When Providing Becomes the Only Way Men Know How to Love
The fear underneath the providing isn't about money. Stop, and everything disappears. Or so the story goes.
The Truth of It: Men who provide everything for their families are often the most absent person in the room. The fear driving them isn't about money -- it's primal, it's survival. And it's costing them the connection they're working so hard to protect.
The man who gives everything and still feels like it's not enough
Why can’t they just appreciate what you do? You work hard. Overtime, evenings, weekends, holidays so that your family can have a stable life. But all they do is complain that you’re never home, and when you are, you really aren’t there – you’re either dead tired or thinking about the next thing you have to do.
Can’t they see how much you love them?
You work harder and drift father…Freudian typo…farther away.
No matter what you do, it just isn’t enough.
You’re damned if you work harder and damned if you don’t.
So you dance with the devil you know.
What Does Being a "Provider" Actually Mean to Men?
Beyond the label of ‘provider,’ what is it you are actually trying to provide?
Is what you think you need to provide actually what your family, maybe even your employer, asks from you?
Are you trying to give them something beyond mere survival? Something that lessens their discomfort in life and provides more joy?
Do you want them to not have the childhood that you did? Or, are you competing with your memories to give them even more than your parents gave you?
In the gap between all you have given and what they are missing from you, what deep-seated feeling do you notice about your ability to provide security and safety for them?
What Happens to Men When They Can't Provide?
Your raise doesn’t come through. You don’t get the promotion. Maybe your role was eliminated.
Now what?
Without the means to give safety and stability, who are you?
All the energy that you used to put into gathering now has nowhere to go; you get a nervous tic, like a caged animal…ready to burst, but knowing you’d hurt the ones you love. Instead, you just hold it all in – it’s not safe to let them see you like this – and you just stuff it down.
Is Providing Really Love, or a Substitute for It?
Caging yourself is showing concern for their safety, but it’s really a mask and a deflection.
You’ve learned to hide your feelings, to not show vulnerability, and not ask for help, because for men, that’s supposedly a sign of weakness.
Providing shows your love, but it isn’t LOVE.
Your Love for your family is what’s underneath all of this performance.
What Would You Give If Money Weren't the Measure?
The money, the house, all the stuff: what are they hiding? You can show you care, but it turns into a never-ending cycle of “I need to do more. What I’ve given isn’t enough. We’re not secure yet.”
The outward metrics change every day: Stock market up and down, jobs change, salaries get cut and some get raises…every single thing out of your control.
Trying to control them, trying to plan for them, is exhausting and just elevates your sense of insecurity.
If you take away the masks, the facades, what do you really want to give to your family that is not a symbol of safety?
What do they want from you that you’ve been afraid to offer?
Providing is noble. Making it your entire identity is a cage.
The cultural story you’ve been indoctrinated to is “The man IS the provider,” so you adopt the identity, “I am the provider.”
The label is a prison.
Your family can visit you there. They get a sense of your power behind those bars, but they never get to see your full power to protect and connect.
Welcome to domestication.
You didn't build this cage alone. What if it isn’t real?
There's more safety outside those bars than you've ever been allowed to believe. More power too.
The Undivided Man opens the door. Fourteen questions. Less than five minutes. Uncannily accurate.
