10/12/2026
Who’s above you. Who’s below. Whether you need to establish position or yield it. Whether this man is a potential ally or a threat. The inventory runs fast, largely automatic, and largely below the threshold of conscious thought.
The evolutionary basis for this is real. Research on male competitive behavior consistently finds that men contribute more to group efforts when competing against other groups — and that the same competitive psychology also creates a near-constant scanning of every relational environment for hierarchy. The cost of living there permanently is significant. A man who is always running the scorecard cannot fully relax into friendship. Cannot collaborate without the undertow of measuring how he ranks. The loneliness this produces — the loneliness of a man surrounded by other men and genuinely connected to none of them — is one of the most pervasive and least examined features of male social life.
What becomes available when competition relaxes is not weakness. It is a different and rarer kind of strength. The capacity to actually be with another man — to be genuinely curious about him rather than positioned against him — turns out to be one of the more demanding and more nourishing things available to a man who has spent his life competing.
🔗 Link in bio — The Unfinished Man: The Fire, starts November 4.
