The Work: Capacity, Presence, Practice

Brother, 

You probably don’t need another relationship video. You probably don’t need another attachment-style quiz or another explanation of why you get defensive, shut down, overthink, people-please, lose yourself, or struggle to say what you actually feel.

A lot of the men I talk to already know a surprising amount. They know their attachment style. They know their childhood wounds. They understand nervous-system regulation. They’ve listened to the podcasts, watched the videos, read the books, and some of them can give you a remarkably accurate explanation of exactly why they do what they do.

Then their wife says, “We need to talk,” and suddenly none of that information seems available anymore.

That’s the part of this work I think we need to talk about more. Insight is not the same thing as capacity. Knowing why you become defensive doesn’t necessarily mean you can stay present when you feel accused. Knowing you have an abandonment wound doesn’t mean you won’t panic when someone pulls away. Knowing you tend to avoid conflict doesn’t automatically give you the ability to walk toward a difficult conversation.

The information matters. I’ve built a lot of my work around helping men understand what is happening underneath their patterns. But information was never supposed to be the whole process. Eventually, what you understand intellectually has to become something you can access when you’re uncomfortable, activated, ashamed, afraid, angry, or uncertain.

That part requires practice.

You practice staying present when every part of you wants to defend yourself. You practice telling the truth without becoming cruel. You practice hearing something uncomfortable without immediately deciding whether it is right or wrong. You practice holding a boundary without using the boundary to punish someone. You practice noticing what is happening inside of you before automatically handing it to someone else.

And eventually, you begin discovering something much bigger: discomfort doesn’t have to mean danger, disagreement doesn’t have to mean disconnection, and you don’t have to abandon yourself in order to remain connected to another person.

This is also why I think men need other men.

Men have always been pretty good at gathering beside one another. We hunt together, work together, watch games together, build things together, drink together, and talk about business, sports, money, projects and everything happening around us. What many men have had very little experience doing is actually sitting with other men without needing to perform, fix, compete, impress, entertain, or pretend everything is fine.

There is something powerful about being around men who are also trying to figure this out. Not men who have everything solved. Not men dispensing advice from some imaginary mountaintop. Just men willing to become more honest about where they are, take responsibility for what belongs to them, and practice becoming the kind of men they actually want to be.

That’s a big part of what Campfire has become.

Campfire isn’t therapy, and it isn’t another class where you need to take notes and memorize something. It’s a place to come sit with other men doing the work. Sometimes you bring something you’re struggling with. Sometimes another man says something that makes you see your own life differently. Sometimes you simply listen.

Jake is hosting Campfire this evening, and if you’ve been following our work from the sidelines, reading the books, watching the videos, or trying to figure all of this out by yourself, I’d invite you to come sit with us.

Because sometimes the next step isn’t learning something new.

It’s finally practicing something you already know.