What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Being a Man at 20, 30, and 40

If I could sit down with myself at 20, 30, and 40, I would have a few things to say.

Some of them would irritate the hell out of younger me.

At 20, I probably would have argued. At 30, I would have explained why the advice didn't apply to me. At 40, I might finally have stopped talking long enough to listen.

Most men receive plenty of instructions about how to perform manhood: Be strong. Work hard. Don't complain. Provide. Compete. Win. Keep your shit together.

We receive far less instruction about how to remain human while doing it.

Here is what I wish someone had told me.

The Short Version

At 20: Becoming a man does not require becoming harder. Anger is not the only strong emotion, and no achievement can permanently answer the question of whether you are worthy.
At 30: Competence is not intimacy. Being needed is not the same as being known, and working harder is a respectable place to hide.
At 40: Self-reliance can become a prison. You will need people, you will lose people, and waiting to feel completely safe before being vulnerable means waiting forever.
At every age: Your emotions are data, not dictators. Your history can explain your reaction without excusing its impact.

At 20: Becoming a Man Does Not Require Becoming Harder

At 20, I thought strength had a particular look.

Strength was toughness, certainty, intensity, independence, and the ability to withstand pain without revealing that it hurt. Anger felt strong because it was active. Fear, sadness, shame, loneliness, tenderness, grief, and need felt dangerous because they exposed something.

I wish someone had told me that anger is not the only strong emotion.

Intensity is not authority. Intimidation is not leadership. Being able to frighten people does not make you powerful. It may give you control of a room, but control and respect are not the same thing.

Real strength includes the ability to recognize what is happening inside you before it takes control of what you do.

Fear will influence your life whether you call it fear or convert it into anger.

Shame will influence your relationships whether you name it or disguise it as defensiveness.

Loneliness will influence your choices whether you admit that you need people or pretend that everyone else is the problem.

The emotions you refuse to recognize do not disappear. They simply operate without supervision. That is the mechanism behind the real reason small things set you off — the reaction is rarely about the thing in front of you.

I also wish someone had told me that I didn't have to prove my worth through toughness, achievement, sex, competition, status, or control.

Those things can all be enjoyable or meaningful. Achievement can be deeply satisfying. Competition can make us better. Sexuality can be an important part of a vital life. Strength and ambition are not the enemy.

The problem begins when we give them an impossible assignment:

Make me worthy.
Make me safe.
Guarantee that I belong.

No achievement can permanently settle those questions. There is always another promotion, another opponent, another goal, another person with more money, status, power, or hair.

I wish I had understood that I was already worthy of love, connection, belonging, and success. I didn't have to earn my humanity by becoming harder or doing more.

At 30: Competence Is Not Intimacy

By 30, many men have become extremely good at being useful.

We provide. We fix. We solve. We teach. We explain. We anticipate problems. We work longer hours so the people we love will have what they need.

These can all be genuine expressions of love.

But competence is not intimacy.

You can be indispensable at work and nearly unknowable at home. You can solve every practical problem in your family while remaining internally unavailable and mysterious to the people in it.

Being needed is not the same as being known.

Being successful is not the same as being safe.

Working harder will not protect you from rejection, grief, shame, or loneliness. In fact, work can become a remarkably respectable place to hide from all four. If you have ever wondered why successful men feel constantly stressed and can't switch it off, this is a large part of the answer.

I wish someone had told me that presence is not another problem-solving strategy.

Sometimes the person you love does not need your analysis, your explanation, or your five-point improvement plan. Sometimes she needs to know that her experience has reached you. Or that you feel her pain.

That becomes especially difficult when your partner is disappointed in you.

For many men, a partner's disappointment does not register as one piece of relational information. It lands as a global verdict of worth:

I failed.
I'm not good enough.
I'm a terrible partner.

Once shame enters the room, we become defensive. We explain what we intended. We correct an inaccurate detail. We point out what the other person did. We build an airtight legal defense for why we should not be experiencing this uncomfortable conversation.

Meanwhile, the person we love is still waiting to be heard. It is one of the clearest reasons conversations with your partner escalate so fast.

I wish someone had told me that I could listen to another person's pain without agreeing that I was a terrible man.

My intent matters. My impact matters too.

Both can be true.

I can say, "I didn't intend to hurt you, and I understand that I did."

I can listen without immediately defending myself. I can take responsibility for my behavior without accepting responsibility for everything that has ever gone wrong.

My explanations can wait.

That last lesson alone would have saved me from a great deal of unnecessary conflict.

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At 40: Self-Reliance Can Become a Prison

Self-reliance is valuable. Every adult should be able to tolerate discomfort, solve problems, and take responsibility for his or her life.

But compulsory self-reliance is a prison with excellent branding.

Many men don't merely prefer handling things themselves. We believe needing help means that something is wrong with us, that we are weak.

We wait until the marriage is nearly over to call for help. We wait until the pressure becomes unbearable to tell a friend. We wait until the warning light has been flashing for six months, smoke is pouring from the engine, and one wheel has fallen off before admitting that the vehicle may require professional attention.

Then we congratulate ourselves for being independent.

I wish someone had told me that I would need people.

That is not a soft claim. In a meta-analysis of 70 studies, Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues found that social isolation, loneliness, and living alone were each associated with roughly a 26 to 32 percent increase in the likelihood of early death — an effect comparable to well-established medical risk factors.² Connection is not a luxury item you get to once the important work is done. It is part of the important work.

I would also lose people.

I wish someone had told me that it's okay if some people don't like you.

No amount of success, control, vigilance, or emotional armor could prevent every loss. I could not become competent enough to guarantee that everyone I loved would remain safe or stay with me forever.

Strength is not refusing help. Strength is recognizing when your existing tools are insufficient and finding trustworthy support.

I also wish someone had told me that I did not have to feel completely safe before becoming vulnerable.

If you wait for a guarantee that nobody will reject, misunderstand, disappoint, betray, or hurt you, you will wait forever. Intimacy inherently contains risk. To love another person is to place something valuable — your heart — beyond your complete control. And yet, it is the only way to live.

Relational safety is not the total absence of risk. It is built through repeated experiences:

Telling the truth.
Listening without defensiveness.
Keeping your promises.
Respecting boundaries.
Returning after taking space.
Repairing the damage you cause.
Discovering that you can be imperfect and remain worthy of love.

What I Wish I Had Known at Every Age

Your emotions are data, not dictators

Fear may tell you that something feels unsafe. Anger may tell you that something feels wrong, blocked, threatened, or unfair. Sadness may tell you that something mattered and has been lost. Loneliness may tell you that you need meaningful connection. Shame may tell you that you fear being unworthy of love and belonging.

Listen to the information.

Then decide what you do with it.

This is not a metaphor. In a functional MRI study, Matthew Lieberman and colleagues found that simply putting a feeling into words reduced activity in the amygdala and increased activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex — the naming itself took heat out of the alarm.¹ Precision matters more than intensity. "I'm frustrated and embarrassed" does something that "I'm fine" never will. If naming what you feel is the part that stalls you, start with the practical guide to emotional intelligence for men.

You are not weak because you feel. You are not defective because an old wound still hurts. But you are responsible for what you do when it hurts.

You are responsible for the words you use, the intensity you bring into the room, the walls you build, and the people you frighten or shut out. Your history can explain your reaction without excusing its impact.

The Inner Kingdom: Who Is Actually Running You

This is the work of what I call the Inner Kingdom.

Inside us is a Squire carrying early wounds, fears, dreams, and conclusions about what makes us worthy and safe. There is a Knight who learned how to protect that boy through anger, control, achievement, withdrawal, humor, pleasing, work, or emotional armor. There is a Lover who carries our need for connection, tenderness, meaning, grief, beauty, and belonging.

And there is a King: the wise adult capable of hearing them all and choosing what happens next.

The engine is simple once you see it. The Knight is sworn to protect the Squire. When today rhymes with an old wound, the Squire's old certainty fires, the Knight draws his sword, and the King was never on the throne.

The goal is not to kill the boy, dismiss the heart, or disarm the protector.

The goal is to become the man who can lead them. We call it holding court.

The King can tell the Knight, "I understand why you drew your sword. I will decide whether we need it."

He can tell the Squire, "This hurts, and I am not leaving you alone inside it."

He can tell the Lover, "What you care about matters. We will speak honestly about it."

Where to Start This Week

Name it out loud, specifically. Once a day, put language on what you are actually feeling — two words, not one. Precision is the rep.
Hold court before you respond. When you feel the surge, ask which figure just grabbed the wheel. Knight? Squire? Then decide as the King.
Let one explanation wait. The next time you are criticized, listen all the way to the end without defending. Your case will still be there tomorrow.
Tell one person one true thing. Not the whole history. One honest sentence to someone who has earned it.

The Promise Worth Making

Being a man is not about becoming invulnerable.

It is about becoming trustworthy with your strength, honest about your wounds, responsible for your impact, courageous enough to ask for help, and open enough to remain connected.

The deepest promise is not:

I will never be hurt.

No man can keep that promise.

The deeper and more honest promise is:

When pain comes, I will not abandon myself or the people I love inside it.

This is the heart of the work I do with men one-on-one at Guide to Self, where I coach men on anger, stress, and self-leadership. If the pattern in this article is your pattern, that is where to start. If anger is the specific place it shows up, the online anger management course that more than 25,000 men and women have taken is a self-paced way in.

And because this work shouldn't only happen in a coaching session, we built something for the other 23 hours of your day. Proxi He gives men real-time support in the moment they need it — the Inner Kingdom, on demand, to help you hold court before the Knight swings. (To be clear: it is a coaching and personal development tool, not therapy or medical care.) If the pattern is showing up between you and your partner, Joree and I work with couples together at Love Isn't Enough, our coaching practice for high-performing couples.

References
1. Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x
2. Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568352

— Dr. John Schinnerer is a UC Berkeley-trained executive coach, host of The Evolved Caveman podcast, and a consultant on Pixar's "Inside Out."

Keep reading: the seven things emotionally intelligent men actually do, why men still struggle to express emotions and what it's costing us, and why burnout is a nervous system problem, not a character flaw.

FAQ

What do men most often wish they had learned earlier?

Three things come up again and again: that strength does not require becoming harder, that being useful is not the same as being close, and that needing other people is not a defect. Most men learn all three late, usually after something breaks.

Is it normal to feel unfulfilled after becoming successful?

It is extremely common. Achievement answers the question "am I capable?" It does not answer "am I worthy, safe, and known?" When a man has been outsourcing those questions to work, status, or competition, hitting the goal tends to expose the gap rather than close it.

Why do men get defensive when their partner is disappointed in them?

Because for many men a partner's disappointment does not register as one piece of relational information. It lands as a global verdict on their worth. Once shame enters the room, defending becomes automatic: explaining intent, correcting details, building a case. Meanwhile the person they love is still waiting to be heard.

Why is it so hard for men to ask for help?

Many men are trained to read needing help as evidence that something is wrong with them. So they wait until the marriage is nearly over, or the pressure is unbearable, and then call the delay independence. Strength is not refusing help. Strength is recognizing when your current tools are insufficient and finding trustworthy support.

What is the Inner Kingdom model?

It is a four-part model of a man's inner life: the Squire carries the early wounds, dreams, and conclusions about what makes him safe; the Knight protects the Squire through anger, control, achievement, or withdrawal; the Lover carries connection, tenderness, grief, and meaning; and the King is the wise adult who hears all three and decides what happens next. The work is not to silence any of them. It is to become the man who can lead them.