I pretended I was functional, and eventually I forgot I was pretending.

Get good at something people value. You will always be able to say, “I’m shite at a lot of things, I’m ugly, and unlikable, but at least I can __________”.

It doesn’t hurt to be physically active, too.

I’m not advocating for any of these, but my journey towards feeling secure in a male adult identity was probably:

• Good set of male friends in high-school that I still keep in touch with (at 48). That was pure luck, I didn’t get to choose them ending up in my class.
• Joined the army at 18. Hard work but definitely forced me into a number of situations I wouldn’t otherwise have had to deal with and raised my personal confidence that the unknown was generally something that could be handled.
• Did the Landmark Forum early twenties. I do not recommend this to anyone but it did wonders for me.
• Through doing a bunch of shitty jobs learnt to apply for good jobs.
• Raised with high expectations. Parents weren’t jerks or unreasonable but they expected me to apply myself without ever nagging at me. Good parents is a huge hidden privilege.
• Met my wife at the right time and through sheer luck she turned out to be perfect.

In short: Mostly luck, privilege and a bit of hard work. And when I say privilege I do not mean money. That we had not very much of.

Bit of an odd answer, but for me (and my wife), the last piece of the puzzle was really budgeting. The invisible, constant financial stress is a lot, and adds to that feeling of “pretending” when you’re not even sure if buying groceries will cause a bill to bounce, let alone hanging out with friends who always seem to comfortably have the money to do whatever it is you’re doing.

It’s been several years now (early 30s, started budgeting in late 20s), it took us a while to figure it out and progress was slow, but I can “see the line” now, towards retirement, towards home ownership, we have no more credit card debt (just student loans left, which we’re working on), and we budget “fun money” that I save up to make big purchases like a 7900XTX without any guilt or credit.

We’re also having our first kid soon, and at least financially, I’m not stressed about it at all, which would’ve been impossible in our twenties. Getting our financials in hand and headed in the right direction has just done massive work in helping me feel like I know what I’m doing, and that our life is actually getting better rather than stuck in place.

I got a few things that have helped me figure things out.

1. Nobody has this shit figured out. We’re all just kids with jobs and responsibilities now.

2. The only people that care about how manly another man is are other men that wanna feel superior to you. It’s okay to want to feel manly if that’s what you want, but don’t do it for someone that probably didn’t like you to begin with. Why work so hard to earn the approval of someone you don’t like?

3. Men are just as emotional as women and the sooner you realize that the sooner you can start dealing with your emotions in a healthy way.

4. Don’t try and find people that fit the very specific definition of “friend” that you have in your head. Every friendship and relationship is unique and should be appreciated for what it is instead of what it isn’t.

5. Failure doesn’t mean that you are a failure. Try and figure out why you failed instead of focusing on the fact that you did fail. You learn a lot more about yourself from your failures than your success.

Found someone I love to spend my life with and give me something to strive for.

I don’t know about fully functional, but I think there’s 3 things I would say are key to not being miserable all the time:

• Be kind. It’s not in everyone’s nature, but the results are so rewarding. Just stop to think, is what I’m doing right now causing someone else pain or discomfort? How could I reverse that? Don’t let your bad day ruin someone else’s.

• Be purposeful. Find things to strive for. Small goals are fine, and sometimes things take a long time, but don’t lose sight of where you want to be. Dont be manipulative or treat it like a zero sum game either, your success doesn’t need to come at the cost of someone else’s. Winning with your friends is even better than winning alone.

• Be forgiving. Most importantly to yourself. Failure is not the enemy of success. Self hatred will destroy any chance you have at happiness, many of us are taught at a young age to treat our own failings as horrendous sins that we must mentally self flagellate for. This is the one of the hardest things to overcome, but every step along the way will give your mind a little more room to find peace.

I found myself in a place where I was terribly miserable, isolated, and regretful. I didn’t know it at the time but it was the gradual application of the above which helped pull me out of that place.

Started taking my meds

I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

• C.S. Lewis

a large number of men feel isolated, unvalued by society, and dysfunctional, but it’s not 100%.

My solution to this has been to join a hobby that happens to check off a lot of criteria

• Physical exercise
• Interesting people
• Teaching and mentorship, with opportunities on both sides of that fence
• Camraderie
• Promotion of positive masculinity

For me that’s the SCA, a medieval reenactment organization. But my local area has a lot of good people in the organization and unfortunately not every area is filled with great people. Plus, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine.

1. I was priveledged enough to have positive role models and grow up in an environment where I could form platonic friendships with girls.

2. I started training martial arts at 14.

3. I made a fuck tonne of mistakes, took responsibility, and learned from them.

4. I kept coming back to my foundational beliefs and continually adjusting my behaviour to reflect them.

Adulthood is realizing most adults don’t know what they’re doing.

But I think a lot of men’s issues is trying to confirm to the boomer’s definition of “a man”.

I have no idea why anyone would do that, but lots do.

And that link is about how some men can’t get laid…

That right there is likely the main problem.

men feel isolated, unvalued by society, and dysfunctional,

And:

Not all guys have an ongoing sexual relationship with a woman.

Are not the same fucking thing. If you’re looking for a single partner to fill all your emotional needs, you’ll never be happy and you’ll make the other person unhappy and eventually make them despise you. At best you’ll end up with a problematic codependent relationship

Getting into philosophy and ethics. Contemporary Stoicism in particular is very freeing and empowering. Theres this concept in Stoicism (and Buddhism) of “dichotomy of control” where some things can’t be controled like thoughts emerging or you dying but you can control your reaction to all of that.

Another concept from Stoicism that relates to community is the idea of “festival” which is basically being intentionally mindful of how awesome crowds are - the fact that a diverse group of people gather together for some shared activity or just to hang out is enough for you to enjoy it!

Mostly realizing that masculinity really is what you make of it. It doesn’t need to be aspirational and probably shouldn’t be. You are a man regardless of whether you fit anyone’s expectations of that or not and the more people you find to become friends with who accept this radical fact the more comfortable you are to express masculinity without boundaries. Being able to be fully real without pretending to like or hate anything because you are “supposed to”. Being able to express a full range of emotion without fear and talk about it occasionally. Not being held to a standard of sacrifice of the self for meaningless prizes which hold no lasting value.

Secondly - sometimes comfort is a trap. We seek comfort as a natural instinct and to have it sometimes is a good thing… But to find it and expect to live in it all the time makes your world smaller. Over time you lose the functionality that allows you to make changes and do the things that you need or want to. Pushing out little by little into the uncomfortable slowly expands the space and duration in which you can be functional and comfortable. Doing things you don’t like, make you self conscious or put you temporarily in an environment that tires you out is training your mind to be tougher and more resilient. Go without comfort sometimes, treat it as exercise or nessisary medicine. Self-care is one thing but self-coddle will make whatever you tell yourself about not being able to handle things true. It is a sedentary lifestyle of the mind. Find a medium between points of comfort and vistas of discomfort to venture into and you will find less things hold you back, more stories you will have to tell and the more life you will feel like you have lived and the more rewarding your times of comfort become.