We’ve reached the point of examining the outright misogynists of the Manosphere, and frankly, I need to take the weekend off.

I also think we all could use not thinking about men, masculinity, misogyny and all of the other issues modern society is facing in helping the genders better understand each other and support each other’s growth and flourishing.

So I recorded a short message designed to bridge us to next Sunday instead of publishing my usual weekly essay.

To all who celebrate: Happy Easter. Chag Sameach.

May this holiday season be one of renewal — and rebirth to the better people we all strive to be.

Thanks for reading Mindful Masculinity! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Richard Reeves is well ensconced in Gen X

Fellow Substacker Jai Benson represents Gen Z, estimated to be the largest generation in global history.

Yet while, Boomers and Xers dominate the conversation about boys and men today, so infrequently do we hear from voices like Jai’s.

That’s why I made certain to grab about an hour with Jai to hear about what his challenges and lived experiences feel like, what he sees in the men of his generation.

In this episode of the Mindful Masculinity podcast, Jai and I cover a lot of ground, including:

* Whether his generation feels like men feel empathy from the world for some of their unique income and relationship challenges

* Whether “The Manosphere” is real, or a moral panic

* The struggles men face navigating life with old scripts about what it means to be a man

* The importance of acknowledging women’s issues when talking about men

I hope you join Jai and I in this conversation. And if you know other young men interested in talking about masculinity, please forward this episode to them and ask them if they would be interested in contacting me.

Thanks for reading Mindful Masculinity! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I am incredibly grateful to Jai for taking the time out of his life to share his thoughts with all of us. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Paying close attention to interviewers like Chris Williamson, it becomes fairly easy to notice how they regularly frame discussions about men around women and femininity.

I guess some of it is necessary. You can’t talk about heterosexual sex or relationships without including the female half of the equation.

But I can’t help but feel like there’s a subtext of some kind in what they say and how they say it that belies a deeper reason for why men fail to move from their “role self” to a “whole self.”

In his October 2025 interview with Scott Galloway, The War On Men Isn’t Helping Anyone, Williamson starts off the conversation by asking Galloway about his April 2025 BBC interview, “Young Men Are Struggling. What does this mean for young women?”

(Funny enough, I covered this same interview last June: Repackaging the Patriarchy.)

“This ‘men struggling, women most affected’ framing is wild to me. Does that irritate you in the same way as it does me to have to do this weird sort of land acknowledgement to the challenges that women face, even as we’re talking about the problems that men are facing?”

I think it’s healthy that Williamson is trying to examine why discussions about men’s struggles require a framing that includes women. (Oh s**t. Is that a male land acknowledgement?)

Where Williamson and I diverge is that I’m not irritated by the “land acknowledgements.” I look forward to the day of equality where we won’t need them. But for now, I simply acknowledge them (wink wink), and focus on the substance of conversations.

In fact, Galloway hits the mark with his initial response to Williamson, describing land acknowledgements as “productive” because they frame men’s struggles “as a societal problem.”

What betrays Williamson’s frame of mind, and why he sits on the slope downward and to the right of Mindful Masculinity’s Bell Curve of Male Suffering Voices, is his persistent visceral irritation.

Williamson describes himself as “just so sick of this land acknowledgement thing where we have to prostrate ourselves.”

Prostrate… or prostate Chris? ‘Cause it sounds like something’s gotten up your ass.

Where people like Justin Baldoni, Terry Real and Michael Kimmel lionize females at the expense of men, voices like Williamson’s seem to harbor only the thinnest of veils of female resentment.

You see this later on in the interview when Williamson talks about his theory of the “soft bigotry of male expectations,” begun when he read about a study that challenged the findings of a separate and earlier study of male and female roles in prehistoric big game hunting.

According to Williamson, the data from the original study, which presented a theory that women performed as much big game hunting as men, “had been fucked with an awful lot.”

“…there was loads of s**t in the data. One hunt was counted the same… It didn’t count the number of times that that happened. So a man could have gone out on 50 hunts a year and the woman went on one, a woman went on one and they were counted as one and one. It also didn’t count what the women were hunting in terms of how big was the game, etc., etc.”

According to Williamson, the second study made it “obvious” that the first study was trying to “put forward women as being able to do the thing that the men did, just as well as the men.”

Just spit balling here Chris — if that data was accurate, so the f**k what?

Williamson labored on and on about this big game study as if the whole reason men are struggling today relied on the findings. After winding himself up, he wound his argument down with a rambling, non-sequitur about unhappy childless women.

“It seems like eight in ten childless women didn’t intend to be childless. This is Stephen Shaw’s work. F*****g four in five. And there’s groups of grieving. These women grieve families they never had. And so there are some, there’s one in five, whatever it is, that ‘I’ve made this decision and that was my choice.’ So on and so forth. That means that if you want to be a mom, how do you take pride in that?”

WTAF?

I’ve read Shaw’s work, including his August 2025 paper, “On a microdemographic framework for decomposing contemporary fertility dynamics.”

A mouthful, right?

The demographic data Shaw used does not support Williamson’s statement that eight in ten childless women didn’t intend to be childless.

Now, how Williamson conflates that data does demonstrate a lot about Williamson’s agenda.

When Williamson says, “eight in ten childless women didn’t intend to be childless,” he knows how listeners might interpret that.

“Most women who thought they didn’t want children regret it, so make babies with guys if you want to be happy.”

(My interpretation. Not a Williamson quote.)

And that of course will make some women anxious about not conforming to male breadwinner/female homemaker norms.

But most studies show that only a small minority of women who choose not to have children ever regret their choice. And guess what. The majority of women who do regret being childless are involuntarily childless due to reasons like infertility, a lack of a partner, health issues and economic factors.

Framing female regret about being childless this way is so manipulative.

It’s why I can’t accept Williamson as an honest interlocutor on the topic of masculinity. He favors traditional gender roles and he’s uncomfortable with men and women having the same opportunity and choices to be who and what they want to be.

But why?

What I struggled to understand about all of this irritation and fuckery was why? Why does Williamson need to contort himself this way?

Where I landed was this. Williamson struggles to structure a masculine identity that is indispensable to society, and he shudders on the steps of the Temple of the Female Womb.

Where are you headed on the curve?

The whole idea of this Bell Curve of Male Suffering voices was intended to help men like you think about who you seek out for advice on being a man, what biases that speaker may have, and where that speaker may be leading you to.

I’ve watched about 50 hours of Chris Williamson’s podcasts and seen dozens of his video shorts. What I see is someone who is clearly well-read, intelligent, able to capture lots of data in his head and rapidly retrieve that data for soundbites that resonate.

But I also see someone with an ideological bent.

If male listeners aren’t mindfully careful, Podcast Bros like Williamson can lead them further down the righthand side of this bell curve, landing them in the hands of outright misogynists — men who struggle deeply with a healthy approach to masculinity.

The journey goes something like this:

The Gateway: “Relatable” Grievances

A man’s descent to misogyny often starts with some kind of personal frustration —perhaps a difficult breakup, a series of rejections, or a feeling of being overlooked in social hierarchies. At this stage, the result is likely to be mild resentment and/or a sense of unfairness.

The Algorithmic Rabbit Hole

This is where platforms like YouTube or TikTok can inflate the sentiment. A man might start watching “self-improvement” or “dating advice” podcasts that seem perfectly fair and intelligent, and not notice that he’s being desensitized to increasingly hostile language.

Cognitive Distortion and “Othering”

As his resentment and beliefs solidify, he moves from “I am frustrated” to “They are the problem.” Confirmation bias and generalizations take over, and it is easier for this man to see women no longer as complex and varied individuals, but as a monolithic “other.”

The Hardened Ideology (Misogyny)

At the end of the pipeline, the resentment crystallizes into a formal worldview. In communities like the Manosphere this is often reinforced by theories like evolutionary psychology, confirming roles that give a man a sense of dominant stability. At this stage, a man may feel a sense of righteous anger or superiority, which makes the ideology very difficult to dismantle.

If the Podcast Bro you listen to finds it irritating to be conscious of how society treats women or thinks that anthropological studies of prehistoric humans somehow determine what it means to be a man today, take a deep breath and ask yourself why that might be the case.

If the answer you come back with has a strong odor of grievance or righteous anger, maybe its time you unsubscribe.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. Why not subscribe to us instead to receive new posts and support our work to help men lead more fulfilling lives.

In hockey parlance, it was a cheap shot. And now it was my job to show my teammates and the other team that we had his back.

My defensive pairing was brought out as the opposing player’s penalty was ending, and I made certain I was close to the penalty box as he exited. I jammed him with my body, hooked him tight with my stick to tie him up and provoked him further.

The rest of the ugliness unfolded as it had on hockey rinks throughout North America for decades. We both received five minutes for fighting and I was sent off the ice for the rest of the game AND received a three-game suspension.

I wasn’t proud of what I did. I was a 15-year-old in a 5’9” 170-pound frame, with an undeveloped set of morals.

I took no joy from what I did.

But I knew I was obligated to uphold “The Code,” especially since I was the second largest player on our team.

The tradition of retribution for a cheap shot — an illegal, dangerous, dirty hit — is deeply ingrained in ice hockey culture, an unwritten rule designed to help self-police the game.

When a player delivers a dangerous hit, opponents often retaliate immediately, usually through fighting or a physical confrontation, to defend teammates and deter any further incidents governed by “The Code.”

The rationale is that if the on-ice officials don’t sufficiently punish a dangerous act, the players must take matters into their own hands to protect one another. In a fast-paced, physical, high-contact sport like hockey, it’s important the other team at the very least thinks before they try something stupid.

I was raised fully aware that absolutely no one takes a cheap shot at your teammates without there being consequences.

Just moments after their stunning overtime victory against the Canadiens on Sunday, the U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey team failed to uphold this code when they let someone take a cheap shot at the Women’s Olympic team.

Celebrating in the locker room, they took a cellphone call from the president of the United States, who joked that he would “have to” invite the women’s team to the White House, because if he didn’t, he’d “probably be impeached.” The Women’s team had won gold two days earlier, against their Canadian archrivals in another stunning victory.

The men’s team laughed at the joke.

Adding insult to injury, Florida Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk removed his own gold medal and placed it around the neck of FBI Director Kash Patel.

Patel, of course, has not only failed to pursue the sexual predators identified in the Epstein files, he has attempted to turn the American public’s eyes away from it, telling Congress “there is nothing to see here,” after making the Epstein files a singular point of focus during his pre-FBI podcast career.

Over the more than 100 years since the winter Olympics included ice hockey, the U.S. men have won three gold medals, eight silver, and a bronze. Women’s hockey has only been around in the Olympics since 1998. During that time, the American women’s national team has won three gold, four silver, and a bronze.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty impressive Olympics performance, especially since, like the men’s team, the American women’s program has faced a similarly dominant Canadian women’s team.

All of the U.S. men’s team members are very much aware of “The Code,” especially Matthew Tkachuk, known in the NHL as one of its nastiest players.

During Game 4 of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Tkachuk cross-checked Bruins forward Garnet Hathaway in his unprotected ribs after the first period buzzer had sounded, causing Hathaway to stay down for a few minutes before finally skating off the ice to the locker room.

Tkachuk received a two-minute penalty, and the Bruins used that penalty to score a goal in the second period. Early in the second period, Tkachuk also took a thundering hit from the Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy, a message from the Bruins bench.

This week, the men’s team had one more chance to redeem themselves — by not showing up at the White House to be used as propaganda for an administration that is leading the charge to remove women’s rights in America.

They could have shown this administration and the American public that taking a cheap shot at women isn’t acceptable, by politely declining. Apparently, five American hockey Olympians were not in attendance at the White House celebration, though we don’t know why. As of this writing, none of the American Olympians have openly spoken against the insult directed at their Olympic teammates.

(Yes. They are teammates, literally and figuratively.)

While sending a message to the opposition that “a cheap shot will be answered” sometimes can be a deterrent to dangerous play on ice, I always thought the more important message was to my teammates.

“I’ve got your back.”

I was tapped on the shoulder more times than I can remember in the seven years I played hockey, before hanging up my skates when I turned 21. I fought and was suspended three times. Most times, I threw some kind of aggressive body check to send a message.

My teammates knew I had their back because I would take the risk of being harmed.

In Scott Galloway’s terms, that’s called being a “Protector.”

The U.S. Men’s Hockey team was tapped on the shoulder this week, and they failed to answer the call. They failed to show their teammates and women across this country that “I’ve got your back.”

As men and as hockey players, they should be ashamed of themselves.

NOTE: I will be taking this Sunday off from the usual weekly Mindful Masculinity newsletter. We’ll be back the following Sunday.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

During his February 5, 2026, episode of the Prof G Podcast, Galloway called dads “a waste of time or space” in a newborn’s life and warned men away from delivery rooms because they’re “disgusting and unnatural.”

Now… I strive for equanimity in most aspects of my life. But listening to that episode, my inner Buddha sat cross-legged under the Bodhi tree, took a long, deep breath… and expelled:

“What an a*****e.”

When people like Galloway use their privilege to espouse limiting and false gender beliefs, the box trapping men with unhealthy masculine roles grows more claustrophobic.

At stake is the potential for men to grow into broader and deeper humans, capable of enjoying the fullness of life. Fathers listening to Galloway run an extra risk of missing the chance to develop profound and meaningful relationships with their children.

So here’s me extending a big “F**k You” to Galloway’s view of fatherhood.

Sorry Siddhartha. I know. “Samma Vaca.”

Galloway spewed his b******t at the beginning of the episode after the writer Derek Thompson opened by talking about how the interview marked the precise end of a two-month paternity leave that Thompson took to be with his second child, born in early December.

At Galloway’s request, Thompson described the first few weeks of early fatherhood. He called it “a very strange thing, in that you are not biologically necessary to the survival of the child.”

According to Thompson, not being able to breastfeed his newborn created a juxtaposition of emotions and experience.

“…it’s interesting because you are simultaneously so involved, enmeshed in this young human’s existence, that you love, and also your necessity is like a little bit secondary because… your job is to be the perfect life sustaining deputy to your wife.”

On the Bell Curve of Male Suffering Voices, describing newborn fatherhood as the “sustaining deputy” role would place Thompson at the top, precariously sliding rightward towards Galloway, where Scott waits to deliver a sharp and traditionally masculine critique of men as nurturers.

“… I think dads are mostly a waste of time or space,” Galloway began, adding, “I’ll go much further than two months… I think it’s basically, the baby is a science experiment and we’re there to be supportive of our partner who is you know obviously instrumental.”

After Thompson and he debated paternity leave, Galloway offered this unsolicited advice about the first few years of fatherhood:

“… the bad news is it just sucks for the dad. We pretend to like it. I think dads are full of s**t when they say they like babies. They’re awful. Your job is just to make sure mom doesn’t lose her s**t and get some sleep, and keep the baby away from bodies of water. That is literally your only two jobs right now, are the only two things that you’re any good at.”

When a child reaches their twos and threes, Galloway said, “it starts to get less awful. And then by four or five it almost becomes fun. It gets better and better. Anyways, there’s my parenting advice. Gets less awful every day.”

What the f**k Scott?

Speaking from the personal experience of nurturing three newborns, I couldn’t disagree more. Some of the happiest moments of my life were those quiet times with one of my newborns, cradling them on my chest while lying on the couch, drawing their bath and spending 30 minutes with them splashing and getting clean.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

Back in April 2025, I wrote about the power of men to be a part of their young children’s lives in my Substack, Real Men Don’t Push Strollers. In the essay, I talked about The Brooklyn Stroll Club, featured a few days earlier in a New York Times article.

I quoted two men who posted in the comments section:

KF2, from Newark Valley, NY wrote about how he was a stay-at-home dad in the early 1980’s. “You have no idea what comments I received... all suggesting a father caring for his child was somehow undesirable or bizarre. I’m glad I’ve lived long enough to see how times have changed and fathers no longer have to be defensive about their parenting. Seeing these dads enjoy their children brings back my most joyful memories.”

And this from Sobremesa: “Be the change you want to see. I had a hands-on dad, and it changed both our lives for the better. May this spread to communities everywhere.”

Men are radically changing beliefs about men, and proving it every day with thoughtful, heart-filled parenting.

(NOTE: In an email to the New York Times writer Jessica Grose, Galloway walked back his comments as “intentionally provocative in the context of a friendly/snarky conversation.” I call b******t based on similar comments Galloway wrote in his book, Notes on Being a Man, his recent interviews about men, and his inability to connect with guests at an Oprah Winfrey event supporting his book.)

In the same Derek Thompson interview, Galloway tells a story about how he asked his 15-year-old, “What value are you adding to this family or back to your school?” and then responding to his son’s answer that it was sufficient for Galloway to approve of continuing to finance his son’s privileged lifestyle.

Wonderful way to demonstrate unconditional love Scott.

Galloway capped off his podcast stupidity with his assessment of men in delivery rooms.

“I’m a bit I think more of a 50s dad… I don’t even believe men should be in the delivery room. I thought that was so disgusting and unnatural. I wanted them to bring me a baby with a bow, and while I smoked a cigarette.”

Maybe Galloway should have listened to Thompson when he talked about how he was surprised to learn with his first child “an enormous upsurge of instinct for how to parent my child.”

Thompson said:

“And I love that. I love discovering a new piece of myself in parenting. And so as secondary… I do think it’s really important for us to lean in both to help our partners and to discover that part of ourselves that I think really is there to be discovered, that is inscribed by evolution and by little genes that are waiting to be acted on by our interactions with our little babies.”

What Thompson has discovered through his personal experience is what researchers have discovered through years of studying newborn mothers and fathers — that men are fully capable of both being nurturing parents and growing as compassionate and feeling humans from the experience of raising newborns.

Peer-reviewed research suggests that caring for a newborn can deliver real emotional and psychological benefits to fathers — especially when the care involves nurturing, mother-coded stuff (e.g. skin-to-skin, soothing, feeding support, calm presence).

As a newborn learns over time that “this specific person (mom or dad) responds when I cry,” they develop a sense of “relational health,” which can lead to more empathetic toddlers who are better at regulating their emotions, and more successful in social settings like preschool.

A father who becomes a reliable source of calm, warmth, and predictable responsiveness helps tune his newborn for stress regulation, attachment and sleep organization. And some of those effects show up as father-unique associations (e.g., cortisol regulation), rather than being redundant with mom.

It’s ironic to me that Scott Galloway repeatedly wants society to stop “pathologizing” the male libido but he openly flirts with “pathologizing” sensitive, engaged fathers of newborns.

I guess Galloway wants all of the fun of the sex act but not the responsibility and emotional labor after the act produces a new life.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Men love love. A lot.

Most couples research shows that heterosexual men are the first to say “I love you” in their relationships. I think there’s a connection from that to the long history of men penning touching love songs — like John Legend did when he composed “All of Me,” co-written with Toby Gad.

As the country once again celebrates Valentine’s Day, I thought it might be helpful to step back from Mindful Masculinity’s series on the Voices of Male Suffering to spend some time thinking about men and love, and how we can suffer less by loving smarter.

Loving smarter, to me, means loving with greater self-awareness.

It doesn’t surprise me that Legend was capable of writing “All of You.” In interviews, he often talks about mindfulness and how it helps him be a better husband, father and friend.

During tours, Legend prioritizes self-care, including meditating, stretching, and napping to stay “present and available” for his family. The Headspace app made him their Chief Music Officer in 2020, curating sleep music, meditation tracks, and mindfulness content.

With a consistent practice of mindfulness, a man can build a wellspring of emotional intelligence that provides him with the instinctive behaviors of a great partner, someone who can experience and express love at its richest levels.

A mindful man learns how to identify his emotions and channel them into being a supporting, loving human. He builds a source of power to be more accepting, more attuned to his partner’s feelings, and less reactive to the situations that all relationships present over time.

He becomes more whole as a person, capable of seeing his partner as a whole person too.

The Curves

When we first find ourselves experiencing a physical reaction to someone new, someone with whom we share connections and feel connected, it’s easy to become drunk on the mesmerizing cocktail our bodies mix — dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol.

This infatuation cocktail can temporarily blind us to our own biases, to what we want to see in another person. And it only gets stronger as we participate in novel activities with them and learn new things about them.

These are the Curves Legend sings about, the enticing soft spots of a woman’s personality that cause us to feel manly, to react with a joyful ease, to feel warm and comforted.

“I love how she laughs at my jokes.”

“I replay that song that reminds me of her.”

“My heartbeat surges when her name appears on my phone.”

Mindful men don’t suppress these thoughts and feelings, but they also don’t inflate them and idealize our partner.

They observe:

“I’m attracted to her. This feeling is real. It’s a feeling. It is not yet a conclusion.”

They think:

“Why am I attracted to her? Am I rebounding from someone else? Does she fill a lonely space? Am I more interested in sex than an emotional connection?”

Developing a higher self-awareness creates legendary love affairs because it helps a man interpret his internal physical state — something called interoception — to better understand why he has loving feelings for a certain person, and why he loves at all.

These are the thoughts that arise in me when I listen to the lyrics of John Legend’s song, written for his then girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife Chrissy Teigen. It’s a song about a man trying to see the full profile of a woman he thinks he loves, and Legend talked about it in a 2025 interview with Angie Martinez on her IRL Podcast.

He discussed how his relationship with Teigen evolved from something that initially was “physical,” with “great chemistry.”

“That’s a good foundation to start with,” Legend said. “But you also have to be mindful, and you have to work on yourself, and work on whatever your bad habits are, and your bad relationship habits are.”

The Edges

How wonderful that Legend and Gad start off their love song with two seemingly less than loving lines:

“What would I do without your smart mouth?Drawing me in, and you kicking me out.”

What Legend is describing is what too many men don’t work at, understanding the things about their partner and themselves that power triggering reactions like anger, arguments and withdrawal, which often spiral into “she’s not right for me” thoughts.

Higher self-clarity gives us the ability to see and accept a partner’s edges because we are attuned to our own.

(NOTE: Saying something harsh in the heat of an argument can be mean but does not necessarily make someone a mean person. Every human slips up. However, you should NOT tolerate a persistent meanness or poor behavior from a partner. Look for patterns that consistently impact the sense that you feel loved, seen and heard.)

If you have “worked on yourself” through a mindfulness practice, what emerges is someone who is more kind and more forgiving, because you have come to understand human nature and how emotions rise and fall in moments.

So, when a partner who is genuinely kind and good natured loses their s**t with you, you understand, “That moment really triggered them.”

Mindful love is generous with how it perceives reality. That generosity changes the climate of the relationship because you’re not operating under illusions about yourself or the other person. You have learned to love someone because they wouldn’t be the specific person they are without their edges.

In more Legendary terms it’s saying: “I know your flaws and I hold your worth steady.”

🌹Every rose has its thorns 🌹

Every man who is serious about finding a legendary love needs to have at least these three tools in his relationship toolbox:

* Decentering: The ability to discern which of your partner’s words and actions are “events” that are happening, rather than immutable “facts” about their character. Decentering helps you realize “I’m feeling angry” and not “My partner is a bad person.”

* Interoception: Increased awareness of your internal sensations. Being able to sense that your heart is beating faster and your jaw is clenching helps you avoid saying or doing something you will regret, versus something thoughtful that helps you and your partner grow.

* Response flexibility: A mindful approach to creating a gap between a stimulus and your response, like choosing to ask your partner a question about what they said or did, instead of making a defensive accusation.

One of the greatest benefits my relationships have gained from my mindfulness practice is that I no longer “idealize” the woman I love. She’s a human to me, with all of the curves — physical and otherwise 😉 — and edges that make her so uniquely beautiful and wondrous to me.

I wouldn’t want her any other way, because then she wouldn’t be her. I would be invalidating the person she is and wanting her to be someone different.

I’m a happier and better person because when she isn’t some “ideal” version of humanity, I’m not disappointed or aggrieved. If anything, I see her more as the “ideal person” because she embodies the fullness of what it means to be a human.

Longitudinal work with heterosexual newlyweds finds that how people compare their partner to their “ideal standards” interacts with acceptance and satisfaction over time. The more that a partner ticks off “ideal mismatch” on their relationship scoreboard, without acceptance, the more trouble couples tend to have.

Legendary love affairs become a lyrical lifetime soundtrack when disappointment transforms from contempt and correction, to understanding and compassion.

We don’t stop purchasing Valentine’s Day roses just because the stems have thorns. The edges in our partner’s personality are no different. We’re just mindful of the arrangement.

Wishing you the happiest of 💝Valentine’s Days 💝, however you choose to celebrate it.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

So many people choose to look at this time of year as an opportunity to set new goals for their lives, personally and professionally.

I asked Damon Mitchell, author of the Substack Tolerance of Men, coach and moderator of a men’s group, and the owner of Intentionalize My Life, to chat with me about intentions — including:

* what is the difference between an intention and a goal?

* how can we determine what our intentions are, including what emotional and mental tools are required?

* does it take desperation to uncover your intentions?

* and finally, does uncovering your intentions matter?

I personally believe that living an Intentional Life is a better path for me than setting goals. Goals and intentions go hand in hand, but reaching my goals has always required my having a strong belief that they were aligned with who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to be him.

I’m curious to hear about your experience, so please let me know what you think about goals, intentions, purpose — all of that good stuff that helps move our life along.

And please consider sharing this talk with someone whom you feel might benefit from thinking about goals and intentions.

NOTE: In this episode, I talk about an occasion during my adult life where I considered suicide as a goal. I brought that up in this conversation with Damon because men are four times as likely as women to commit suicide. We too often see ending our lives as a better outcome than enduring our present situation.

I personally believe that the evening when I considered taking my life, it was my focusing on my intentions that helped pull me out of my spiral into that unfathomable darkness, and I talk about those moments in this podcast.

Please pass over that portion of the discussion if you find that topic too difficult.

My deepest thanks to Damon for being such a great friend and supporter of Mindful Masculinity. And my sincere gratitude to all of my subscribers, contributors, podcast guests and commenters who intentionally participated in the growth of this community in 2025.

I wish you the Happiest and Most Intentional of New Year’s wishes.

The very best to you and yours in 2026.

Some people call these New Year’s Resolutions.

With my guest Damon Mitchell, men’s coach and author of the Tolerance of Men Substack, we try to uncover the strategies that best motivate someone to achieving their goals, whatever they call them, with a focus on the role that intentions play in helping someone set reasonable goals and stay on track to achieve them.

In this segment, Damon talks about his experience working with men and their intentions and how men sometimes react to the question: “What are your intentions?”

Come join Damon and I New Year’s Eve morning for the full conversation.

Even if you’re not into New Year’s resolutions, we dig into human nature, masculine strengths and weaknesses in this space, and provide some moments in our own lived experiences where intentions changed our trajectory.

What rarely if ever gets spoken is that this would be the 4th or 5th “crisis” American men have faced in the last 50 years. Neither do these conversations focus on how the latest forms of male suffering are exactly the same problems men have faced in every single one of these crises.

In this deeply personal and vulnerable discussion I have with Stephen Bradford Long, we try to get to the heart of why men are suffering.

Please join the conversation by sharing your thoughts about why men suffer. I promise to reply to every comment. And let us know about other interview subjects and other topics you would like us to cover in future interviews.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The average man will spend more time on Thanksgiving consuming the day’s abundance than contributing to it. I’m sorry. The facts are what they are. We men are, on average, more self-valuing and selfish than women, the result of a combination of biology (higher testosterone levels) and socialization.

Men have the power to counter the effects of this combination through intentional and repetitive acts of giving to others. The human brain is wired that way, and when you understand its neurochemical mechanics, you open up a brighter and more fulfilling world.

My Thanksgiving of 2012 makes me certain of that.

I woke up the morning of October 30 in my Hudson Valley home to learn that Hurricane Sandy had flooded New York City’s streets, tunnels and subway lines, while downing trees everywhere and cutting power all over the city.

There were reports of dozens of fatalities and concerns were spreading that the breadth of the destruction would leave whole communities to live in brutal conditions for months.

I had been laid off a year earlier and wasn’t getting many interview offers. The constant stream of rejections were hollowing out my manhood. I was my family’s sole breadwinner and had grown up taught to believe that a man measured his worth by how well he provided for his family.

At the time, I was a very active member of my Catholic parish, St. Patrick’s in Highland Mills, NY. So when our religious ed director arranged for us to collect and donate food and water…

… children’s goods and clothing, to a sister parish on Staten Island, and a nearby neighborhood, I pitched in.

The November 10th drive was a huge success. (Watch the video here.)

I was so touched by the decency of my fellow parishioners and the gratitude of the recipients of our gifts. I started making plans to volunteer again.

This time I would work with Occupy Sandy, a grassroots organization that had jumped in to meet the immediate needs of tens of thousands of newly homeless, filling the gaps that FEMA, the Red Cross and other organizations simply didn’t have the speed to serve.

A few days later, a friend of mine and I were at Occupy Sandy’s central aid distribution center located in a large downtown Brooklyn church.

We unloaded trucks, organized a wide assortment of donations — including food, clothing, generators — and loaded trucks delivering aid to communities in the worst affected areas.

That afternoon, we canvassed Coney Island, trying to reach elderly shut-ins living in apartment buildings that had no electricity, heat or elevators.

That visceral shift from “I’m useless right now” to “I am needed” lifted my unemployed, non-providing spirit. My heart was cracked open, emptied physically but full spiritually.

My then 16-year-old daughter wanted to follow in my footsteps and asked to volunteer with me the day before Thanksgiving. I had already decided that after seeing the devastation firsthand, it would be hard for me, someone who loved Thanksgiving more than any other holiday, to look forward to celebrating that year.

So I planned with my family to go with my daughter, then stay behind to work at a church cooking and preparing meals for thousands on Thanksgiving Day. It would be the first time in my life that I would not be celebrating Thanksgiving with at least one family member.

At sunrise Thanksgiving morning, I headed down to the foot of the Verrazano Bridge, arriving at the church around 6:30. It was already abuzz.

A group of professional chefs were firing up stovetops and ovens in the church’s industrial kitchen, while thousands of pounds of ingredients stacked throughout the main church hall waited to be transformed into thousands of Thanksgiving blessings.

That day was an eight-hour dopamine high. The main chef organizing everything took me on as his second-in-command.

He handed me orders based on what was needed to enter the kitchen next, and I worked with the rest of the team keeping this amazing assembly line humming.

Everything, from the smell of roasting turkeys, skillet cooked shrimp and vegetables, the sight of people from all walks of life doing the humble, quiet, joyful work of chopping, ladling, carrying and packaging trays, made me feel more at home than any family Thanksgiving table I had ever sat at.

As the sun began to set outside the church, and the last meals were packed up in autos and trucks, and on their way, the volunteers, most of us total strangers until that day, began to hug each other.

Some of us introduced ourselves for the first time, teary-eyed and overcome by the magnitude of what we had shared that day.

It was the best Thanksgiving of my life — I think because it was both mine and not mine at all. This is the lesson I think more men need to learn.

Our brains are wired for connection and altruism. Moments like what I experienced flood our brains with our natural feel-good drugs — dopamine and oxytocin — that are the perfect antidote for men big on self-valuing and low on selflessness, warmth and emotional awareness.

Thanksgiving 2012 lit up a new default configuration — agency in service and a useful tolerance for discomfort (the November cold, and missing my favorite holiday).

Purpose dragged my emotional life into the room before my default masculine personality had a chance to talk me out of it.

As you approach this wonderful day of abundance and this season of giving, let me leave you with five ways you can step into gratitude as a new or enhanced default masculinity:

* Trade one hour of consumption for one hour of contribution.

* All it takes is asking: “What can I do to help?”

* Involve the next generation.

* If you are a father or father figure, invite a child to serve alongside you. Let them see you in the kitchen, or in the muck, not just on the couch.

* Use your “male” traits for connection, not escape.

* Men are risk takers. Overcome your lack of knowledge about a task and volunteer anyway — with a heart open to screwing up and learning.

* Host with your hands and your words.

* If you have a home to gather in, take responsibility for some of the load: cooking, cleanup, or making sure the quieter people are seen and thanked.

* Ask one question that costs you nothing and gives someone everything.

* To a relative, neighbor, or stranger: “What are you carrying this year?” and listen. This is how high-armor men practice dropping the shield a little.

I hope this Thanksgiving is one that cracks open your heart in a new and unexpected way that helps you feel that rush of giving a part of yourself to others.

To you and yours, a very Happy and Thankful Day.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Other than eschewing eating meat so as to prevent the suffering of another being, I wonder how the Buddha would have participated in a modern Thanksgiving celebration.

What would he say about grand feasts and the gathering of friends and family? Would he have appreciated the fact that people set aside a specific Thursday in November to intentionally try to be grateful?

For men, I think the Buddha would have actively encouraged us to approach Thanksgiving with what Buddhists call kataññū-katavedī — knowing what’s been done for you and trying to repay it.

Buddha would say that kharma is not a pre-determined fate, but a life we create through our intentions. So, I think he would have seen Thanksgiving Day as an opportunity for us to examine our lives, our behaviors and thoughts, to see if we hold in our hearts the gratitude that allows us to repay our fortune through acts of love.

For too many men today, our default personality profile makes gratitude and emotional presence feel less automatic. As a result, we’re happy to have women preparing the Thanksgiving meal while we enjoy the appetizers and watch the day’s football games.

I think this male inclination shows up in the gender correlations we see in the Clearer Thinking Gender Continuum Test. This self-reporting survey found that about one out of four men scored a -1.5 or less on the Unselfish questions in the survey, versus only one out of ten women.

Translated? Men are twice as likely to prioritize looking after ourselves.

For example, 2022 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that on average, women spend 50 percent more time than men every day preparing meals. From 2003–2022 the share of U.S. men who cook on a given day rose from 36 percent to 52 percent, while women went from 69 percent to 72 percent.

Men are cooking more than they used to, but women still shoulder more of the daily cooking responsibilities and spend more minutes at the stove.

This is NOT a knock on men. We’re raised to be more self-valuing and less unselfish, too often neither encouraged nor taught to do household chores like cooking.

Most adults report having learned to cook usually from parents (especially mothers). But men are consistently less likely than women to have been taught and less likely to cook frequently, across multiple countries and datasets.

I learned to cook mostly by spending time in the kitchen with my mother, who considered Thanksgiving her favorite day of the year. It became mine as well when I entered my teen years and only increased as I grew into a man.

With a family of nine children — our tenth sibling died at seven days old in the late 1950s — my childhood Thanksgiving days were always incredibly warm and festive.

As we all matured and started our own families, it only grew larger, louder — and somehow warmer.

Dessert was always accompanied by a soundtrack of our favorite Christmas songs, albums spun by yours truly on my parents’ living room stereo. Then a group of us would decamp to the den downstairs for a marathon game of cards (Spades for fun, Poker for money).

Yes. There was football, but unless one of our teams was playing, it wasn’t central to the day — family was.

So when my now ex-wife and I were first looking for homes, I immediately fell in love with the house we purchased because the kitchen flowed into a large eat-in dining space that opened up to the den. I could be in the kitchen cooking for Thanksgiving while still being present to the warmth and joy of friends and family, eating and talking.

On those occasionally warm Thanksgiving Days, our kids would be in the backyard playing on the jungle gym or trampoline with their cousins. I could feel my parents’ love for the day observing it all.

I loved everything about those Thanksgivings, from the moment the week started to the Wednesday before the big day, when I would take the day off to shop for all of our feast’s ingredients, stopping at my favorite wine store to purchase a few really good bottles.

Learning to be grateful

When asked in 2024 what they are most thankful for, nearly half of Americans told YouGov their Thanksgiving gratitude list was topped by family and friends (followed by health at 19 percent). I couldn’t find a male/female breakout for the data, but other surveys show how these results may skew by gender.

For example, according to a Pew Research Center 2023 blog, women are much more likely than men to say having family nearby is very important to them (42 percent vs 29 percent).

So, on the Clearer Thinking spectrum, it appears the average man is starting Thanksgiving with less built-in gratitude fuel than the average woman — he has the capacity to feel all of the warmth, but his default settings tilt more toward self-interest than toward open-hearted, other-oriented gratitude.

Which brings me back to the Buddha and his teachings.

As Thanksgiving week begins, I’d like to suggest that you set some intentions for the holiday.

* If your home is not hosting a Thanksgiving celebration, how do you plan to show up at the celebration in another home?

* What sense of gratitude will you bring for the individuals who have invited you?

* Are you intending to contribute to the celebration? In what way?

If your home is hosting the celebration, what can you do this week to both contribute to the warmth and joy of the day, and increase your ability to feel its warmth and joy?

* How can you be grateful for those who will be doing the work in your home to make the day warm and joyous?

* How can you participate in that work from a place of gratitude, and reduce the workload and stress of others?

The human brain is not permanently fixed to any thought or behavior.

But to alter what we think and do requires intention and regular active practice. It is this consistent mindfulness and action that triggers the joyous hormones and neurochemicals that act as incentives and rewards, thus creating a more instinctual set of future behaviors.

This Thanksgiving, try to practice being present and grateful to yourself and to everyone around you. Notice how the day is making you feel. Share your appreciation for your friends and loved ones as openly as you can.

Start today by planning out the week and day for the joy you deserve and the joy your friends and loved ones are grateful to see in you.

See you Thanksgiving Day for some final thoughts.

There also is much to learn — about men and masculinity — from this sordid story of depravity and sexual abuse of minors.

Today, I want to stay focused on these two questions:

* What is it about some male personality patterns — and the way we socialize men — that makes it so easy to rationalize staying close to someone like Epstein?

* What do men need to think about in order to prevent someone they know from doing something like this ever again?

As you may be aware, Larry Summers has been a prominent figure in American society for decades. He served as the World Bank’s Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist from 1991 to 1993, U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001, and as the director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010.

He also served as Harvard University president from 2001 to 2006.

During this time, Summers also was a close friend with Epstein, who during their friendship pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008, serving a 13-month cushy sentence.

It stretches my imagination to believe Summers was unaware of Epstein’s conviction and the widely spread knowledge about Epstein’s sexual attraction and access to young women (and knowledge that they likely were minors).

I also struggle to believe that Summers was not aware that, at a minimum, there were rumors of Epstein being a sex trafficker.

This week, I have been reading through some of Summers’ text messages and emails with Epstein. Records released by Congress revealed frequent communication between the two in 2017, 2018, and 2019, over a decade after Epstein’s conviction.

The Miami Herald began publishing a series of investigative reports about Epstein starting November 28, 2018. Despite these reports, from November 2018 to July 5, 2019, a day before Epstein’s arrest by federal authorities, Summers sought advice from him on how to pursue a sexual relationship with a woman Summers described as a mentee.

I don’t know about you, but I have never consorted with an individual credibly accused of abusing anyone. And the way I was raised, if I had, I would have sought to protect girls and women by calling the police on someone like Epstein. I also would have permanently ostracized myself from him and ensured that any other men who knew him had the ability to examine the facts and decide for themselves how they would or would not interact with Epstein.

Weighing personal gain over the harm to others

How then did a man as powerful and financially successful as Summers choose to continue having Epstein as a friend?

I think the answers can be found once again in Clearer Thinking’s Gender Continuum Test survey results. Men report having lower selflessness, compassion, emotional awareness and a higher focus on sex.

Not knowing Summers personally, I will not venture a guess at his mental makeup. But the Clearer Thinking results map easily to someone who would weigh the personal gain they could achieve from a well-connected man who reportedly was worth a half billion dollars, over the harm that same person might be doing to girls and women.

It makes total sense to me. Not having enough of their own emotional awareness, how could they feel a deep compassion for Epstein’s victims?

To be fair, many women sought out and enabled Epstein as well, including Summers’ wife Elisa New, a former Harvard English professor. Summers and his wife both solicited donations and other assistance from Epstein even after his 2008 conviction.

Now. No trait is “all male” or “all female.” Most people are a mix. A man is closer to the “average man” on a trait about 57 percent of the time.

But at the tail ends — where the people who are extreme on a trait reside — gender matters more. And even modest effect sizes can matter when you’re talking about men with outsized power over money, institutions, and reputations.

For example — being more sex-focused does not mean a man is destined to offend, but it does increase the odds that he will feel sexual conquest is central to a masculine identity and status.

AND he might be more inclined to normalize other men’s sexual excess as “boys will be boys.” In these cases, while the benefits of Epstein’s network are immediate and tangible, the victims are more like abstractions than the subjects of assault.

When a man like Epstein is known in elite circles as the guy with the girls, the parties, the “sophisticated” erotic scene, a highly sex-focused man can slip into some moral gambling:

“He already pled. He did his time.”

“People move on from mistakes and scandals all the time.”

Continuing the friendship becomes just another high-risk bet for a man who travels in heady circles of highly successful people.

Layer on top of all of this the impact from Normative Male Alexithymia (NMA):

* Difficulty identifying and naming one’s own feelings

* Discomfort staying connected to the emotional reality of victims

* Habit of translating moral discomfort into detached, cognitive language

So instead of feeling:

“Every time I get an email from this man, I picture terrified girls and feel sick.”

… many men feel something fuzzier:

“This is complicated. The optics are bad. But I can manage it.”

But I’m not Larry Summers…

If this is what happens at the top of the male status pyramid, imagine the quieter versions happening every day in our offices, friend groups, churches, and locker rooms:

* A boss known for “chasing the interns,” but also known for big bonuses and promotions

* A friend who routinely gets women drunk to encourage soft no’s he can disregard

* A charismatic community leader with a “reputation” around teenage girls

So what do we do about all of this?

Pre-committing to taking action is how you counter your own risk-taking and status-seeking tendencies before they’re activated. To do that, I invite you to write down the following questions and consider your answers as honestly as you can.

And please feel free to share this Substack essay with anyone you think could benefit from reading it.

Protecting children and women relies on our being proactive.

1. “When a man I know is accused of hurting women or girls, where does my sympathy go first?”

* To his reputation, career, and stress?

* The harm, fear, shame, and powerlessness she might be feeling?

If your first instinct is to protect him, you could be tilting away from compassion.

2. “Are there benefits I get from this man that might be blurring my judgment?”

* Money, status, introductions, entertainment?

* Would I judge him differently if he had little to no power or influence in my life?

Any time your livelihood or ego is on the line, your brain will try to explain away red flags.

3. “What would I think if the girl he hurt were my daughter, sister, or close friend?”

Not protecting someone looks like emotional distance collapse. You’re letting NMA and in-group loyalty numb you to a stranger’s pain.

4. “How does this man act around and talk about women?”

* Ogles women on a dance floor and shares with you his lecherous thoughts?

* Thinks that since “girls mature faster, they know what they’re doing”?

* Tells stories that explicitly indicate or imply he has non-consensual sex?

Look. You don’t need a confirmed conviction of an acquaintance or friend to decide whether this is someone to keep in your inner circle.

I trust you have good enough judgement to know when women and children are in jeopardy from someone you know.

To prevent another Jeffrey Epstein we need good men committed to speaking up and doing the right thing, regardless of the personal cost.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Patrick Swayze worked at choreographing a balanced life — and an equally balanced masculinity — throughout his movie career and lifelong love affair with Lisa Niemi. There’s little doubt that his ability to be vulnerable and his passion for connection contributed tremendously to his charm and sexual charisma.

In the documentary “I am Patrick Swayze,” Lisa described the time when the couple (still teenagers) danced in front of an audience for the first time:

“People who are performers know that wonderful magic that happens when you... when the lights come up on you on stage. But so much of it was what we saw in each other. There was something about him. When I looked at him, what I saw was pure gold, and I think probably he looked at me and he saw something else than what other people were seeing also.”

Swayze felt the same, telling Barbara Walters in a 1988 interview how Lisa was his “creative partner.”

“There just feels like there’s a real power between us. There feels like there’s a real chemistry, like we’re soulmates, if you believe in that kind of thing.”

Lisa and Patrick were married in 1975 when he was 23 and she was 19.

Feeling the beat

In an August 1997 interview, Eleanor Bergstein, creator, novelist and screenwriter for the movie “Dirty Dancing,” said:

‘’So much of the movie is about the inner life of dance and how it makes you feel.’‘

I was a very young boy when I first saw my mother and father dancing. It was at my eldest brother’s wedding, and it was magical. I’m pretty sure it was the Lindy, a high-energy, playful mix of bouncy fast rotations, swingouts and returns.

While my parents by no means had a perfect marriage, for them, dancing was a joyful expression of their love for each other and the partnership they had created over the more than 20 years they had been together leading up to that wedding reception.

I could see the joy and appreciation they had formed with and for each other, a rhythmic improvisational beat of embracing and releasing an individual and a partner.

Remembering my parents’ marriage, and today watching improv swing dance videos, I’ve come to understand how important that beat can be to connect two partners beyond the bedroom.

The tempo and rhythm of a song two people hear together develops a greater physical and non-verbal awareness between partners, fostering a stronger synchronization and connection — a shared, responsive movement.

Hungry eyes

In a 2017 People Magazine article, Swayze talked about this sexual power of connection when he tried to explain the physical passion that grows between the “Dirty Dancing” characters, Johnny Castle and Baby Houseman, eventually leading to them making love in Johnny’s cabin.

“It’s not about a man and a woman jumping each other’s bones, it’s about two people not being complete until they look into each other’s eyes.”

The first time Johnny and Baby make love, Johnny is feeling despair after his friend Penny almost bled out during an abortion. Baby woke her father, a doctor, to save Penny. Afterwards, her father told Johnny he assumed Johnny had gotten her pregnant because of the dancer’s status at the resort and in life.

Later, in Johnny’s cabin, Baby tries to rebuild Johnny’s pride in his character and ability to create a good life, the life he dreams will give him self-worth.

He tells her:

“I’ve never known anybody like you. You look at the world and you think you can make it better. Somebody’s lost, you find them… you aren’t scared of anything.”

And Baby responds:

“I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of what I saw. I’m scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”

She asks him to dance, and as they pull in close, we know where this leads.

Bergstein called this scene…

“…the dead center of the movie… that moment in your life when you move one way or another. If you focus your heart and your spirit, you can hold your life in your arms and make it do anything.’‘

Men, for a myriad of reasons, focus too much of their sexual energy on the physical aspects of foreplay and intercourse.

They don’t realize how much more powerful a sexual encounter can be by showing the woman they are making love to that they understand the complete woman she is, and how much joy he gains from seeing her be that complete and unique individual — inside and outside the bedroom.

Sex therapists and marriage counselors talk about how couples should be engaged in this kind of foreplay throughout their days and weeks. Arousal doesn’t begin to build when your clothes come off.

It starts when you offer to make her something at breakfast, when you pick up her laundry without her asking. It’s reinforced when you validate her point in a conversation, bringing up something important you remember her saying six months ago. It deepens when you ease in behind her at the kitchen counter and wrap your arms around her, showing her how much you love her, without any sexual pretense.

I remember one year, alone with my father, asking for a new bike for Christmas.

He said no:

“Your mother hasn’t had a new dress in ten years,” he told me. “She sacrifices so much for you kids and this household. She deserves some new nice things.”

I wasn’t disappointed to not get my Christmas wish. I was filled with joy to realize how much my father was watching my mother sacrifice for all of us nine children, and him. I saw in his eyes how much he respected and loved her.

My parents were phenomenal dancers not because they had professional lessons, but because they connected deeply on and off the dance floor. They enjoyed each other’s company, worried over each other’s health and well-being.

And yes, they had a physical passion for each other that lasted long after I grew into an adult.

Choosing which way to move

Men have choices to make when it comes to their sexuality. They can mindlessly seek to use a woman’s body for their gratification.

Because of my father and some other special men in my life — and witnessing the broken pieces of women — I never learned to be that man.

I wonder sometimes why men are so prone to this kind of dancing, failing to connect the dots between body and spirit. I’ve come to believe that they’ve never learned to listen to the beat of the music in their own lives. All they hear are broken clips of songs they’ve never stopped to really listen to.

So when they do finally have sex, they’re neither able to hear the beat inside them, nor the rhythmic spirit emanating from the woman they are with.

Over the course of my life, I have had enough partners to know that my best dancing was with a woman I loved, who knew that I heard the rhythm of her life, and could feel me following her beat all day long.

If all you ever do is perfect your frame and balance and never feel the beat your lover holds in her inner life, you’ll never know the true power of sex.

You might as well be dancing alone.

This was the opinion of someone who read my recent essay “For the Love of Men.” He disagreed with a number of my points and also agreed with a couple. For him, Jimmy Kimmel’s Nov. 11 monologue was NOT a great example of a positive male role model.

Regardless of whether I agree with this reader, his comments are instructive for you, me, and anyone interested in how we help men navigate masculinity and their lives.

First off, this reader and I differ on my labeling Scott Galloway’s incessant stream of negative facts and figures about men as “Male Suffering Porn.” (One of my subscribers did the same in a separate discussion.)

“… they’re saying what many are afraid to say. That men are hurting and no one cares. Galloway says it too crass, [Richard] Reeves says it too passive, and [Jordan] Peterson says it too abstract. But they’re saying it!”

They are saying it.

I concede that point.

But I’m not sure that “no one cares.” The fact that so many media outlets have been hosting Galloway, Reeves, et. al., indicates a fairly large foundational level of “caring.”

What I think this reader points out is actually my greater theory about all of this durm and strang — “Why with all of this media coverage is so little being done?”

Someone please show me the nationwide movement to address the hurting men are going through? There is no Title IX-style effort to put more men through higher education or vocational schools where they can earn certifications/licenses for higher paying jobs. There is no national movement to address male suicide.

And the worst part of this failure to do nothing here in 2025 is that this is at least the fifth time in modern American history that we have had book authors, magazine article writers, broadcast TV discussions, about masculinity.

What the failure of each of these media borne “masculinity crises” indicates to me is that the quantity of conversations is not important. It’s the quality of those conversations and where they direct our attention.

As I wrote about in two separate Substack essays – Free, Free. Set them free, and “The “Crisis” That Never Ends”), American media has documented that “Men are Suffering” for at least 70 years.

(Please become a paid subscriber and you can read all about it.)

In those two essays, I documented how today’s “crisis of men” is the exact same conversation America seems to have every ten years, repeating ALMOST IDENTICALLY both the suffering men are experiencing and the so-called litany of causes.

As I proposed in both of those essays — I even built a special series to help men stop suffering; 8 Steps to Independence — people like Reeves, Galloway and Peterson over-simplify the cause of male suffering, and as a result, they diminish the ability for men and society to adopt their proposed solutions.

(Peterson is a rambling misogynistic philosopher who wants men to learn about masculinity from lobsters. I do not take him seriously.)

Simplicity may make for great YouTube thumbnails and help draft soundbites that roll off your tongue, but as my reader commented this week, addressing “What’s Wrong with Men” is “nuanced.”

That is why I wrote about Jimmy Kimmel and his tribute to Cleto Valentine Escobedo III, and here is where this reader and I diverge significantly about solving yet again, America’s “masculinity crisis.”

My reader wrote:

“Role models would be the men who understand being a husband and father is thankless and gladly do it anyway. With pride. The guy who puts his feelings aside to make a decision. Who protects. Only thing Kimmel protects are his hair products.”

Nope.

First off, being a husband and a father is far from a thankless job. For me and many of the men whom I personally know, it is THE MOST rewarding job we have ever held.

Secondly, the science doesn’t support that men who put their feelings aside are better off. In fact, volumes of research prove that acting with your feelings integrated into your decisions makes men infinitely happier.

I would venture to say that this reader inadvertently proves my point when he wrote this:

“But we need to balance out the dark stories of male suicide with men who worked to be emotionally intelligent while still being protectors, strong in adversity. That we can certainly agree on.”

Yes. We can agree on the importance of balance.

And here’s where pesky nuance and complexity interject themselves again.

Being emotionally intelligent does not necessitate putting your feelings aside — and Jimmy Kimmel proved that this week. His love for his friend helped him MAKE the decision to hire Cleto Escobedo and his dad for his show band. That decision appears to have been quite a successful one.

Similarly, Cleto Escobedo Senior in 1966 listened to his heart and quit a job so that he could better help raise his son. Listening to Kimmel’s tribute of Escobedo Junior, I would say that was another successful “emotional” decision.

Emotional Intelligence is not an add-on to the “real” masculine core of decision making, protecting, providing, etc. It’s baked into happy and healthy male identities.

Without it, Scott Galloway’s 3Ps look like this:

* A provider who cannot read his own stress or his kids’ fear, so he becomes controlling, absent, burned out — maybe even suicidal.

* A protector who can’t feel his own tenderness and slides into domination or emotional vacancy.

* A procreator who can’t access grief, joy, and vulnerability, so that the boys he raises and/or mentors grow up with a full set of emotional tools that expand their hearts and minds, instead of narrowing them.

Emotionally attuned men make better partners, fathers, and leaders because they register their own and others’ feelings and then act with both heart and judgment.

Men who chronically ignore or suppress feelings show more relationship distress, emotional numbing, and sometimes impulsive acting out.

Let’s keep talking

I think lots of people genuinely care about the state of men today. But the conversation continues to avert its eyes from the reason why these bursts of media attention never accomplish anything. We never help men learn how to better identify and integrate their emotions.

The way off this hamster wheel isn’t more of the doom content and surface level marketable solutions Galloway is selling on his book tour. The way out is spotlighting real, emotionally present, pro-social men who are the precise role models Galloway and Reeves say we need to raise better men.

I am so glad that this individual engaged with my content. I learn more about this topic, about men and their varying takes on masculinity, and about myself, every time ANYONE engages with me, whether we agree or not.

My reader is right. It’s good we are talking about this. Any time someone talks about strong, positive male role models, the world has the opportunity to be a better place.

That’s a good place to end this essay and continue the conversation. Please join the Mindful Masculinity community. We all benefit from hearing YOUR voice.

Mindful Masculinity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I call it “Male Suffering Porn.”

It seems today you can’t get away from interviews with so-called experts droning on about what’s wrong with men. Rarely if ever do I hear them tell the stories of good men, great men, kind, caring and thriving men.

This take on men is not unlike porn itself… attention grabbing… titillating, gratuitous and lacking in depth.

The likes of Scott Galloway, Jordan Peterson, Richard Reeves, are sucking the air out of our country’s latest edition of the “Masculinity Crisis” conversation. Their tales of woe and their doomsday narratives share little space with real stories of genuinely good men.

Genuinely good men like Jimmy Kimmel.

You remember him. The guy who was chased off the TV airwaves briefly after mentioning the name of Charlie Kirk in his monologue ( …and no. Kimmel did NOT disparage Kirk. Go watch the video yourself).

In Kimmel’s 22-minute November 11th monologue, he did more to advance the progress of men and society than anyone I have witnessed in the nearly five years that I’ve spent studying and writing about our current “Manhood in Freefall” era.

And Kimmel did it all for the love of another good man you’ve probably never heard about.

Jimmy’s monologue was a loving tribute to his best friend, Cleto Valentine Escobedo III, an American musician and bandleader who led Jimmy’s house band since the show’s inception 22 years ago. Escobedo passed away Tuesday morning.

Still grieving terribly from the raw and devastating news, Kimmel made the courageous decision to still host his show (while announcing Jimmy Kimmel Live! would take the next few days off.)

With Escobedo’s mother in the audience, and his father seated as a saxophonist in the band, Kimmel gave one of the most exquisite and heartwarming tributes I have ever seen one man provide for another.

And the most beautiful part of it was seeing how authentically sincere Kimmel was about every single word.

He talked about how he and Cleto had met as children in the 1970s in suburban Las Vegas, doing all of the crazy s**t that boys do, from phone pranks to setting fire to Hot Wheels. They learned about sex together. They played baseball. They grew into men together.

“He was so much fun,” Kimmel said. “He was wild. It’s funny because as an adult, he was not wild. He was a dad who if we did go out, we’d go on a fishing trip. He liked to stay home with his family. He never missed a day of work.”

Where did this incredible man come from? Another incredible man, his father, Cleto Valentine Escobedo II, whom Jimmy described this way:

“His dad was in a band, a very successful band from Texas called Los Blues. But he gave up his career because he didn’t want to go on the road and be away from his son. He didn’t want to miss raising his son.”

Escobedo senior quit being a musician in 1966 when Junior was born and took a job as a bus boy at Caesar’s Palace where Sammy Davis Jr. recognized him.

“He knew him from the band he was a fan of and he felt bad seeing him busing tables. So he called the man who ran entertainment at Caesar’s Palace and got Cleto Senior a job as Sammy’s personal room service butler, which was a solid consolation for hanging up his horn, which he gladly did to be with his family. Not even a hint of regret or resentment.”

When Kimmel received the offer to headline the ABC late night show, he immediately thought of his friend as the only person he would want leading his band — and he wanted Cleto Junior and Senior to play together every night for the show.

Listen to how much joy this gave Jimmy Kimmel – his sincerity as he chokes up:

“And I’ve often said that the single best thing about doing this show was getting the opportunity to allow Cleto Senior to pick up where he left off in 1966 and become a musician again with his son.”

When the Clearer Thinking Survey results show us how large a variance there is between men and women on the trait of selfishness — the greatest size effect difference of all 18 traits — Jimmy Kimmel is the example of a man challenging men to be better. Kimmel, his best friend, and his best friend’s father, are examples of great male selflessness.

These three men are also examples of the capacity for men to build and sustain deep friendships with each other over time. Listen to Kimmel describe the bond he and Cleto Escobedo had:

“We had so many adventures. We would laugh so hard. We had our own language that like almost no one else understood. We didn’t have to say anything. We’d sit here at rehearsal every day. We didn’t have to look at each other. I knew he was thinking about looking at me and I was thinking about looking at him. We look at each other like this and that would be it.”

Kimmel’s description of their ability to connect at this intimate level is more like what we see from women in our society — a connection built through honesty, compassion, selflessness, emotional self-awareness. Imagine two men, so committed to each other that they would learn each other’s deepest thoughts and allow the other into that intimate place of being.

To get to this point, Kimmel and Cleto needed to nurture a relationship defined by psychological safety and the ability to trust that they could be vulnerable with each other. It likely required shared attention, reciprocal self-disclosure, responsive listening and empathy — all traits the Clearer Thinking study shows us men have, but not in the quantities that foster the kinds of intimate and supportive relationships women more readily have.

I could go on and on about this incredible 22-minute ode of admiration and love between two incredible men.

Like how Cleto Escobedo lives on in the love of his family, including a wife and two children, of whom Jimmy spoke so sweetly about in his monologue.

Better that you watch it yourself, to see and feel your reactions — to reflect on how Jimmy’s story about his best friend challenges you about what you think and feel, about what it means to be a man.

I’m really f*****g tired of “Male Suffering Porn” dominating the conversation about men today.

Yes. Trying to size the issue and the importance of the suffering can help focus resources and solutions. But where is the balance? Where are the interviews about “What’s right with men?” Where are the extended interviews and book tours with Jimmy Kimmel and now only Cleto Junior’s dad?

What’s ironic to me is that one of Galloway’s “3 Ps,” his alliterative solutions to the masculinity crisis, is men adopting the title of Procreator.

Galloway defines Procreator as either becoming a father or taking on the proxy role of one; as a mentor, uncle, friend. Galloway (as does Reeves) calls for more male role models to shine a light on a healthier way forward for men.

And I agree with them. We need more good role models.

This country needs no better role models than Jimmy Kimmel and the father and son team of Cleto Escobedo II and III.

I would love to see these fine human beings get their sustained days in the spotlight, to remind the world, good men, great men, already exist, and we are so lucky to have them living among us.

If you were to listen to conservative commentator Helen Andrews tell the story of a famous U.S. district court ruling, an overly sensitive female worker just couldn’t handle the sight of bare breasts.

However, the truth reveals a lot about Helen Andrews and the state of gender conversations in America today.

You see, those “pinups” cited in that landmark 1991 decision (Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyards) were actually part of an extensive collection of pornography openly displayed throughout that workplace.

For example, there also were porn magazines lying around, pictures of nude women with their legs spread, centerfolds in tool rooms, and at least one depiction of two nude women “apparently engaged in lesbian sex.”

Court records also show that the plaintiff repeatedly was subjected to lewd sexual comments (“The more you lick it, the harder it gets”), and most importantly, testimony that management knew about and permitted these working conditions.

The court concluded that the totality of this environment was discriminatory and issued injunctive relief, forcing the shipyard to ban those materials and implement anti-harassment policies.

Helen Andrews has been making the rounds these last few months, her “anti-wokeness” campaign, attempting to build a case for reversing the advances women have made in the American workplace.

Gasp! (Clutch my pearls.) Women are destroying American institutions.

Her October 16 Compact Magazine essay, The Great Feminization, caused such a stir recently that conservative New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat asked Andrews to be on his Nov. 6 “Interesting Times” podcast.

The title? More than your classic click bait:

“Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace, And if so, can conservative feminism fix it?”

Andrews, Douthat and a third guest, conservative writer Leah Libresco Sargeant, talked for more than an hour about Douthat’s opening premise and inquiry:

“Men and women are different. That is a core premise of conservatism in the age of Trump, that liberalism and feminism have come to grief by pretending that the sexes are the same.

But what does that difference really mean? Should the right be trying to roll back the entire feminist era? Or is there a form of conservative feminism that corrects liberalism’s mistakes?”

Look. I’m fine with people having differing opinions.

But I’m skeptical when smart people like Douthat (Harvard grad) and Andrews (Yale alum) pretend that they are having an intellectual and objective conversation… when the conversation drops more than a few hints about what is really going on.

I propose that when people leave out facts, don’t present corresponding data that might challenge their opinion, avoid answering questions altogether, what they are really engaged in is ideological propaganda.

And Americans who care about men, women and the truth, need to pay attention to the way these people use rhetoric.

The failure to seek truth

At one point in the podcast Douthat asks Andrews:

“Is that the primary thing that you think is lost in institutions that undergo what you’re calling feminization, the failure to seek truth?”

“I think that’s right,” Andrews responds, “and I think that’s why the harms or perils of feminization have to be examined on a case-by-case basis for each institution and discipline.”

Andrews then bemoans how 80 percent of veterinary students are women today. When pressed by both Douthat and Sargeant to explain why that’s a bad thing, Andrews cites how female veterinarians prefer not to own veterinary practices because “being an owner involves more financial risk and longer and less flexible hours.”

“So the shift from a male-dominated profession,” she says, “to a female-dominated profession… has led to corporatization, and we’ve gone from a world where most veterinarians own their own practices to one where most veterinary practices are owned by private equity, which has not been entirely without problems for the pets and farm animals of America.”

According to the most recent data I could find, only 25-30 percent of veterinary practices are private equity owned. Yes. PE owns nearly 75 percent of specialty clinics.

Further, when Sargeant pressed Andrews on the potential harm to pets and animals, Andrews seemed to shut off her four-alarm warning:

“I would not expect to see a catastrophic effect from feminization in veterinary medicine. I don’t know, like, why is that hard to see?”

Ummm. Yeah Helen. It’s not hard to see that it won’t have a catastrophic effect.

So why the hell did you make this an example of your concern about women in the workplace? And why is it you’re backing down now from your claim that this issue “has not been entirely without problems for the pets and farm animals of America…”?

Private equity is placing bets in lots of fragmented industries where they believe economies of scale can produce higher than average returns. Private Equity and the flow of capital is the primary driving force of the corporatization of American industries, regardless of gender ownership.

Hiding from the truth

What I think is going on here is just another attempt to intellectualize the movement to push women out of the workplace, by people who realize that being overtly sexist will betray their game.

Throughout the one-hour podcast, none of the three participants presented any empirical evidence that workplaces are materially suffering from the increased presence of women — conservative or liberal.

In fact, I would propose that what is truly harmful to American workers is that our workplaces haven’t been feminized enough.

Throughout the life of this Substack, I have found myself returning to a 2024 Gallup/Bentley University survey of 5,835 U.S. adults, regarding business priorities and how businesses deliver on them.

The survey is one of only a handful I have found in the last few years that includes both general opinions about the priorities and activities in the American workplace, and how men and women separately feel about them.

Seven out of ten respondents to this survey said it was “extremely important” that employers offer “high-quality healthcare benefits,” but only 29 percent said businesses were doing a “good” or “excellent” job at that.

Nearly eight out of ten women said this was “important” versus only 64 percent of men.

Similarly, when asked about offering mental health support services to employees, 56 percent of respondents said it was “extremely important,” but only 27 percent said businesses were doing a “good” or excellent job.

Guess what? When you break the data down by respondent gender, two out of three females feel its “important” versus just 45 percent of males.

Yet what do we know about the senior leadership making decisions about workplace health benefits — it’s heavily masculinized — to borrow a turn of phrase from Helen Andrews.

I don’t know Helen and Ross.

Health insurance and mental health are serious crises in America, and it appears women are placing a higher priority on finding solutions.

Perhaps you might want to study a full complement of data before you go off promoting your regressive gender b******t.

Truth tellers don’t dodge and deflect

At one point in the podcast, Sargeant pointed out how Andrews regularly describes male vices and virtues, but only female vices. She pointedly asked Andrews to name some feminine virtues. Pay close attention to how Andrews responds.

Andrews: I saw that you made that criticism elsewhere. If…

Sargeant: It’s a question. It’s only a criticism depending on your answer.

Andrews: If you want to know what I like about women…

Sargeant: No. That’s not my question.

Watching the back and forth going nowhere, Douthat finally jumped in and directly asked Andrews: “What do you like about women, Helen?”

This started a whole new round of back and forth that did not produce a direct answer.

Sargeant: I’m not asking about your likes or dislikes.

Andrews: Well, just to finish that particular thought before I answer that question: It’s a little bit feminine, honestly, to focus on my likes and dislikes.

Sargeant: Helen, I don’t care about your likes and dislikes because that’s not what I found compelling about your portrait of risk, which we both value as a genuine virtue, not a matter of preference, like chocolate or vanilla.

Do you think there are objective virtues for women in the same way you think there are objective, primatology-based vices for women?

Getting no closer to a direct answer from Andrews, once again Douthat found the need to jump in — this time offering his interpretation of what Andrews believes:

“… women, for biological reasons, are oriented toward forms of care and love and communitarian spirit that men are maybe not as good at.”

When Sargeant interjects and asks for a direct answer, yet again, Andrews responds:

“They were apparently clear to Ross, because I think the answer he just gave about care was pretty close to the mark.”

We inch finally closer to some direct response to Sargeant’s question later in this round of circular motion.

Andrews: The reason why I am turning on a big red siren when it comes to the feminization of the law is that all of those things that sounded so nice in theory or in the abstract, in practice looked like the Title IX kangaroo courts for sexual assault on college campuses.

If that is what the feminization of the law looks like in practice, I think that’s horrible. And if an increasingly feminized legal profession is going to take the problems of those Title IX courts and bring them into grown-up law, I think that is an emergency-level danger that we all need to be really, really worried about.”

But here’s just the thing Helen. I couldn’t find any peer-reviewed research tying adverse outcomes for accused males to the gender composition of the legal profession, the judiciary, Title IX offices, or the Office of Civil Rights staff.

And Andrews does NOTHING during this podcast to present a factual through line herself. Perhaps because there is none?

If you want to make such serious claims Helen, back them up with facts.

And shame on you Ross, for not holding her to that standard.

Truth or dare

As in decades past, once again America is facing a rising movement of conservative men and women who simply cannot see genders as true equals. These individuals use fancy Ivy League words, quote lawsuits out of context, and completely avoid answering honest, direct questions if the truth might unmask their real cause.

It’s shocking to me when a supposed prominent commentator asks the public to examine institutions and disciplines on a case-by-case basis and then fails to do so herself.

It’s a deceitful game that individual is playing, especially when we consider the very real human costs.

According to Federal Reserve Economic Data, American household real wages rose 16.6 percent from 2000 → 2024 in 2024 dollars ($71,790 → $83,730). The cost to insure the health of an average family of four during that time rose from about 9 percent of the median household income in 2000, to slightly more than 30 percent today.

(Sources: American Economic Association, Kaiser Family Foundation.)

All of this and more has happened under the supervision of predominantly “masculinized” institutions and disciplines. And people like Mark Zuckerberg want to turn back the clock to even more masculine days.

Douthat opened this discussion asking Andrews if what “is lost in institutions that undergo what you’re calling feminization, is the failure to seek truth.?”

The only failure in seeking the truth about feminization is the failure of certain people to truthfully examine it.

Patrick Swayze died on Sept. 14, 2009, 20 months after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Moore, his co-star in the 1990 blockbuster “Ghost,” described Swayze during an interview for the 2019 documentary, “I am Patrick Swayze.”

Like I wrote in Sunday’s piece, according to professional dance instructors, mastering balance is one of the three core challenges couples face when learning to dance together.

Men should pay heed to Swayze’s beautiful balance as they explore their masculinity, sex, and being sensual, because research suggests women are most drawn to competent and caring men who pair confident agency with warm responsiveness.

Men who cultivate this balance report better sexual satisfaction, likely because emotional intelligence and secure attachment make emotional intimacy — and sex — feel safer and hotter for them too.

Yes, effects vary by culture and context. But the center of gravity for heterosexual relationships over the last 20 years favors balanced agency and responsiveness over either extreme of the male sexual spectrum.

Conversely, shunning labels that restrict you from becoming the fullest person you can be is another lesson we can learn from this enigma of a man who tried to pursue masculinity and happiness on his terms.

The cowboy in ballet shoes

From the time he was a small boy growing up outside Houston, Swayze was on a path to becoming different than most men. His father, a rough and tumble cowboy, married a ballet dancer and instructor who owned her own studio.

His mother had him in ballet slippers when he was still a small boy, and it was here that Swayze realized his sexual identity — as defined by American society — was being pulled in two opposite directions.

In a 1988 interview with Barbara Walters, Swayze described how his father “was real scared” of his son’s ballet dancing. He was worried his son “would turn gay… because, you know, he was a Texas cowboy. Part of him didn’t understand this stuff.”

Swayze excelled at everything he did — from football to track, to gymnastics; and as a classically trained dancer. His male school mates did not understand these two sides of the same young man.

“Well, when you’re living in Texas... and the other kids are going off, you know, to play… football… baseball… and you’ve got your ballet shoes and your tights… I got beat up over and over and over again when I was little, and that wasn’t too good.”

As a result, Swayze said, “one way or another, I’ve spent my life proving [I] was a real Texas kid.”

This boy’s got game

Regularly in close contact with girls in form-fitting tights helped bring out Swayze’s youthful libido. When Lisa Niemi joined Swayze’s mother’s dance studio, the rumor was that the instructor’s son was a Casanova. But despite being blessed with good looks, athleticism and charm, Swayze still struggled with self-doubt.

In one interview, Swayze found a link between Johnny Castle’s attraction to “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing” and his own experience falling in love with Lisa — the woman who would one day become his wife.

“I had been meeting girls with names like Mimi and Angel. Then I fell in love with Lisa, my wife, and for a long time didn’t feel like I deserved her.

That’s kind of how Johnny felt with Baby: ‘She so outclasses me, how dare [I think] she might love me?’ I think I accidentally keyed into something that so many guys feel.”

Swayze took his insecurity of what it means to be a man to New York City where he pursued becoming a professional dancer at 20 years old. He described himself as walking around “with a chip” on his shoulder.

“I’m a ballet dancer. What of it?” was the way he described his attitude in one interview.

“I’m a macho ballet dancer. I’m not like the rest of you.”

The façade didn’t make him happy.

“I woke up one day and realized… that I was becoming the very thing I hated.”

Reckoning with himself

Swayze’s saving grace was mindfulness, the ability to be introspective enough to examine his fears, and try to regulate them.

“I was scared to look inside for fear that I wouldn’t find anything… that… my fears would be proven right.”

Starring as John Travolta’s replacement in the Broadway production of “Grease” helped launch the actor in Hollywood; that and an old high school football leg injury that derailed his professional dancing career.

His entrée into teen idol status was propelled by his 1979 role as a champion skate dancer in “Skate Town USA.”

Speaking to Barbara Walters, Swayze spoke about how after that movie “teen magazines were jumping in my face, and I had a four-picture deal offered, and six other films.”

But Swayze knew he had more inside him.

“I hadn’t been studying all my life to throw it down the drain by becoming a face. The very thing I was scared I was anyway. A face and a tight pair of jeans.

“I was willing to bank on… that with enough study and enough growth and enough you know connection with myself… and the truth in me, that I could become an actor to be reckoned with and an actor with respect.”

Reading for the role of Johnny in “Dirty Dancing” helped him draw closer to that truth.

“I felt something for Johnny. A guy from the streets that is fighting to like himself, to believe in himself, to believe he could be something more than what society will allow him to.”

During that interview, Swayze’s internal masculine war — the one that instructs men to suppress our vulnerability — bubbled up when Walters asked him about how he felt about his father dying before Swayze’s acting career took off.

“Everything he wanted for me. Everything he dreamed about. Now he never got to know.”

When Walters asked Swayze if he thought his father would be proud of him, he started to cry, dabbed his eyes with his fingers, and turned his face away from the camera.

“Oh Jesus... Well, that was his problem. He thought crying was weak.”

Despite his success, Swayze’s pursuit of balance wouldn’t allow him to settle for being just another pretty face.

“I reevaluated my career out of internal need as opposed to career need because, you’re right, after “Ghost,” I had tons and tons of offers coming in and all different kinds of films, but I was having a very, very difficult time finding anything that matched up with what my insides were telling me to do.”

The type of role he was looking for finally appeared when he auditioned for Max Lowe in the 1992 film City of Joy.

Lowe is a Houston-based surgeon who quits his practice and ends up in the slums of Calcutta after being beaten and robbed. As Max waits for his passport to be replaced, he practices medicine for a clinic serving lepers and the city’s poor.

Director Roland Joffe described Swayze’s intense pursuit of an authentic portrayal of Max Lowe this way:

“This was somebody searching for a way of escaping being what everybody was telling him he wanted to be… and he was struggling to find the him inside that.”

This is why I have a problem with all of these men writing books prescribing for men what being a man should look like. There is no universal template for “a man to be a man.”

To successfully navigate between what’s on our insides and what the outside wants us to be simply requires being introspective — and kind to ourselves.

Looking for a regular guy

Patrick Swayze was an imperfect man. Not that there is anything wrong with that. In fact, there is everything right with acknowledging it. Maybe it’s more accurate to call Swayze a perfectly imperfect human.

Swayze didn’t need to deny the possibility of the fullness of what a man can be —vulnerable, soft, strong, athletic, handsome. All of it. Not some of it at the expense of other parts of it.

And women found his balance desirable, sexual, sensuous. Millions swooned over him, whether they knew him personally or from a distance.

In a March 5, 2005, interview with the American Film Institute, Swayze described the success of “Dirty Dancing” like this:

“It’s not about the sensuality. It’s really about people trying to find themselves. This young dance instructor feeling like he’s nothing but a product, and this young girl trying to find out who she is in a society of restrictions...”

Your brain is your greatest sex organ. It’s where your sensuality and sexuality resides, alongside your deepest beliefs about yourself, your repressions, inhibitions — your memories of lovers past and present.

They all inhabit this mysterious cluster of gray matter, emerging in and out of your consciousness, sometimes when you attempt to call on them. More often than not, when they call on you.

Trying to be more conscious of this neural call and response can make you more emotionally receptive — attuned, validating — increasing your sexual desire and that of the women we love.

That’s the “softness” side of Swayze that he seemed to have worked on so skillfully.

He didn’t need to exercise his more traditionally masculine traits to dominate women and get them into bed. In fact, he and his wife Lisa worked on their marriage monogamously for 35 years.

Male coercive dominance tracks with worse relationship happiness, according to many studies, while kindness relates more positively to attractiveness. A confident and prosocial man beats a domineering one any day of the week.

And men with a higher emotional intelligence tend to exhibit greater sexual satisfaction — partly due to how this trait lowers attachment avoidance (anxiety) while also opening a man up to feeling more emotions more strongly.

Simply stated, being more comfortable with intimacy and touch creates more healthy sexual exchanges.

“When I think of Patrick, I think of gentility,” Demi Moore said. “He was just this very sweet, like a regular guy, this quiet, almost very mild-mannered person. It’s the contradiction of this extremely dynamic, physical person.”

When will we truly normalize this definition of a man? — “a regular guy” trying to blend his unique combination of strength, wisdom, compassion, softness.

A man who is peacefully exploring the question, “Am I enough?” And no matter the answer, he remains committed to continuously trying to master his balance.

As anyone who has ever learned to dance knows, trying not to think of your steps isn’t easy in the beginning. It takes practice, muscle memory, and a certain confidence that eventually gets us out of our own head so we can feel the subtle push and pull of synchronized motion with another human.

The stakes are high in the movie “Dirty Dancing.”

Frances “Baby” Houseman, a pretty, middle-class teen-ager, is coming-of-age in 1963, vacationing with her family at Kellerman’s Resort, their annual summer Catskills tradition.

Dance novice Baby volunteers to learn the mambo so she can perform with the resort’s dance instructor, Johnny Castle, at a previously scheduled paid gig at another resort. She is filling in for Penny, Johnny’s usual partner, who needs an abortion after getting pregnant.

It’s during these intense dance lessons that we watch the partners fall in love.

There are so many parallels between learning how to dance and learning how to make the kind of love that leaves two partners feeling deeply connected — breathless, physically and emotionally. Dancing and sex teach men that if he desires partnered activity, at some point he needs to incorporate the habits learned from his solo experiences, and mindfully build a broader identity open to a partner joining him.

In building this sexual identity, masturbation serves as an opportunity for a man to learn his steps, what mechanically makes him aroused, what propels him closer to orgasm, what he can do to make himself last longer.

But these moves don’t necessarily shield him from the typical experiences men have when they are initiated to partnered sex — confusion, humiliation (premature ejaculation), self-centeredness that leaves his female partner unsatisfied.

In the end, it really does take two to tango. Bringing the most self-aware and mindful one, dramatically increases the chance of one and one equaling two — and increases the chances of a happy partnered sex life.

Framing the issue

Professional dance instructors believe there are three core challenges couples face when learning to dance together.

* building a healthy self-frame

* mastering balance

* learning how to feel the beat

The biggest challenge presented is when one or both partners haven’t developed a healthy “self-frame.” This is the launch point of a co-created space of posture, muscle engagement, and partner points of contact.

Frame is the connection where intentions travel almost imperceptibly between partners. Frame allows a tiny squeeze, a tug, a lingering glance, to be received and answered.

In a sexual relationship, “self-frame” is your broader sexual identity of both body awareness and self-confidence.

We’ve all had those awkward and tense sexual moments, where your frame, and potentially your partner’s, are stiff and out of sync. You fumble and struggle because the sex act is just that — an act.

That’s not the way lovemaking unfolds between two partners who have learned to hold their “frame.”

When Johnny is teaching Baby, he and Penny work a lot on Baby’s dance frame. He reminds her over and over of where her arms and hands go, how to hold them, and how her frame and his should connect.

I follow swing dance improv performers, like Keerigan Rudd, on YouTube. It’s amazing to see two individuals seamlessly originating a completely new set of dance steps right before your eyes, and it feels like they were practicing it for weeks.

But they haven’t.

They move so flawlessly together because they’ve each individually worked hard on their frame, their control over their body and the space they inhabit in partnered dance. They have mastered how to hold a flexible structure that can sensitively receive their partner’s frame.

Watching Rudd’s performances is better than porn. It’s magical, two individuals perfectly melded in motion.

Self-frame meets connection

In dance or sex, the shared frame can only be as strong as the weaker self-frame. If either person’s frame collapses, signals get crossed and the duet turns into a tug-of-war.

I have personally found this to be true in sex as well. The moves I learned before partnered sex were way too immature, and so, my first partnered sexual experiences ended up feeling mostly like a performance. They were rushed, self-isolated encounters. And way too often, they were filled with anxiety, leaving little room for me to feel my partner’s signals.

Don’t get me wrong. I achieved my goal. But it was a hollow victory. The whole experience, from arousal, to building momentum, to achieving orgasm — mostly left me disappointed.

My disappointments did however drive me to explore more of my self-knowledge and develop a confident self-frame. Over time, I learned how to be infinitely better attuned to my body, my moves, and hers.

It was kind of like the work and energy that Johnny and Baby put into their dancing — eventually leading to them making love, falling in love, and dancing successfully at the performance Penny couldn’t attend.

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Tango in the sheets

Dancing and sensuality have been closely intertwined partners for centuries. From my teenage years, I have pined for a female partner who would take dance lessons with me, so we could be that couple seamlessly flowing out on the dance floor.

Martha Graham, the famous classical dance instructor, believed the power of dancing emanates from the pelvic region. Some of her students even purportedly described the Martha Graham Studio as “The House of the Pelvic Truth.”

“I know my dances and technique are considered deeply sexual,” Graham wrote in her memoir, “but I pride myself in placing onstage what most people hide in their deepest thoughts.”

Isn’t that where our sensuality, our sexual identity, principally resides? In our deepest thoughts?

The movie “Dirty Dancing,” alludes to how bored married female guests flirt and potentially have sex with the summer resort staff. These women are referred to as the bungalow bunnies.

(Their husbands only come up on weekends, according to the resort owner, Max Kellerman.)

At one point in the movie Johnny explains to Baby that rich guests slip him their room keys “two and three times a day.”

After his first sexual encounter with Baby, Johnny refuses dance lesson money from the husband of one bungalow bunny. He respects Baby too much.

He could have kept going, earning bonus money and bonus orgasms. But Johnny had moved on from solo, isolated sexual experiences after making love to a woman he was falling in love with.

He found his frame, and held it, for himself and his partner.

That’s a mindful man.

What does your frame feel like to you?

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The chart below, pulled from Clearer Thinking’s Gender Continuum Test, shows how overall, women are demonstrably more unselfish, compassionate and emotionally self-aware than men. These are traits that generally appear in individuals who default to helping carry other people’s loads in relationships.

I had the great fortune to recently interview Jeannie Ewing, part-time copy editor and proofreader for indie authors, as well as a hybrid author (both self- and traditionally published) and public speaker. Jeannie also writes the I Grow Strong Again Substack newsletter, and holds a B.A. in Psychology and a Master’s in School Counseling.

Equally important, Jeannie is a wife and mom of five children, including a daughter with a genetic craniofacial condition — Apert syndrome. Mash all of this together, and what you have are a lot of stressors on Jeannie’s time, thoughts and her heart.

This is what Jeannie and I spent 60 minutes talking about earlier this fall, trying to help illustrate how so many women adopt a persona in life that leads too many women to becoming default caregiver in relationships.

We covered a lot of ground, but especially focused on how cisgender men and women in a partnered relationship can better communicate about the load they’re carrying, so they can balance more of that load across both partners’ shoulders.

Like Jeannie says in this edition of the Mindful Masculinity podcast, there’s lots of good guys out there with the right intentions. We just need to refocus more male partners on the needs of all of the members of a partnered household, this way everyone’s happiness has the opportunity to flourish, while minimizing suffering as much as possible.

We hope you enjoy the conversation, and look forward to your comments.

This quote comes from the opening of Philip Roth’s famous novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, the story of a young man in therapy who describes how he masturbates compulsively while struggling deeply to understand his sexuality in a healthy way.

Like I wrote in this past Sunday’s essay, untold numbers of men have developed nervous systems like Portnoy’s, paved over with psychological highways leading them away from pleasure and towards guilt.

Their impulse to masturbate triggers an equal and opposite reaction of emotions they cannot control, from wanton lust to moral disgust or even anxiety — despite the fact that most psychologists and researchers believe that self-pleasure is a healthy and natural activity for both men and women.

In this essay, I try to reach people more personally, the way smart people like neuroscientist Paul Zak have taught me — through stories.

Stories help humans move from a general understanding of lofty, abstract concepts to revelations that are more personally applicable and productive.

So, what you will find here are two dialogues from two hypothetical men — both characters based on the concepts that Mindful Masculinity has tried to explore in these two previous essays:

* Does Jerking off Make You a Jerk?

* Self-Pleasure and Self-Acceptance

To set up the scene, the men in these scenarios are:

* someone who has been heavily influenced by forces telling him that masturbation is both spiritually unnatural — perhaps even “sinful” — and harmful to his masculinity.

* someone influenced by those same forces, but who is trying to incorporate self-work and introspection to recode his habits as natural and free of moral judgement.

Let’s see how these hypothetical scenes might unfold:

Scene 1 — Feeling Like a Jerk (not mindful)

setting: evening. door closed. laying in bed

yeah. I’ve been waiting for this...damn that girl at the ballgame was hot

i wonder what she likes. Stacy never got kinky with me

that feels good. yeah.

i bet that chick at the game would get off riding my cock

this sucks… Stacy and I breaking up… having to bust a nut solo… but…

stop thinking about that. just keep pumping man… get that release…why do i feel weird?

it’s just stress. long week. work sucks… boss sucks.. pay sucks…

too much to endureremember that guy in Fast Times? geez that was humiliating.

don’t be that guy. just keep stroking… that chick in those tight jeans shorts at the ballgame.

yeah. her… focus on herpastor Sunday called this lust. am i going to hell for this? do i have to tell him about this?

am i f*****g weird? what’s wrong with me … sitting here stroking my cock when i should have a girlfriend in bed, or a wife…

didn’t jerk off this much when Stacy and I were going together…

i’m better than this when i have a girlfriend…

f*****g stop man… just stop… you’re going soft… you’re making this worse.

think about something hot. find a porn video… something easy… focus man. focus(scrolling on his phone)

yeah… that video works… just focus on her… riding her guy…

damn his dick is huge… no wonder he’s got a chick like that…

(why is my chest tight?)

whatever. just keep going. you gotta finish, shower, sleep…

can’t be late to work tomorrow…just finish. you’ll feel… better… yeah. that’s it.

focus… damn this chick looks like the one at the ballgame

(orgasms)

damn… damn… yeah… ahh…

f**k… what a mess… where are those napkins?i gotta quit. i can’t go to hell. can’t talk to pastor about jerking off…

i can’t talk to anyone about this… humiliating…

this is the last time… this, this is pathetic… noFAP man. noFAP... get a f*****g girlfriend.

how do i stop feeling like s**t?

Scene 2 — Self-Acceptance Reset (mindful)

setting: same room. a minute of breathing first.

yeah. been waiting for this all week…too much stress… not enough fun… glad the guys took me to that ballgame tonight

okay. slow down. no rush tonight…one breath. in… 4… seconds… out 6… again.

damn… tight chest. jitter in the gut. long week.name it: stressed, wired. fight with Stacy Monday…

intention check: unwind, be kind.this is fine … there’s nothing wrong with this…

i know what i like… start with light. touch = feeling, not racing.no scrolling. no chasing someone else’s story…

Stacy enjoying herself on top… love the thought of us caring for each other that way… caring for ourselves… damn, i love pleasing her body…love the way she pleases minewish i could share this with her… would she like it? how do i talk to her about this? would she be upset? why is this even a question?

pastor calls this sinful…do I repent?

return man… stay in the moment.. label those thoughts: old tape. not truth.new line: i’m allowed to comfort my body without shame.

try slower. pause. notice. unclench jaw. shoulders drop.soften on the exhale.

focus on how it feels good… focus on breath.remember what feels good… yeah. like that. that pace. that grip… that part of your shaft, the tip…

steady heartbeat, feeling safe.

remember that last time. Stacy moaned… we came together… i loved the look on her face. she was so in the moment. so satisfied… damn it feels good helping her feel like that.

stay with that memory. that sensation. this now/that then… they’re the same. no difference

(orgasms)

ride the wave… don’t clench. don’t stop…

phew…. rest… wash up... quick rinse. just like afterwards with Stacy…no difference

jot it down: start: stress 7 → end 3. shame 6 → end 1.

kept the pace, no phone.inhale 4 seconds… exhale 6… sleep.

The passenger

In the first scenario, the man focuses more on the influences that are causing him distress, and less on what his body is feeling and telling him. His strong sense of emasculation because of work and the loss of his girlfriend makes his sex-focused psyche easy prey when he sees an attractive woman at a ballgame.

What this individual does not understand is that he is abdicating his agency to the triggering effects ingrained in him by pop culture (e.g. what constitutes manliness) and moral judgement (e.g. his religious beliefs).

His initial focus on the physical sensations and desire to reach orgasm are interrupted by notions of shame, so much so that he needs even stronger stimulants to continue. He resorts to a porn video.

The driver

Compare that with the second scenario where the man is masturbating even though he currently has a partner in his life, someone whom he cares about and has healthy sexual encounters with. In fact, he brings his connection to partnered sex with this woman into a memory of sex with her, versus external stimulation like porn.

While other lingering forces in his life creep into his calm, he has the basic mental tools to minimize their impact.

What kind of man do you want to be?

Like the first man, Portnoy lives a solo sex life that is neither exploratory nor self-caring — it’s compulsive and haunted by guilt. He doesn’t learn from his body; he’s at war with it.

Portnoy describes his humiliation and disconnection with his sexuality as inscribed into his body itself. His shoulders carry guilt — his stomach knots with anxiety. His genitals, the epicenter of his conflict, are overlaid with shame.

Transforming from sexual compulsion to self-awareness and self-esteem isn’t easy for most people. Portnoy is hyper-self-aware — he can name every repression — but he’s still trapped inside them.

It is especially difficult for men who have been told to tamp down their emotions, or to even avoid them altogether, to make this journey to a fully healed sexual identity.

The point of this essay is to hold up a mirror that allows you to see and connect with yourself, liberated from knee-jerk reactions. Portnoy knows the road map in his head — “superhighways of shame and disconnection.”

It’s common for men to not have the sharply honed emotional skills to find the exit ramp to curiosity, connection, and autonomy.

Mindfulness can put you back in the driver’s seat.

Thanks for reading Mindful Masculinity! This post is public so feel free to share it.

And then the images started flowing into my newsfeeds about women and old men being thrown to the grown by heavily armored and armed figures, who, on the surface, bore something of a resemblance to men.

I saw videos posted about children being woken up from their sleep, as their families’ apartment building was flash banged by rappelling storm troopers. (Yeah. Storm Troopers.)

The common thread through all of these stories is that grown adults agreed to be the perpetrators of this violence against other humans.

Crying women thrown to the ground. Children traumatized. American businessmen sent to the hospital with injuries because heavily armed soldiers were rampaging through his car wash.

If you’re reading this and you have some kind of counterpoint, get the f**k out of here. I have no time for you.

I grew up with an angry Italian father who had a hard time holding back his rage when I was young. In our family business, I hauled lumber and construction materials on my back and shoulders for eight years. When I was 20, I lost the tip of one finger in a table saw splitting a 2x6 for a customer. I played ice hockey and was an enforcer for my coach.

I have no problem cursing. I have no problem telling someone to “go f**k off” when that’s what they finally need to hear. I have no problem using my fists when I absolutely have to.

But hurting women? Making children cry and filling them with fear when you have other options?

If you approve of any of this s**t being forced on other humans, if you think there are no alternatives to solving America’s problems, you need to reassess what it means to be a man.

There is no reason for this disgraceful exhibition of mindless aggression. And it’s part of the reason why I started this Substack — to get some people to look at themselves and the world we are co-creating, and ask ourselves to be better humans.

Becoming a man means understanding what one is

When a boy grows into a real man, he realizes that on average, we are bigger, stronger and faster than the average woman and child. (I’ve met some pretty big teenage boys.)

That’s when a switch should go off in his head that he needs to be mindful of how his emotions can accelerate outside his control and cause him to use his advantage to the detriment of others.

What I see in all of these people in camouflage, with sidearms and automatic weapons, night vision goggles, armored vests and zip-ties, are boys who never grew up. They are stuck in their teens with an immature understanding of masculinity and biology.

You see it in the Clearer Thinking Gender Continuum Test results. The largest male-leaning traits, used in the wrong context, can lower the brakes on aggression and cause the scenes that are flooding our newsfeeds today:

* Thick-Skinned: lower sensitivity to others’ distress; helps in high-stress jobs, but can interfere with empathy.

* Risk-Taking: greater willingness to accept physical/legal/social risk; increases likelihood of the use of force when situations are ambiguous.

* Self-Defending: heightened vigilance for threat/insult; can tilt toward hostility in charged situations.

* At Ease / Self-Valuing / Improvisational: confidence and fast, on-the-spot decisioning; good under pressure but can shorten deliberation windows.

Men also are lower than women in traits like being Unselfish, Compassionate, Peaceful, Emotionally Aware, Forgiving and Warm/Amicable; behaviors that would otherwise support perspective-taking, and encourage de-escalation and restraint in the face of provocation.

These personality qualities can help some men dash into burning buildings, or run toward danger to protect us. Those same traits, without the right culture and training, can also tilt a hazy, difficult moment toward human harm.

It’s like kindling on a fire in situations that are intense, fast-moving, ambiguous, or dehumanizing. Whether that fire flares up or not depends heavily on other factors, like leadership, the norms a man has been raised in, accountability.

Self-control is manly self-worth

Living near West Point for nearly three decades, I had the great pleasure and privilege of meeting dozens of graduates, and very often veterans of real wars.

One man I became good friends with became an Apache helicopter pilot after he graduated. He served in the first Iraq war. He did not like to speak about his service, because, as he told me once, “every time I pressed the ‘fire’ button on that stick, I knew I was probably taking a life.”

As a Christian, he regretted taking lives and was not proud of the result of his actions, though he was proud to have served and defended his fellow soldiers on the ground.

What my friend described and how he described it is NOT what I see in these cosplaying, penis-bearing individuals (I refuse to call them “men”) in America today.

We have seen this show before, and if you haven’t studied history, let me help you.

Raids and dawn arrests are high-arousal settings. Providing participants with poor leadership, anonymity (a.k.a face masks), and out-group cues (a.k.a military uniforms vs civilians, “us” versus “illegals/threats”), sets them up for a rapid decline into ugliness.

Just ask the veterans from Charlie Company who entered the village of My Lai in 1968. Or ask historians about the Waffen SS, who in December 1944 massacred 84 U.S. Army prisoners in Malmedy, Belgium.

Just ask any adult Jewish American. They very likely have met a Holocaust survivor and/or have family members who were killed by individuals who were “just doing their job.”

Below is a picture taken in Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. Take a long look at the faces of these women and children. The likelihood that any of them survived being “rounded up” is slim to none.

This is what happens when heavily armed men, indoctrinated to fear and hate “others” aren’t properly trained and led.

The scene above comes from file footage from the 1941 pogrom in Iasi, Romania. 15,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered by Romanian supporters of the Nazi Third Reich.

I am very fond of someone who is alive today, who has two children alive today, only by the stroke of good fortune that her Romanian parents weren’t among those 15,000.

Yet, despite these facts, every day I walk among, work with, and smile at Americans who seem to believe “that will never happen here. This is totally different.”

B******t.

The dehumanization of Jews in Romania started long before 1941. In 1866, Ion Brătianu, Romania’s Minister of Finance, labeled the Jews a “social plague” for Romania, that…

“…pure and simply because of their large number threaten, as everyone acknowledges, our nationality....Only [strong] administrative measures can save us from this calamity and prevent this foreign underclass from invading our country.”

Words and concepts like these were repeated over and over again for decades, until men with guns took fear and brutality into their own hands on June 28, 1941 — while most of their Romanian Christian neighbors no doubt stood by and watched.

Is that what you want to be today here in America?

Is that what it means to be an “American man?”

It IS happening here

Recently, I had a mostly civil discussion with a group of adult male friends about what is going on in America today. I know these men very well. We get together regularly for coffee and conversation.

I noticed something cold and distant during a recent exchange we had about America’s immigration policies and how some popular influencers and commentators talk about immigrants — and even about African Americans.

They seemed indifferent to the denigration of “others.”

These commentators, they explained to me, have the right to “free speech,” to label non-white Americans as more stupid, lazy, more criminal, than “us.” At no point did they express horror at the comments I showed them from one particular popular commentator. In fact, they wondered how much of what he said “was taken out of context,” when there was not nearly enough context to gloss over his racism.

The ultimate revealing irony is that one of these adult males recently married his South American girlfriend, who apparently has been living and working in America for years on an expired visa. But it was okay for her to stay, and for him to try to do everything he could to keep her in this country.

All those other “illegals?” They need to be deported.

Across hundreds of studies, prejudice reliably rides on two human characteristics adjacent to what we see in the 18 Clearer Thinking traits:

* Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) — preference for group hierarchies and inequality between groups. Men score higher on SDO quite robustly. It predicts harsher attitudes towards low-status or stigmatized groups and stronger endorsement of force to maintain hierarchy.

* Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) — submission to established authorities, aggression in the name of authority, and conventionalism. This predicts prejudice against groups seen as norm-violating or threatening social order. (Gender gaps are smaller and less consistent here than for SDO.)

When we talk about “them” as less than fully human, we’re not just being rude — we are flipping neurological and cultural switches. Decades of research show that seeing an outgroup as less evolved (“they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs”) or less capable of “human” emotions lowers our moral brakes and raises our appetite for harsh policies and actions.

Men, who more often endorse group hierarchies and feel pressure to prove their manhood publicly, are especially vulnerable to these cues. Change the cues — restore people’s names, roles, emotions — and support a culture where restraint is status-worthy, and the spiral toward othering loses its grip.

We are standing somewhere on that proverbial “slippery slope” to the ugliest side of ourselves, losing our grip on the solid multi-ethnic ground America used to strive to represent. We are already targeting and arresting innocent people without due process, and carting them off to other countries with no justice system to protect them.

What’s next? Building camps in Florida swamps from which they permanently “disappear?”

“IT” IS happening here, right now. And men, real men, good men, need to grow a pair and put a stop to “IT.”

We must never forget the depravity that humans are capable of performing as they descend into madness. The words “Never Again” must never be trampled under the feet of hate-filled people.

Dear men,

Grow the f**k up. NOW.

Before you’re the one throwing a wailing wife to the floor, or cracking open the head of a photographer, or pointing the barrel of a gun at innocent children.

While these influencers rack up views, earn money from social media platforms, and sell passive income coaching programs that don’t work, some men get caught up in negative, emotional doom loops.

They never get past the influencer’s videos telling them what they already know about their lives, and possibly making them resent women.

These men don’t grow out of their pain. They dwell in it. And that pains me.

I want to help men steer clear of the behaviors paralyzing them, and not transforming them.

Thanks for reading Mindful Masculinity! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Men: Let me know what your experience has been, finding someone who hears you, sees you and helps you work through your feelings so you can live a life that makes you happy.

And for the women who follow me, I want to hear from you too — about what you see in your own experience, in the experience of the men in your life, and how you think influencers on social media do and do not help you maximize flourishing and reduce suffering.

(I’ve see a lot of women on these influencer accounts pointing out how damaging these content creators can be to men, and seen the backlash from these influencers’ fans for these women speaking up.)

Comment below. I want to hear from you — men and women alike.

Expected to be protectors, providers, leaders, men often struggle to define a more broad range of feelings and behaviors.

This week's co-host of the Mindful Masculinity podcast, men's coach Damon Mitchell , calls this undefined area "the liminal space," where men have to navigate between the rocky shoals of what society tells them to be, and perhaps conflicted feelings about being someone else.

These negotiations, inside a man’s thoughts and externally with the people they encounter day to day, aren't always successful.

Damon and I try to define what those behaviors and thoughts look like, and pull in some external examples, like actor Anthony Mackie, and his recent comments about masculinity in America, to frame their discussion.

Come join the conversation:

In the nearly 70 years since Esquire magazine published Arthur Schlesinger’s essay, “The Crisis of American Masculinity,” our country has endured a never ending cycle of progress and retreat in the “Battle of the Sexes.”

It seems like society is always trying to define men based on how masculinity and femininity sit on opposite ends of a continuum, and whether men are living up to some standard of masculinity that never changes with the times.

This isn’t working. The data about men is not good, and in many respects, getting worse.

The failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, to provide men and women with equal amounts of paid parental leave, to confront the causes behind sexual assault and harassment against women, all point back to one thing for me.

Masculinity needs to be defined much more broadly, and compassionately, so that the concept of equality doesn’t generate fear that men or society are losing something when women and others who do not identify as “men” gain more rights.

This isn’t going to be easy. America has been conditioned to box heterosexual men into a limited range of emotions. We expect men to regard themselves as productive members of society only when they conform to expectations that society is making it increasingly difficult to achieve.

We need to try something radically new — an approach that allows men to define masculinity based more on love and compassion, for their own sake and the sake of everyone else.

Like when I was bushwhacking solo in the Catskills and forgot to pack my compass. It was late afternoon when I realized I was “lost” descending from High Peak summit.

I had the mindfulness then to stop, take some long deep breaths and clear my head. I had constructed my life in a way that I knew who I was and that I had the skills to survive.

I was infinitely capable of finding my way “home.”

This Substack is trying to create a deeper conversation about ways all of us can help men lead more fulfilling lives, build better relationships and find purpose.

Today, I am calling on all of my subscribers, followers and anyone else on Substack, to join the community and join in the conversation.

We need to hear your stories to broaden the range of lived experiences, how others define masculinity and ways men and women have redefined masculinity as something that increases flourishing and reduces harm.

Won’t you join me? Please.