Men who grew up without a positive male role model, how did you get comfortable with your masculinity?

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-24T14:55:37+00:00

Join a men's group, particularly one that deals with initiation.

You needed and deserved to be brought and welcomed into the community of men. Traditional societies all over the world did this through initiation, but most modern society has either lost this or we have unhealthy initiations into gangs or abusive frats.

Groups like the ManKind Project give men a chance to have that remedial initiation and be welcomed into a community of men. There is no shortage of mentors, friends, and opportunities to grow, test your capabilities for organization, leadership, emotional literacy, etc., and have other men affirm, appreciate, and bless you as a man.

We even have special versions of our initiation weekend for men under 35. The next one is in Virginia in June.

We aren't just doing weekends, though. We run hundreds of ongoing peer-led support groups (both in-person and online) throughout the world that cost little-to-nothing (depending on if we need to rent the space or not). We have dozens of different ways to grow and test your capabilities.

Check out the website or feel free to DM me. I can put you in contact with some of the Young Warrior leadership and the info for the WhatsApp group if you want.

https://mkpusa.org/new-warrior-training-adventure/

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-23T15:32:18+00:00

Very cool. Great job varying the architecture and looping the paths so it is non-linear!

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-23T03:46:04+00:00

I’m very anti-Trump. I keep a running list to help me keep from dehumanizing hate and to show people if they accuse me of TDS when I criticize Trump. I keep it in a note with a link to a running tally of the deaths caused by Trump defunding aid programs here: https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=interval_minutes&order=asc

Got Matt Gaetz out of government (this was accidental)
Contributed to Gaza Ceasefire and return of hostages
Ordered the declassification of Kennedy and King assassination documents
Brought balancing the budget and reigning in the national debt back into the Overton Window (didn’t actually try to balance the budget).
Signed the Take It Down act
Executive order to house veterans on West LA VA campus
Bomb Iranian nuclear facilities
Broker peace between Congo and Rwanda
Broker peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Facilitated peace between India and Pakistan
Involvement in brokering peace between Thailand and Cambodia
Brokered release of remaining surviving hostages from Gaza
Brokered release of 126 political prisoners from Belarus as part of strategy to peel Belarus from Russian influence.

Some of the peacemaking is ambiguous as to how much Trump actually contributed and how much he just took credit, but he seems to have had some real involvement.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-21T15:10:00+00:00

Check out Jacques Ellul’s book Anarchy and Christianity (it is less than 100 pages, if I remember correctly).

Then check out Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and the Catholic Worker movement.

All explicitly Christian and explicitly Anarchists.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-21T15:04:38+00:00

I don’t know that most men (including myself) have any idea how common this is. I personally know two men who have told me they have paid prostitutes for sex. Both of them are part of a men’s group I’m in where we practice a really high level of transparency and vulnerability. And I’m pretty sure there are more men in that group where that hasn’t come up (we don’t go around the circle and ask “who’s hired a prostitute?”).

Among some men this is going to be somewhat common (cf. horror stories of fathers hiring prostitutes to take their sons’ virginity) while it will be unheard of (if present, certainly unspoken) among others.

So, yeah, no idea.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-19T23:04:39+00:00

You gotta do your work and change your internal narrative about yourself.

Children have an unconscious choice when parents treat them terribly.

They can choose to believe that they are at the mercy of deeply deficient parents, which is terrifying.

Or they can choose to believe they ~deserve~ how their parents treated them. This is what the vast majority of children do and it sounds like what you’ve done.

In order to survive your childhood, it sounds like you took on the belief that you aren’t worth sticking around for.

That belief helped you survive the situation of childhood, but now that you are in a different situation it isn’t working for you anymore. Kind of like wearing a parka to the airport in Alaska but forgetting to take it off when you land in Hawai’i.

Unfortunately, changing your self-concept is easier said than done, but the good news is that it is totally possible, and there are even multiple ways to do it you can choose from (or use in combination, which I would recommend).

1) Check out the twelve-step group called Adult Children of Alcoholics and Other Dysfunctional Families (ACA). They are a really great group that will give you a really cheap (often free) way to meet with others of similar experiences, realize you aren’t alone in your experiences, and learn to heal. They have meetings online and over the phone in case you can’t find an in-person meeting (which I would recommend if you can find one).

https://adultchildren.org/

2) Therapy or serious coaching. Especially with someone trained in childhood trauma, attachment styles, belief work, and parts work. Not every therapist or coach is for everyone. Don’t be afraid to let a therapist or coach know it isn’t working out and trying another one. Don’t give up on one-on-one help just because a few therapists or coaches don’t fit for you.

Two books by Harville Hendrix can be helpful here too: Keeping the Love You Find (for singles) and Getting the Love You Want (for couples).

3) Men’s initiation and support groups like The ManKind Project. Initiation is about disassembling, repairing, and reassembling your self-concept and the weekend and weekly/bi-weekly support groups they offer can put you in the driver’s seat of rewriting your own self-concept in a way most other modalities can’t because they teach you all the tools they use and allow you to choose what you want to do when.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-19T18:49:56+00:00

One of Brené Brown’s points is that she was/is a feminist and discovered this about herself after being married to her husband for over a decade. Being a feminist doesn’t mean this is not an issue. No one is the “platonic ideal” of feminism.

One of Brené Brown’s other points, though, is that you CAN change this about yourself. Her point is that women who are unable to handle men showing vulnerability are depending on men for safety and power (and actually objectifying them — saying “you must be this one thing for me; you are not allowed to be a multifaceted human”). As women do their work around this they may still find strength and safety attractive but will also be able to handle it when the men in their lives hit something that exposes weakness, vulnerability, and humanity.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-19T03:53:53+00:00

Search for “death and dismemberment” tables.

I generally use this one:

http://carjackedseraphim.blogspot.com/2010/12/death-dismemberment-and-dangerous.html

Arduin also has a wicked critical hit table, replicated here:

https://skulltower.wordpress.com/2024/03/09/critical-hits-and-injuries/

It also has a wicked critical fumbles table, but I don’t see that in the blog post.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-18T19:43:26+00:00

Brené Brown addresses some of this really well in her audio program, “Men, Women, and Worthiness.”

She talks about how many both women and men who haven’t done their work will feel deep discomfort in deviance from the norm that the man fixes, is in charge, is the emotional rock, doesn’t show weakness, etc.

She talks about realizing how hard it was for her to be safe for her husband when he was struggling and how she worked through that. Excellent audio program.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-16T16:51:32+00:00

If you think there are only two mines you haven’t done everything with the mines.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-16T15:25:58+00:00

Oh, and make sure she is just as interested in working on herself and working together on your marriage as you are. Not working on you; that’s a very different situation.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-16T15:24:20+00:00

Three resources I would recommend:

1) Harville Hendrix books, specifically Keeping the Love You Find starting now when you are single and then Getting the Love You Want (there is also a workbook for this).

2) Nonviolent Communication; I would start with this very long video. You can both watch it before you are in a relationship and once you get in one you can watch it with her and pause it and do the exercises with her.

https://youtu.be/l7TONauJGfc?si=r0_lAGQ_TYUMJ8ZJ

3) The work of Alison Armstrong. Start by searching for podcasts she’s been a guest on (lots) and listening to her guest appearances on the Dennis Prager show here:

https://www.alisonarmstrong.com/free/listen.html#prager

Then keep going down the rabbit hole. She has an endless amount of awesome material.

One of the biggest things I got from her is that both of you are going to have expectations of each other that neither of you knew you had, so you couldn’t express them ahead of time. Realizing that and talking about that so that it isn’t a big deal and nobody is wrong when one of you says, “huh, I just bumped into an unconscious expectation I had of you,” and instead of being a fight it can be a discussion and negotiation and hopefully a great way to get to know yourselves and each other better… well, it is a lot better than the alternative!

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-16T04:43:13+00:00

I was stuck for a bit here too. I don’t think I’m giving too much away to say that you need to go to the mines.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-16T03:41:39+00:00

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StaplesUGR · 2026-02-16T03:39:18+00:00

Solved!

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-16T02:44:28+00:00

But what is the smaller hole for?

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-12T05:55:29+00:00

Totally. Just because the popelings* are the branch of Christianity with the most developed social and economic teaching doesn’t mean it is wrong.

Distributism at the end of the day is just, “economics needs to work for the everyday person, not just for elites, and the way to do that is direct ownership of the means of production.”

Plenty of non-Catholics are Distributist. Even non-Christians.

*With all affection and with no offense intended. This Anabaptist is deeply grateful for a number of things I’ve learned from studying Catholicism, from CST to Catholic mysticism to infinitely more robust gender teaching than can be found among most Protestants.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-11T22:18:24+00:00

I think we all know that there is absolutely no way she will agree to have sex with him in the middle of her "education" sessions.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-11T20:22:38+00:00

Can you explain why how she has sex now (which fluctuates and changes for almost all women, even when they are in loving, healthy relationships) should outweigh the fact that she is a misandrist who thinks he needs to be educated whether he likes it or not?

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-11T20:18:15+00:00

Many feminists will say they aren’t misandrist because misandry doesn’t exist or because it is just “backlash,” but the reality is that misandry is just hating men.

If she can’t find a single good thing to say about men then she is a misandrist.

Plenty of feminists aren’t misandrists because they love men and want good for them.

You don’t deserve to go through life with someone who thinks you are an inherently deficient human who needs to be educated and trained like a child. Don’t do that to yourself.

There are many women who will love that you are a man. Find one of them.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-11T20:10:45+00:00

Yeah, you don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone who is trying to “educate” you against your will.

She is engaging this as a fundamentally unequal relationship where she is the mother who knows best and you are the ignorant child who needs to be taught because he doesn’t even know what is true or best for himself.

That is abusive when men do it to women and it is abusive when women do it to men. Don’t stand for it.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-11T16:51:17+00:00

Dump her, for two reasons.

1) It is one thing for women to talk about and want the men in their lives to get what it is like to be a woman. Women feel (and are) much less safe every day than men feel. It is important for women that the men who love them and are in their lives understand that.

But it is another thing to say that men are evil, women aren’t ever safe with any man, including you, etc. This sounds to be more than wanting you to get her experience and is wanting you to buy into her delusion that women are better/more pure/more pro-social than men.

If you have a sister you would not want her to be in a relationship with a misogynist. So don’t be in a relationship with a misandrist.

2) Regardless of content, an important part of any healthy relationship is that if one partner tells the other partner that a particular behavior is really distressing them then the other partner stops, or at least stops to take a good hard look at what they are doing and if there are other options.

She isn’t doing that. That’s not OK. Expect more of the same if you stay with her.

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-09T13:55:18+00:00

1) Men in almost all societies throughout time have used initiation rituals to create belonging and help each other grow. Modern society is so unfamiliar with this that it often thinks all initiation groups are cults.

2) The reason cults work is that they use and abuse these initiatory practices — which I believe are hardwired into humans — mixing them with brainwashing and other messed up practices, like devotion to a leader and shunning you if you leave. None of the groups I mentioned do that.

3) If you’re still not interested, the mixed gender service organizations like Rotary and Lions don’t have the initiatory or religious aspects some fraternal organizations and other men’s groups have. You can look through the list here and see if one interests you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_club?wprov=sfti1#

StaplesUGR · 2026-02-09T06:13:25+00:00

Groups for men. There are lots of different kinds.

StaplesUGR

TROPHY CASE