From Provider to Prisoner: What It Feels Like When You’re Not Allowed to Fall Apart

Men face a wealth of struggles today. Many men feel overwhelmed by the pressures to be financial providers, emotional supports, and leaders in all areas of life, often leading to exhaustion and isolation. 

We discuss the importance of redefining manhood, fostering strong male friendships, and incorporating vulnerability as a masculine trait. 

We also explore practical steps to relieve these burdens, such as engaging in honest self-reflection, seeking professional help, strengthening male relationships, and investing in one’s faith. 

00:00 The Weight Men Carry: An Introduction
02:22 The Modern Provider: More Than Just Finances
03:51 The Emotional Toll of Being the Rock
05:53 The Isolation of Responsibility
10:37 Finding Freedom: Redefining Manhood
14:23 Building Strong Male Relationships
15:33 Faith as a Foundation
16:35 Join the Manhood Tribes Community
17:21 Engage and Share Your Burdens

💪 Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly. 💪

Transcript

0:00

I talk to a lot of men about what's going on in their lives, and one of the things that I hear most frequently is not only how tired and exhausted men feel like they are, but also that they feel like they have to just keep going. There's this feeling of, if I were to fall apart. Everything and everyone around me would fall apart as well. And so for the sake of keeping everything together, I've got to figure out how to press on how to just keep going just a little bit further, how to make it to the next hurdle or the next step, or the next milestone. How to just hold my shit together for long enough so that everything doesn't come crashing down. Are you wrestling with that? I think it's a pretty common feeling from men these days. The load that we have to carry from not only being the financial provider for ourselves, our families, and sometimes even more than that, but also being a provider in a whole lot of other ways, whether that's leadership, stability, emotional support, relational availability, you name it. We have to be a provider in all kinds of ways, and the load is just becoming more than we can bear. But what were to happen if it were to fall off of our shoulders, would the world really fall apart? It can kind of feel like it. Here at the Manhood Tribes Channel, my job is to try to do a few things for us as men. I want to give us a clear vision of what it means to be a man. I want to give us a clear challenge to build strong male friendships, and I want to give us a clear path for how to do both things. Now, you might be wondering, as I say that, what does that have to do with this topic of feeling like I can't let things fall apart? Well, one of the reasons that we start to feel that way is we're not really sure what it means to be a man, and so we're taking on all of the things, but. One of the other big reasons is that we don't really have strong male friendships around us, and so we're trying to carry all of this load by ourselves. Okay. I think both of these things are a reality, and I want to talk about a lot of that and just unpack this idea a little bit more. But let's, let's dig in a little bit more to this problem of being a provider who has to carry the load for everyone. Are you feeling like this? Are you feeling like all of that responsibility weighs on your shoulders? In previous generations, the idea of being a provider was really simply just about being a financial provider. Men worked, women raised the kids and managed the home, and these kind of spheres of influence were largely separate from one another. Now, I'm not saying that was necessarily a good model. There's all kinds of problems from that that my generation and younger generations of men have dealt with because it disconnected us from our fathers. But what we've replaced that with is this sense that both men and women have to do. Everything. We've gotta carry all of the load on our shoulders. And as men, the leadership of that still primarily falls to us. And this is true, especially in family settings, but it's, it's not just for guys who are husbands and dads. This is true maybe in whatever settings you're dealing with, whether that's just your own personal finances, career goals, future retirement plans, uh, you know, life's ambitions, friendships, relationships, you name it like. Anything and everything that you're responsible for, it's feeling like more than you really have the capacity to be able to manage. The idea of being a provider is no longer just about finances. It's about every aspect of life. And as the man, one of the chief ways that we are looked to for being the providers is to kind of be this like sense of stability. We're meant to kind of be the rock that everyone else can sort of lean on. Sometimes I talk about it in the, in the sense of feeling like. I'm the son and my family are the planets that just get to kind of orbit around me. Like their worlds keep going and they can kind of spin outta control if they need to, but I've gotta be stable. I've gotta be centered and grounded so that they have the freedom to kind of wobble in their orbits around me. I'll tell you what, that feels exhausting at times. It feels like, okay, I'm providing for everybody else, but who's providing for me? What happens when I'm having a rough day or a rough week or a rough year, and I feel like I need to just kind of like emotionally wobble for a little while to just express the fact that, gosh, my life is hard too. There are things that are really difficult and out of my control in my world as well. Sometimes my emotions are more than I know how to manage. Sometimes things aren't going my way and I just wanna lose it. What happens when that's the case when everyone else is trying to orbit around me and they need me to be stable and grounded? What happens when I need to kind of fall apart for a little bit? There's, no provision for that. There's no place in our world right now for men to be able to lose it. For men to be able to have a, a crack in the wall, there's no place for us to be able to be unguarded and to just kind of like. You know, rest for a little bit and let the responsibilities lie with someone else. Now, this is part of what it means to be a man. Carrying some of that load is a necessary part of being leaders in our homes and families and communities. But the way that we have interpreted that as if we have to do it all by ourselves isn't healthy and isn't the way that men are meant to function. If you're feeling like you never have time to take a break, if you feel like you're never off the clock, that sense of if I were to fall apart everything and everyone else is gonna fall apart, if you're feeling the weight of that, then you're likely doing that out of a place of isolation. You're feeling the weight of that because you're trying to carry all of it by yourself. You don't have anyone else in your life who is helping you trying to manage that load or even just be empathetic with you over the fact that the load that you're trying to carry is too much. It's more than one person is meant to bear. And what that does to you is it causes you to emotionally and relationally disconnect from the people who are in your world. All those people who are orbiting around you and who are leaning on you for stability and comfort and support, you begin to emotionally isolate. From them even. And so the whole point of you like being able to be a provider in terms of yourself being relationally available, being emotionally supportive, the whole point of being able to do all of that, you start to do really, really poorly at you start pulling away because it's just too much to try to manage everybody else while you're also having to try to manage yourself. You disconnect. And in that disconnect we get further and further away from the things that actually will help us be able to navigate the stress and this burden that we're trying to carry. So what does it look like? I was talking to a guy just the other day who was describing this situation in terms of what it felt like to be available to his wife and the fact that when he got home from work, it was no longer kind of this American story of the wife who wants to ask. Her husband about what his day at work was like. Now for him it was when he gets home from work, he needs to ask his wife how her day at work was. He needs to ask his kids how their day at school was. He needs to be able to check in on where everything is going on in the house. What kids' activities he's gonna need to be available and show up for what homework he needs to be able to help out with what events are coming up, that he needs to be available for what bills he needs to make sure they have enough money to pay and are actually getting paid. What is going on on the family calendar that he needs to make sure that he blocks out so that he can be available. And after all of that is done, no one has really checked in with him. How was his day? What's going on in his world? Because there's so much to have to check in on. There's so much to have to do and be available for. He was just describing the fact that home feels like one of the most isolating places that he's been in. It feels like the very last place that he wants to go when he's not at his best because he knows that when he shows up at home, he's expected to be at his best. He's got to be on. He's got to be able to be involved in all the conversations. He's got to be able to ask all the right questions. He's got to check in in all the right ways, and he's got to be at the top of his game. Guys, no man can survive in that for forever. A home is meant to be a place where we can let our guards down. It's supposed to be the place where we can rest and relax. But B, the fact that you trying to shoulder all of that load by yourself has kind of unintentionally created a home environment where you aren't really safe is a problem. It's a problem, and men, we need to kind of own a little bit of the fact that we have contributed to that problem. We have wanted to take on the load. We have wanted to be responsible men. We have wanted to try to show our families and our communities that we can be the kind of men who can manage all of that stuff, that we can show up in all those places. A lot of us grew up in families where our dads didn't do any of that kind of stuff, and a lot of us are trying to make up ground for that by showing up in the ways and in the places that our dads didn't. That's a really noble thing to try to do, but we're trying to do it by ourselves. We're trying to carry all that load on our own, and we just aren't meant to do that. No man is meant to be able to carry all of that by himself, so it's no wonder that you're exhausted, that you feel like you're falling apart, and every day you feel like you've just got to push just a little bit further. Eventually, guys, you're gonna crack. You are going to fall apart. Some ball is going to get dropped, and something detrimental is going to happen because you just can't sustain the pace and the way that you are living right now. So what do we need to do instead? What does freedom in one of these ways begin to look like? What does it start to look like to be a man who lives differently than that and yet still does make himself available and supportive to the people in his life that he cares about the most? First things first, we need to revisit the five marks of manhood and talk about some things that are really important. The first two of those five marks of manhood are strength and courage. When you combine those two things, you can get something that we at Manhood Tribes talk about in terms of being vulnerable with our stories and with what's going on in our lives. We talk about getting naked. I. This is really just our way of being able to say, we've got to have places and people in our lives where we're being honest about what our reality actually looks like. We've got to talk about it. Vulnerability can be a masculine thing. It is something that you're going to need to be able to enter into in order to be able to continue to do all these other five marks of manhood wealth. If you want to stay strong, if you want to be able to be courageous, it takes getting naked. You've got to open up and be honest about what you're dealing with. What does your reality look like? Who are you able to talk to about the fact that you feel like you're on the verge of falling apart? Who can you tell that you think that if, if things fall apart for you, they're gonna fall apart for everybody? What does that look and feel like for you, and where are you able to talk about it? Maybe at the moment you don't feel like you have anyone to be able to talk to about those kinds of things, and I can understand that that becomes a problem. So you need to start with yourself. You need to start by just being honest and raw with yourself, giving yourself permission to actually talk about what's going on with you internally. Let it all out. Even whether that takes the form of writing it down in a journal or screaming it in your backyard, you know, whatever that looks like. You've got to create some space to be honest with yourself and to let yourself have the permission to say, yeah, this really sucks. I. I, I don't feel like I can keep going like this. I'm not gonna make it. You need to be able to say those things out loud so that you know that is your actual reality and you're not trying to live in a fake world where you're just assuming, ah, I got this. Like, yeah, this is hard, but I'm just gonna keep pressing through. And it's, you know, maybe it's a problem for all these other guys, but it's not gonna be a problem for me. I can make it, I can be the exception to the rule. Don't keep pretending you're not gonna be the exception to the rule because no man is meant to be the exception to this rule. That's not how we're designed. You aren't meant to do all of this alone. But if all that you have to start with is yourself, then it's time to start figuring out some other ways and places to be able to do that. Maybe you need to see a professional counselor or a therapist, someone who you can set up a, a formal and professional relationship with where you can talk about those kinds of things. If that's the best option that you have for being able to find a place to talk about some things and to do it quickly, then that probably is a great option. You need to pursue it. Counseling and therapy is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of courage. It's a sign of saying, Hey, as a man, I know that these things are going on with me and I've got to face them. I've got to address them. Guys who don't go to counseling and therapy because they think it's a sign of weakness are actually avoiding what's going on in their lives, and that's what true weakness looks like. It's un courageous to not face the things in your life. So summing up that manly courage and just have some humility to go along with it and say, I need this. I need a place to be able to talk about these things, and it's gonna take some courage to be able to do so. But if I need to start with a therapist, that's where I need to start. In the meantime, you need to be developing strong male relationships. You need to be connected with other men in your life. So wherever you can find ways to do that, whether that's by building some friendships with guys that you work out with at the gym, or guys that you go to church with, or guys who are. Dads of your, your kids' friends or something like that. Uh, guys who are involved in a hobby that you are involved in. Maybe you're not involved in any hobbies and you need to get one so you can get around some other guys. Just pick something, pick a way to begin getting. Other male friendships in your life and start finding even just one or two of those guys that you can have real and honest conversations with. We're gonna talk more about how to do those kinds of relationships on this channel quite a bit. In fact, we've got some content on that already. So if you want to go back and look at one of our previous series on building strong male friendships, you can go and look at some of that content, but just know that's a big part of what we do here at Manhood Tribes. And last but not least, I want to really encourage you as well that this might be the time and the opportunity for you to really examine, do I need to build up my faith? Is my faith something that could help me be able to shoulder the load of what I'm dealing with? As a man who's a Christian and a follower of Jesus, I want to encourage you that faith can be a rock for you when you feel like you're having to be a rock for everyone else, you aren't meant to do this alone and following Jesus gives you a way to be able to walk with someone, to walk with Jesus himself, who is capable of carrying your burden and all of those other burdens around you so that you don't have to try to do it on your own. Join a church, get involved in a men's group. Find a way to be able to connect with other men who are trying to do the same, and use that resource of your faith, your relationship with God as a way to be able to navigate the incredible burden that you're dealing with. Okay. Those are some basic ways to start to be able to deal with the load that we as men are trying to carry. If you're enjoying this kind of content, I want to encourage you to like and subscribe, to follow along with what we're doing. But I also want to encourage you to consider joining our Manhood Tribes community. Right now we are getting ready to launch our tribe community, and so you can go to manhood tribes.com/community and find out what that is going to look like and how you can be a part of it. It is gonna help you be able to level up your game as a man so that you can connect with other like-minded men. Grow in your faith in Jesus and become the kind of man that you truly want to be. It's gonna be an incredible space to connect with other guys who are resonating with this kind of content and begin to develop some of those relationships that you really need to succeed and thrive as a man. So again, check that out at manhood tribes.com/community and put your name on the list to join us when we're ready to get started. Now I wanna leave you by encouraging you to comment below. And to just answer the question, what is one burden that you are carrying as a man that you feel like no one sees? Put that down below in the comments and I look forward to engaging with you there, and we'll talk again next time here at Manhood Tribes. See you then. I.