There's a moment about halfway through my conversation with Dr. Steven Solomon where I found myself describing something I'd never said out loud before: lying on my back on a therapy room floor in my twenties, sobbing like a two-year-old and begging to be held. It was the first time I'd cried in years, maybe decades, and it cracked open everything I thought I knew about being a man. That raw moment became the doorway into our deeper exploration of men's groups, vulnerability, and what I call the "man box" that keeps so many of us trapped and exhausted.
We dove into my own journey, growing up in the Chicago suburbs in a household that wasn't volatile but was completely emotionally vacant. No inner world, no interiority, just robots living in the same house. That neglect showed up big time when I hit puberty and suddenly had no idea how to be with women or even be comfortable with physical touch. It took a men's group and somatic therapy in my 20s to crack that open. I'll never forget being on my back on the floor, crying like a two-year-old, saying "hold me, hold me, hold me" after never being able to cry before in my life.
We talked about why men's groups work. It's not triangulation, bonding over a third thing like sports or work. It's turning the attention onto each other. What's actually happening for you right now? What are you carrying? Turns out, when men finally have permission to share what they've been holding for 30, 40 years, there's an incredible exhale. This masculine love of "I don't need anything from you, I just want the best for you." The spinach in the teeth relationships where someone will actually tell you the truth.
Steven and I also unpacked the cultural programming, the man box we're all supposed to fit into. Be tough, never show weakness, never ask for help, disconnect from your body. We're rewarded for disembodying from a young age. No wonder so many men end up exhausted, holding everything together, their bodies literally taking the shape of that tension. The cost shows up in suicide rates, isolation, health challenges. We talked about the missing piece, how most of us never had a model of healthy masculinity, never had that rite of passage with older men.
If you're a man who's been holding it alone, feeling like you're supposed to have all the answers, I want you to know: there's nothing broken with you. You go to the gym to work out your body. You go to therapy or a men's group to work out your heart and mind. That's how we become the most responsive, sturdy, strong versions of ourselves.
If this resonates and you want to explore men's work, check out what I'm up to at evolutionarymen.com.
