Im sitting here on my lunch break, crying as I read this. I know I am lonely, my two best friends died in the past couple years. I have a dear wife, that I love, but she is struggling with her own health issues so I really don’t want to burden her. So I keep suicide in my back pocket, like a get out of jail card. I have a plan and a date set. But then I read this and think maybe I could get some help. Thank you.
Hey brother, I hear you and you aren’t alone. Yes, you can get help, and this long moment of pain isn’t your forever. I really suggest getting professional support asap, and talking to someone you trust. If you need resources for men, let me know. My DMs are open, though I’m not a professional or clinician — just a friend and fellow traveler. You can get through this, brother, and you can find support.
Wow. This was intense. TBH I’m guilty of ignoring the needs of masculine gay men and straight cis men. Mostly because I (as you well know )may inhabit a male body but I relate to the world the way a woman would ,the feminine ways work for me. This is probably the first time I’ve ever really thought about men’s mental health. Thank you for educating us.
Thanks for writing about this ❤️ these conversations are important. I have found Alternatives To Suicide a helpful avenue for support and an *actual* safe space to express what can have consequences if you don’t have the right audience that can receive you with compassion and help deescalate.
Here are some upcoming opportunities to learn about the model, I am hopeful this will become more widely known and adopted in our lifetime. https://wildfloweralliance.org/trainings/
My heart bleeds for all you have gone through. And I would agree men and women process problem solving much differently with women wanting to talk and men want problems solved. All I can offer is a virtual hug and a prayer for your good health and mental state. Please stay safe.
What a heart-wrenching story. Appreciate your honesty and vulnerability. I could relate to much of what you wrote. AA, therapy, medication, psychedelics, a good marriage, deep male friendships, intense spirituality, all have been extraordinarily helpful. Wishing you the best in your journey.
A the beginning of this podcast, Mr. Palahniuk talks about the importance of "The third place." AA meetings are replacing the church as the third place because groups like AA allow people to take off that mask. Group members don't have to look good or impress. I think you will like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw7ty_EFWJ8
Awesome, thanks so much for sharing. Yeah, AA and other 12 step programs can be incredible. I really benefitted from them back in the day, and I’m thinking of going back.
What a read, Stephen. I spent the whole time highlighting sections, hovering over the restack, but I wanted to finish and comment.
The story of Keith, in particular, got me teared up. This is the man I always want to be, there, free from my self-centered preoccupations. This is the man I think we all want to be, if not at least in our hearts. It may be the human we all want to be too.
Earlier today, in the men's group I host, I pushed the topic of isolation, specifically the meatspace connection aspect. My guys are all pretty good on that front, so I think they were a little confused at first, but I insisted that it's worth the effort to check in. Men can let their real-world connections fade too easily, lost in the opiates of life where they are successful at work and happily married.
Last thought. Every time I read the stats on men and suicide, it's like I'm reading it for the first time. Thank you for that wake-up.
Thank you for sharing. Yeah, both Keith and Jacob are incredibly good men. I’m lucky to be loved by them, and all the other friends I have in my life. That’s what I want for other men — deep emotional intimacy with a community of friends.
This is powerful writing. Obviously I knew the topic would be heavy but I still didn’t expect to be crying halfway in. I’ve struggled knowing how to help the men in my life who I could see clearly were NOT fine. I was smacked in the face by this passage:
“don't want to talk to a female professional about sexual compulsion or violent thoughts, or masculine rage. I don't want to talk to her about my sex drive or compulsions. This is simply because men and women are different on average, with different needs and inner lives. Male pain is ugly and unique, and I don't want to talk to someone smaller than me who might feel threatened by my six-foot-one frame and expressions of masculine darkness”
I’m trying to work through writing a chapter about the ones we’ve lost to I’m Fine and the noble masculine quality of protecting the ones we love from ourselves and our pain. It’s been harder than I thought it would be and I really really appreciate your story. Thank you for the insight that I have a feeling will benefit me for a long time.
Damn, this was good. I’ve ached with you in some of those bipolar moments, but this? Thank you. I’m envious that you have found men who stand by you. Me? Now in the mid-70s, the men I know disappear by mortality or weakness and so I find myself looking around: where? What?
Brother, I’ve read enough of you to also sense the aches-I’ve carried them in prayer. But this? You opened a landscape, or perhaps shared one and for that I am deeply, deeply thankful.
Boy, this is raw. I’ve been in that dark place before, and in a lot of ways I’m still there. But there is some light now that I’m working on keeping. I appreciate you writing this. Beautiful and real work.
This piece has stayed with me, and amid my evolving thinking I figured I'd pop in and share a couple of things. I'm a female therapist, for context. I don't disagree with the core of your message at all, I think there are many practitioners who struggle with meeting people where they are and allowing them to have agency in the work. Like, if you get to "deep feeling", or tears, you've "done good work" as a sort of baseline rule that mostly serves the practitioner's sense of competence.
However. I think you name a key tension when you say "male pain is ugly and unique, and I don't want to talk to someone smaller than me who might feel threatened by my six-foot-one frame and expressions of masculine darkness."
That's absolutely fair. This is why it's so important to choose someone you feel you can work with, someone you can trust. But in my experience, sometimes male pain is less ugly and unique and frightening than the man in question fears. I am taking a long time to write this, and being so careful, because I don't want anybody who reads it who is vulnerable to think "Great, women therapists CAN manage it" and get themselves in a dangerous situation with a practitioner who can't bear what they bring. Your chances of finding someone who can hold the intensity and rage are better with a man.
But I have also sat with men who were, for want of a better term, "stuck" with me (court-ordered rehab doesn't leave you much choice) and who were able, through gradually increasing tests of trust, get to speaking about really, really dark, violent, fucked-up shit. There was something meaningful in that experience for them (at least, this is what my very experienced male supervisor shared, who debriefed with them all). Because the ugliness and violence of their lives did not condemn them as less-than-human.
Not all women therapists can do this (and neither can all men). Your odds are better with a man. Feeling free to choose someone you trust is the biggest factor in therapeutic success beyond any individual modality. But at the same time, just in case anyone is reading this and feels despair because they don't have the option of seeing a man ... I just wanted to share my experiences.
I have a lot of professional experience of men opening up to me in ways they don't with their friends or wives, probably for various reasons, and my own experience navigating masculinity as someone socialized through girlhood. I really do think a lot of the "I'm fine" comes directly as a result of emotional neglect on a societal level. When boys are told that boys don't cry, they either teach themselves to not feel their feelings, redirecting them into the acceptable male emotions (usually rage or lust), or still have softness but feel guilt and shame. It reminds me of how a lot of former Christian Patriarchy survivors talk about processing sexual repression, or how I've experienced my chronic illness after a childhood and young adulthood of being told what I was experiencing wasn't real by medical professionals (I say "I'm fine" reflexively every time a bone dislocates, for example).
Really, what toxic masculinity is, imo, is a Faustian bargain that is placed on men without their consent. It's trauma in exchange for some societal privilege, but every step is deeper into that trauma, and every gain of power is conditional, fleeting, and may be gone with just the trauma remaining. Not recognizing that trauma, and insisting men are just stubborn and emotionally disconnected from themselves by nature, is wildly harmful in so many ways.
And as for therapy not working for men, I can fully believe that. Talk therapy mostly doesn't work for most autistic people or those with cPTSD, and CBT can be actively harmful. I've bounced off of therapy before, because I do not need help working out where my issues come from or what they are. I'm fully aware of my own flaws. What I need is tangible strategies to work on them and a path of growth to walk down. Trauma informed care is fairly difficult to get, and trauma also doesn't manifest in everyone the same. I can also understand a cis man wanting a male therapist well, considering many women prefer female gynecologists for similar reasons (wanting someone familiar with the issues, not having to navigate gender or sex dynamics during something vulnerable).
I do think we need to talk more about the limitations of therapy.
In the early 1990's, RW Connell wrote in Masculinities: “In a perceptive paper in 1979, Sheryl Bear and her colleagues observed that psychotherapists tended to ignore social contexts, to be conservative themselves about gender, and to demand stereotypical behavior from their clients.” All that, afaik, is still basically true.
Substacker Zawn Villines recently wrote "The truth is that there are a lot of bad therapists out there, and bad therapy can be incredibly harmful, teaching you to doubt yourself and accept the proclamations of low-value men."
Therapists still get like 10 hours total in sexuality training, according to a guest on Dr. Justin Lehmiller's podcast. Which is absolutely bonkers when you consider how tightly linked sex is to sexuality, romantic relationships, and mental health.
I can't find the study, but I read once and completely believe, anecdotally, that most therapists are reflexively pro-monogamy and anti-porn.
Should more men go to therapy? Probably. Should therapy get better as a discipline especially when it comes to sex, gender, and related matters? Abso fuckin lutely.
From what I know of what you've publicly shared of your life, you and I grew up in extremely different circumstances and have led vastly different lives with different problems and traumas- and yet after reading this, I felt like this is something I could have written, in spirit if not story. (Of course, you wrote it with a lot more grace, honesty, and je ne sais quoi than I would have.)
As I mentioned in my restack, I have done the talky bullshit thing before with a female therapist, and she was a great and empathetic professional who never went out of her way to shame anyone. But I would also be lying if I said it was a completely positive process, or that I was completely vulnerable and honest and safe about everything everywhere all at once, or that she was a perfect human who always interpreted all of my bleeding, fervid, disgusting thoughts with the understanding and charity the rest of my life denied me. Women- as women themselves like to tell us- are human, and just like any humans, they have their own thoughts, biases, and life experiences.
And while I'm sure there are a good number of men out there that would rather douse their own nuts in gasoline than talk to a therapist because they do think it's weak or girly, I do think there are also some parts of the male id and the male experience that are fundamentally at odds with a view of the world that believes vulnerability and honesty are always an unalloyed good. And for all of our societal talk about men needing to open up and share, that isn't always something that's compatible with not taking up more than your fair share of space in the world or not dumping your problems on others with no easy solution. Frankly, this may be why "toxic" stoicism, for all its flaws, can seem not only empowering but morally correct- why risk impinging on others' boundaries, however well-meaning, when you can't control other people or force them to accept or even like you? The only person you can and should control is yourself.
As a man that values not making others uncomfortable, that values personal responsibility and respecting others' boundaries, it's hard not to internalize all of that and think that relying on yourself is the only way forward between a rock and a hard place. And if you're one of those people that thinks men shouldn't "trauma dump" and should avoid imposing "emotional labor" on others, why are you surprised when stoicism looks even more compelling?
----
(You (wisely, I think) avoided the obvious political point here, because it would have detracted from the beauty and humanity of the post. But this being an internet comment, and me being a random nobody, I'm free to bite the bullet. It's undeniable that masculinity and male emotions have become entangled in the modern culture war because of the male vote and incels and Andrew Tate and everything else, and while I certainly can't blame anyone for being worried about the state of young men's emotional health, I think it has had an extreme cost in the way we treat "men should open up more because toxic masculinity" as more of a political talking point rather than something intrinsically meant to help men live better lives, and not to take down the patriarchy or bridge the emotional labor gap or beat Drumpf.
I have never been a particularly traditionally masculine man, and in theory, I should be one of the people shouting the praises of "healthy masculinity" from the rooftops. But the reality now is that when I hear people telling me to open up, to talk more, to be emotional because that's what "real men" do, it feels more performative than anything else. Telling men to open up and be vulnerable to reassure others that they're "one of the good ones" feels like when random men tell women to smile more just to make others feel better.
If I sound a bit cynical, I apologize. As I said, I have seen a therapist. I have written letters I've never sent, talked myself and other people off the ledge, and confessed some truly gross and painful and pornographic things in the confidence of trusted friends, and have probably been better off for it. I think it's fine for men to cry, and honestly, it might not even be a bad thing if they felt safe to cry a little more.
But how many times have you seen the phrase "it's OK for men to cry" from someone whose profile pic is a mug that says "male tears"?)
Im sitting here on my lunch break, crying as I read this. I know I am lonely, my two best friends died in the past couple years. I have a dear wife, that I love, but she is struggling with her own health issues so I really don’t want to burden her. So I keep suicide in my back pocket, like a get out of jail card. I have a plan and a date set. But then I read this and think maybe I could get some help. Thank you.
Hey brother, I hear you and you aren’t alone. Yes, you can get help, and this long moment of pain isn’t your forever. I really suggest getting professional support asap, and talking to someone you trust. If you need resources for men, let me know. My DMs are open, though I’m not a professional or clinician — just a friend and fellow traveler. You can get through this, brother, and you can find support.
Wow. This was intense. TBH I’m guilty of ignoring the needs of masculine gay men and straight cis men. Mostly because I (as you well know )may inhabit a male body but I relate to the world the way a woman would ,the feminine ways work for me. This is probably the first time I’ve ever really thought about men’s mental health. Thank you for educating us.
I’m so glad it was educational for you! (Also, good to hear from you)
Part of me vibes with this, part of me feels like I’m unnecessarily cutting apart a duality and missing out
Thanks for writing about this ❤️ these conversations are important. I have found Alternatives To Suicide a helpful avenue for support and an *actual* safe space to express what can have consequences if you don’t have the right audience that can receive you with compassion and help deescalate.
Oh, I’ve never heard of Alternatives to Suicide. Will look them up.
Here are some upcoming opportunities to learn about the model, I am hopeful this will become more widely known and adopted in our lifetime. https://wildfloweralliance.org/trainings/
Thank you so much! Eager to look into it
My heart bleeds for all you have gone through. And I would agree men and women process problem solving much differently with women wanting to talk and men want problems solved. All I can offer is a virtual hug and a prayer for your good health and mental state. Please stay safe.
Thank you, and I’m doing my best
What a heart-wrenching story. Appreciate your honesty and vulnerability. I could relate to much of what you wrote. AA, therapy, medication, psychedelics, a good marriage, deep male friendships, intense spirituality, all have been extraordinarily helpful. Wishing you the best in your journey.
Thanks so much man. I appreciate that ❤️
A the beginning of this podcast, Mr. Palahniuk talks about the importance of "The third place." AA meetings are replacing the church as the third place because groups like AA allow people to take off that mask. Group members don't have to look good or impress. I think you will like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw7ty_EFWJ8
Awesome, thanks so much for sharing. Yeah, AA and other 12 step programs can be incredible. I really benefitted from them back in the day, and I’m thinking of going back.
What a read, Stephen. I spent the whole time highlighting sections, hovering over the restack, but I wanted to finish and comment.
The story of Keith, in particular, got me teared up. This is the man I always want to be, there, free from my self-centered preoccupations. This is the man I think we all want to be, if not at least in our hearts. It may be the human we all want to be too.
Earlier today, in the men's group I host, I pushed the topic of isolation, specifically the meatspace connection aspect. My guys are all pretty good on that front, so I think they were a little confused at first, but I insisted that it's worth the effort to check in. Men can let their real-world connections fade too easily, lost in the opiates of life where they are successful at work and happily married.
Last thought. Every time I read the stats on men and suicide, it's like I'm reading it for the first time. Thank you for that wake-up.
Thank you for sharing. Yeah, both Keith and Jacob are incredibly good men. I’m lucky to be loved by them, and all the other friends I have in my life. That’s what I want for other men — deep emotional intimacy with a community of friends.
Wow. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much for reading
Beautiful 🙏
Thank you, friend
This is powerful writing. Obviously I knew the topic would be heavy but I still didn’t expect to be crying halfway in. I’ve struggled knowing how to help the men in my life who I could see clearly were NOT fine. I was smacked in the face by this passage:
“don't want to talk to a female professional about sexual compulsion or violent thoughts, or masculine rage. I don't want to talk to her about my sex drive or compulsions. This is simply because men and women are different on average, with different needs and inner lives. Male pain is ugly and unique, and I don't want to talk to someone smaller than me who might feel threatened by my six-foot-one frame and expressions of masculine darkness”
I’m trying to work through writing a chapter about the ones we’ve lost to I’m Fine and the noble masculine quality of protecting the ones we love from ourselves and our pain. It’s been harder than I thought it would be and I really really appreciate your story. Thank you for the insight that I have a feeling will benefit me for a long time.
Thank you so much for reading and taking it seriously. It means a lot.
Damn, this was good. I’ve ached with you in some of those bipolar moments, but this? Thank you. I’m envious that you have found men who stand by you. Me? Now in the mid-70s, the men I know disappear by mortality or weakness and so I find myself looking around: where? What?
Brother, I’ve read enough of you to also sense the aches-I’ve carried them in prayer. But this? You opened a landscape, or perhaps shared one and for that I am deeply, deeply thankful.
Thank you, friend ❤️
Boy, this is raw. I’ve been in that dark place before, and in a lot of ways I’m still there. But there is some light now that I’m working on keeping. I appreciate you writing this. Beautiful and real work.
Thank you for reading, and so glad it connected
This piece has stayed with me, and amid my evolving thinking I figured I'd pop in and share a couple of things. I'm a female therapist, for context. I don't disagree with the core of your message at all, I think there are many practitioners who struggle with meeting people where they are and allowing them to have agency in the work. Like, if you get to "deep feeling", or tears, you've "done good work" as a sort of baseline rule that mostly serves the practitioner's sense of competence.
However. I think you name a key tension when you say "male pain is ugly and unique, and I don't want to talk to someone smaller than me who might feel threatened by my six-foot-one frame and expressions of masculine darkness."
That's absolutely fair. This is why it's so important to choose someone you feel you can work with, someone you can trust. But in my experience, sometimes male pain is less ugly and unique and frightening than the man in question fears. I am taking a long time to write this, and being so careful, because I don't want anybody who reads it who is vulnerable to think "Great, women therapists CAN manage it" and get themselves in a dangerous situation with a practitioner who can't bear what they bring. Your chances of finding someone who can hold the intensity and rage are better with a man.
But I have also sat with men who were, for want of a better term, "stuck" with me (court-ordered rehab doesn't leave you much choice) and who were able, through gradually increasing tests of trust, get to speaking about really, really dark, violent, fucked-up shit. There was something meaningful in that experience for them (at least, this is what my very experienced male supervisor shared, who debriefed with them all). Because the ugliness and violence of their lives did not condemn them as less-than-human.
Not all women therapists can do this (and neither can all men). Your odds are better with a man. Feeling free to choose someone you trust is the biggest factor in therapeutic success beyond any individual modality. But at the same time, just in case anyone is reading this and feels despair because they don't have the option of seeing a man ... I just wanted to share my experiences.
I have a lot of professional experience of men opening up to me in ways they don't with their friends or wives, probably for various reasons, and my own experience navigating masculinity as someone socialized through girlhood. I really do think a lot of the "I'm fine" comes directly as a result of emotional neglect on a societal level. When boys are told that boys don't cry, they either teach themselves to not feel their feelings, redirecting them into the acceptable male emotions (usually rage or lust), or still have softness but feel guilt and shame. It reminds me of how a lot of former Christian Patriarchy survivors talk about processing sexual repression, or how I've experienced my chronic illness after a childhood and young adulthood of being told what I was experiencing wasn't real by medical professionals (I say "I'm fine" reflexively every time a bone dislocates, for example).
Really, what toxic masculinity is, imo, is a Faustian bargain that is placed on men without their consent. It's trauma in exchange for some societal privilege, but every step is deeper into that trauma, and every gain of power is conditional, fleeting, and may be gone with just the trauma remaining. Not recognizing that trauma, and insisting men are just stubborn and emotionally disconnected from themselves by nature, is wildly harmful in so many ways.
And as for therapy not working for men, I can fully believe that. Talk therapy mostly doesn't work for most autistic people or those with cPTSD, and CBT can be actively harmful. I've bounced off of therapy before, because I do not need help working out where my issues come from or what they are. I'm fully aware of my own flaws. What I need is tangible strategies to work on them and a path of growth to walk down. Trauma informed care is fairly difficult to get, and trauma also doesn't manifest in everyone the same. I can also understand a cis man wanting a male therapist well, considering many women prefer female gynecologists for similar reasons (wanting someone familiar with the issues, not having to navigate gender or sex dynamics during something vulnerable).
I do think we need to talk more about the limitations of therapy.
In the early 1990's, RW Connell wrote in Masculinities: “In a perceptive paper in 1979, Sheryl Bear and her colleagues observed that psychotherapists tended to ignore social contexts, to be conservative themselves about gender, and to demand stereotypical behavior from their clients.” All that, afaik, is still basically true.
Substacker Zawn Villines recently wrote "The truth is that there are a lot of bad therapists out there, and bad therapy can be incredibly harmful, teaching you to doubt yourself and accept the proclamations of low-value men."
Therapists still get like 10 hours total in sexuality training, according to a guest on Dr. Justin Lehmiller's podcast. Which is absolutely bonkers when you consider how tightly linked sex is to sexuality, romantic relationships, and mental health.
I can't find the study, but I read once and completely believe, anecdotally, that most therapists are reflexively pro-monogamy and anti-porn.
Should more men go to therapy? Probably. Should therapy get better as a discipline especially when it comes to sex, gender, and related matters? Abso fuckin lutely.
Thanks for writing this, Stephen.
From what I know of what you've publicly shared of your life, you and I grew up in extremely different circumstances and have led vastly different lives with different problems and traumas- and yet after reading this, I felt like this is something I could have written, in spirit if not story. (Of course, you wrote it with a lot more grace, honesty, and je ne sais quoi than I would have.)
As I mentioned in my restack, I have done the talky bullshit thing before with a female therapist, and she was a great and empathetic professional who never went out of her way to shame anyone. But I would also be lying if I said it was a completely positive process, or that I was completely vulnerable and honest and safe about everything everywhere all at once, or that she was a perfect human who always interpreted all of my bleeding, fervid, disgusting thoughts with the understanding and charity the rest of my life denied me. Women- as women themselves like to tell us- are human, and just like any humans, they have their own thoughts, biases, and life experiences.
And while I'm sure there are a good number of men out there that would rather douse their own nuts in gasoline than talk to a therapist because they do think it's weak or girly, I do think there are also some parts of the male id and the male experience that are fundamentally at odds with a view of the world that believes vulnerability and honesty are always an unalloyed good. And for all of our societal talk about men needing to open up and share, that isn't always something that's compatible with not taking up more than your fair share of space in the world or not dumping your problems on others with no easy solution. Frankly, this may be why "toxic" stoicism, for all its flaws, can seem not only empowering but morally correct- why risk impinging on others' boundaries, however well-meaning, when you can't control other people or force them to accept or even like you? The only person you can and should control is yourself.
As a man that values not making others uncomfortable, that values personal responsibility and respecting others' boundaries, it's hard not to internalize all of that and think that relying on yourself is the only way forward between a rock and a hard place. And if you're one of those people that thinks men shouldn't "trauma dump" and should avoid imposing "emotional labor" on others, why are you surprised when stoicism looks even more compelling?
----
(You (wisely, I think) avoided the obvious political point here, because it would have detracted from the beauty and humanity of the post. But this being an internet comment, and me being a random nobody, I'm free to bite the bullet. It's undeniable that masculinity and male emotions have become entangled in the modern culture war because of the male vote and incels and Andrew Tate and everything else, and while I certainly can't blame anyone for being worried about the state of young men's emotional health, I think it has had an extreme cost in the way we treat "men should open up more because toxic masculinity" as more of a political talking point rather than something intrinsically meant to help men live better lives, and not to take down the patriarchy or bridge the emotional labor gap or beat Drumpf.
I have never been a particularly traditionally masculine man, and in theory, I should be one of the people shouting the praises of "healthy masculinity" from the rooftops. But the reality now is that when I hear people telling me to open up, to talk more, to be emotional because that's what "real men" do, it feels more performative than anything else. Telling men to open up and be vulnerable to reassure others that they're "one of the good ones" feels like when random men tell women to smile more just to make others feel better.
If I sound a bit cynical, I apologize. As I said, I have seen a therapist. I have written letters I've never sent, talked myself and other people off the ledge, and confessed some truly gross and painful and pornographic things in the confidence of trusted friends, and have probably been better off for it. I think it's fine for men to cry, and honestly, it might not even be a bad thing if they felt safe to cry a little more.
But how many times have you seen the phrase "it's OK for men to cry" from someone whose profile pic is a mug that says "male tears"?)