That’s right. The Godfather of Soul.

This is a man’s world, this is a man’s world
But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.

Brown goes on about the inventions man made, from cars to trains to boats. And in the last two lines, he sings…

He’s lost in the wilderness
He’s lost in bitterness, he’s lost lost.

What did Brown mean by “he’s lost?”
Lost without a woman?
Lost in his inventions that leave him loveless?
Lost in his thirst for power?

I can only intuit. The time was 20 years post WWII, 10 years post Korea, on the cusp of Vietnam.

A man’s world, it was, in the public realm. But what about at home?

In 1966, a man could still call the shots at home. A man could dictate how his children were raised. He could run all the family finances. He could smear his wife publicly if she attempted divorce.

And today? Is it still a man’s world?

Yes, in the majority of workplaces. Yes, for the powerful government and corporate elite.

But in relationship, in marriage, for the masses of us, men, fathers, and husbands, is it a man’s world? Many men would say no.

As feminists came in force in the 1970’s, women blew open the “man’s world.” And that’s a good thing.

But did it go too far when Gloria Steinem popularized the slogan, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle?” Did that serve women? Help their men become better partners?

54 years later, most men would say – She calls the shots at home. She decides how the kids are raised. And often, she keeps the family books.

54 years later, many men are still lost, in fact, more lost than ever. Lost in a world they see as a “woman’s world.” A world where women make up the vast majority of college students.

A world where homelessness, addiction, suicide, and violence plague men exponentially more than women. Where women initiate 90% of the divorces.

A man’s world?  Or a woman’s world?

Does it matter when you’re a man looking into your wife’s eyes? And she’s telling you to pack your bags?

Or scolding you for your most recent outburst? Or listing the things you forgot to get at the store?

What happened to men?
Why are we falling behind?
Why are women so unhappy with us?

As a men’s coach, I see men…
… devastated that their wife wants a divorce.
… failing in the pursuit of “happy wife, happy life.”
… struggling to speak their needs.

In time, these same men step in and get help. They break out of the “Man Box.” They ask for and receive what they want and need.

A man wants love.
A man needs respect.
A man wants to be trusted.

And so he courageously steps into the scariest parts of himself. In time and with work, he becomes the man he wants to be – with her, with himself, and in the world.

And this excites her. She begins to see and honor that man – loving, communicative, tender, and fierce.

And then he’s no longer saying, “A man’s world? A man’s world? Are you kidding me? She’s got me by the balls. I can never make her happy.”

That was my story once upon a time.  If that’s yours, it doesn’t have to be.

Make a change. You’ll love yourself for it. And so might she.

P.S. Interesting trivia: James Brown developed his impassioned ballad from lyrics written by a woman, Betty Newsome. Her words were derived from the Bible and her observations of some of her ex-boyfriends, including the Godfather of Soul himself.

P.S.S. Check out the short sweet song now from the Godfather. It’s a good one. Enjoy!

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Men cry. I see this often in my work. Contrary to common belief, they are strong men. Very strong. Strong enough to…

Access their sadness.
Trust others to help them.
Go to the scary places within.

These are not guys who crumble into a total mess and can’t pick themselves up for months or years afterwards. That’s a Hollywood cliché, designed often for entertainment purposes, not reality.

The reality is a guy who cracks open from his anger, through his rage, and into his tears, to resurface with a brightness, ease, and strength — a light that wasn’t there before. This guy has a courage that is often not seen in the public eye.

This guy gets it when I say to him – “Feel the hurt. Allow it to have you.”

And it is here, stripped away of his armor, that a man answers the call of his heart, of what the world hungers for from men – their full loving hearts. And only then can he be…

Strong AND loving.
Consistent AND flexible.
Tough AND tender.

Stripped of ego, bare of machismo, at his own personal ground zero, a man begins the work of rebuilding himself. Here he frees himself of prior resentments, judgements, and arrogance, in order to be relational and intimate with his partner, his family, and the world. Giving weight, bringing into balance, his relational nature with his transactional nature.

It starts with his tears.

Until then, until he gets to the source of his own pain, he hobbles around, emotionally crippled, half of a human being, containing a time bomb within. That is… until he can’t contain it anymore.

In his splitting open, a man may go to where…

He fears most.
He was programmed NOT to go.
He confronts his fears of “being weak, a sissy, or a wimp.”

In the death of his old programming, he may be born to a new way of being a man. He may understand that his tenderness is an untapped strength. And he may revisit his tears often to tap the well.

He must feel his hurt in order to develop compassion and strength, to hold the hurt of his partner.

And only then can he be fully trustworthy to her. Only then can he be the man she dreams of. Only then can he…

Stand in the fire with her.
Stay calm when she cannot.
Hold her when she is struggling.

And it is here, a question that women often ask me gets answered.

“How come my man is so shut down?”

I often say, he was raised to be that way as a boy. He was taught feeling…

Fear makes him a “wimp.”
Joy makes him “gay.”
Sadness makes him a “sissy.”
And anger makes him “manly.”

He was raised in “The Man Box.”* A restricted container, confining him to a limited range of emotions. It started at age five or even earlier – at school on the playground or at home with his father or brother.

“Be a man.”
“Suck it up.”
“Don’t cry.”**

The Man Box dilutes his gifts as an adult male. Compromises his access to compassion, patience, love, kindness, presence, and a range of emotions. In The Man Box, he lives in a black and white world, his freedom to live as an enlivened, vibrant man severely handicapped.

To get out of The Man Box, he must fight… until his death, until his old way of masculinity dies. And then he can reclaim his emotional life.

But he won’t go there until it’s clear his current life is clearly no longer working. Until crisis hits. Until he loses things and loved ones. Until he taps his tears.

What he must realize is this.

“Only boys keep their cheeks dry.
Only boys are afraid to cry.
Men thank God for their tears.”
-Rain, Vachel Lindsay

And in time, he learns…

Tears are a gift.
Tears release energy.
Tears are peacemakers.

Tears bring peace to a man’s oppressed heart.
Tears increase his rate of survival.
Tears strengthen his bond to others.

Tears of the heart contain the chemical leucine-enkephalin, an endorphin that reduces pain and improves mood.***

Tears do not rob a man of his masculinity. In fact, they refine his masculinity. From heartbreak, he learns his healthy powers of assertion, supplanting old patterns of violent aggression.

Tears do not make a man a woman. They make him an emotionally richer and more empathic man. A man to whom the world can relate. A man who can fight for what is right in the world, instead of just what’s right for his wallet.

Tears enable a man to be in strong relationship with himself, in order to be in strong relationship with his partner, his family, and the world. Yes, back to self-relationship for healthy partnership.

I have shed many tears myself. Over the last five years, in particular. Enduring and battling old selves that needed to die. Ritualizing grief in death. Crying tears for life.

The death of a marriage.
The death of a career.
The near death (amputation) of a leg.
The death of a country.

Tears washed away the muck in my soul, begging to be cleansed.

Go deeper into any of the topics below.

*For more on The Man Box, Check out Tony Porter’s “A Call To Men” at
http://ted.com/talks/tony_porter_a_call_to_men

**For more on “Be A Man” programming, check out the short film “The Mask You Live In” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc45-ptHMxo

**For more on the science of tears, check out the short film “Why Do We Cry?” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=128&v=QGdHJSIr1Z0

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I did the young love in the 20’s thing without kids. I did the mid 30’s with kid. And then I did the mid 40’s thing with older kid. And yes, all with the same person. In all phases of relationship, I know firsthand that an energized and passionate relationship can be extremely elusive.

Yes, even in my 20’s without kids, I sometimes wondered, after the first few years, really, is this it? Watching videos on weekends? Eating dinner together most nights? There must be more.

And in my 30’s and 40’s and beyond, it got much tougher to honor our coupledom. Raising a son, a busy lifestyle, running a business together, trying to take care of ourselves, manage a home, my wife and I clearly noticed when we were connecting and how much more powerful we were, as opposed to when we were not. In connection, we had jet propulsion. In disconnection, it was like bad petroleum.

For most couples past the age of 35, life just happens. It’s a cliché but it’s everywhere. Work, kids, house, finances, busy lifestyle. Life has taken the couple by surprise. And yet with a simple elder who’s been through it, it wouldn’t. Consistently couples complain, I’m stressed, he’s stressed, we don’t have enough time for everything. And in the cross traffic of life, we miss each other. Even worse, we start to blame each other for the misses.

We miss the wisdom – that our energized and connected coupledom is the fruit of our lives. With kids, it is the bedrock of our family. Be weak in your coupledom and your family falls apart.

And yet don’t we know this already? Haven’t we been told? Or do we get so bogged down in the stress of work, the kids, that we get blind to this truth?

Carl Jung said, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”

Now extrapolate the phrase “unlived life of the parent” to the unlived life of the couple. Can you imagine what I’m getting at here? The unlived life of the couple. The couple that misses one another. The couple that has lost one another

With divorce rates as high as they are, it’s not far fetched to say we are a nation of unlived lives of couples. There often is no life of the couple, if even a couple. Instead, there are two frantic individuals going it alone, trying to cobble together a family structure financially and logistically.

And when the unlived life of the couple reaches extremes of unlived-ness, the couple wonders, where is my partner? Who is he? What matters to her? And in here, divorce often ensues, sending the family into a tail wind.

And so, how can this be different? How can you as a couple engage and energize one another? What does the “lived life of the couple” look like?

Simple. One word. Connection. Okay two. Meaningful connection. And in here, is the spark igniter.

The lived life of the couple ignites just like this.

You sit opposite your partner at the kitchen table or in the bedroom. The kids are asleep or watching tv (if you have kids). It’s a week night 9pm or maybe Saturday at 9am. You light a candle to set the space. (If that’s too hippie dippie for you, scrap the candle.) You take 30 seconds of silence and take a few breaths together. You clear out the cobwebs of the day or the morning.

Read on to part 2 now

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Emancipated. It’s a powerful word. To be free or freed from a confinement, enslavement, or restriction. To enter a new and open landscape of possibilities and opportunities. To be able to do anything you set your mind to. To be fearless in the creation of your life. To be without obstacles. To get out of prison.

For many of us, the prison is within ourselves. Our mind, our logic, our cynicism, our fears, our childhood programming. Get free from the prison of yourself. But how does this happen? This forming of a prison, then this getting free? How do you do it?

I’ve heard clients say, It seems almost impossible. I’ve tried for years and nothing. I can’t just change my thinking. There’s no escaping me. Often the road seems insurmountable, but one well worth taking, in fact, the only one worth taking. It will free you into all of your other freedoms – freedom to love unconditionally, freedom to be loved, freedom to be in purpose, freedom to live fully, freedom to meet your life head on.

And let me make this clear, the way I teach it, this is not a narcissistic journey of the self. It is indeed very self-involved. But ultimately you do it, in the act of service to things and people beyond yourself – for your mission, your purpose, your ideals, for your partner, your family, and others. This is freedom with a higher responsibility, what I call Conscious Emancipation.

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” – Nelson Mandela –

And yet, you cannot enhance the freedom of others until you free yourself first. Master love, trust, respect, and honor with yourself and then you may offer those qualities to others. You are pioneering a new trail where nobody has ever gone before – within you, a you who has never existed until now.

While others have taken the trail, they have not traveled the one you are on. You are a pioneer because you get to blaze a first trail within the unique you that has never been before. You are unique because even you don’t know who you will be, in that you are still being revealed, still becoming, still an unknown.

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