“You know, when you go, you go. You just don’t know,” a friend used to say to me.
Mortality is the one truth we all share, whether we admit it or not. And yet, how we live with that truth varies. “John,” a recent widower I knew, had his own way of facing it: by keeping the promises his wife left behind, as if honoring them could hold together what grief …
Grief after losing a spouse does not arrive on schedule
Clinicians often meet men like K at the exact moment their lives start to quietly unravel. They don’t walk in using the language of distress. They show up looking competent, composed, and in control, even as something inside them is slipping. What looks like a business crisis is often an emotional one, driven by shame, isolation, and the belief that suffering must be carried alone.
This story and topic could easily …
The male loneliness epidemic hiding behind success
My friend Barry has money galore that makes people assume he shouldn’t have any problems at all. He runs a thriving real estate business, owns multiple homes, collects cars, spends weekends on his boat, comes from a family most people would envy, has friends, and can buy expensive tchotchkes, little throwaway things he could replace without a second thought. On paper, he has everything. But every time I saw him, …
Loneliness in successful men hides behind abundance
There is a danger in being good at holding everything together. People start to believe you do not need holding. Competence becomes camouflage. Reliability becomes a cage. And one day you wake up realizing you have become the infrastructure of a life that no one is helping you carry. For those who thought they could carry everything alone, I have realized there comes a time when a “foreclosure notice” may …
Emotional over-functioning drives the competence trap
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