How to Be A Man

In the year 2000 a few days after turning twenty my mother drove up to Salt Lake City from our home town to pay me a visit. Two years earlier they had kicked me out of the house for being gay and refusing and unable to acquiesce to their authoritarian, religious, bigoted expectations. Recently out as a gay boy I had also been rejected by nearly every childhood friend I had ever made and initially found it difficult to make new friends after moving to the city. I finally started to grow close to a few other gay boys I had met incidentally and we hung out frequently and bonded over our shared experiences of rejection by friends and family, and they had begun to replace the social support which should have come from my own family.

Me at 20.

For my birthday one of my new friends had given me a carnation, it was one of the sweetest gifts anyone has ever given me. I had never received flowers for any occasion, its scent was wonderful and I kept it alive as long as I could and then set it above my wall-mounted phone to dry so I could keep it indefinitely. Walking into my apartment my mother immediately saw the flower. “Oh, that’s pretty where’d you get it?” she asked. “My friend,” I said proudly, grateful to be able to even say those words with proof of their affection for me, as their companionship had been integral in helping me survive the dark depression I had been experiencing every day. But my mother immediately scowled, “Men don’t give each other flowers, Nathan,” she grumbled. I was crushed. The possibility that anyone could find anything negative in such a wonderful thing as a flower had not even crossed my mind. I should expect my mother to be happy that people cared so much about her son to give him a nice gift on his birthday so he would feel loved, but instead she appeared to prefer me alone, isolated, and empty than supported by people who freely gave the love she was unwilling to.

Having grown up in a conservative, American religious community I was inundated with a conservative, religious, machismo conception of manhood my entire life. My father was very masculine, always in shape, an athlete, an architect and general contractor who designed homes and then built them with his own bare hands. I loved building too but mostly he made me just clean up his construction sites instead of showing me any useful construction skills, and after the age of twelve I was always on his construction sites sweeping sawdust, collecting offcuts, or raking the dirt and laying sod. Growing to six-foot-four by ninth-grade my father had frequently pressured me into being the basketball star he had always wanted to be, and his constant reprimands and negative reinforcement made basketball a torturous chore rather than the fun contest it should be. I also naturally lacked the drive and aggression that makes many young men succeed in competitive sports, and during tryouts for the ninth-grade team one of my friends playing against me in a game of scrimmage played dirty and knocked me over with his even larger body, trapped my leg between his and the first thing to hit the ground was my kneecap which busted off. The pain was incredible.

“You’re fine, walk it off” my Dad said after calling him to come get me. “No, Dad it really hurts,” I replied. “It’s already swelling up there’s something wrong.” I couldn’t believe I was having to justify to my own father that he should help take care of me. “You just need to toughen up, I’m not coming to get you.” He continued. My eyes started to tear up in front of my coach. “Put mom on!” I shouted. She came to get me and a week later I went in for surgery to repair a fully torn MCL. I still made first cuts (and my attacker didn’t), but I could no longer run and my Dad’s interest in my life completely evaporated.

There is a lot of discussion in our society right now about manhood, the male loneliness epidemic, toxic masculinity, rape, looksmaxing, incel culture, and a general crisis in masculinity as young men of mine and later generations have grown up without role models for what it means to be a man, and this vacuum has enabled heinous grifters to move into the space and capitalize on the worst characteristics of maleness such as rape, misogyny, violence, and exploitation, to enrich themselves while leading literally millions of young men to believe in false and harmful conceptions of maleness. When I say harmful I am not referring to the harm such behavior causes to others like women and children but instead to the man himself, as these behaviors deprive us of relationships and resources we require to live a healthy and fulfilling life, because the Law of Causality (cause and consequence) is an immutable facet of reality and we cannot separate consequences from our actions no matter how much we wish it to be true. Life does not care what you want, nor your intent, and we cannot separate consequences from our actions any more than we can separate gravity from our body, so many young men have been deceived into willful belief that we can do as we wish without repercussion, to then find rudely that we have been deceived when the consequences of our actions catch up with us and take more than they ever gave.

But all of us have needs which we must provide in order to live a fulfilling and successful life, such as eating food, finding opportunity for achievement and success, taking care of our bodies, and having intimate friendships and romantic relationships, and when we are unable to fulfill these needs (as discussed in my book The Perfect Child) then experience stress, disappointment, frustration, loneliness, or even disease or other worse consequences. Many men have been misled to believe that we can use force, coercion, manipulation, or other aggressive means to get what we want, but the immutable Law of Causality means that resorting to aggression or coercion to get what we want always results in reduced access to those resources because of the consequences of our behavior on our environment and relationships. For instance, a man who engages in forceful sexual behavior will always engender resentment, hatred, fear, and disgust in victims AND their friends and relations which then reduces access to sex and intimacy. Frequently such behaviors result in criminal prosecution and imprisonment, logistically cutting off an offender from even accessing potential relationships for sex and intimacy.

Many people do not realize that those whom are wealthy have gotten their wealth only because they are willing to engage in abhorrent behavior in the exploitation of workers, immoral competitive practices, and even outright cheating and stealing, and while yes this kind of behavior has made them rich most people are not willing to engage in the kind immoral behavior that is required to get rich, and rich people have not won and are not successful but instead have exchanged their souls and their peace of mind for riches, and riches do not actually provide any of the fulfillment people expect of it so those who are rich remain unfilled, restless, frustrated, and fearful and resort to drug abuse or heavy medication and abundant interpersonal conflict in order to numb or distract from their emotions, guilt, and shame over the things they have done to get where they are. If success as a man (or woman) is limited merely to one’s net worth it comes with a price that greatly exceeds that wealth, and many men become rich because they believe material wealth makes a man, then wonder why they still do not feel like a man and act out in frustration in pathetic attempts to prove their manhood, often losing everything they tried to build as the consequences of past harms and mistakes catches up with them as time marches onward.

Some of my readers have suggested parallels between my work and Stoicism, and from the little I’ve seen of the Stoics I can see why, as much of my work transcends much of the base instincts of humanity to achieve an enlightened existence. But a big difference between my work and Stoicism is that I was lucky through my life experiences to find tools which are actually effective in addressing my needs as a man which are far more effective than those I had during my youth and the men I have known and observed, where Stoicism is mostly philosophical and not so practical. One of the most effective tools I learned which most men (nearly all) lack is having compassion for ourselves and the difficulty that life can often be. Each of us is just one person doing our best, and every person in life is doing their best even if it’s outright awful because of limited life skills. We are individually only capable of doing so much, in direct proportion to our empowerment and life skills, and the problem with how we chase success and fulfillment in life is not whether our actions are good or bad, those decide the nature of the consequences we experience, but whether our skills are effective or ineffective. Effective skills lead to greater fulfillment and resources, ineffective skills deprive us of those.

In my article How to Get Laid I discuss various strategies people can use and be aware of when seeking romantic and erotic encounters, and one of the most profound factors in our ability to be effective in our pursuit of sex and romance as well as business and friendships are feelings of insecurity. In the chapter on the duality of character weakness in The Perfect Child I talk about how our control and coping mechanisms are never isolated but instead support and motivate other control and coping mechanisms and, for instance, the coping mechanism of insecurity is always accompanied by compensatory arrogance. When we are insecure we can’t help but be arrogant, and many of us try to practice confidence when we feel insecure but confidence is earned, not pretended, and when we pretend to have confidence it is actually arrogance which then undermines our attempts for achievement as others are turned off, offended, or embarrassed, advertising our insecurity and lack of self-confidence and thus we are ineffective in our attempts to fulfill our needs and find success. Compassion for ourselves is not a feeling, but action, and taking action to care for our needs such as by practicing inventory therapy to resolve our feelings of insecurity which motivate arrogant, failure behavior is the act of having compassion for ourselves, while refusing to do that kind of self-care is the opposite of self-compassion and entrenches our lack of effective life skills.

In my article How To Adult I argue the primary trait of adulthood is the ability to provide for our own needs. This does not mean going it alone because we obviously need other people for sex, intimacy, friendship, employment, opportunity, education, logistical help, etc., and instead to collect resources and acquire skills so that we can effectively provide these needs without expecting other people to do it for us. This is very much a cornerstone of being a man which is that we learn the skills required to be an effective man, which means learning, cultivating, and maintaining life skills which help us not only achieve success but also maintain it. For example, getting into a relationship with someone who is volatile, manipulative, or unreliable does not effectively provide for our needs even if we do have access to sex because they might use sex as a manipulation and we might waste years of our life with someone that makes life more difficult, creates lots of disruptions and crises, and will eventually leave us while also disparaging us to others which then further reduces our access to friendships, relationships, and intimacy. Other people’s behavior is not our fault, but choosing to be with someone who is harmful to our wellbeing is our choice, and the lack of effective interpersonal relationship skills prevents us from pairing with people who actually have our best interests in mind.

Similarly the inability to say sorry and actually amend past mistakes is a serious lack of effective life skills. We all make mistakes and even in our best intentions can hurt people when we don’t intend to, and lacking effective interpersonal skills as amending mistakes makes people hate us, resent us, and to leave us, depriving us of valuable relationships and the benefits that come with them. Having the skill to amend mistakes and harms helps maintain and sustain relationships by showing and proving to people that we have their wellbeing in mind.

Pursuit of wealth is also not something we can actually do on our own, and when we do try to do it on our own we often resort to harmful behaviors like exploitation, theft, and cheating which deprive us of interpersonal relationships, wealth, and opportunities to succeed (such as by getting fired, sued, or prosecuted). I once had a scummy landlord who tried to extract as much money as possible from his tenants and even engaged in lying and deception to extract as much as he could. I know for a fact that his wife and daughter hated him, and everyone that rented from him also hated him and would not stay long at his properties and leave negative reviews about his properties, so while he might be a materially wealthy person he is impoverished when it comes to respect, admiration, and companionship, and lives in an awful world in which nobody actually likes him, not even himself, and has frequent turnover of his properties and attracts less stable tenants due to his behavior which loses him money and time.

One of the only important lessons on manhood I learned from my father was restraint. He never once hit me, although my mother did plenty to make up for it, and it wasn’t until I was about twenty-two that I took that lesson to heart when I once witnessed him being very kind and engaging to a teen who had been vandalizing one of his construction sites. By treating the young man with more kindness and patience than he ever had to me (and by patience I don’t mean he let the kid get away with his behavior but empathized with him) he likely helped model healthy manhood to that young man and might have even helped dissuade him from further behavior that could get him into real trouble with people less patient than my father, and what epitomizes manhood better than modeling for young men effective skills and behaviors. But as it was with my father, and with myself, and every other adult, we cannot give what we do not have, so the first and most important thing to do as a man is to learn those life skills that we do not have so that we not only can live more effectively but also model and teach those skills to younger men so they in turn can be more effective too.

Later in my youth, after my suicide attempt when I briefly and mistakenly went to live with my parents to recuperate, I one day made a joke about my straight friend who had injured himself doing a daredevil surfing stunt that implied he wouldn’t have hurt himself if he had been gay (it was a funny joke if I do say so myself). Being highly manipulative and abusive my mother retorted, “Straight men defend our country and serve in the military!” The stereotype that straight men are more risk-takers exists for a legitimate reason, and I wasn’t expecting that moment to be one of bigotry and hate although by then I should have. My first boyfriend with whom I had separated several months before was also in the US Air Force, as obviously were many, many more gay men (not to mention women and trans people too).

My mother’s behavior toward the concept of manhood also underscores another problem when it comes to being a man is that it cannot be defined by people who are not men, and deriving our concept of manhood from women is antithetical to manhood because they have never been men. Like many women, my mother used manhood as a cudgel to shame me, my brother, and my father into doing what she wanted and expected. Many women use homophobia to manipulate their insecure and self-doubting male partners into doing what they want which then not only foments homophobia but also deludes men into believing an incorrect conception of manhood that deprives us of the friendship, closeness, and emotional support of other men that we all deserve. Abusers often try to cut their victims off from emotional support, where abusive men often try to limit contact of their partner with friends and family, trying to isolate them from the support that would keep her from being codependent on him, the same thing occurs with abusive women who deride a man’s sexuality in order to cut off his emotional connection with other men, because if he has emotional support and fulfillment through healthy friendships he is less vulnerable to her abuse and manipulation. Men are intoxicating, and it doesn’t take much effort to be attractive if you take care of yourself in a healthy way as advocated in my work. But being a man is not something that should be defined by others, because others will mislead you about what it means to be a man so they can exploit you for their own purposes. What it means to be man instead should be your own personal conception of what you think it means. If your definition of what it means to be a man comes from yourself and is rooted in your own truth, dreams, and desire to be effective in your own life then you will be resistant to manipulation and exploitation and will be able to lead a more fulfilling, happy life.

But when I was in my late thirties putting my life back together after having cancer and losing my relationship I realized I had almost no effective life skills and worse had no idea how or where to get them. I wanted to know real confidence, I wanted to stop being afraid of money, I wanted stability, to be good at making friends, I wanted to like myself. While my dad was very masculine I did not want to be like him at all. I disliked my parents and knew they did not have any life skills I wanted and could not learn from them, nor did anyone in my extended family have admirable skills, nor self-help books, nor my sponsor in recovery. Even notable public figures were insipid, shallow, materialistic, insecure, and treated others as possessions and failed in their relationships. Frustrated by this dilemma I was one day practicing inventory therapy and suddenly realized I had been teaching myself the skills I was trying to learn. The mere act of sitting down and practicing structured retrospection helped my unconscious brain learn new skills by unlearning the past, ineffective ways I had been living my life, and this is how any man, grown or young, can learn what it means to be a man, by unlearning the unhelpful past coping and control mechanisms which get in the way of being the kind of man you want to be. To stop looking to others for an example and be an example instead.

Other problems we often experience as men are things such as so-called ‘sex-addiction’ which actually isn’t a thing and is instead a biological mechanism built into us which must be resolved through health and nutrition as discussed in my article No Such Thing as Sex Addiction. Manhood often comes with leadership but if we lack confidence we become ineffective, sometimes even criminal, and being a more effective leader as discussed in How to Change Politics can protect our interests as well our partners and children from harmful and duplicitous politicians. Growing as a man and the path our life will take can also be inferred using academic astrology as discussed in my article Fate and Action.