Coach: Your family is looking to you to be their rock.
Client: But I’m not made of stone.
This is the experience of many men I talk to. They are called to be strong and resilient for their families or their peers. But when they need support themselves, they don’t know where to find it. It’s one of the earliest messages we are taught as children and one of the hardest for us to understand.
“Man up!” “Don’t be a pussy!” are phrases that break down our self confidence in our early life. As we grow up, we are often ridiculed for doing “girlie” things like playing with dolls or joining a dance class. This only gets worse if we want to participate in “feminine” sports like cheerleading or volleyball. Once we start dating, we find that girls don’t want to date “soft” or “sensitive” guys. As adults, these messages are confirmed once again with phrases like “man of the house” or “who wears the pants?”
At the same time, we are taught that being mean, violent, or aggressive is abusive and harmful. We are told to be kind and understanding. We hear voices telling us to let our feelings out, to be sensitive to the needs of others. We see that helping someone else gains us praise. We hear of “narcissists” and “abusers” who only take and never give back.
We want to connect, share, help, and be helped. We want to care for someone and have someone care for us. We want to have a life filled with the joy and happiness we know comes from loving someone and being loved by others.
To many of us, these messages conflict. How can I “man up!” and be kind? How does a guy “don’t be a pussy!” and be understanding? In our young and developing minds, “soft” or “sensitive” is the solution to being a “narcissist” or “abuser.” Yet soft, sensitive guys don’t get dates, so some of us become “narcissists” and “abusers”. As adults, husbands and fathers aren’t taught how to “wear the pants” and be caring and loving at the same time.
What ends up happening for most of the guys I talk to is that they pick one side or the other. They choose to be sensitive and caring, hoping that someone will see the value in being treated like a princess. Or they choose to “Man up” and set down the rules, therefore offering a level of safety the sensitive guys can’t offer. But there is a happy middle ground whereby we can be protecting and kind, loving and strong. The difference is being the rock without becoming the stone.
My Experience
I grew up, like most young boys, being told alternately to be strong and to be considerate. I was never taught what those identities looked like. I believe that was because the people teaching me didn’t know either. I and others like me leaned toward the sensitive side while other guys I knew leaned toward the protecting side. People rarely noticed me and if they did, it was to make fun of me in some cruel way. The protectors, on the other hand, did get noticed – as aggressive. Neither of us had much opportunity to have a girlfriend. Me because they didn’t think I was “man enough” and them because they were “abusive.” Eventually many of us learned how to become more balanced, but that took a lot of failed attempts. Many other guys still haven’t figured that out.
I can remember an ex calling me a whimp and spineless after she got mad at me for not going to her defence when someone called her names in the mall one day. I can remember another one telling me to stop being so mushy. I remember an ex loving my romantic poetry one moment and demanding I “take charge” in the bedroom the next.
The confusion I felt from these mixed messages left me wondering what it means to be a real man. I couldn’t figure out when I was supposed to be strong and stand up for what I believed in and when I was supposed to be supportive and compassionate. I read book after book on men’s issues, addiction, and abuse, some of them Christian, some not. I asked friends and peers. I talked with classmates and co-workers. I attended men’s conferences and faith groups. I tried counselling and therapy. I even tried drugs, both the legal and not so legal kinds. I’ve tried to become an alcoholic so many times I’ve lost count. All these things did teach me many things, but none of them helped me clarify what it means to be a real man.
Then a few years ago, when I started writing about depression and my own journey with issues other men also deal with, I started helping other guys that are also finding this dichotomy confusing. In the conversations that ensued from this new point of view – of helping other guys – I started to see a pattern I didn’t recognise before. Many guys feel weak, some are called weak by the people in their lives, even by their spouses, while others believe they should be strong enough to handle whatever life throws at them. As I started examining this through the relationships they had and comparing that to the stories I’ve heard from so many women who’ve experienced abuse at the hands of a “strong” man, I saw the pattern. For a lot of guys, the choice comes down to two things: being seen as weak or being tagged as abusive. It became clear to me that the problem is we focus on avoiding the negative side of these characteristics instead of creating positive ones. We focus on being made or not made of stone instead of being the rock that others lean on for support.
If This Is You
Are you a guy trying to navigate the balance between strength and compassion, between sticking to your values and choosing to love someone? Do you struggle to know when to be strong, offering your strength in support of someone you care about, and when to show you softer side, asking for help to care for your own needs?
Most of us get it wrong sometimes as we traverse this life. We hold strong to our beliefs when later we believe compassion would have been more appropriate. We make sacrifices in our lives in order to help out a friend in need only to feel used afterward. We show “tough love” to someone who we believe has been enabled too long then see that we only made things worse for them. We go out of our way to do nice things for our spouses only to have them call us selfish or controlling.
We are often most abusive to ourselves. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn was to believe I have always done what I thought was best in the moment, even if the very next moment I wish I’d done something else. The great thing here is, once you start to realise you did the best you could in the moment with the information you had at the time, you can learn to forgive yourself for making mistakes or causing pain when you were trying to help.
The way to be the rock without becoming made of stone is to be strength for some and to look to others to be your strength. While a guy made need to lean on someone for something, they will likely have a strength that can support others. For example, I have a firm belief in the strength of manhood while many people believe that most men either misuse power or refuse to protect those seeking help. Guys call me up looking to lean on my belief in the strength of their manhood because they don’t feel strong as men. Yet many of those men who lean on me have strengths I rely on in areas I feel weaker than I want. This is the way of guys. We lean on each other when we need to and let them lean on us when they need to. In this way, each of us men can then be the rock in our families and hold them up when they feel like they’re falling, protecting them when they feel in danger, and allowing them to come to us with their needs instead of giving them something they haven’t asked for.
Waiting for them to ask us for help is important for two reasons. First, it frees us from being eternally vigilant. If we don’t have to constantly hold them up or protect them from danger, we can embrace, nurture, and grow in our own lives, preventing our own hearts from becoming like stone. Second, it frees them from being controlled or manipulated. Without our constant monitoring them for weakness or danger, they have the freedom to grow and experience life’s greatest joys. That is what being a man really is: being the rock they need when they want it, and having the strength to let them experience life their own way when they don’t, regardless of the consequences to you or to them.
If This Is Someone You Know
If you are in a relationship with a guy that isn’t embracing his manhood in the positive, life-giving way that he could, first make sure you and others around you are safe. Second, understand that he hasn’t figured out how to navigate the often-conflicting instructions us guys are given. Third, realise it isn’t your place to help him figure that out. In a relationship you have one job, to help the other person feel all the warm fuzzy feelings that go with feeling loved.
If he isn’t doing that for you it doesn’t change your job into making him see that. Your only job remains helping him to feel those feelings. If you can’t help him with that because of some damage that was done by you, by him, or by someone in the past, then it might be time to take care of yourself and let him find a way to take care of himself.
If he isn’t taking responsibility for his own life or helping you with the responsibilities in the relationship, your job isn’t to make him take responsibility. Your only job remains helping him to feel those warm fuzzy feelings that show him you love him. If you find you aren’t able to do that because you find yourself taking care of him or making decisions for him, it might be time to focus on taking care of your own needs and let him to find a way to be responsible for his own.
At that point you can continue (or resume) taking care of yourself and your kids of you have them. If, at some future point, you can resume helping him feel those warm fuzzy feelings then by all means do so, and there is no rulebook saying you have to do that. You are allowed to break the ties and go your separate ways. You are also allowed to wait for him to be available to receive your love again. The choice is ultimately yours.
If you have a hard time seeing his emotions or the emotion you see most often is anger, his heart might be becoming or already made of stone. If you don’t know what makes him happy, he may be hiding his joy behind a stone wall to protect it from harm. You’ll know the man you’re with is a rock, however, when you can rely on him to provide you with support and protection when you ask for it and share your life as you experience it your way when you want instead.
What It Means
Whether we chose the protective side or the sacrificial side when deciding what kind of man we want to be, we might misunderstand what being a man is actually all about. When we receive conflicting definitions of manhood, it can be hard to figure out what’s actually expected of us. This is the most common problem among the men who reach out to me for help. When I help them see that their families are looking to them to be the rock solid foundation that the family is built upon, the next thing we usually end up dealing with is how they get the support they want when they need it. The answer is simple, although it can be difficult to find.
Other guys can help hold us up when we feel the weight of our lives pulling us down. This is the reason we crave buddies, man caves, and traditionally masculine hobbies like sports and cars. With other guys to share our troubles with, we can have someone to lean on in the areas we want support in while supporting other guys in the areas we feel are our own strengths. We can be each other’s rocks and feel strength in companionship and community. This is what will enable us to be the rock in our families and relationships without hardening ourselves to the emotions that will inevitably come up.
Another way you can find help is through a professional that deals with men’s issues. Counsellors, therapists, and life coaches, all have different way that they can help guys out with these kinds of things. I’m a life coach who specialises in helping guys with these kinds of problems figure out how to manage their lives and show up for their families in a way that is both supportive and safe. Feel free to contact me so we can talk about how I may help.
What will you choose to be? The rock that your family can trust to hold them up and keep them safe while they go out into the world and experience new things, or the stone that holds himself apart from, and disconnected with, his family, forcing them to protect themselves from you and find other people to connect with. The choice, ultimately, is yours.