#88 | The Work of Intimacy - Jayson Gaddis (Getting to Zero)

Just in time for the weekend, a conversation from the vault (actually recorded 2 years ago, but freshly published now).My guest today is Jayson Gaddis, founder of The Relationship School, which he co-teaches with his wife. He is the author of “Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships” and has trained over two hundred coaches across eleven countries.I’d been aware of Jayson for a few years, though what drew to me reach out was discovering a paper he wrote back in 2005 called The Deep Masculine, while researching my own program by the same name, and realized we had been walking parallel trails for a long time.His path took him through the college fraternity system, where hazing and sexual conquest offered a distorted version of the belonging every young man actually needs. He took on an advocacy role that led him through seventy-five college campuses in thirty-five states, until disillusionment called him into the wilderness. He took young men on seven-day backpacking trips to see what might happen if initiation was replaced by solitude and sweat instead of alcohol and shame.The trail finally bent toward relationship, after a breakup in a Whole Foods parking lot at age twenty-nine made him ask a terrifying question: maybe I’m the problem.In our conversation today, we explore his perspective on ‘the deep masculine’ and what it actually takes for a man to stop defending, start feeling, and learn the single most important relationship skill there is: repair.Jayson reminds us that most men don’t come to this work through inspiration. They come through pain. And the path back to connection runs through the body, the present moment, and the art of intimacy.LINKS: * Jayson Gaddis’ Relationship School* Getting to Zero - book Would love to hear your comments on this conversation. Post your thoughts below. Heads up, if you are a man seeking to explore the mythopoetic path, you are invited to join The Deep Masculine - my 3 month online quest to repattern your relationship to sex, soul and purpose. Developed with my colleague Deus Fortier, it draws from embodied somatics and the mythopoetic lineage. Robert Bly’s Iron John. The archetypal map of King, Warrior, Magician and a special emphasis on the Lover.We work with four pillars. Mythopoetic maps. Somatic skills. Ritual rhythm. And brotherhood. Ongoing connection with men around the world who are walking the same terrain.If you’re not quite ready for the deep dive, check out The Archetypal Compass. This mini-guide is designed to help you navigate the internal archetypes of the soul, providing a map for those ready to move beyond personal inquiry and toward a more conscious stewardship of their lives and the world.SHOW NOTES0:07 — Fraternity Culture: Ian asks Jayson to unpack what the system promised, delivered, and took from the young men inside it.0:09 — Broken Initiation: Jayson on hazing as a distorted rite of passage, where alcohol and peer pressure replace traditional thresholds into adulthood.0:12 — Sex and the Mask: The conquest culture inside fraternities, where bravado hides the private shame of sensitive, lost young men.0:16 — Wilderness Initiation: Jayson proposes seven-day backpacking trips for fraternity men, and the breakthroughs that came from solitude and physical exertion.0:18 — The Parking Lot Epiphany: At age twenty-nine, breaking up with a woman at Whole Foods, Jayson faces the possibility that he is the problem.0:27 — The Deathbed Offering: Ian shares the night his grandfather was dying, when he told his own father he was glad to be his son, and what melted in the aftermath.0:29 — Father Repair: Jayson describes doing similar work with his dad, accepting that the man did the best with the values he had.0:32 — Learning to Feel: Jayson recalls six months of therapy where the only words he could find were I don’t know, then numb, then anger, and eventually something more nuanced.0:36 — The Defensive Man: On the wound of not getting it right, the shame underneath, and how to approach it as a team rather than a battlefield.0:38 — It’s Not About That: Ian tells the st