Being a man today is not straightforward. The old answers — strong, silent, provider — no longer carry the weight they once did. Or they carry it differently. Roles have changed. Expectations have loosened. But something deeper remains: the quiet pressure to measure up to a version of masculinity you didn’t choose — but somehow still carry.
For many men, that pressure becomes internalised. Not as a question, but as a burden. You should be further by now. You should know what you’re doing. You should be able to handle this.
And if you can’t — or don’t — what then?
The Man Box: What We Inherit
Tony Porter calls it the man box — the unspoken code that tells men how to behave, feel, and be seen.
Don’t cry. Don’t ask for help. Don’t be soft.
Succeed. Be respected. Stay in control.
Most men were never asked whether this version of masculinity fit them. They were just handed the box and told to live inside it.
Some do. Many suffer.
You learn to suppress what doesn’t belong in the box — fear, sadness, tenderness, doubt. You shrink. Or explode. You pour that pressure into work, sex, withdrawal, control. And still, something doesn’t feel right.
Individuation: Finding Your Own Shape
What’s required now isn’t only rebellion, but responsibility — the deeper kind. Not performance, but presence.
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung described the process of individuation: not becoming someone else, but becoming yourself — the self that has been buried under conditioning, culture, and fear.
For men, this process can be disorienting. Especially if your identity was built around competence, silence, or being needed by others. Individuation asks you to stop outsourcing your worth. It asks: What is truly yours? What have you inherited that no longer fits? What wants to emerge if you stop managing it all?
The Masculine Doesn’t Die — It Evolves
This isn’t about becoming less of a man.
It’s about becoming more of yourself.
True strength isn’t control. It’s contact.
True resilience isn’t performance. It’s presence.
True masculinity isn’t loud or dominant — it’s honest.
There is space for you — not just the parts that perform well, but the parts that long, falter, grieve, and change.
The responses to today’s call need to be individual, they need to grasp diversity as an essential part of being human, they need to come from within. And those answers also need to find a way into the reality of your life.
The reality of your family or origin, your own home, your partner and your off-spring, your friends, your professional life. We are not atoms, we are part and parcel of ever widening circles of communities. We affect them, they affect us.
Unless men can emerge from darkness, we shall continue to wound women and each other, and the world can never be a safe or healthy place. This work we do, then, is not only for ourselves but also for those around us.
James Hollis – Under Saturn’s Shadow
This work, then, isn’t only personal.
It’s relational. Intergenerational. Cultural.
When a man gets honest with himself, everyone around him feels it.
You’re not alone in these questions — even if no one around you is speaking them out loud.
I’ve written more about how emotional reactivity, shame, and silence show up in the therapy room here.
And if you’re considering working with someone who understands these questions — not just from theory but from lived experience — you can read more about how I work with men here.
