Not a hero story. Just an honest one.

Built for This follows Brad Poulter from a North End butchery in small-town Oamaru to the mess decks of the Royal New Zealand Navy.

Raised among strong women, butcher’s benches and hard ideas about what men are meant to be, Brad grows up knowing he’s different long before he has words for it. In late-90s New Zealand, difference isn’t discussed, it’s managed. Joining the Navy offers escape, certainty and belonging. The rules are clear. The uniform fits. Silence feels like part of the job.

But passing as straight comes at a cost. As deployments stack up, including service in Afghanistan during the War on Terror,  the pressure of pretending collides with trauma, grief and identity, and something gives way.

From ship’s galleys to combat zones, investigation rooms to leadership tables, Built for This charts a life shaped by discipline, loyalty and unspoken rules and what happens when you stop accepting them. Brad’s journey moves from junior sailor to leading culture, conduct and harm prevention inside the New Zealand Defence Force, staying long enough to challenge the systems that once demanded silence.

This is a memoir about masculinity, how it’s built, inherited and performed, and what it takes to rebuild it on your own terms. Honest, sharp and often funny, Built for This is about survival, mateship and the courage to be seen and why staying can sometimes be the bravest choice of all.

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Why I Wrote this Book

I did not write this to be clever or to tick “author” off a list. I wrote it because carrying this stuff on my own was doing my head in.

The Navy gave me some of the best days of my life and some of the worst. I loved the tempo, the mates and the sense of purpose. But there was plenty that nearly broke me too. The silence, the fallout and the cost of trying to fit into a world that was not built for me.

So I put it down. Straight and unfiltered, the way we talk in the mess deck or over a pie. The good, the bad and the bits I would rather forget.

I know I am not the only one. Plenty of us have been told to harden up, blend in or shut up. Some of us did and it left scars you cannot always see. This book is me calling that out.

It is not a Navy yarn for the sake of it and it is not therapy dressed up as a book. It is my story told my way. If it helps someone else speak up or make sense of theirs, even better.