was all about differentiation,

JOE KORT 2:24
that’s great. I love differentiation because it’s all about what makes you right doesn’t make me wrong, what makes you good doesn’t make me bad. Can you say more about that? Yeah, I think, like, if we and I think this concept, like, it’s really important in romantic relationships and friendships and all that kind of stuff. But I think even this, if we could bring this concept even further out into the world and to community at large, like there’s going to be differences, and differences are okay. Differences are how we learn about ourselves and our partners and our the people who are important in our lives. And so often we, you know, we get locked into this pattern of not differentiating and not really sharing what’s important to us in our romantic relationships, and it just creates, you know, either a lot of stale toxicity or a lot of angry fighting.

Speaker 1 0:00
Tom,

JOE KORT 3:07
And I love what you’re saying, because it’s pretty much most relationships. But what makes the book and your work different with queer relationships around those same issues?

TOM BRUETT 3:16
So I talk a lot about the things that have impacted us as queer men, gay men in in our, you know, growing up in development. So the developmental differentiation theory, that’s a big component of of this work. In this book, really deals with some specific things that we, we encounter as gay men. And I’ve, I’ve come to a couple of your trainings, so I know you speak a lot about this, and, you know, there’s just, there are differences to be to being queer. I mean, just from the media representation to the internalized homophobia to the overt homophobia, let me think about sex and how, you know, just the experience of being queer really impacts how we show up in our with our pleasure and our and our bodies and our sex,

JOE KORT 3:57
right? It’s the doubling of the genders, right? So two women are going to show up very different than two men. They’re going to show up very different from men and

TOM BRUETT 4:04
women. Yes, yeah. And I think the gay experiences is different, you know, we’re not just trying to create carbon copies of heterosexual relationships. You know, there’s different, different structures, different sex, sexualities at play. There’s different, you know, family and community aspects too.

JOE KORT 4:19
I spent all of my early years, up until your age, your your Is it okay if I say your age? Sure, okay, then you’re 40, right? In my 40s, I had built a heteronormative relationship with my husband, and I realized, what the hell am I doing? I’m gay. I don’t have to be heteronormative. I can do this any way I want. Would you agree that gay and lesbian and queer relationships have more freedoms than straight couples.

TOM BRUETT 4:42
Yeah, it’s not all doom and gloom. I think, you know, certainly I was in a pretty, you know, heteronormative type relationship earlier on in my life, and this, the relationship that I’m in now is is so much better, because I could be differentiated, and we can, you know, have different relationship structures and different ways of really. Communicating about our wants and needs and desires, and it’s not you know you’re when you’re raised just male in this in this culture, it’s very difficult to actually get in touch with all that internal stuff and then to actually be vulnerable and take a risk and share it with somebody else. Can be really scary.

JOE KORT 5:15
Yes, especially when we took taking risks and being vulnerable as LGBT people has been mostly met with trauma, abuse and rejection, and now we’re being asked to do it relationship, right? So that can bring that all up. Yeah, yeah, I don’t know, as your experience, do you work with lesbian couples

TOM BRUETT 5:32
as well? I do work with a couple lesbian couples, yep, because

JOE KORT 5:35
I always find that I and I jokingly say this, but it’s kind of true that you need the jaws of life to separate them, because there’s so much oneness. Whereas with gay male couples, my experience is I have to feel like the woman in the relationship, where women say, hey, come back to the relationship. Come back into the Do you experience that? Or do you have a different way that you see things?

TOM BRUETT 5:54
Yeah, I think that that does speak to the attachment piece. I mean, we know a lot more gay men fall on the avoidance side of things. And so, you know, I think when you just separate the gender piece out in attachment, it’s like, okay, if you have two pretty avoidant people in a relationship, a lot of the work is going to be, how do you actually take some steps towards each other and and build some group projects, or do some things together that feel connecting and bonding, yes,

JOE KORT 6:17
rather than competitive. And like you say, avoidant, that’s well said, Actually, talk about your seven developmental stages in the book. Or you say seven stages, I’m calling developmental tell us what

TOM BRUETT 6:29
they are. Yeah. So the seven stages, there’s, there’s five that come from Ellen and Pete’s original theory, which are the honeymoon stage, the discovering differences stage, the exploration stage, and then the reconnection stage, and then you’re working towards a goal of mutual interdependence. I’ve added two additional stages there. So the second queer adolescence, I think, is really important. Really important developmental stage for a lot of LGBT people, because, you know, our developmental experience is different. We don’t usually come through adolescence at the times our bodies are kind of going through physical adolescence, and that really does shift the way you’re kind of learning about yourself and relationships and all that kind of stuff. And then the other stage I added was an agreement stage. I think this is important for all relationships, but especially if you’re differentiating and you’re going out and exploring and trying different things, you’ve got to come back and reestablish those agreements in a really clear

JOE KORT 7:24
way. I like that. And how do you help the couples do that? So

TOM BRUETT 7:27
it’s really through the process of learning to differentiate. And I think of it, I always tell them, it’s like a muscle. So we’re going to be working on building this muscle of differentiation, and I’m going to be encouraging you to first. The first step is self differentiation, getting in there and figuring out what is important to you, and then kind of building up the skills to take those risks and share those with your partner, and then to tolerate that tension like it can feel really tense if you’ve avoided differentiating and being yourself in a relationship like, kind of like you were describing with your husband. I’m sure it was a process right to change those unspoken or spoken agreements?

JOE KORT 8:01
Yes, yep, even when I am the level you’re using the word agreement, I use them too with couples, and I even ask if somebody tells me they’re monogamous, I will ask them, I have you negotiated your monogamy, because most people don’t understand that’s an agreement too.

TOM BRUETT 8:16
I have quoted you in the book. Yes, I’ll look for that. Thank you. You’re welcome. Thank you for all you’ve done for our community. I

JOE KORT 8:26
love I’ve loved doing all this, and I love watching people come up behind me and learning from them. And I love that you’re working with Ellen Bader, because she was always like in the background of all the theorists and other couples. But I always loved her work. I used to use her. She has this couples contract. I don’t know. She still uses it. I borrowed it, and then she has this one line that I love when you forbid your partner you invite secrecy. Yes, I love that.

TOM BRUETT 8:51
Yeah, she’s done. I mean, she does so much work with betrayal and infidelity and all that kind of stuff, which it takes a lot of differentiation to work through those cases when there’s been a lot of betrayal, or, yeah, any kind of trust eroding

JOE KORT 9:06
totally. All right, so you talked about the gay adolescents, second adolescence. How does it impact relation? Well, what is it? First of all, if you could be a little more explaining, and then how does it impact?

TOM BRUETT 9:15
So the second queer adolescence, this is certainly not a phrase I’ve coined. I mean, it’s kind of around there, out and about, but I think it’s something that we’re finally acknowledging as in the queer community, because so many of us, I’ll just speak for my experience, you know, people, I would say it’s a lot different for people who are younger than me, but I’m still getting 20 year olds in my office who are disowned and, you know, so it’s like the stuff is still there. But if you’re, if you’re coming to know who you are, and you’re having to keep bits and pieces of that secret. And then you’re, you know, also trying to figure out how to be in relationship with somebody else. It’s almost impossible, I think. And so, you know, in typical adolescence, your brain is developing. You’re experimenting. You’re trying all sorts of fun and interesting things. So many times as queer people, we do this after we come out, or, you know, if you come out in your 20s, maybe you do it. You. 20s. If you come out later than that, maybe it happens then. And I always say, like, these stages are fluid, so just because you came through it a little bit doesn’t mean you’re not going to go back to it at times. But you know, people will sometimes call it like your slut phase, or, you know, you’re having a lot of different partners, or you’re, you know, you’re just trying and experimenting, exploring and figuring out who you are in

JOE KORT 10:19
the sex addiction community. What I used to hate when I was part of it is they would call it sex addiction. You’re acting out in that hypersexual and I used to say, what you’re talking about, this is delayed adolescence. You don’t understand. Have you ever heard somebody calling it a sex addiction?

TOM BRUETT 10:33
Yeah, yeah. I mean the sex addiction, I think just from the inception of that term has been really dangerous for the gay male community, but

JOE KORT 10:44
terrible, right? And I always like to tell clients, especially if they’re 40s, 50s, 60s, I’ve even sure you have two in their 70s, when they’re in delayed adolescence, at least this time you have money and you don’t have acne, so you get to enjoy it.

TOM BRUETT 10:58
And I love that, because I think so often we have to look for the joy, the queer joy, the resilience. Because if we only stay in the the challenging parts, like it’s, it’s, I don’t think we’re doing anyone a service. I

JOE KORT 11:09
love that. What you just said, queer joy, wow. Do you say that a lot?

TOM BRUETT 11:13
I do, yeah, yeah.

JOE KORT 11:14
Say more

TOM BRUETT 11:16
about I just think it’s something that so often. You know, we can read like, if you’re, if I’m giving a presentation right on gay male the gay male population, all of the statistics are really, you know, very difficult to absorb. If we look at just the mental health statistics, you know, the substance use, all that kind of stuff. But there’s also so much more about being a queer person that is full of joy and resilience. And, you know, I think Dan Savage has the quote like we would during the height of the AIDS epidemic, we would bury our friends in the morning, and then we would go and party at night as a form of resistance. And I think we need to, especially right now, like, stay attached to that,

JOE KORT 11:55
especially right now, absolutely, you say in your book, you talk about relationship role models for gay men? Will you share a few thoughts on that?

TOM BRUETT 12:04
Well, I think, I mean, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I think you’re a role model, right? I mean, we lost an entire generation of gay men. I mean, not an entire generation. There are people who have survived, but it’s very few and far between, and so to lose that, you know that breadth of of, like, our elders, I think it makes it really challenging to then look, you know, above us and into what are, what are relationship structures and relationships that work? And there’s very few examples, I think, out there, of, like, especially gay men who are, you know, living a life, who are ahead of me in age and have figured this out. And I mean, you certainly are one of them. You’ve been doing this for a really long time, and have helped our community in a huge

JOE KORT 12:46
way. Thank you. I’ve loved it, but I’ve had to have my own right side, like Brian McNaught. Do you know who that is? Yep, he’s been like my elder, right? And then we had, when Mike and I first got together, we had a gay male couple that were together longer than us. Thank God, because they normalize, like you talk about that as well.

TOM BRUETT 13:03
Oh yeah. I mean, especially, I think it’s shifting with with gay marriage and stuff. But, you know, there, I think the statistics actually show that LGBTQ couples that are committed and, you know, stay together longer than our heterosexual counterparts. But it’s, I don’t, I don’t think we, we can, we can’t look into the future and say, like, Okay, this is the kind of relationship I want for myself. I mean, there was nothing on TV or media, and I know we shouldn’t always look to that those places for relationship role models, but we need it somewhere, right? If you grow up in a straight household and a straight community, and where are you getting the inspiration for living a life that feels authentic to you,

JOE KORT 13:37
right? My role model, or I guess my what I saw normalized was making love. Do you know that movie? Oh, it’s such a good movie. It didn’t do well at the box office. It probably came out at a bad time. It was like 1981 or something, and it was with Kay Jackson and Michael onto Keene and Harry Hamlin. There was about a gay man in a marriage heterosexual and he comes out, and then he has this adolescence and all this stuff. It just was very inspiring to think that I could, one was a doctor. One was, I don’t remember, but they have, like, really nice professional jobs. And back then, you didn’t see gay people with that, yeah. I

TOM BRUETT 14:13
mean, it certainly has shifted in a lot of ways. But, you know, then there’s some frightening things happening in the world today. So it’s still, you know, we make a little bit of progress, and then we go back a little bit

JOE KORT 14:23
in Ellen’s community. Are you one of the is there a lot of LGBT doing the work you’re doing? Are you one of the few?

TOM BRUETT 14:30
So, I mean, she’s thankfully, I mean, she’s been a champion, kind of, since her first book in the late 80s. She had a gay couple in one of her early books, which, you know, and she loves working with gay and lesbian and queer couples. What she said is now that there’s, as it’s become more accepting for therapists to be out, she’s not getting as many gay and queer referrals because they’re going to therapists who self identify as gay or queer. And there’s, I would say, there’s a handful of people in her community. And then that’s why I really. Created this, this other training program that’s all queer therapists, because I wanted to, my early training was at a place called queer life space in the Castro in San Francisco. And it was, it was amazing, because we were in a cohort of queer, you know, training therapists we were working with in queer community mental health, and then every week we had trainers from around the community come in and teach us. And there was something so beautiful and safe about learning in a space that, like, you didn’t have to defend parts of your identity. And, you know, really, because I think it’s hard to learn when that you’re having to have that shield up.

JOE KORT 15:35
Yes, we’ll talk about that training that I know you offer these LGBT trainings for queer therapists. Is that right?

TOM BRUETT 15:41
Yeah. So I’ve taken, you know, a lot of the principles from the developmental model work pretty well, just as they are with with queer and gay relationships. But I wanted to kind of create forms that are all LGBTQ inclusive, all of like, the role plays and things you give your clients and do all the code switching for people, so that they can just learn the model, just like figure it out. And it’s been really beautiful. I mean, this year we had, I had about 25 people from different parts of the world. We meet twice a month, and it’s just been really, really a beautiful community.

JOE KORT 16:11
I can’t tell you how much I love this, because I have a jaded perspective on how a lot of LGBT people feel like they’re the authority, and there isn’t a shared authority. It’s so undifferentiated. How did you create a community that wants to be together?

TOM BRUETT 16:27
Well, I mean, something I say all the time is like, the queer community is not a monolith. I can’t possibly speak for all of the queer community. I can’t even speak for like many of the gay men out there, right? There’s as many queer and gay people as there are queer and gay people out there. Yeah. And so I just invite other people to share their you know, we’re a community. A community means we learn from each other, we grow from each other. And, I mean, there’s some great therapists in there who know a lot more about neurodiversity than I do, or, you know, other topics. And they’ll, they’ll share, they’ll it’s just a really nice, caring place to be. I

JOE KORT 16:58
know, I think it’s great. I think you’re it’s, I think I’m making this up because I don’t know for sure, but it feels rare. It doesn’t feel like, if there is other ones, it’s got to be in pockets. You don’t hear a lot about this much. I my i feel like my strength is teaching straight people how to work with gay people. When I tried to bring together our community like you did, I’m not good at it, but you are. It

TOM BRUETT 17:18
just that’s something I think that early training at queer life space really just helped me figure out how this could work. And, you know, there’s a lot of differences in the queer community, and so we can’t pretend that those aren’t going to be there. But, you know, I think just acknowledging them, differentiating, bringing it into the space. And you know, there’s no way that you can do for me personally, like my journey of every time I learn something new in the therapeutic way, I grow exponentially as a human, yeah? And so, you know, we’re always evolving and growing, and that’s, I think, one of the beautiful things about this

JOE KORT 17:48
work, right? And then what you do is the same thing I do. You teach it. You find a way to make it a way to teach. I love that about you,

TOM BRUETT 17:54
yeah, yeah. It’s really teaching is just, it really is something that just lights me up. And I like working with clients, but the teaching has been really fun. Now.

JOE KORT 18:02
What about singles? People will watch us go, Oh, he’s only going to be dealing with relationships. What about me? What do you say to them?

TOM BRUETT 18:08
Something I really, I really was writing this book, thinking it would be for, you know, gay couples who are thinking about couples therapy. Maybe they’re having a little bit of trouble, whatever. But I’ve had a few people, a few friends and people in my community who are single, who are reading it, especially younger gay men, and they’re like, Wow, I wish I had, you know, there’s no place to we can really get these concepts. And nobody’s, nobody’s teaching relationship skills, I think, just in general. And then you add on being a gay man on top of that. And you know, there’s a lot of people who are, are feeling lost,

JOE KORT 18:40
yes, and I always say, even just being men, right? Just because people forget we’re men, we were socialized as boys. We’re socialized as Terence real talk. They’ve not turned our backs on vulnerability. Not have relational language. We don’t know how to we were taught to run from each other, not toward each other. So then relationship becomes very hard. I’m sure you see that.

TOM BRUETT 18:59
Oh yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, you know, just the smallest little act of vulnerability can feel like the biggest risk in the world. And then you add on, like telling your partner you want an open relationship, or something that’s even, like, bigger than that, or I don’t want kids, or whatever it could be like that. Those Those things can really upset the apple cart.

JOE KORT 19:17
How do you deal with talking to couples about open relationships? Do you just bring it up? Or how does it work? Do

TOM BRUETT 19:22
work? I mean, I definitely follow where they want to go, but I I myself, have been open relationship. I have been since the beginning of this relationship, and I will sometimes disclose that to people, but there’s usually, you know, if they’re coming to couples therapy around it, there’s usually someone who wants it more and someone who doesn’t want it, right? And so getting them to differentiate and really get get clear on what they want about it, what they don’t want about it, what their fears are. So, so often people just want to go to problem solving right away. And I mean, that’s how we’re trained as men, especially like but if you don’t differentiate first and slow down and really understand, then you know you’re solving the wrong problem. Many, many of the times, yeah.

JOE KORT 20:00
Yeah, right. And so many straight therapists, or just therapists in general, feel like your model. If one wants monogamy and one doesn’t, or one wants something sexually and one doesn’t, then it means that you shouldn’t do it because there’s somebody that doesn’t. But I love what you’re saying, and I say the same thing. Differentiation is anything one wants to move, one doesn’t. One wants more children or no children. One doesn’t. It’s beyond just monogamy and sex. Why do we only teach differentiation in everything but monogamy and sex? And you’re saying, let’s do it to everything?

TOM BRUETT 20:28
Yeah, I think it’s, it is like, like, the hands down, biggest skill I wish I had learned earlier in my life.

JOE KORT 20:35
Why say more about that? It’s, it’s

TOM BRUETT 20:38
something that for I’ll just speak my experience personally, like growing up as a gay boy, a little gay boy who was bullied extensively and all this kind of stuff, I really learned to hide and people please. And so I could disappear into relationships. I could make other people feel really comfortable, but I wasn’t being true and honest about what I needed or wanted or desired. And so taking those risks and like and experimenting that way in relationships. It’s, it’s like, wow, I can actually, like, stay in connection with somebody and also have some autonomy. And it’s just like a really powerful, magical thing. What would

JOE KORT 21:12
you say to people that you kind of already answered it, but I think it’s good for us to be direct about it. Who would say, Well, why do Why would anybody need to go to a queer therapist or queer trainer, like we’ve we’ve made it right so we’re integrated. Why do we need to go back to being insulated? What would you say?

TOM BRUETT 21:27
Many of the reasons I hear and and like, like, a gay couple will come in and they’ll say, oh, you know, we’re having sex issues. We just, we loved our straight female therapist, but we just didn’t feel comfortable talking about sex with her, and there was something maybe she was doing, or something from their past that, like, wasn’t making that possible. And so there just feel like there are some topics where, you know, just because we’re gay, does gay or queer, it doesn’t mean we understand every aspect of the community, but there’s something about, like, just just opening the door, that makes people feel, I think, a little bit more understood, a little bit safer. It’s the same reason I’ll really only go see a gay doctor, because it’s, you know, I don’t want to be not that there’s anything wrong with straight doctors, and I’m sure I could get the help and support I need, but I really want somebody who understands and doesn’t pathologize or judge things about being gay,

JOE KORT 22:16
right? So that’s just being gay friendly, but being gay informed, yeah, right. What else would you want people to know about the work you’re doing that we haven’t addressed so far?

TOM BRUETT 22:27
What else would I want people to know? I just I, you know, I hope that people will take a little bit of time and read this book. And the goal here is just to get people talking about things. And so at the end of each chapter in the book, there’s, there’s questions. So if you’re reading it with your partner, you can, you could journal the questions. You can talk about them like the book is structured as a way to actually be a joint project with a partner, or if you’re reading it on your own, to kind of journal and get to know a little bit more about yourself. And I just, I just, I really think that strong relationships build strong communities. And I just think our community, we just, we’re like, we could just be so much greater if we just dealt with some of these issues that so many of us have.

JOE KORT 23:12
I totally agree. What about intergenerational relationships? You know, I’ve noticed in the last five years, increase of negativity toward you. Never used to be that way. In my generation. It was, like just known and understood, and unlike in the straight community, where there’s always judgment about older people with younger people adults, where’s your stance on intergenerational relations?

TOM BRUETT 23:35
I think whatever works for the person is what works for the person. But you know, it’s so interesting, because this topic does seem to be a hot button topic like it. I think I created a tick tock or something about age gap relationships, and it’s like everybody has comments on it. People are this is a topic that it seems like our community is really, really invested in, for some reason.

JOE KORT 23:55
Well, I didn’t understand it either. I did a tick tock too, like two, three summers ago, and I got lambasted, like, just horrible, right? And I was like, What is this? Is we? It was shocking. And somebody put in the comments, and then I got it, this is, there’s a whole body, a generation, who grew up with online, with Grindr, with, I don’t know, whatever the old platform, right? I forget the names now, but so, but they were preyed upon by older men through these platforms. They never dealt with it. They never got help for it. So they superimpose that this is a power imbalance, and they they make it well, like what happened to them is in this relationship, and that’s not what this is. Can you speak to that a little bit? Well,

TOM BRUETT 24:42
I think if we think about like, the topic of erotic orientation, right? Some people are templates. People just are attracted to what they’re attracted to. Some people are attracted to younger guys. Some people are attracted to older guys, different sizes, you know? And that, I think, has to be okay. Some people are side. Some people like to top. Some people reverse. Like these are just. Just parts of what, what makes up your sexuality, and if we could just stop pathologising All of it. I mean, as long as you’re not hurting anybody, as long as it’s consensual, you know, it’s legal, whatever that means, you know, like, I think we’ve got to just have a little bit more space and graciousness around, right?

JOE KORT 25:18
I actually followed up to my video with this, and they blasted me for this. But it’s true that when you have a delayed adolescence, you might be in gay year, you might be chronologically 50, but in gay years, you’re 25 and you meet a 25 year old, and you’re in the same place emotionally and psychologically, right? So that that plays into

TOM BRUETT 25:38
it, especially like, if we think about it’s like a really common therapist trope, right? Like, if you had a really difficult traumatic experience, you stopped developing around whatever age that was that you had that traumatic experience. So if your traumatic experience was something to do with your sexual orientation or coming out, or whatever it was, it makes sense that you would be frozen a little bit around whatever was happening at that time.

JOE KORT 25:59
Yeah. How do you help somebody unfreeze around that when they come in and they have that delayed adolescence? What do you do with

TOM BRUETT 26:06
them? It takes so much trust. I mean, because people come in, they trust us as therapists, but they would be not wise to just automatically trust us, right? So it takes time, and it takes they’re experimenting with differentiation with me. And I think one of the powers of for thinking about individual therapy is like, it gets to be a reparative attachment relationship. And you know, when we can have that experience with a therapist and connect and like, actually heal through some of this stuff and go through the process of differentiation and allow yourself to be fully seen and taken in and cared for. I mean, personally, that was what was the most healing about my own therapeutic journey. And it’s something that I think that’s part of what I think change, how change happens in therapy.

JOE KORT 26:49
I love that. That makes a lot of sense. Can you tell people when your next round of trainings are for LGBT therapists?

TOM BRUETT 26:57
Yeah. So the next one will start in September, and it runs for nine months. I’m probably going to open the I keep it really small, so I don’t do more than 30 people, and then probably in the next like by June 15, I should have it open for people who want to sign

JOE KORT 27:12
up. That’s great. And where can they find you? They can find me@queerrelationshipinstitute.com

TOM BRUETT 27:18
and on there’s the list of all the trainings, and you can see the book and podcast stuff and everything.

JOE KORT 27:24
Me, good, all right, good. And then you’re on YouTube, Tiktok, right? Instagram,

TOM BRUETT 27:29
yeah, not as prolific as you, but you know, you have found a way to balance it all to me, and it can be kind of exhausting.

JOE KORT 27:35
I know I don’t, yeah, I have loved the marketing part of this from the day I became a therapist. So I think that’s what it is. I’m a Marketing passion, and I have a passion for the work, but I know the marketing can be exhausting to people, yeah,

TOM BRUETT 27:49
but I love it, yeah. And you’re so good at I mean, you don’t shy away from controversial topics. You really put yourself out there. And I mean that is practicing differentiation and being vulnerable.

JOE KORT 27:59
Thank you. I had a coach once say to me, you know, you’re controversial. I’m like, No, I’m not. She goes, Yes, you are like, No, I’m not. Like, we had a whole thing at the end. I was like, Oh, I guess I am. Thank you so much for acknowledging that before we stop.

TOM BRUETT 28:14
No, I’m just, I’m it’s been great to talk with you, and thanks for having me on.

JOE KORT 28:18
Yeah, thank you so much Tom for coming on the show. I’m looking forward to watching more of your work and your videos and getting people referred to your training. So thank you. You can hear more of my podcasts on smart sex, smartlove.com and you can also follow me on Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and then if you want to go to my website. It’s Joe court, J, o, e, K O, R t.com, and all of my handles everywhere is at Dr. Joe court, thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time you

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