Talk To Me, Not About Me

What the ‘control room’ taught us about control, conflict, and connection.

You can feel it before it breaks.

That tension—quiet and civilized—like people rearranging cutlery at a dinner table that’s seconds away from an emotional food fight. At the Songa Mansion, conflict rarely arrives at the front door. It leaks in through the windows, masked as miscommunication, scheduling friction, just a vibe.

And then one night, it names itself.

We were in the control room, a repurposed AV booth from the mansion’s old bed-and-breakfast past. Velvet walls, outdated switches, one-way glass. The kind of room designed to watch things—not to be watched.

It was a fitting place for a conversation about control.

Erin Spelling sat upright on a stool, knees crossed tightly, voice steady but restrained. Forbes Nash—the former Silicon Valley manipulator turned Songa’s resident "People Pusher"—stood against the wall, arms folded, jaw tight. Wyoming leaned into the console, silent, but tracking everything with the stillness of someone who’s coached too many leaders through too many explosions.

Wyoming wasn’t here to facilitate. He was here to make sure the real conversation actually happened.

Have you ever been the go-between?
Or the person no one told?
Hit reply. We read every story.

For weeks, people had been talking. Not to each other—but about each other. Forbes was giving unsolicited notes. Erin was collecting the fallout. Everyone was complaining to someone—just not the person who needed to hear it.

Erin had vented to three different Songa moms about Forbes steamrolling a family segment of the experience without consulting her. She said Forbes kept improvising new formats, overriding her without warning, and treating her like an afterthought in front of patrons. Forbes told the tech team he was tired of Erin "repping the mom voice" but never offering usable feedback, calling her critiques "vibes without structure."

It got worse when Erin told a few people that Forbes reminded her of Emerson—her husband—always pushing, always confident, never listening. She said it half in jest, but it made its way back to Forbes. And once it did, he couldn’t un-hear it.

Forbes didn’t know how Erin felt until the comparison reached him secondhand. And as a blunt, analytical tech guy, that lack of directness rattled him. He started questioning everything—Did she not trust him? Did she see him as toxic? Was this just like Christer all over again?

It made him feel like he was the villain in a play he didn’t audition for.

Wyoming broke the silence.

"There’s a fine line between facilitating and enabling," he said. "And if you’re the one people keep coming to, it’s probably because you’re saying what they want to hear."

Forbes gave a bitter laugh. "Stewarding trust—that’s what they used to pay me for. To mediate, to build bridges. But the point isn’t to stay in the middle of everyone’s mess forever. It’s to mirror what trust looks like so people can learn it themselves."

Erin didn’t flinch. But she didn’t answer either.

Wyoming turned to her. "It’s not your job to be the emotional switchboard. Not anymore."

"This is why we don’t talk about people behind their backs," Forbes added. "Because if you don’t say the full truth to the person—and hold some of it back—you’re not really venting. You’re pressurizing. Later on, it comes out sideways. You say, ‘I’ve told you four or five times,’ when what you mean is, ‘Can’t you see how angry I am?’"

Erin looked down. "Sometimes it’s not about fear. It’s about not having the words."

"That’s fair," Wyoming said. "But that’s also how people get into abusive relationships. They talk to everyone except the person. They don’t set limits. They confuse boundaries with unsaid expectations."

"Exactly," Forbes said. "'Boundaries' have become this catchall excuse. People say 'you violated my boundary'—but there was no shared agreement. Just a private line in their head that got crossed."

"What we need are limits," he continued. "Not walls. Limits say: you can do that again—but there will be a consequence. Boundaries say: I’m cutting you off and you’ll never know why."

Erin opened her mouth, closed it.

Forbes softened. "I’ve helped frame more of your conversations than you probably know. Not to triangulate. Because people trust me to speak in tribe. It’s not about being right—it’s about being reachable."

"But I didn’t know how you felt. Not until I heard it secondhand. And once I did—it made everything worse. I started thinking you didn’t respect me. That you wanted me out. That you saw me as a liability, not a partner. I would’ve rather heard it direct—even if it stung."

Wyoming looked up. "And people learn better with real-time feedback. Not weeks later."

"That’s why we’re here," Forbes nodded. "To build real-time feedback loops. For everyone. Not just the people who’ve read all the books."

"Even a hand signal would’ve worked," Erin muttered. "I just didn’t want to make a scene."

"Silence is a scene," Forbes said. "It makes everything awkward."

Erin looked at him. "I did try. I went to Forbes. I went to Wyoming."

"But not me," Forbes said. "And that’s the thing. Everyone ends up doing more work—for me—because no one told me the first time."

Wyoming cleared his throat. "I’ve seen what happens when companies build their cultures around conflict-avoidance." He glanced at the control board. "At one point, I was brought into a company where nobody gave the founder honest feedback—not for ten years. He wasn’t a monster. But the silence made him one."

"If someone had spoken up—ten, twenty, thirty years ago—we might not be dealing with a Musk or a Trump. Real narcissists don’t start that way. They become unreachable because people stop trying."

"One guy I worked with inherited his father’s firm—$100M valuation. But every exec quit within a year. Not because he was unfixable. Because they all complained about him to each other, and not to him. By the time they did, he didn’t trust anyone. He built a moat instead of a bridge."

He paused, and then added quietly:

"And Erin—I know things aren’t easy at home. But that’s the point. If you’re walking around telling everyone what’s wrong in your marriage except the person you’re married to—how do you think this place is going to be any different?"

"It’s not just about systems. It’s about the stories we replay from home." Wyoming glanced at Forbes. "You two are living out the same tension I’ve seen in a hundred marriages: one person pushes, the other pleases. One dominates with good intentions, the other disappears while managing everyone’s emotions."

"You say Emerson takes up all the oxygen, but you don’t speak up. You manage around him. And now you’re doing the same thing with Forbes."

Erin blinked. Something cracked. Not a breakdown—just a shift. A quiet permission.

"You want to reclaim power?" Wyoming asked gently.

"Then don’t whisper about someone.
Speak to them. Set limits.
Hold your seat. Leave the door open.
Nobody learns from being cut off."

The room held still. Even the console lights seemed to wait.

Erin finally spoke. "I’m frustrated. I’m at a nine. And I want to talk about it. But not right now. Tomorrow?"

Forbes nodded. "That’s all I ever needed. Thank you."

Wyoming sat back. "Now that is what trust looks like."

And that, I thought, watching from my spot in the corner, is what it means to live the Songa Way. Not to perform connection. But to risk it. In real time.

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