Why So Many Men Feel Lost

Daddy issues.

Only women have daddy issues … is what I was led to believe by countless other boys and men I know now were themselves just teeming with unexamined daddy issues.

(like nipples, men have ‘em, too.)

My father has been overwhelmingly absent throughout my life. I used to think, “How could he have messed me up? He wasn’t even around!”

In my latest bonus podcast episode (“The Manhood Crisis: Why So Many Men Feel Lost”) I talk candidly about my own experiences as a boy instinctively aching for initiation into manhood, yet no older/elder man ever showed up to offer it. Actually, the only grown men who ever even attempted to initiate me into manhood were my fraternity brothers in college and a few drill sergeants and officers in the military. Sadly, the modern fraternity experience is just boys initiating boys, and the military only initiates boys (and girls) into a version of masculinity that profoundly (and painfully) cuts us off from other vital parts of our authentic selves.   

Thus, like many men, as a consequence of having no wise elder showing me the way into a mature manhood, I was destined to walk confused and disoriented through much of adult life, unsure of myself in countless ways.

For years, I would unconsciously attempt to mask this inner uncertainty with accomplishments, accolades, and woman conquest, while often feeling unworthy of it all.

This is the fate of the ”fatherless child” who lives through years of “dad deprivation” only to become a grown man who never quite feels certain he’s worthy of his manhood.

​​The tragic, heavy burden of this psychological condition inevitably falls on the world around us.

What’s the cure for the fatherless child, for the man who has long felt the absence of a wise and loving father?

Inspired mentorship.

Getting a mentor(s) to support him in finding his own way into authentic power and presence as a full man – and also becoming a mentor to others who are themselves lacking wise guidance and stewardship.

In my experience, ideally a man has both mentors and mentees. He has people wiser than he that he can look up to, reveal his challenges and burdens to and gain counsel from, as well as youngers to whom he can pass on his own hard-earned wisdom and also offer comfort and support.

Every man needs support.

Every man also needs a space where he can effectively offer his support.

Otherwise, we men are prone to fall into the pits of isolation, chronic resentment and frustration, cynicism, even bitterness, without even knowing why – or worse, we just blame our intimate partners, kids, work, the government, or anything outside ourselves for our disenchantment, which only allows us to avoid looking inward to the wounds that haunt us.

👉 EP 137 – The Manhood Crisis (Why So Many Men Feel Lost)