Sunday Saunter #9
The Adult in the Room
Is there ever a day off?
I spent five days last week assisting my good friend, Taylor Johnson, with his Embodied Sexual Leadership Training (hence the absence of last Sunday’s Saunter).
Taylor took us through a brilliant arc weaving generative somatics, primal play, and erotic exploration. At the core of what he’s teaching: if we men want the sexual aliveness and connection we long for, we’re going to have to lead ourselves and our partners into that experience.
There’s a lot I could share. I’ll certainly be weaving some of this work into Heart of Men and I’ll be bringing in Taylor as a guest teacher in Living Leadership this fall to share some of these codes.
I want to focus on something specific that felt challenging, confronting, and ultimately possibility-filled that came up for me during our last day.
I found myself speaking to the room of 20 dudes: “I believe in what we’re learning. I believe this form of leadership would have a really positive impact on my experience in sex. And if I’m honest with y’all, I lead in every single area of my life, and at the end of day, I just don’t know If I want to lead my wife and my’s intimacy.”
The room got still. Almost every married man in the space let out a deep sigh and nodded their head in that way that says they recognize something of themselves in what I shared.
A question reverberated in my being the remainder of the afternoon: do I have to be the adult in the room in every situation?
…..
This was confronting and evocative because: I was being given the tools—tools I needed two decades ago—to actually lead powerfully, authentically, and in service to my partner in sexual connection. The gap I’ve felt in intimacy was no longer a “skills gap;” it was a question of my willingness. And that brought some shit up for me.
If I’m honest, the area in my life where I feel I have not historically been a good leader is in my intimate relationship with my wife. For the past couple of years, I’ve run some version of the story I spoke to the group: My leadership is “switched on” for the entirety of my day; when it’s 8:30pm after a 14-hour day and it’s getting dark, I just want things to be easy.
I have plenty of compassion for why I’ve felt this way.
And the reality is: the perpetuation of this story has left me in a place of pretty consistently feeling unfulfilled with intimacy and then disempowered in my ability to effect change.
No thing is wrong with my intimate relationship with my beloved wife. By most standards, it’s par for the course and kind of just okay for a married couple with a young kid.
But for my soul, for that vibrant well of life within me that wants his full aliveness, I know I’m leaving so much on the table. I know I’m often choosing what’s comfortable in this setting instead of meeting the brave, growthful edge that I often ride in other domains of my life. And our whole family ecosystem is negatively impacted by this void of courageous leadership.
…..
At the turn of this year, I sent out a newsletter about becoming Grown-the-Fuck-Up-Humans. It was the most engagement I’d ever had on an email to that point (this was before the blossoming of Sunday Saunter). It clearly had struck a chord.
When I think about being a Grown-the-Fuck-Up-Human—an adult—I see it as a willingness to do what needs to be done. It isn’t always what we think we want. It doesn’t always “feel right” nor “easy” nor “inspired.” But it’s the thing the situation clearly needs and isn’t getting that we are in fact capable of filling.
Our culture has fucked us here in supporting our growth into initiated adulthood. Sold an infinite story of comfort, convenience, and doing “what feels right,” in the absence of any personality-destroying initiations, most of us get to “adulthood” still children in our leadership.
Most of us get to adulthood—and sometimes spend our entire adulthood—still looking for someone else to do the thing. To fill the void. To take us where we most want to go.
Most of us are still looking to mom and dad in the form of political leaders, bosses at work, spiritual teachers, or even in our most intimate relationships.
Bless this stunted adult. Bless him in all the ways he lives in me and he lives in you, as a result of the cultural waters in which we were raised. It makes sense.
I don’t write to shame him. Nor you. Nor me. I write to say, almost objectively: this way of looking for the adult elsewhere is not getting you what you want in your life.
This way I was waiting for someone else to lead in my intimate connection with my wife, objectively, was not getting either one of us what we most deeply desired in our relationship.
The etymology of leadership from *leit: to go forth.
I believe we came to this Earth to learn how to lead ourselves—and then others. I believe our task here is to go forth on behalf of what’s actually most important to who we really are.
What lives in us as sacred and precious: it is our task to carry this forward. To meet the edge that we hadn’t met before and to allow something to be born at that edge, through our leadership.
And this also means that we’re here to follow—the right people at the right times.
The etymology of follow from *full-gan: full-going.
When someone leads from this place of what matters most, naturally others want to give their full-going to this beautiful and necessary expression of life.
I say all this to say: I’d bet some real money that if there’s a place you feel unfilled in your life, it’s asking for a deeper expression of your leadership. And/or, it’s asking for you to give you full-going to someone you trust that can help you develop the capacity, courage, and clarity to begin leading yourself there.
…..
I look at the entirety of my life’s ecosystem.
Where I am most deeply fulfilled is where I’ve chosen to lead from what matters most. My culture didn’t give me a life-affirming template to follow. Certainly not.
Heart of Men. Living on Land. My embodied relationship with Spirit. My love of the wild. My marriage, my fatherhood, and my provider-ship. In all of these areas, I had to 1) make the choice to listen to something deeper in me 2) be willing to go forth from this deeper place and 3) fuck it up a whole bunch until I found my footing.
If I’ve gotten somewhere good, it’s because I’ve been willing to lead myself there on behalf of what’s real.
There are days I want to rage at how little culture has given us and how much that asks of us to champion on our own.
What was laid out as “normal” for me in terms of sex, work, family structure, food, the suburban home, emotional integration, spirit—it almost all requires us finding something else if we’re going to be well.
I believe that something else comes through your leadership. Your bravery to say, “you know—I don’t yet know the way, but this sure ain’t it, and let’s try something different.”
That’s what it’s like to be alive right now.
Congratulations. I’m sorry. And thank you.
…..
The task at hand feels big. It really requires this much precision, attention, and discernment? I either need to be leading myself on behalf of what’s real OR I need to be in an active, engaged relationship to following that which is actually life-affirming?
There’s not a lot of room for laziness in that equation. There aren’t a lot of off-days. There isn’t much space to consistently disassociate into a 4-hour Netflix binge or a 45-minute Instagram scroll on the toilet.
What I’m speaking to—whether you’re leading yourself somewhere worthy or choosing to follow someone you can trust—doesn’t allow for passivity. The kind of passivity where without any intention nor direction on your part, suddenly what you’ve wanted is miraculously granted to you.
Passivity is not going to take you there if you want the fullness of the life you came to live.
And this is where I see choice for myself. I have a lot of empathy for why I haven’t wanted to lead in our sexual relationship. I tend a lot, pretty well on most days, and I, too, need tending, touch, care, rest, and to be led.
I’ve dreamed of a world where, without my input, direction, and intention, my wife and I could arrive somewhere deeply fulfilling.
But, ultimately my choice to disengage from leadership in this domain was not creating the life I wanted. I have the agency and the capacity to choose that which will bring me the life I long for. And that’s the choice I’ve been making as I come back from last week’s retreat.
It hasn’t led to some psychedelic breakthrough. I didn’t suddenly have a 45-minute full-body orgasm. But this past week, I’ve felt empowered. I feel in the current. I feel I’m answering the call of my soul. I feel subtle doors opening in the connection with my wife. I feel our love, slowly and steadily, growing in a new way.
……
I share all of that to close with this: it is a lot to be the adult in the room. Especially when you’re choosing to play in a lot of rooms.
I don’t pretend what I’m inviting myself and you all into in this email is easy. Nor even attainable. It certainly isn’t the norm.
Look at our culture, and the vast majority of people are seemingly okay being passive participants in the water they find themselves swimming in.
The folks I respect the most, the folks who are actually living fucking beautiful and honorable lives, those doing the precise work of finding that overlap between their soul’s longing and what the world needs—they’re working hard right now.
I look around at my peers and my mentors who are doing the damn thing, and they’re meeting edge after edge after edge. And it is not rainbows and cupcakes and Instagram reels of surfing in Bali and having ecstatic lover-ships.
It’s real. It’s hard. And it’s the game I’m choosing to play because it’s the one that I feel honors this precious life I’ve been given.
It just doesn’t work for me to be a passive participant in this whole drama of the life I’ve been granted.
There’s a couple balms I want to offer for those walking in this way.
Tears.
Thursday morning, I was feeling under the enormous weight of all I’m tending. It’s the intensity of summer, the days are long, and I’m dealing with a gum infection from a sideways wisdom tooth that has had me at a 9 on the pain scale in moments this week.
It hasn’t felt like stopping is really a possibility right now. The familiar seduction of resentment, bitterness, and blame began to simmer in my bones. Noticing this spiral and wanting to interrupt it for the sake of myself and my family, I moved my first call Thursday and took an extra 30 minutes that morning in my meditation/breath practice.
I let myself first connect with the pride and fulfillment I feel in showing up for those around me in the way I do. For the depth of integrity and greatness I’m reaching for and inviting in from those around.
But then equally important, I then let myself feel the heaviness of the responsibility. I connected in with that desire to just play and laugh and be in touch with this vibrant, expressive, wild boy in me.
I let myself feel the seeming gap between those two realities. Of holding up my world and living in total, care-free splendor. The tension between them. And I let myself cry. And cry. And cry.
Tears have a way of orienting me. They’re a vital nutrient to my soul ever since I got wrecked 7 years ago and met grief for the first time. I never leave a good crying session with “everything figured out.” But, I leave feeling the resolve to hold the both. And to keep on moving on with the edge that’s in front of me.
It’s a fucking lot to be the adult in the room. It’s a fucking lot to be sensitive and awake to being alive in these times and to choose to do something about it. We need moments—and I’d say we need them weekly these days—where we’re not holding the world together. Moments where we give credence to what’s scared, uncertain, or overwhelmed in our own capacity.
Moments to be held by another—be that our partner, a close friend, a bodyworker—or moments to be held by Something Greater.
Walking with others towards greatness.
I used to feel, quite often, that I was on an island alone trying to answer the deeper call of my life. I used to feel, quite often, that my attempts at being a grown-the-fuck-up-human couldn’t be understood by those around me that were living more fanciful and passive lives.
I’ve found over the past few years, primarily through Heart of Men, that walking towards being a real adult—walking towards greatness—alongside other men changes the whole journey for me.
Put me in a space where 14 other guys are moving towards what’s most important to them. Put me in a room where other dudes are taking courageous action on behalf of their soul. Put me next to guys chasing the real stuff of life to be the kind of men they didn’t have growing up.
Put me in a space where a man can break down in one moment, inspire the shit out of me in the next, and then tell a joke that gives me the deepest laugh of my year.
That shit does something for me.
It doesn’t take away my bad days. Nor the hard passages I need to walk through. But rocking with guys like this, being seen and uplifted by them, chasing big stuff we really care about together—it makes the whole thing make sense to me.
I really love surrounding myself with people who are trying to be their best at who they really are. Honestly, that’s why I said yes to creating and leading Heart of Men.
Which brings me to this:
Once a year, we do something that I think one day our grandchildren will talk about. We gather 14 men for 8 months to walk towards greatness together in our flagship program, Living Leadership.
We’re together for 18 online sessions + two, 5-day in person summits on our mountain here as we move through four specific initiations.
We don’t get high on peak experiences so you can feel better for a weekend. Nor do we sell you on ideas of being a perfectly integrated man.
You learn to lead yourself such that you can consistently and courageously tend the fire of what’s most important in your life. I’ve come to see: anything that’s real and true that felt impossible before this brotherhood becomes inevitable.
Here’s one brother from last fall’s journey:
“I pole-vaulted across a chasm because of you guys by seeing that I could lead something that actually mattered to me. I’m astonished by where I am right now compared to 8 months ago. Even if you had given me a cheat sheet with how to do all this, there’s no way I could have without this.”
The waitlist is open for this fall’s program, which includes a $1700 gift from me and 6 weeks of free coaching if you join this week. You can find out more here.
Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for all the ways, seen and unseen, you’re choosing to move towards and embody a way of being that affirms life. Thank you for being an adult in a culture where so few of us had any form of integrated masculine expression modeled to us.
It’s a gift to know you. Be well this week,
TD
Listening to (helped me get into my tears Thursday): Jacob Collier’s The Light for Days
Watching: My man Erick Godsey’s webinar on building a business from soul that contributes to the renaissance of culture (dude has earned $950k in past 3 years totally living his dharma). I’ve learned A LOT from him and wouldn’t be here without his courage to live his gift.
p.s. Rites of Reunion is live, yo! February 17-22nd. 25 men + 25 women along the banks of Oak Creek in the Red Rock desert. Wood-fired saunas, hottubs under the stars, decadent feasts. And the space to find a new fucking way for men and women to be together in these crazy times.
This email has been written by a real human, me. I don’t believe in using LLMS to write or more broadly, to make art. This stuff comes from the human soul.
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