Íntimas
December 13th, 2023: Nearly three months after my best friend and partner, Amy Segreti, and I decided that our style of coupleship was taking from us more than it was giving.
This “Friendsgiving” of a Christmas party was the first time people in our group got to see Amy and I in our next stage of knowing each other. It’s a special gathering that Amy puts together every year, and this one was feeling particularly joyful.
Amy and I were in a good friend-flow, and it was wonderful to see this collection of people together again. I felt comfortable in my role not just as “ex”, but as “person attending who still knows Amy best, using his powers for good.”
The party progressed, as many a Boulder gathering do, into a seated circle. After I received the expertly selected Secret Santa gift of houseplants for my new apartment, co-facilitator Galen introduced the question for the circle:
“By this time next year, what gift would you like to have given yourself?”
(Those who’d like to play along may answer this question for themselves.)
I deeply considered Galen’s question. In one way I had been thinking of the answer for the past 12 months. My word for 2023 was “manhood,” in the dual sense of defining my own masculinity, and as the brotherhood of men that I had been longing for since I came to know the healing power of pristine masculine energy.
I also knew I had more work to do here, beyond 2023. I didn’t have my archetypal “best man” yet. While I got a taste from being in my first men’s group earlier that year, I didn’t have the band of brothers I knew could help me if I got stuck on the side of my life or feel proud to have around my future wife and children. I was hungry for men to know me, and to know them.
So I had my answer; I knew what my truth was.
But the voices of fear began their protests.
“Is that too honest? Can I be safe being that honest? Nobody else is really going to that kind of place, is it weird for me to go there? Does anyone want to hear that from me? Maybe I can come up with something else by my turn.”
But then I remembered everything that I had been working on the past two years.
I am committed to truth. These people really are my friends, and I know that I will be safe and okay after.
If I want to call myself an honest man, I will speak the truth of my heart, in that very moment.
It arrived at my time to speak. My voice slightly catching in my throat, I shared what I was honestly longing for: more friends. That I truly did want at least one man in my life I could call a brother. I continued to name the micro-truth of the moment as well, that I was feeling especially nervous about sharing my desire, and that I considered fabricating an “appropriately vulnerable” answer to feel like I would fit more into the group.
I know even more strongly now that leaning into the difficulty of the truth in whatever messy form it looks, always the right choice.
Later, Amy told me that she felt the space open when I made my share. That I gave people permission to be more honest. Good things came directly from it as well. In the following weeks I shared coffee and conversation with a friend at Süti & Co, and another friend and I have had a greatly nourishing couple of Zoom call nights.
I know that there are men out there like me who desire more men of depth in their life, and to put what they’ve been practicing to work.
In addition to putting on my big-boy pants and honing my skills as a leader, I am attempting to create more of what I want to see in the world: gatherings of men, purpose-driven to heal the world by healing ourselves, together.
