Being “Man Enough” is Exhausting
How to stop playing the unwinnable game
Trying to be “man enough” brings a unique kind of exhaustion.
It’s not about doing hard things, because everyone faces challenges, and many of us are built for them. The real fatigue comes from constantly feeling like you have to prove yourself. You work hard, build your body, your bank account, your reputation, or your toughness. You do everything you think will make you seem “man enough.” Sometimes, it even feels like you’ve finally made it.
But then you meet someone who reminds you there’s still more to prove.
Maybe he lifts more weight, earns a bigger paycheck, has a black belt, or just seems less concerned with what others think. Whatever it is, something inside you changes. Despite all your effort, you start thinking, “He probably thinks I’m soft.” It doesn’t matter if he says it or not because the scoreboard in your mind has already put you behind. So you push yourself again.
Proving your masculinity is not about other people
It took me a while to realize this, but when a man tries to prove his masculinity, he often thinks it’s for other men’s respect. In reality, he’s trying to quiet his own insecurities. Other men just become a way to feed that feeling.
This isn’t meant as an insult. I just want to point out how it works. Proving our masculinity through others is actually a private struggle. It’s about how we see ourselves, but we let strangers decide our worth.
But those strangers can’t actually decide anything. Their perceptions of us are just noise. That is, until we pick those perceptions up and agree to believe them. Another man can call you soft all day, but it only matters if you accept what he’s saying. The scoreboard only has power because we give it power. Which means the person keeping us in the game was never really him. It’s us.
That’s why this game can never be won.
Because the moment we succeed at one version of masculinity, someone running a different version of masculinity might see us, and to that guy, our version of masculinity is the weak one. So he ranks us below him. Or, what I think is the more common scenario, is the moment we succeed in whatever version of masculinity we’re chasing, we start looking for a new person to compare ourselves against.
No matter how we got here, we have a choice. We can ignore the comparisons, or we can keep chasing the respect we think we need. If we chase it, we might get good at it and feel confident for a short time, but soon another comparison comes along. Whether it’s from someone else or our own reflection, we hear the same insults—girl, beta, soft, or whatever the latest term is. The word itself doesn’t matter. What matters is that other men and we are always keeping score.
I ran this on myself for years, in a lot of different ways, and the clearest example didn’t involve another man questioning my manhood at all. When I was a triathlete, I started with sprint triathlons (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run). Then I moved up to Olympic triathlons (1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run). It was tough at first, but I got used to it. Still, after finishing my first Olympic triathlon, I realized moving up to the Half Ironman (1.9km swim, 90km bike, 21km run) wasn’t for me.
But when I saw my training friends move up to the Half Ironman, I decided to had to do it too. I didn’t want to seem less masculine. After all, triathlon is famous for its quotes about suffering:
“Success in the sport is, above all else, about enduring suffering.” — Chris McCormack, two-time Ironman world champion.
“If it’s hurting me, it’s killing them.” — Sebastian Kienle, Ironman world champion.
So I did it. And I hated it, and I didn’t do well. Still, I signed up for another one, trained for months, completed the race, and hated that one too. Oh, and I did worse than my first one. Even after the second race, I kept training until I had to stop because of exhaustion and burnout. But that’s a story for another time.
No one called me soft. No one had to. I had the scoreboard running all on my own, chasing a version of enough that kept moving the second I got close. That’s the part worth noticing: the other men are optional. The scorekeeping isn’t.
As you can see, this is a never-ending comparison game. There’s no man so masculine that everyone else will always rank him highest. That person doesn’t exist and never has. Chasing that idea only keeps us unhappy and always reaching for something out of reach.
So the real question isn’t, “How do I win this game?”
The question is, “How do I stop playing?”
If you’re a free subscriber, I hope you’ve found this helpful so far. The rest of this post is for paid subscribers.
For paid subscribers, here’s what helped me stop keeping score without feeling like I lost something. It comes in two parts: two shifts that stopped me from keeping score, and then two reasons those shifts are worth making, because knowing how to stop playing and actually wanting to are not the same thing.
