You’re Not Fine, You’re Just Good at Looking Like It

We’re real good at having polite, distant conversations with no real depth. You are not known, and one of the reasons is: it’s not safe to be known.

A lot of men build their whole life around the image they portray, believing that image is the only way to be successful, the only way to get what they really want. If your career, your whole sense of self, is based on how you look to other people, the truth is you’re not really fine. You’re just good at looking like you’re fine, good at looking like you have everything under control when you really don’t. That can lead to a lot of loneliness. A man alone with his secrets is in a difficult spot, believing his secrets make him uniquely broken, that no one else could possibly struggle the way he does.

A Room Full of People

Deep in a period of using, between 2006 and 2010, at a company dinner, a room full of people, and a feeling of total isolation that had nothing to do with anyone in the room. It was the conversation happening internally, all the secrets that kept safety at bay. That’s a hard situation to overcome, because it requires trusting people, and being vulnerable with someone you can’t trust is genuinely counterintuitive.

Walking Down the Stairs

Building trust works like walking down a flight of stairs. Take one step down, and wait to see if the other person takes a step down with you. Try something like: some days I don’t really have as much control over my life as I’d like. If the other guy says yeah, I know what you mean, that’s a real step. If he says nah, that’s not really me, that tells you something too, that this may not be the person for a deeper conversation.

The opposite mistake is just as costly: jumping from the first step to the thirtieth. That’s a way of shocking people, of keeping them at bay by moving too fast into something that feels overwhelming to them. Either way, it takes time to build real relationships, and understanding that the process is slow, one step at a time, is part of the work.

Why the Circle Comes First

Once you begin building those relationships and being actually known, the things you’ve done to protect yourself around certain people, you don’t have to wear as much anymore. As you become more known, you become less lonely. That’s why the first foundation stone in Storm Ready is the inner circle. A high number of men make their wife or partner the only person who knows them, and the problem is she may have serious trouble carrying some of what you need to share. Having other men who’ve walked some of the same paths makes it easier to see you’re not alone, not unique in your secrets or your fears.

Find places where you have permission to be real, a grief group, some church groups, anywhere the expectation is mutual vulnerability. Church, ironically, can be one of the least safe places for this: plenty of room to talk about knowledge, very little room to say this is really how bad it is right now. Have more than one person in your circle, because they’re not always available. One friend of mine preparing to move was a real scare, because he was part of my inner circle and I didn’t want to lose him. That’s exactly why you want three to five men, not one.

The phrases man up or put on your big boy pants don’t make hard things go away. They just push them deeper, and the deeper they go, the more fragile you become, and the more likely you are to crumble when a storm hits.

This Week

Pick one relationship where the conversation has stayed polite and distant. Take one step down the stairs. Say one honest thing you haven’t said before, and see if he steps down with you.

Next: how spiritual depth becomes the foundation everything else stands on.

Take the free Storm Ready Assessment at StormReadyMen.com. Wives, find support at The Couple Cure.