How Did You Learn to Love?

Many of us learned how to solve a problem long before we learned how to hold space for someone else's.

Somewhere early on, a lot of us picked up an idea about what it means to show up for someone: try to fix what's broken, offer the solution, consider the job done. That instinct serves us well in plenty of situations. Some find though that it's a model that we absorbed rather than chose. Models built for one kind of relating don't always transfer to what a relationship really asks of us.

That gap shows up in small, familiar moments. Someone voices a frustration, we respond with a solution. But a solution wasn't what they were asking for, and now the room feels tense in a way neither of us expected. Some call this the Fixer Hat, the reflex to solve a problem the moment it's named, whether or not a solution was ever the ask. Other times the reaction moves the other way. Someone responds to something we said, or didn't say, and the response doesn't track with what we thought we'd communicated. Easy to read either moment as a failure of goodwill. Often it's something quieter: two different sets of relational instincts, each shaped early and reinforced often, meeting without either person realizing the other one learned a different rulebook.

How we learned to love isn't only a story about romantic partners. The same gap shows up with a friend, a coworker, a parent, anyone whose way of relating doesn't match the one we learned first. Where did we pick up the reflexes we now bring into every relationship without thinking twice? What taught us to read, or not read, what someone else actually needed from us? And where might that reflex work against us?

This session is an invitation to take a closer look at the relational reflexes we never chose, and to ask, honestly, whether they're still serving us where we're using them.

This is a Space for men to speak honestly about their inner lives, without needing to perform, fix, or prove anything.

In a world where expectations around masculinity are shifting, many of us are left sorting through conflicting messages about who we're supposed to be. Balancing projecting strength and vulnerability, aspiring to independence while yearning for connection, our frameworks for male identity don't always mesh easily. And for a lot of men, there aren't many places where that tension can be explored out loud.

This group offers a place to slow down and reflect in the company of other male-identified and masculine-presenting peers interested in sitting with complex questions. Together we'll explore identity, relationships, and emotional life. We aspire to take thorough inventory of the stories we've inherited about what it means to be a man.

There's no pressure to have it all figured out, just an invitation to be real, in whatever way feels right.