In this episode, I draw the second film from my New York Times Jenga movie deck—Anchorman—and end up somewhere I didn’t expect: a surprisingly intimate reflection on masculinity, emotional development, and the quiet fragility beneath alpha performance.

Using both the film and stories from my clinical work with men and couples, I explore how so many of us were taught to perform masculinity without ever being taught how to feel, relate, or truly know ourselves. What Anchorman turns into comedy, I often see in the therapy room: men who look confident on the outside but feel disconnected, angry, or numb on the inside.

I also bring in Jorge Ferrer’s idea of the “omega male”—a relational, emotionally grounded alternative to dominance-based masculinity—to imagine what might emerge when the alpha role finally collapses.

This isn’t a movie review.

It’s a reflection on how masculinity breaks—and what might grow in its place.

What if intimacy was never meant to come with guarantees?

In this solo episode, I explore how psychotherapy often inherits a quiet promise—that if we choose the right relationship structure, heal enough, or communicate well enough, intimacy will eventually become safe and predictable. Drawing on my clinical work, reflections on anti-mononormativity, and insights inspired by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics, I suggest a different way of holding love and relationship.

Rather than treating intimacy as something that should protect us from change, I explore the idea that intimacy is inherently risky—not in a harmful way, but in a deeply human one. To love is to be affected, transformed, and sometimes undone by another person. No relationship structure—monogamous or otherwise—eliminates that risk; it only organizes it differently.

This episode is not an argument for or against monogamy or polyamory. It’s a reflection on moving away from relational essentialism and toward a view of relationships grounded in perspective, relatedness, and transformation. Along the way, I draw on real clinical moments, explore jealousy as information rather than pathology, and reflect on therapy’s deeper task—not guaranteeing safety, but building capacity to stay present while we’re being changed.

If you’ve ever wondered why love still feels hard even when you’re “doing everything right,” this episode is an invitation to think about intimacy in a more honest, compassionate, and spacious way.

In this episode, I sit with a question that’s been quietly shaping a lot of my clinical work and personal reflection: What kind of masculinity are we actually bringing into our relationships?

Inspired by a provocative appendix from Jorge Ferrer’s Love and Freedom, I explore his contrast between the “Alpha Male” and the “Omega Man”—not as fixed identities or ideals, but as relational patterns that shape how men experience confidence, desire, power, and intimacy.

Rather than critiquing Ferrer, I use his framework as a doorway into something more personal and clinical: how masculinity often becomes organized around performance, hierarchy, and validation—and what begins to shift when it moves toward presence, self-trust, and relational safety.

Along the way, I reflect on:

• Why gender language always risks essentialism—and how to hold it lightly

• How these dynamics show up quietly in the therapy room

• Why gentleness, empathy, aesthetics, and emotional attunement are still coded as “unmanly”

• How sexuality changes when it’s no longer treated as a referendum on worth

• And why masculinity doesn’t need to be defended through hardness in order to remain potent

This isn’t an episode about becoming a “better man,” or replacing one masculine ideal with another. It’s an invitation to get curious about what allows relationships—and desire—to breathe.

If you’ve ever felt alienated by hyper-masculine bravado or flattened versions of “healthy masculinity,” this conversation is for you.