Orientation, Growth, and the ME / WE / SHE Pattern
Why orientation matters
This page is meant to explain patterns, not tell you what to do next.
Many men come to this work confused by a tension they can’t quite name.
They’ve been told, implicitly and explicitly, that focusing on themselves is selfish, that prioritizing the relationship is maturity, and that being a good man means putting others first. And yet, living that way often leads to resentment, invisibility, exhaustion, or a quiet sense of powerlessness.
This page exists to slow that down and look at it developmentally, not morally.
What follows is not a model for labeling people. It is a way of understanding how men tend to organize their attention and energy over time, why those patterns make sense, and why growth often requires a shift that feels wrong at first.
Orientation, not personality
When I talk about orientation, I’m not talking about personality types or fixed identities.
Orientation describes where a man is primarily sourcing his sense of safety, meaning, and movement. It reflects what his attention is organized around when life feels uncertain, emotionally charged, or threatening.
In more common language, orientation influences whether a man tends toward dependency, co-dependency, enmeshment, or healthy differentiation, even if he’s never used those words before.
These orientations are adaptive. They form for reasons. And they can change.
The three common orientations
SHE orientation
In a SHE orientation, a man’s attention is primarily organized around his partner or another significant external figure.
This often looks like preoccupation with what she is feeling, needing, wanting, or doing. Energy is spent managing her emotional state, anticipating reactions, or trying to get relief through her change.
Over time, this pattern often leads to what I call emotional gridlock,
where both people feel stuck, reactive, and unable to move forward, even though everyone is trying harder.
In psychological language, this often overlaps with dependency or co-dependency, though many men would never describe themselves that way. The underlying pattern is not weakness, but a learned belief that emotional safety and stability come from outside the self.
This orientation makes sense. For many men, it develops in response to relational instability, emotional unpredictability, or a deep desire to maintain connection and avoid abandonment.
What eventually breaks down is that relief remains external. Power is deferred. Agency quietly erodes.
WE orientation
In a WE orientation, a man’s attention is organized around the relationship or system itself.
The focus shifts from “her” to “us.” Communication models, dynamics, fairness, emotional safety, and mutuality become central concerns. This often feels more mature and balanced than a SHE orientation.
At this stage, the relationship itself often becomes the primary strategy for maintaining emotional safety.
When the system feels calm, everyone feels okay. When it’s strained, everything feels at risk.
And in many ways, this is a developmental step forward.
However, when the relationship becomes the primary source of regulation and meaning, this orientation can slide into enmeshment. The system carries the emotional load that the individual self has not yet learned to carry.
What eventually breaks down is that when the relationship is strained, uncertain, or disconnected, the self has nowhere solid to stand.
ME orientation
In a ME orientation, a man’s attention is organized around his own choices, responsibility, and inner alignment.
This is not self-absorption. It is self-location.
Energy shifts inward, not to withdraw from relationship, but to reclaim agency. The man begins to ask, “How am I relating to this?” rather than “How do I get this to change?”
In therapeutic language, this orientation closely resembles differentiation. The capacity to stay connected without losing oneself, and to act from choice rather than emotional pressure.
This orientation is often the most misunderstood, because it contradicts deeply ingrained moral stories about selfishness, goodness, and what it means to be a “good man.”
The counterintuitive part
Most men have been taught that focusing on ME is selfish, immature, or dangerous.
As a result, moving toward a healthy ME orientation often feels wrong at first. It can trigger guilt, fear, or the sense that something important is being abandoned.
Much of this resistance is rooted in deeply held beliefs about dependency and relationships, where safety and goodness are unconsciously tied to self-sacrifice rather than self-trust.
This discomfort is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that a man is stepping outside of inherited conditioning.
And yet, without a grounded ME, neither WE nor SHE can function sustainably.
Connection without agency becomes dependence. Responsibility without self-location becomes resentment.
Common misunderstandings
“Yeah, but isn’t WE the goal?”
WE is not the problem. The problem is expecting the relationship to do the work of the self.
A healthy WE emerges from two differentiated individuals who can take responsibility for their own emotional state, choices, and boundaries.
Without that, WE becomes a container for regulation, negotiation, and quiet control rather than intimacy.
In other words, WE is an outcome of health, not the source of it.
“Yeah, but isn’t focusing on ME selfish?”
Selfishness is taking without regard for impact.
ME orientation is taking responsibility for one’s own experience, choices, and behavior so that others are not unconsciously burdened with them.
Men who avoid ME often believe they are being generous, when in reality they are outsourcing their needs, resentment, and emotional regulation to others–most often, their partner.
Avoiding ME does not make a man loving. It often makes him invisible, performative, or quietly (or not-so-quietly) angry.
“Yeah, but what about responsibility to family?”
Responsibility that is not grounded in agency becomes obligation, and in time, resentment.
Obligation may look virtuous on the surface, but it slowly erodes joy, presence, and leadership.
This work is not about abandoning responsibility, but about choosing it consciously rather than performing it under pressure, guilt, or fear.
How this fits the rest of my work
This orientation model is not a standalone idea. It runs through how I understand change, growth, and transformation more broadly.
It connects directly to my understanding of how real change happens, the perspectives that shape my work, and the worldview that underlies it.
It also informs how I work with men through coaching and mentoring, community, and courses. Different orientations often benefit from different starting points, not because one is better, but because context matters.
Where this leaves you
If you recognize yourself in any of these orientations, that doesn’t mean you are behind or doing something wrong.
It means you are human, responding to life with the tools you had available.
Growth is not about replacing one orientation with another. It is about developing the capacity to choose rather than default.