Being a Dangerous Man

Bernardo Torres - 2026-05-18

A few days ago, a poem appeared to me and blew my mind.

I've been carrying a strange mix for several weeks: exhaustion, economic pressure, the weight of sustaining a company when everything outside feels tighter, and that particular sensation we micro-entrepreneurs have that nobody really sees what it costs. With all those emotions tangled up, I opened my phone and found this:

"If I ever have boys, they'll be dangerous men."

I read the complete poem by Daragh Fleming, an Irish poet. I didn't know him. What he wrote touched something in me that had long been nameless.

I'm a tall man. I have a very strong voice (then I joke that I have a megaphone voice). When I enter a room, I take up space without meaning to, and when I speak, it shows. My whole life they've told me this in a thousand ways, some as praise, others as criticism. "You're very direct." "You're intimidating." "You sound angry even when you're not."

For years I tried to fix it, lower the volume, soften the edges. Ask permission before saying what I thought. Apologize for having the voice I have. It never worked, I am who I am.

It took me too long to understand that making myself smaller doesn't make me a better person, but it does make me less honest.

Fleming wrote something in that poem that I'll turn into a personal mantra:

"…an emotional man is a man fully grown."

An emotional man is a man who has fully grown.

Reading that hurt at first because I realized that for a long time I believed the opposite. I believed that being strong meant not needing. That being a leader meant carrying. That being a man meant solving. That feeling was a weakness managed in private, ideally alone and in silence.

For many years I carried. I carried things that weren't mine to carry. I held up people in places where they needed to hold themselves up. I took emotional responsibility for what others felt, decided, stopped doing. I got confused thinking that weight was love, that that surrender was leadership, that that infinite availability made me a good man. And it's not like that.

It was fear of not being enough if I wasn't indispensable.

I've learned (with stumbles, with relationships that ended badly and conversations I should have had years earlier) that putting a hard boundary is sometimes the highest form of respect. Respect for the other person, because you return their own weight to them. And respect for yourself, because you stop borrowing a pain that isn't yours.

But those boundaries don't always come out right.

Sometimes you set them late and the relationship is already broken. Sometimes you set them early and the other person feels abandoned. Sometimes you set them right and you're still left wondering if you were too harsh. Sometimes you set them and discover the other person never wanted you, they wanted you available.

I've lost people by setting boundaries. I've hurt people by setting them wrong. I've gone months not knowing if what I did was taking care of myself or being cruel. And I don't have an answer for that. What I do know is that continuing to carry what wasn't mine to carry was turning me into someone I didn't like anymore. And a man who doesn't like himself is no use to anyone. Much less to his son, and him I do have to carry.

I have a beautiful son just over 2 years old, Lázaro. And everything I'm writing, deep down, is for him.

Fatherhood is the most overwhelming transformation I've gone through, and continue going through. More than founding and running a company. More than any professional crisis. Because being a father can't be delegated, can't be optimized, can't be outsourced, and has no day off.

What is my son learning from me when I'm not talking to him? How do I treat his mom when we're tired? How do I respond when something frustrates me? How do I handle silence? How do I cry, or not cry? How do I ask for forgiveness, or not ask for it? How do I make mistakes in front of him?

He's not going to remember my speeches about vulnerability. He's going to remember if I was vulnerable. I have to be, today, the kind of man I want him to be tomorrow.

Not the one I tell him to be. The one I am. Do, not say.

Fleming writes:

"They won't bottle anger, they'll learn how to express." "They won't let pride be the reason they hide." "They'll know that love isn't something to perform."

I read it thinking about Lázaro, but also thinking about myself. Because none of those things were taught to me as a child. I see my father carrying his fears and frustrations in silence, I see myself in many things like my father. Now I'm learning, in real time, many of those things Fleming writes about, while I try to be his dad and while I run a company, and while the economy gets complicated, and while my head asks me to rest and my body warns me that I have to change something.

I don't have the manual, I'm understanding along the way that being an emotional man doesn't mean being emotionally available all the time. It means being present with what I feel, saying it when it needs to be said, and also knowing when to withdraw so I don't unload it on someone who shouldn't have to bear it.

That last part is hard for me, really hard.

"They'll know that being a man doesn't mean carrying the burden alone."

My whole life I believed it did, that being a man meant carrying alone. That asking for help was admitting I couldn't handle it. That showing exhaustion was showing the wound.

Today I'm in a different place, I still struggle to ask for help. I still sometimes carry more than I should before letting go. But I already notice when I'm doing it and that, compared to five years ago, is a huge difference.

Lázaro might not inherit my strong voice or my height, though it looks like he will. But he can inherit the way I learn to use that voice and that presence. He can inherit whether he sees me set boundaries with affection or with violence. He can inherit whether he sees me ask for forgiveness or hide behind pride. He can inherit whether he sees me cry when there's a need to cry, or swallow everything until my body sends me the bill.

That's the inheritance that does depend on me.

Fleming closes like this:

"But the danger they'll be, won't be the one society meant."

I want my son to be a dangerous man, yes. But dangerous to the old molds. Dangerous to the idea that men don't feel. Dangerous to the culture that confuses hardness with strength. Dangerous because he's going to speak when others stay silent, and he's going to feel when others cover it up, and he's going to let go when others hold on.

And for him to be that, I have to be it first. Not tomorrow. Today.

With the strong voice I have. With the mistakes I've already made. With the boundaries I'm learning to set even though sometimes they come out wrong. With the fatherhood that's changing my bones. With the company I sustain and that sustains me. With the real exhaustion of these days. From there, not from a perfect place.

What kind of dangerous man are you being today for the child who's watching you, even when you're not looking?