This month inside the Masterful Men community, we’ve been talking about courage—not the kind of courage that shows up in grand gestures, but the daily kind. The courage to tell the truth. To face ourselves. To stay open in hard conversations. To drop the mask and stop performing.
This article is part of that ongoing conversation. Because nothing requires more courage than intimacy; real, soul-stripping, freedom-demanding intimacy.
And here’s the inconvenient truth about intimacy:
We can’t have it both ways.
We can’t have intimacy and control.
We can’t have passion and predictability.
We can’t have aliveness and domestication.
Control kills the very thing we crave most.
In a nutshell, I help men become stronger.
Not performative strong. Not the kind that masks fragility with aggression or emotional shut-down. I teach a different kind of strength, the kind that builds real emotional and relational safety. The kind that leads. The kind that grounds a room. The kind that a woman, deep down, is actually craving.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth…
This kind of strength cannot be controlled.
And that’s where things get messy.
Because many women, understandably shaped by pain and past harm, often try to do just that… control it. Tame it. Domesticate it. Wrap it in layers of emotional intensity, criticism, or withdrawal until it feels more manageable.
It makes sense. They’ve seen what happens when “strength” is weaponized. When men use power to dominate or detach, injure, or overwhelm. They’ve experienced the pain of being unsafe around men who had no idea how to hold their own inner fire, much less someone else’s.
But in trying to prevent that danger, they often create a different one.
When a woman uses her intense emotions to shut a man down—to make him more compliant, more digestible, more “safe”—she also silences the very parts of him that made him feel like a man to begin with. The parts of him that were animated, alive, invigorating. The parts that once set her heart ablaze.
She shuts down the very energy she longs to be near.
You can’t call forth the King and then treat him like a child who needs scolding.
A man cannot be fully strong and fully domesticated at the same time.
The Courage Most Men Miss
Now, here’s the part where almost every married man nods his head and goes, “Exactly. That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Some might even throw in a hearty “Hell yeah!”
And then? They go right back to sitting in the same frustration, waiting. Complaining. Blaming. Rationalizing their passivity.
They make their growth conditional.
“I can’t be myself until she stops trying to control me.”
That’s a big, steaming pile of absolute bullshit.
And it’s the trap most men stay in for decades.
Because here’s the real challenge: cultivating the courage to rediscover and live from those parts of yourself even while they’re opposed.
Especially while they’re opposed.
That’s the entire premise of the Hero’s Journey.
You don’t become the man through comfort. You become him by walking through resistance, fire, and challenge.
Pressure doesn’t prevent the process. It initiates it.
This is where most men bail. They make freedom dependent on permission.
But brother, your strength is forged in the refusal to abandon yourself, even when it costs you. Especially when it costs you.
And no one else can walk that path for you.
False Illusions About “Safety”
From the outside, a domesticated man may look safe, predictable, polite, even selfless. But beneath that tamed exterior is often a slow-burning resentment. A hollowed-out version of himself. A man who has outsourced his internal compass to emotional appeasement.
That isn’t safety. That’s suppression.
And suppressed men are not safe.
They are disconnected. They are volatile beneath the surface.
Because strength that gets buried doesn’t disappear, it ferments. And what it becomes by festering in the dark is far more dangerous than what it ever was in the light. It becomes volatile, dangerous, and unpredictable.
The truth is, real safety comes from freedom, not control.
The men I work with are absolutely learning to become emotionally and relationally safe. That’s non-negotiable. But here’s the paradox:
A man doesn’t become safe by cutting himself off from the scary, even potentially dangerous parts of himself.
He becomes safe by being deeply acquainted with, accepting, and integrating every part of himself.
His anger. His desire. His fear. His grief. His hunger.
He stops fearing what’s in him. He faces it. He integrates it. He leads it.
That’s what makes him a good kind of safe. Not agreeable. Not tamed. But self-led.
A man who is free from shame and manipulation, free from needing to be liked, is a man who can carry his own strength with impeccable integrity. That’s the man who builds trust. That’s the man who offers emotional safety. That’s the man a woman can relax with, not because she’s managing him well, but because she knows he’s not managing himself for her.
He’s grounded. Clear. Present. Human.
And when he isn’t? When he lives cut off from that inner fire, he loses more than just his vitality.
He loses his passion.
He loses his purpose.
He loses the polarity that once sparked something electric between them.
His biggest adventures become attending the Saturday morning men’s prayer breakfast to hear yet another message about sacrificing more for his wife, and how his ultimate purpose is to be nice. Or waiting for a weekend when he can finally sneak in his favorite game or hobby.
But in truth?
He doesn’t really feel all that alive.
His biggest adventure becomes her.
Her moods. Her cues. Her timing.
And most of all… when she’ll finally “let him” have sex again—something she often dreads or avoids because, truthfully, she finds him unarousing in this muted, domesticated state.
Meanwhile, because we keep missing this,
He stays up watching action films and hero movies, quietly aching for the part of himself he buried under spreadsheets and shame.
Sometimes he wanders into darker territory—porn, not just for the explicitness, but for the illusion it offers: to be unashamed, unbound, powerful, wanted. What he’s chasing isn’t lust—it’s lost vitality. Lost connection. A place where he feels alive and seen again, even if artificially.
And she goes to bed turning the pages of romance novels or queuing up romcoms, longing for the experience of being truly chosen, pursued, emotionally known and delighted in.
She’s not just after fantasy—she’s grieving the absence of magic, of mutual magnetism, of the man she once saw glimpses of but now feels distant from.
Both of them yearn for something real, invigorating, and deep.
And both of them silently mourning what they’ve mutually helped tame out of each other.
What About the Women?
Before any man walks away from this thinking, “Yeah, she just needs to stop trying to control me,” let’s flip the mirror.
Because we men are just as guilty of trying to tame what we don’t understand.
We want her soft, but not too emotional.
We want her radiant, but not too reactive.
We want her open, but not too unpredictable.
We want her sexual, but only when it’s convenient.
We want her tender, but not when she’s trembling with grief or rage or desire we can’t comprehend.
We want her mystery without the mess. Her wildness without the weeds.
And then we wonder why she doesn’t trust us with her deepest self.
If we want her most potent feminine beauty—her intuitive, emotional, cyclical, untamed essence—we cannot control it, fix it, or make it predictable. We must stop trying to collapse her otherness into something comfortable.
Because her full expression will scare us.
Just like our full strength scares her.
This is the real work of polarity. Not tactics. Not techniques. Reverence.
We don’t get to demand her surrender if we’re not strong enough to hold what she brings.
And she doesn’t get to demand our strength if she’s unwilling to feel the fire of it up close.
We’ve both been trying to win the same zero-sum game:
“I’ll give you more of me if you give me something I can control.”
But that’s not intimacy. That’s negotiation.
And negotiated connection is a slow death.
The Dead-End of Domestication
Here’s the bottom line, for men and women alike:
You cannot experience the full power, awe, and intimacy of another human soul while trying to tame it.
And you certainly cannot build a life-giving relationship by demanding safety through predictability.
Domestication is a dead end.
It doesn’t give us connection, it gives us compliance.
It doesn’t give us passion, it gives us performance.
It doesn’t give us safety, it gives us sedation.
If you want love that’s real and alive,
You must stop trying to domesticate each other.
You must allow what scares you about one another to lead you to look inward at places that desperately need your attention in order to become free.
Let him be wild in his strength.
Let her be wild in her emotion.
Let love be forged in the fire of two sovereign people seeing and choosing each other, over and over.
That’s where the good stuff is.
Not in control, predictability, or making things feel comfortable.
True Relational Safety Isn’t What You Think It Is
A lot of men try to talk their way into emotional safety.
They try to learn new lingo.
That’s admirable!
But words don’t calm her nervous system.
Your calm being does. Your grounded presence. Your self-acceptance.
There’s a passage from The Chronicles of Narnia that reminds me of this concept:
Mr Beaver: “Aslan is a lion. The Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh,” said Susan. “I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe?”
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
That’s it.
A man acquainted with his true kingly nature is likewise.
He’s not “safe.”
But he’s good.
He is emotionally and relationally safe because he has faced and is addressing everything inside himself that isn’t.
He is not safe to lies.
He is not safe to manipulation.
He is not safe to injustice or self-betrayal.
But to those under his care?
He is presence. He is warmth. He is safe in all the best ways.
It’s been my experience that the souls of most women long for Aslan—wild, good, powerful, present.
But the fear, insecurity, and control born from their ego demand something else entirely: Eustace.
Tamed. Predictable. Self-absorbed.
The boy who began as arrogant, whiny, and obsessed with rules and safety—utterly incapable of true wonder, leadership, or sacrifice—until transformation dragged him through pain he didn’t choose and freedom he hadn’t earned.
The Eustace Pattern: Why Men Settle for Safety and Lose Themselves
It’s been my experience that the souls of most women long for Aslan—wild, good, powerful, present. But the fear, insecurity, and control born from their ego often demand something else entirely: Eustace. Not the Eustace at the end of his journey, but the one we meet in the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader—petty, rule-bound, obsessed with comfort, and entirely out of touch with anything noble, wild, or selfless.
And many men oblige.
Not because they want to. But because it’s all they know. Most have never been invited into anything deeper. There’s been no initiation, no older man pulling them into the wilderness and teaching them how to carry weight with honor. No one has shown them how to hold power without domination, or how to be strong without becoming rigid. So they default to what they believe women, churches, and culture want: agreeable, dependable, low-maintenance men. Safe.
They oblige the call to become tame.
And then everyone wonders where the spark went.
But here’s what makes the Eustace metaphor so powerful: he didn’t stay that way.
Eustace had his reckoning.
After hoarding treasure like a dragon—and waking up as one—he came face to face with the cost of his self-centered life. He couldn’t remove the dragon skin on his own. It was only when Aslan intervened, clawing through layer after layer, that the boy beneath was set free. And that’s what transformed him—not a woman’s approval, not a lecture, not shame. But pain, initiation, and the presence of something greater.
That’s the journey men are missing today.
And until they take it, they’ll keep obliging the call to be digestible instead of powerful. Manageable instead of magnetic. Tame instead of trustworthy.
And women will keep wondering where all the Aslans went.
The Cowardly Trade
If you want a picture of what happens when a man trades his wildness for predictability, and you’re not familiar with Narnia, look no further than George McFly in Back to the Future and Gríma Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings.
George is the everyman who forfeited his strength long ago:
“I know what you’re gonna say, son. And you’re right, you’re right. But, uh, Biff just happens to be my supervisor, and I’m afraid I’m just not very good at confrontations.”
“I’m just not very good at… at things like that.”
He’s harmless. And because of that, he’s not respected.
Not by his wife. Not by his kids. Not by himself.
Wormtongue is worse. He’s manipulative, flaccid, and scheming.
He survives by flattery and control.
His cowardice has made him venomous.
“Late is the hour in which this conjurer chooses to appear!”
Both represent what happens when men abandon the discomfort of authentic power.
They become “safe,” but not trustworthy. Passive, but not peaceful. Neither one of them is someone you’ll trust in the time of your deepest needs, emotional or otherwise. Neither one of them is someone you want to passionately make love to you, either. Neither really knows how.
By contrast, the world aches for men like Aslan, Aragorn, Maximus, and Atticus.
Men whose strength is not safe, but good.
Men who are deeply self-led, emotionally present, and undomesticated.
The Real Reason You’re Both Stuck
So here’s what happens:
A man starts to feel like his strength creates conflict. His truth causes friction. His presence isn’t welcome.
So he dulls it. He edits himself. He tries to be more manageable.
And it kills the very thing she needs from him: his passion.
Because passion comes from aliveness. And you cannot be alive when you’re afraid to be you.
And she? Well… she starts off offering more of her heart, more of her emotion, more of her vulnerability. She shares more of her voice, her needs, her fire. But quickly, she runs into his resistance. His emotional absence. His defensiveness. His shame. His silence.
And she begins to doubt herself.
She swings between feeling like she’s too much and not enough. She gets called difficult, needy, and dramatic. She gets labeled with that one awful, belittling “c-word” women have come to hate most: “crazy.”
And slowly, she begins to edit herself too. She silences her needs. She walks on eggshells. She shuts down parts of herself that once made her glow.
Both of them are trying to make it easier for the other to love.
However, both of them have become shadows of who they were.
This is the mutual trap of making your partner more manageable. This is what erodes the soul of a marriage or long-term relationship.
All our failed attempts to fashion our partner into a safe, predictable, domesticated version destroy the very spark that brought us together.
This is how emotional gridlock begins. This is where attraction dies. This is what breeds the four horsemen: contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
If you want a great, intimate, connected, and thriving marriage, you must interpret this season for what it is, not the end, but an invitation.
An invitation to stop trying to avoid your inner darkness through mutual shutdown and control.
You must each do your inner work. (There is an order to this, and I explore it deeply in my book, The Unchained Husband.)
Do your work. Watch what happens.
What Is the Work?
If you want to be deeply known, you have to fully know yourself.
If you want to be deeply accepted, you have to fully accept yourself.
And if you want love that’s actually alive?
You have to stop trying to reshape your partner into someone more manageable.
You have to let strength stay strong, even when it unnerves you.
You have to let emotion stay fierce, even when it overwhelms you.
And you have to let love be a free, conscious choice between two people who are done contorting themselves for comfort.
Your partner’s triggering isn’t a threat.
It’s an invitation… to see what’s still unhealed in you.
And if you reject that invitation just to stay safe from your own shadows?
You’ll never have intimacy.
Not with them.
Not with yourself.
Ready to Step Into This Work?
If you’re a man reading this and realizing you’ve been edited, domesticated, or afraid to be fully yourself, it’s time to reclaim your edge. Your fire. Your internal authority.
And if you’re new to my work, let me be clear: this kind of emotional gridlock and intimate deadness begins healing best when the man goes first. That doesn’t mean she can’t or shouldn’t do her own work. But it does mean that you, brother, must take the first courageous step, regardless of where she is or what she’s doing. Waiting for her to go first will keep you stuck in the same powerless loop.
Start with The Awakened Purposeful Man.
It’s a short, powerful course that will help you reconnect with your strength —not a performative strength, but one rooted in deep emotional aliveness.
The kind that makes you magnetic, grounded, and real.
If you’re a woman reading this and you’ve been stuck watching a man you love stall out or pull away, I see you. You’re not crazy, and you’re not powerless.
How to Stay Sane While He Figures His Sht Out* is a practical, no-fluff guide to help you hold your ground, stay emotionally sane, and stop trying to fix what isn’t yours to fix.
He has his path. You have yours.
And if you’re a man who knows it’s truly time to stop circling this work and go all-in, I currently have space for three new one-on-one clients (as of this writing) for a two-month intensive.
This is for committed men only; men ready to begin the courageous journey of reclaiming their strength, presence, and purpose.
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