All right, so I just had a beautiful conversation with Viv on her show Perspective about softness and what that actually means for men. And I gotta say, it's a topic that's so needed right now because most men have no idea what to do with softness. We're taught from a young age that being soft is weak, that vulnerability is dangerous, that we need to be tough and invulnerable at all costs. But here's the truth, that rigid, armored approach to masculinity is literally killing us. The stats don't lie. Eighty percent of suicides are men, and a huge part of that is because we're never taught to feel what's happening inside or to reach out for support.
We talked about how so many men carry years, sometimes decades, of tightness in their bodies because we've learned to hold emotions in rather than feel them. Every time we tighten up to avoid feeling something, we're creating more rigidity. And that accumulates. Our faces get flat, our energy drops, we feel exhausted and stiff. Softness is what happens when we finally stop resisting what's inside and just let ourselves breathe and feel. It's not weakness. It's actually where our power lives.
We also dove into shadow work and why it's so transformative for men, especially in groups. So much of what drives our behavior is unconscious. We keep repeating patterns we don't understand, finding ourselves in the same fights or turning to the same numbing behaviors. Shadow work brings that stuff into awareness so we actually have choice. And when men do this work together, it's like we can finally see each other's blind spots. That's the magic of men's groups. We stop trying to lone wolf everything and actually let ourselves be held and seen by other men.
One thing that really stood out to me in this conversation was talking about how most men default to relating through triangulation. We bond over a third thing, a game, a project, a beer, but we rarely turn our attention directly on each other and ask, what's actually happening inside you right now? That shift, from looking at something together to looking at each other, that's where real connection lives.
If you're a man reading this and you're feeling the weight of trying to hold it all together on your own, I want you to know there's another way. You don't have to keep suffering alone. Real strength isn't about never needing anyone. It's about being connected, grounded, and present enough to feel everything and still show up. If you're interested in doing this kind of work, check out what we're building at evolutionarymen.com. Until next time.
