Just Stand There

the hardest thing a man can do is nothing

This is a long post about a day so pivotal in my life that sharing what I learned that day has become my career.

If you struggle to stay present, open, and available when the stakes are high or big feelings happen, reading this will be worth your time.

If you’ve ever shut down, turned away, or closed your heart when someone you love was going through a tough time, this post is for you.

If your partner has said she doesn’t feel safe with you, or that she doesn’t trust you (ouch!)—this post is for you.

Additionally, reading this post will help you if you are a man who wants:

• More intimacy

• More depth

• More trust

• More felt strength

• More feeling

• More solidness in your relationship

• More love in your life

And less:

• shutting down/turning away when things get hard.

• reliance on porn, alcohol, doomscrolling.

• shallow distractions that keep you numb

• reacitivity

• fear of the feminine

• fear of the masculine

• fear of big feelings

You’ll also have more capacity to stay calm and centered when even harder moments arrive, like

• fatherhood,

• career loss,

• financial ruin,

• health crises,

• death of loved ones

• zombie apocalypse

---

August 2012
Somewhere in the Nevada Desert

It’s a trite thing to say, in 2025, that Burning Man changed my life. But this was no mind-bending acid trip.

It was a blistering hot, dead-sober afternoon in a shaded geodesic dome with thirty-some other humans, half women, half men.

We’d gathered for a workshop called ‘Emote-a-thon’.

The idea was to create a container where women could ‘emote’ or express whatever they needed to: rage, bliss, grief, pleasure, violence, anything. Not just express, but be heard. Witnessed. Not fixed, shut down, or told to turn down the volume.

For three minutes, a man—selected by the woman stepping into the circle—would have the opportunity to hold space. His only job was to ground himself into the earth and be as fully present with her as possible.

My then-girlfriend and I were the only couple in the workshop. We’d been invited by a new friend, Ben, who was also there. I did not suspect that showing up as a couple was a risky thing, a clue in and of itself.

After the container was set and everyone had “checked in” (introduced themselves, shared a bit about their struggles), the men were taken out of the dome by a man called Day.

Day led the men through grounding exercises aimed at helping us occupy our bodies and settle our nervous systems while leaning in to uncomfortable experiences like walking blind, or holding a low squat with hands above head for a long time in the hot sun.

I looked around for my friend Ben, who’d invited me to this thing. I scrunched my face, meaning to silently ask, are you sure about this?

Ben calmly fixed his gaze on me. This is not how men look at each other in the ‘default’ world because being truly seen by another man, even just for a moment, is vulnerable, even threatening. Ben did not speak or smile or look away quickly. He was just there with me, in this group at this thing in the desert. Nothing wrong, nothing to fix.

During one of the closed-eye grounding practices, a man ran directly into the side of a truck. He burst out laughing. Some laughed with him because it could have been any of us.

Yes, Day said. Feel that connection building between you. There is no competition here. No man battles, hunts, leads or loves, alone. Even if there’s no one else around.

A lot of what Day said was jibberish to me. Things like, feel the core of the earth beneath your feet.

Fuck that, there was just dirt underfoot, and it was hot. The sun baked my skin, and sweat poured from my brow and down my back.

Day had a bit much of the ‘guru/teacher’ vibe for me, but it was clear that he was connected to something that I hadn’t fully grasped yet.

After thirty minutes of grounding work, we were brought back into the dome. As we filed in, a female assistant was fielding questions from the women. The last thing I heard before all quieted was, “what if no man is ever able to offer me this again?”

We were invited to form a circle, two crescents: women facing men.

When the time was right, a woman self-selected to step into the circle. She scanned each one of the men. Looked us up and down.

Evaluating for what, I thought. Attractiveness? Resemblance to dad, or abuser? Trust? I looked to the men at my right. The hand positions. Where they were looking. How far apart their feet were.

I copied them, hoping to get chosen.

The woman in the center called a man toward her. A smirk died on his lips as he approached. He stood three feet or so before her, a little unsure but finding his footing.

She was given her inviolable three minutes to bring up whatever was real and true for her.

He was there to receive, to be present, to breathe, to tune in, to relax, to open. To shelf anything of his own stuff that came up.

In fact, Day had encouraged all of us to lean into the experience, instead of away. He’d emphasized the importance of noticing any inclination to fix her, or to stop her tears or calm her rage.

“Everything in you will want out of this,” he had said while we stood in a deep squat position, hands held high.

“If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this experience, it’s to understand that what we’re about to go in there and do is the deepest service of love and intimacy that most of these women will ever experience from a man in their lives.

So don’t fool yourself into thinking that standing before a woman present and connected to your breath is not, in and of itself, doing something.”

And when everything within you is screaming to run and hide, just say yes. Open your heart and say, more, please.”

Open your hands and receive the gifts of her rage, or bliss, or whatever it is she’s offering you.

And here’s the key: it’s not about you.

Whenever I tell this story, men invariably ask the same question.

No, we did not reverse roles. It was not any woman’s job that day to hold space for any man.

Another woman stepped in. After a moment of scanning, she nodded at me. A little shot of dopamine, a smirk, then the remembering.

She was angry. Stamped her feet and screamed. Asked if she could slap me. I consented. She glared at me like I’d just murdered her child, and slapped me across the face.

It fucking hurt. I opened my mouth and asked if she wanted to again.

The second time hurt more. My head rang, I looked back up at her. She was glowing. A smug, victorious smile spread across her face.

Then, something in me relaxed. I could feel the burden she was unloading: the years or decades she’d carried this anger with nowhere for it to move, and the wall she was knocking down by having it out with me. As if I was the one who’d caused her the pain.

I felt all of the projection, each seething ‘FUCK YOU’, and the spray of her spittle sliding down my face like sweat. Whatever propelled her spit was not hers anymore, nor was it mine to hold. She didn’t need saving, or fixing.

I relaxed more. I looked at this woman as if she was another human. The judge in the back of the male brain that scans every woman for sexual potential quieted.

There we were, two sweaty humans, exhausted, breathing rhythm matched, for what seemed like ages. She completed. We hugged. She sat on the “throne” to decompress and hydrate. Feeling jazzed and almost proud of myself, I returned to my spot in the circle with a bounce in my step.

The next woman who stepped in was my girlfriend. She’d introduced herself at the beginning not by her name but by the name ‘Cou-rage.’ Emphasis on the latter syllable.

She chose a solid, handsome man with a short, black beard, solid in his stature and presence in a way I was definitely not. And kind. If I knew anything about her at all, it was that she chose this man because he was kind.

She raged - at me. He stood before her like a demigod holding the spinning fucking earth. Perhaps he was comforted by the ‘it’s not about you’ advice in a way I could not be.

As she detailed her pain (and my failings) upon the crowd at the top of her lungs, her fists pounding Blackbeard’s chest, I was filled with shame.

I felt a hand on my chest. It was my friend Ben, who’d invited me to this workshop. There was another hand, on my back. Day’s hand. I did all I could to not sob. But the tears flowed, and no one wiped them.

While the woman I had tried to not love too much made it clear that that was not working for her, these men helped keep me standing.

Something in me wanted to hold all of it. Holding it in fed my shame. Shame was uncomfortable, but familiar. I clung to it. Loved it, even. It felt like something instead of nothing.

Like some sort of psychic guru, Day leaned in to my ear and whispered: It’s not you, mate. Listen to her now. Feel her.

And there she was, my lover, looking at me, her face and hair soaked in tears and sweat like a ferocious tiger goddess after a kill. And suddenly her gaze was away, and she said thank you to Blackbeard with a hug, and took her place at the throne.

Ben and Day returned to their spots. The next woman stepped in.

She stood there, gazing at me.

No fucking way, I thought, and looked away.

She kept her eyes on me.

I’m sure the open contempt I felt flashed across my face.

I took a deep breath and stepped into the circle. Again.

If I’m honest, my clearest memories of the workshop fade when I approached this woman. I remember nothing of her content. I just remember that after we completed the three minutes, it felt a little easier than before to breathe, to stand on my feet, to allow myself to look at her and see her humanity, to feel the depth of her feeling.

If you’ve read this far, here’s the big reveal: her biggest expressions do not go on forever (despite many men’s great fear). It’s a bit like a pressure release value. Sometimes there’s a lot of back pressure, and sometimes it needs to be opened very slowly over time, but there is an ‘other side’.

What does that ‘Other Side’ look like?

Melting. Connection. Gratitude. Love. The kind of intimacy that would send most men running for the hills.

Why?

Emotion moves. It’s like electricity. If it builds up or gets stuck in one place, things start going awry:

Tension, resentment, dissociation, addiction, cancer.

When we’re able to just feel and not get caught up in the story of what it means, the result is often the opposite of tension and resentment.

It’s not just like that in women. It’s like that in men, too.

But when it finally gets to move through a woman, she gets to be in her natural state of connection with everything that is.

And whether you’re her lover or just a fellow workshop participant, you can develop for which so many generations of men have proven themselves inadequate: witnessing and holding space for the sheer, raw, unfiltered power and beauty of the feminine.