“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
I love what’s happening culturally at the moment. On the one hand, we see figures like Donald Trump, who seem to want to dominate the world through cavemanish brute force, using outdated strategies to prove that they are “strong”, can “win”, control, and impose their will on the rest of the world.
And yet, beneath this loud display, something quieter is taking shape. Something more sustainable, and ultimately far stronger. It is slower, but it will outlast and overwrite this culture. What is emerging is almost the opposite of domination. It is authenticity. Vulnerability. The willingness to strip away the mask.
What I find especially heartening are the men who step forward to actively reshape what we understand as masculine culture. Men who reclaim therapeutic and healing work from being labelled as “feminine”. Men who speak openly, from lived experience, about their struggles growing up in a patriarchal world where vulnerability was framed as weakness, or even as failure.
One of these voices is Connor Beaton, a life coach who supports men in facing their darkness and developing greater emotional authenticity. On his website, he describes his own story like this:
“I created an illusion of who I was supposed to be on the outside, the kind, funny, and charismatic guy with a great career and relationship. But on the other side of that facade hid my shadow, the destructive and manipulative version of myself who lied and cheated. The idea of anyone finding out my truth felt like death. And then it happened. Someone important to me cracked the illusion wide open, and I couldn’t lie my way out of it this time. To avoid crushing shame, I shut everyone out and ran.”
In a recent podcast episode titled Why successful men always self-destruct, recorded with Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast, Beaton speaks about how shame often runs the show, particularly in highly ambitious, successful, status-driven men. What lies beneath the brute force, the need to control, dominate, and win? Very often it is a deep-seated belief of not being good enough, an excruciating sense of shame that these men attempt to cover up with achievement, status, money, and external power.
And shame about what? Very often, it is the shame of being sensitive, of feeling deeply, of not being able to live up to the expectations placed on them by fathers, mothers, or by patriarchal society itself. Expectations shaped by rigid ideas of what a man is, or is supposed to be. Boys are often incredibly sensitive until society knocks it out of them.
Sometimes, the root is inner emptiness. Last month, I interviewed a high-profile man who was already at the top of his professional game in his early thirties. He appeared to have it all: success, fame, money, a loving wife, three children. And yet, he had been so deeply depressed for such a long time that he eventually needed to seek help. That journey included psychedelic-assisted therapy.
What he discovered was that a childhood trauma, more precisely the loss of his father, had been driving his relentless ambition and chronic overfunctioning all along. And it did not stop there. He eventually discovered that the inner emptiness he felt, despite the apparent fullness of his life, could only be filled through spiritual connection. That was the missing link for him: a willingness to surrender control to something greater than himself. Since then, he has described feeling more whole and more at peace. His relationships, too, have become richer and more authentic.
Another powerful initiative I recently came across is the Men and Boys Compassion Coalition, which “educates both professionals and the public about what defines a strong, compassionate man, while also promoting compassion towards and from men and boys. We focus on elevating the caring and sharing aspects of being male, while also minimising the dominating and callous ones.”
And that is the quiet but unstoppable force that seems to be slowly, yet surely, transforming our world beneath all the noise. Because patriarchal structures have harmed us all, men, women, and children alike. And while the old systems still shout and posture, something else is steadily finding its way in.
It has become fashionable to attack toxic masculinity, which is, of course, a very real phenomenon. But far fewer people are willing to ask why there is so much toxic masculinity in the first place. Why so much domestic and other forms of violence? And what actually needs to happen at the root for this to change?
And I believe the answer lies exactly here: in understanding the root of suffering in all human beings. In raising our children, especially boys, in ways that do not shame them for their sensitivity and emotional depth. In supporting men, particularly those who have lived with emotional suppression, numbness, and avoidance, in finding their way back to their hearts. And in making vulnerability socially acceptable, because vulnerability, when expressed authentically, is not weakness, but the greatest strength of all.
You might also enjoy my recent article on St Joseph and masculinity.
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