The Unhinged Return: Baby #3, Burnout & Breaking the Perfection Trap

After an unannounced five-month hiatus, The Unhinged Father is back — and a lot has changed. In this deeply personal solo episode, Robbie shares major life updates: selling a home, navigating career shifts, and preparing for baby number three.

But more than just an update, this episode is an honest reflection on the real mental load of modern parenting and fatherhood — the struggles with depression, communication, and falling back into old patterns, even after years of growth.

Robbie explores why today’s parents, especially dads, are more stressed than ever — and how the pressure to live a “Pinterest-perfect” life on social media is wrecking our mental health and relationships.

He also talks about what it’s like trying to make new friends as a parent, how hard it is to ask for help, and why it’s okay to fall off the wagon… so long as you keep getting back on.

🧠 Topics covered include:

• Mental health and fatherhood
• Depression, anxiety, and personal setbacks
• Social media comparison & the “Instagram parent” trap
• Life updates: new baby, moving, career changes
• Coaching, parenting boys, and building real-world relationships
• Why perfection is overrated and authenticity matters more

👉 Whether you’re a dad in the thick of it or just trying to hold it all together, this episode reminds you: you’re not alone, and you don’t have to pretend to be perfect.

🔁 Share it with a fellow parent, drop a comment with your thoughts, and subscribe for more real talk every other week.

Transcript

Robert (00:00)
Hey everyone, hope you're having a great day. Hope you're having a great week. It's me, Robbie the Unhinged Father. It has been, shoot, about five months since I have done any type of podcasting whatsoever. I haven't done any shows, haven't done anything related to the podcast, nothing on Instagram. It's just been an immense amount of change within my family and a lot of things have been going on in the background that...

I'm not gonna really dive too much into all of it, but I just wanted to give you a brief overview of why I haven't been here, why I haven't been posting. And obviously for all you just huge fans out there, all three or four of you that listen to this show on a regular basis or did listen to this show on a regular basis, just kind of give you an idea on why I haven't been able to get any episodes out, haven't put any content out. And hopefully I don't think I'm gonna be able to go to one episode per week again anytime soon.

just with what we've got going on but hopefully start getting a little bit more content out there start getting episodes out so this episode probably gonna be relatively short I don't have a ton to go over today I don't have like an episode planned out I just wanted to go over what's been going on in my life and how come you haven't seen me in the last five six months

So the first thing that we've got going on is by the grace of God, we found out that we are gonna have baby number tres baby number three is on its way and will be getting here in January of 2026. So we are gonna have three kids and we've got another boy on the way. Three boys, it's gonna be chaos, gonna be crazy. I could already imagine what the food bills are gonna look like when those kids are teenagers. It is gonna be absolutely ridiculous.

I'm not looking forward to having to pay for it. Thank God I married an attorney and she can be all of our sugar mama getting us money so we get it Costco pretty hard.

on top of finding out that we were going to be.

Parents again, well, we're always parents, you know, new parents again, having a newborn coming into the world, having nights of no sleep, no rest, changing diapers. We just potty trained my two and a half year old, no more diapers for him, and we're just jumping right back into it. Poopy diapers, spit up, no sleep, looking forward to it. In all reality, I am really looking forward to it. I'm excited to have one more. The boys are excited.

going

to be a great time. But on top of having baby number three come, we also decided to sell our house a couple months back. We closed back in September, but it was a couple months of just pure stress trying to get the old house ready to show.

Having showings, having open houses, the pressures of the market, trying to find someone to buy the house. And then once we did sell the house, finding a place to live next, moving, we have accumulated a lot of shit over the years. And it was just by the

sheer willpower to get everything out of that house and into a new house into storage units. So there's been a lot of transition on that end as well. And that hasn't been really conducive to me coming on here and doing podcasting.

Plus with that, being a coach.

being a dad, increased demands at work. I've had some transition over at work and I'm now in a spot that's better for me career wise, but there is definitely more expectation on me and a lot more work that needs to be done throughout the week on top of also taking care of my kids, being the Uber lift driver that they need to and from school, to and from practices, being the coach. So there's just a lot of shit going on and I don't say this for sympathy or empathy. Everyone's got a lot of stuff going on.

I basically am just telling you what's been going on the last couple of months why I haven't been here why I haven't been posting why I haven't been consistent and ⁓ And yeah, that's really the the main reason why I haven't been here that being said I have missed Doing the podcast and having this outlet this creative outlet I've fallen off the wagon a little bit when it's come to reading to journaling and some of that morning Process that I had to start my day. It really got interrupted during these last couple of months and I'm

just

trying to slowly get back into some of those habits especially before the third kid gets here just because I think that it was good for my mental health and good for me emotionally mentally cognitively I think there was a lot of benefit to what I was doing and the things that I was putting effort into so want to get back into some of those routines

and you probably can't tell just by looking at this video here which also you know

I'm in a new office, a new space. There's boxes piled up behind me. So thank you to this recording studio for giving me this snazzy background filter so that way you don't see all the boxes behind me. But if you can't tell from this filter, over the last five, six months I've been continuing to try and eat healthier, to go and exercise, and I've been putting more of my effort into the physical aspect of my growth and development.

down yeah I'm up I'm up this past week and a half two weeks we've been eating out a little bit more just because of travel and stuff but got down to close to 240 pounds which haven't been there since

since before I was married over 13 years ago. So trying to continue to be healthier, especially as I'm gonna continue to say with the third kid on the way, just made me realize I'm gonna need to be around a lot longer. I'm gonna have to carry three kids now as opposed to carrying two. I've gotta be the strongest, fittest, most capable dad that I can possibly be. And so I'm working on doing that.

And that'll do it for the update on what's going on with me, who gives a shit, that's not why you're here. I did wanna talk a little bit about something that kind of coincides with what we've been going through, what I've been going through the past couple of months. And prior to taking this little hiatus, I had spoken a lot about.

you know, taking care of yourself, getting into different habits, reading, eating healthier, journaling, like all of these things that you can do to really focus on your own self care and make sure that you're the strongest person that you can be. And I've definitely made a huge gain still. I'm not that person I was 12 years ago where I...

had trouble taking care of myself was super lazy. Just all I really cared about was, watching TV, drinking, partying, playing video games, whatever else the fuck I did back then. I'm not back there, but I definitely fell back into some of these unhealthy habits and into some anxious and depressive

behaviors and feelings and just kind of found myself in a little bit of a rut through the past couple of months and I don't say this again for empathy or sympathy. I'm working on it. These are things that I'm that I'm continually working on but I think it's just a good reminder to remember that even if you are someone who

like me is cognizant of the fact that you can become depressive or you can become anxious and you fall into these different ruts and you're working to to attempt to get out of them and you're constantly working on yourself to become a better person, better parent, better dad, whatever it is.

Realizing that you're gonna fall back into some of these things it's impossible life happens and shit happens and You're gonna constantly struggle with these feelings not like they go away Even if you're working on it, even if you become healthier, even if you've got better habits and you've moved on

I'm not an alcoholic and I don't pretend to know what it's like, but I can only imagine that it's similar to someone who's overcome being an alcoholic, that it's a struggle that you're constantly going to have to work on. And God forbid you fall back, you know, you fall off the wagon, you have a drink, you fall into depressive or anxious thought patterns. You don't do your journaling. You don't read. just kind of

withdraw within yourself, you can get back on the wagon. You can get back on. That's kind of where I'm at right now. It's been a whirlwind last five months and I did fall off the wagon in certain aspects of my life. Not everywhere. Like I said, it wasn't a complete regression. And so I don't want to sit here and just be like, the world is ending and I've completely regressed back and I'm starting from step one. I'm not starting from step one. I'm starting

miles ahead of where I was before, but I did take a step back and that's okay. That's gonna happen. The bigger thing or the more important thing is to acknowledge that, give yourself a little bit of grace and know that it's normal to fall off of the wagon once in a while. It's normal to have setbacks. If you're not, then it's fake. It's not real.

There's no way that no one's that perfect where they never fall off the wagon where they don't have any issues So maybe just you know if you're in the same spot that I'm in You've struggled with some of these things you've fallen off the wagon you're stressed you're depressed just Take it as a way to be like I'm real. You know this is normal

I'm a normal dad, I'm a normal person, normal parent, and I'm authentic. This is authentically what's happening to me, and I'm not gonna just sit here and try to push it down or pretend that it's not happening.

which is something that I've kind of seen a little bit more of lately, and this is actually something I wanted to talk about as well, kind of pulls me into our next conversation, I guess you would call it, but.

I've noticed that it seems like parents are more stressed out nowadays than they used to be. And in my mind, the way I think about it is that...

Is parenting really much more stressful than it was before? the stressors bigger? the things is society worse off? Is economics worse? And yeah, in some aspects it might be, but I think overall the things stay the same more than they don't, right? Maybe parents are trying harder to be better parents and dads are trying to be more involved, which is a good thing. But in terms of like the overall stresses of society and all of that stuff, like I think a lot of times it's more

similar

than it was before. One of the things that's really changed though is just the expectation that people have now and like everyone's got to have perfect matching Christmas pajamas. Everyone's got to have.

you know, the Christmas photos, everyone's gotta have maternity photos, everyone's gotta have all of these experiences for their kids to have, everyone's gotta have, everything's gotta be perfect, everything's gotta be Pinterest perfect. We've come to this point in society where parents are trying to be Pinterest perfect, Instagram perfect, everything needs to be.

in this ideal situation and everyone's comparing to everyone else it's like look at those pictures those are cute when the past they're probably like those cute christmas pictures those are awesome now it's like people look at that and say look at those christmas pictures those are cute what a bitch i can't believe she got those done before i got them done or they're way better than mine instagram social media everything is really created not only

this Pinterest society that feels like everything needs to be like perfect DIY, cute, whatever, but also just this society that's fixated on comparison. And comparison is a killer in everything, in relationships, in sports, in school. You can start to compare yourself to other people, and you fuck up your own progress.

So that's just something that I've kind of been noticing as well. And I've actually, took some time off from social media, which really actually helped quite a bit. And I've come to realize that there's a big difference between the real world and the social media world. Now they're blending more and more together as people spend more time in the virtual world. But...

As I've said on previous episodes, do think that this diving into the virtual world is causing a lot of issues. Not that it's inherently bad or not that we're not going down that route. Like there's gonna be more and more virtual whatever. I don't even know. I'm not even sure what they're gonna come up with next, but I'm sure that there's gonna be more life that's spent in the virtual world. I think our jobs as parents,

and as people is to try and stay rooted in the real world as much as we possibly can and to utilize the virtual world for what it is as a tool, but realize that the real world is where we live. The real world is where things get done and this is where we're meant to be as opposed to just living life in the virtual world.

On top of that, this is the last thing I'm gonna touch upon in this episode. Like I said, there wasn't really like a huge plan for this. I just wanted to get something out there. It's been a long time. I wanted to get something recorded, wanted to get it out there and put up. This is probably a dog shit episode and I apologize if you don't get a lot out of it, but.

Like I said, for me, I just wanted to get something else, something out there, something posted, get me back on this track of having some sort of creative outlook because I do feel like some of these ideas are almost like blocked in my head and I've had like a ⁓ block of, like a writer's block, but like a creative block and I've noticed it in certain areas of my life. But the last thing I was gonna mention is that,

My son's been doing soccer, I've been coaching, he's in school now, I'm talking more to the parents, I'm trying to look less like a dick and more approachable and to be nicer to people, which is very difficult for me. But.

I've been trying to do this and one thing that's really come up is like I used to be really good at making friends when I was in college. It was so easy. I go to a bar. I was friendly, outgoing. I made friends relatively easy and now as parents it is so hard to make friends and it's so awkward. You have to like put yourself out there but also try not to be like too clingy or like too weird. It's been difficult and I'm trying to do it.

For my sake, for my wife's sake, and for our kids' sake, because I want to be able to get to a point where my kids have friends, we go hang out with their family, barbecues, all the good stuff, make barbecue culture great again, all that stuff. But it is difficult. Making friends as parents is difficult. It's awkward.

but I'm willing to put myself on the line to do it and hopefully it turns out for the best. I'll keep you guys updated to see if I am able to make friends now as an almost 38 year old. But Matt is gonna do it for this week's.

Episode this return episode. Hope that you somewhat enjoyed it. Like I said, I know that this wasn't really a Very well thought out episode. I didn't really have a ton of things to dive into Not a ton of insight just mostly an update on where I'm at Where I hope that the podcast will continue to go. Hopefully you'll start to see more episodes come out Like I said, I doubt that it'll be weekly. It is gonna be very difficult to do that But hopefully one every two weeks or so until I get into a good rhythm and who knows maybe I'll build

up couple of episodes and we'll be able to get back to releasing one per week. as always, I hope that everyone has a good rest of the day. If there's anything you want to hear me talk about or rant about or you want my ideas on it, just feel free, shoot me an email, shoot me a message on Instagram, message on this platform, whatever it is, and I will try to get to it. But have a great rest of the day. Have a good rest of week and talk to you all soon.