Climbing What You Can't Feel

"You move through the world like a hawk while the rest of us are lost in thought."

I heard that on a Diary Of A CEO episode that autoplayed on my phone, right after I'd hung up with my dad. The timing stopped me cold.

Because how do you love someone who doesn't move through emotion the way you do?

Alex Honnold, the star of the interview, climbs without ropes. Literally.

Thousands of feet in the air, where one wrong move is the end. He's free-soloed El Capitan, Taipei 101. He's scaled things most people wouldn't even look at.

From the outside, it can look like emptiness. Like detachment. Like nothing is there at all.

But the people who love him, especially his wife and children, see something else.

Not a lack of emotion. But a mastery of it.

And that's where something shifted for me.

I had just gotten off the phone with my dad.

I asked him if he related to the idea that some people, especially men, don't sit in emotion; they solve it.

He said yes, immediately.

"Men don't really stay there," he told me. "They fix it."

And I sat there thinking—

Okay… but where does that leave someone like me?

Because I don't just feel things, I live in them. I process through them. I connect through them. I love through them.

So, the other night, my life researched this theory.

I opened up, really opened up, about something deep to me to Mr. International, with whom I'm building something real.

In my lens, he didn’t fully sit with me; it didn't just feel like a difference in emotional language, it felt like distance.

Like I was a tide crashing in the ocean… and he the rock I was pushing up against, letting the waves hit him without ever faltering.

And that's where fear enters. Quiet fear.

The kind that asks: Can this actually work? Are we too different? Am I asking him to become someone he's not?

Here's the truth I had to face: I wasn't just trying to understand him. I was trying to translate him into me.

But what if he's not broken? What if he's just built differently?

He once broke his arm in front of me.

Didn't cry. Didn't spiral. Just looked at me and said, almost casually, "I do yoga in my mind."

And I remember thinking, that's not normal.

But now I'm wondering… what if it’s just not my normal?

Maybe some people don't dive into emotion. Maybe they move through it. Maybe their love isn't always expressed in sitting beside you in the feeling, but in building something steady enough that you don't drown in it.

And maybe the real question isn't: “Why doesn't he feel like me?"

But:

"Can I feel safe with someone who feels differently?"

Because loving someone like that, well, it’s a lot like free solo climbing.

So now I'm standing here, looking at this relationship, asking myself:

Do I want to climb this?

Yes, but not blindly. Not hoping he becomes someone else. But seeing it clearly for what it is: a difference in emotional language. We both have to discover how our best paths can merge into the same course.

Because we're all taking risks. Every single day.

The only question is: which ones are you willing to feel your way through (if you’re a solver) … and which ones are you willing to climb (if you’re a feeler)?

And maybe…

My life has already been answering me.

If I look for you through your display of emotion, I will find a project. A case study. A way to soften you into something that makes sense to me.

But if I look for you in your actions, in the way you show up, in the way you move through the world, in the way you choose me, I find something else entirely.

A world of joy. Of possibility. Of complete reverence… for who you already are.