Rare is the man who can break another man’s jaw if he has to. And stay in his own body as he holds his woman while she cries.

“He was six foot five,” she told me, “and built. It was all there physically, but sitting on his lap in the workshop, he was supposed to fill me with an energy that’s stronger than my own. Or at least hold a structure that will allow me to fully surrender into him. Instead, I felt like a strong breeze would knock him over.”

“I felt like
he was softer
than I was,
like he would
crumble at the
first sign of
intensity.”

“Where was his fullness? Where was the presence to match the physicality? I hate to ask it, but ‘where was his cock?’”

I had this conversation last week with a client who is exploring the masculine/feminine polarity space. She’d spent the weekend at a workshop for more experienced practitioners and still ran into this issue.

The men there, she told me, “were all lovely and soft and open and gentle, but were too often hard to distinguish from the women! I wanted to feel a MAN, not a Nice Guy. Someone who could hold my emotions but also, come on, fuck the world open. And me!”

Now, some of this is language specific to the polarity world, but this is something I hear from women all the time. Here’s what’s being said in layperson terms:

I’m looking for a man who has both sides of his being, the primal and the divine side, both fully available. Both skillfully developed.

My response to each and every one of these women:

“You are looking for an extremely rare man.”

Rare is the man
who knows the
difference between
aggression and assertion,
between violence
and volatility, between
power and force.

The man who can access the primal, protective power that lives in his bones — the part of him that would burn the world down to keep his family safe — and also sit in the uncomfortable silence of his partner’s pain without trying to fix it, without making it about him, without running, or for heaven’s sake — negating it because it’s illogical.

Civilized men
get half of
this equation
at best.

They often either swing too far into the “evolved” masculine — therapy-speak fluent, emotionally available, great at processing feelings — all of which are amazing attributes in a man — but not when they’re utterly disconnected from their own teeth and their balls. These men can hold space, but rarely is there anything solid underneath it. No ground. No spine. They’ve neutered themselves in pursuit of being “safe,” or “spiritual,” and what they don’t understand is that safety without the capacity for danger is just weakness with better PR.

Or they swing the other direction — all edge, all fire, all “alpha” posturing. They can access rage, but it’s uncontrolled. They’re often reactive and abusive. They confuse intimidation with respect, dominance with leadership. They can throw a punch but can’t have a conversation that requires actual vulnerability or holding connection. They’ve got the sword but no sheath. And eventually, that shit cuts everyone around them, including themselves.

The rare man
has integrated
both.

We call him UNcivilized.

He’s done the work to reclaim the primal parts of himself that modern culture has domesticated out of him — not to become more violent, but to become more whole. He knows that the capacity for violence is different than being violent. That having teeth is different than biting. That the ability to destroy is what gives protection its meaning.

Do you feel me on this?

Because he’s also done the harder work of learning to feel — deeply. He can be present with discomfort. To hold his woman’s emotional reality (and his own) without collapsing or controlling. To know that sometimes the strongest thing he can do is nothing. To just be there, staying grounded and connected while the storm passes.

This is not the man our current culture is raising. Not by a long shot.

Culture is raising men who are either dangerous but emotionally illiterate or emotionally literate but completely defanged. Either disconnected from their hearts or disconnected from their balls.

And women feel it.

They feel the difference between a man who performs safety and a man who is safe because he’s genuinely dangerous but in control of himself. They feel the difference between someone who’s been taught to “hold space” from a book or YouTube video and someone who can actually anchor himself in his own body while she falls apart in his arms — because he’s practiced in it. And practiced in it. And practiced in it.

The rare man doesn’t need to prove anything. He’s not trying to be seen as tough, and he’s not trying to be seen as sensitive. He lives both. Integrated. The wolf and the shepherd. The warrior and the lover. The gorilla and the Buddha. Not split into different versions of himself for different contexts, but unapologetic in both his peace and his power.

He can sit across from another man and be a mirror for his pain, and he can also look that same man in the eye and tell him the hard truth he doesn’t want to hear. He can be tender with his children and terrifying to anyone who would threaten them. He can apologize when he’s wrong and stand firm when he’s right.

He doesn’t compartmentalize his power or his presence. He doesn’t need to choose between being respected and being loved, because he understands they come from the same source — his presence. His fucking beautiful masculine presence.

This man is rare because becoming him requires doing two things most men refuse to do — dive deep into opposing skill sets.

First, reclaiming the parts of himself he was told were toxic — the aggression, the intensity, the primal protective instinct — not to act them out unconsciously, but to integrate them consciously. To build the container strong enough to hold that much fire without letting it burn everything down. And to have spent some mat time practicing one of the many physical arts. As philosopher-poet Mike Tyson says,

“Everyone has
a plan until
they get hit
in the mouth.”

This man has been hit in the mouth many times. Literally and figuratively.

Second, descending into the parts of himself he’s been running from — the grief, the fear, the shame, the places where he learned to armor up instead of feel. To develop the capacity to be with his own discomfort so he can be with someone else's without flinching. To develop the capacity to lead himself into depth. Then and only then can he take or be with his woman in her own depth.

Most men will do neither, honestly. If you disagree with me, go look around. They’ll stay in the middle — not too dangerous, not too vulnerable, not too much of anything. Safe. Acceptable. Forgettable. Lukewarm.

The rare man does both. And he doesn’t do it to be attractive, though certainly he will be.

He doesn’t do it to be respected, though he also will be. He does it because living as a fragmented man — splitting himself into the version that's acceptable at work, the version that’s expected at home, the version he hides even from himself — is a prison.

He does it because he knows that the alternative to integration is slow death. A life where he’s never fully here, never fully himself, never fully alive.

Rare is the man who chooses the harder path. The UNcivilized Path.

But that rarity is what makes him worth knowing.

Worth following. Worth loving. Worth becoming.

Primal and Divine. Both. Always.

More man than a civilized man.

Yours UNcivilized,

Traver

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If this resonated with you and you want to begin this work in earnest, I work with a select group of private clients per year. You can apply here.