Colman Domingo crossed paths with his future husband Raul outside a Berkeley Walgreens in 2005 and couldn't stop thinking about him. Three days later, scrolling Craigslist missed connections to post his own ad, he found that Raul had already posted one — just an hour earlier. On their first date, Domingo told him, 'I think I love you.'
Where this was said
At 34:13 · chapter starts 32:20
A few college friends lured Domingo to San Francisco, and he admits with a laugh that he was 'coming out' in multiple senses of the phrase — arriving in the city and emerging as a gay man simultaneously. The living situation was characteristically scrappy: four men in a $625/month studio apartment in the Tenderloin District, Domingo sleeping in the walk-in closet because he was the last to arrive. He was 6'2" in a closet. He began writing plays while bartending, and his first work, Up Jump Springtime — named after a Stan Getz and Abbey Lincoln song — explored queer coming-of-age in an era when no one was writing those stories, with three actors playing every role. He notes that around this time he also wrote the book for the Donna Summer musical, lamenting that Summer's legacy is underappreciated given the extraordinary range of her voice.
Colman Domingo wrote his first play, 'Up Jump Springtime,' in 1997 in San Francisco — a coming-of-age story about a young queer man, with three actors playing all roles.
Colman Domingo met his husband Raul in 2005 after they both posted on Craigslist missed connections following a chance encounter outside a Berkeley, CA Walgreens.
Most people confuse things they value instrumentally (because they get them other things) with things they value intrinsically (for their own sake). Greenberg's friend stayed in a miserable relationship for years because she was living by her parents' values, not her own — the values map made the mismatch instantly visible.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.