When A Man Doesn’t Trust Other Men

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When A Man Doesn’t Trust Men …

He uses women to soothe his loneliness.
He forces women to hold him accountable, which he then resists & resents.
He makes women the source of his worth & well-being.
He isolates.
He endlessly compares himself to other men.
He can only look down on other men, or up at them, and never feels equal.
He can’t celebrate his successes (gotta keep going!).
He struggles with genuine vulnerability.
He struggles to connect.
He struggles to feel fully alive.

And, because he’s a man, too, he can’t fully trust himself, either.

That was certainly my life story.

I deeply distrusted, even plain disliked, men for much of my young life.

Dad left at 4? … Can’t trust a man to hang around ✔

Boys bullied me at school? … Other boys are jerks ✔

Uncle is a raging alcoholic? … Men are unstable and scary ✔

A friend takes advantage of my sister? … Even friends will betray me ✔

My frat bros just want to drink & use women? … Men are childish idiots and a detriment to women ✔

Then I joined the military, and my respect for men – who can’t talk about real things, can’t ask real questions, can’t let themselves feel – just kept plummeting from there.

By the time I was 21, it was decided: Men aren’t safe (or even worthy) to let into my inner world.

Women, on the other hand?

They’re soft. Easy on the eyes. Smell good. Warm. Nurturing. Seem to love hearing whatever I’m open to sharing. They make me feel good.

So women are safe … buuuuuut only to a point.

For eventually a woman always became angry and frustrated with me, and she’d withdraw her love from me, too. Just like men.

Thus I lived the awful isolation so many men live, even when they put a good face on.

When a man stays there, that isolation turns into cynicism, which requires numbing out, which reinforces powerlessness, which renders him useless to the world, thus leaving him to live a pittance of his potential.

Enter men’s work.

At 39, I started doing deep inner growth work alongside other men, and everything in my life changed … fundamentally. I started seeing everything through a new lens.

It helped me understand why women always inevitably got so angry at me.

After all, I was unconsciously using women in attempting to fill up a gaping hole in my heart that was never a woman’s to fill.

Without trustable men I could bare my soul to, share my burdens with, be challenged by (in respectful ways), I would put too much strain on a woman to be my everything: cheerleader, challenger, supporter, lover, friend, accountability partner, adventure buddy, and whatever else I needed her to be.

When a woman failed at any of those roles – and no human woman can (or even wants to) be all those things for a man – I would complain, withdraw, blame her not being what I needed.

She’d feel my punishment, because that’s what it was. She’d resent me for it and punish me back, because … let’s be real … that’s what many women know to do, as well, at least until they’ve begun their own growth journey.

These days, I’m daily surrounded by profound, strong, trustable men who have my back no matter what may arise.

I trust them to challenge me respectfully and witness my struggles without judgment. Where most men minimize each other’s triumphs, and try to make themselves look better, my brothers celebrate me wildly when I win in my life. They also help me get back up when life kicks me in the pecans.

Ironically, with men like this around me, my wife gets to be what I always wanted from a woman: cheerleader, supporter, challenger, friend.

It’s just that she doesn’t have to do it perfectly, or every day.Because I have epic men who play those roles for me, too, and they have my back.

They have her back, too … which helps her feel even more safe with me.

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If you’re a man, and you want to be surrounded by epic men doing life together, and be witnessed, challenged, supported, and celebrated by men who will help you step more fully into your greatness as a man, apply to join me for Elevate 2026.

I have 5 spots left. We begin in January.