The Male Loneliness Epidemic Is Just A Symptom
A Closer Look at Men’s Widespread Accountability Crisis
“A man who cannot sit with his own shame cannot love. He can only grasp.” - Jaya John
There’s a crisis currently unfolding in the men of this earth. And I don’t mean that in a poetic or spiritualized way. I mean there are a staggering number of men walking around with deeply underdeveloped emotional awareness, relational maturity, and self-understanding, and it’s not being named clearly enough.
So I’m going to name it.
Some people are calling it the Male Loneliness Epidemic but I think that’s skirting around the actual substance of the situation. I’m going to say what I say from a place of realistically observing the current reality around me and being honest about it. And let me be clear, I know not every man fits this mold. This is a generalization, not a universal truth. Men are unique, programmed differently, shaped by their own experiences. But after 30 years on Earth, after countless conversations, relationships, observations of friends, family, and strangers, the pattern is loud and clear.
I’ve come to believe that one of the most loving things we can do in this moment in time is to stop being so ‘understanding’ of emotionally underdeveloped men.
Here’s what I mean.
A man who is emotionally underdeveloped doesn’t usually know that he is. He doesn’t walk around saying to his friends, "I lack emotional intelligence." That would be an incredibly self-aware thing to say. Most of the time, he’s unaware of it or in denial about it… or if he senses it, he quickly suppresses it, because facing it would mean confronting deep shame and meeting the core of his ego. And thanks to society and culture, men carry a massive inferiority complex paired with an almost allergic reaction to the feeling of shame. So they push it away before it ever touches them. Shame can feel like dying. And we can all relate to that at some level.
This creates a kind of emotional blindness. And women, especially those of us who are sensitive, aware, growth-oriented, often respond by trying to be understanding. We praise breadcrumbs. We applaud the bare minimum. We find ourselves saying things like, "Wow, he’s finally getting it," when all he’s done is repeat back a surface-level insight he half-understands, and then continues to play out the same imbalanced patterns of behavior or speech anyway.
I don’t think women act this way because they don’t see what’s going on. I think we act this way because we’re relieved. And we’re hopeful. And we’re tired. And maybe a bit desperate. We want men to meet us. And these crumbs feel like something. But here’s what I’ve come to realize: many times (not always), the subtle understanding a man reflects back to us about his own unskillful behavior or thinking isn’t a pure bout of realization coming over him but it’s him saying or doing whatever he needs to say or do to keep you.
And I’m not speaking about one man. I’m speaking about a pattern in men. A widespread, deeply normalized pattern of emotional underdevelopment paired with a relentless need to be seen as good, as right, as competent, and desirable.
And it creates a hefty imbalance. Because women are often showing up with the capacity to be present, self-aware, and growth-oriented… and we’re often met with men who are mimicking those traits because they want access to our energy. Not because they’ve done the work yet or even have the capacity for it.
The hardest part is this: women are taught that loving someone means staying. Supporting. Understanding. Being patient. And I’d like to say: sometimes love looks like leaving. Sometimes love looks like withdrawing our approval so that someone has to sit with themselves. So they can feel the discomfort they keep trying to mitigate through your approval and presence in their lives. So they can meet the parts of themselves they’ve not yet been willing to face fully.
Because that’s what creates change. Change is generally catalyzed by incredible discomfort. It’s what wakes us up from our trance of mind and creates a break in the loop.
And we might think this is unloving, but I want to say,
If your twenty two year old son had a lifelong pattern of irresponsibility and he told you he blew all of his money at a casino and then asked you to pay his rent, would it be loving to pay his rent or would it be enabling the irresponsibility and prolonging the inevitable— the inevitable which is his actual need to face the natural consequences of his actions and ways of thinking? The most loving thing to do here would be to allow this young man to get really uncomfortable and to stop sacrificing because another person hasn’t figured out how to show up in a healthier way yet.
This doesn’t mean we shame men. This doesn’t mean we abandon our compassion. Because we too have blindspots and have had blindspots. We understand how the mind creates distortion in order to avoid the truth of it’s own nature. But we stop applauding breadcrumbs. We stop acting like a man finally remembering to express a feeling instead of passive aggressively shaming you after seventeen conversations on the topic, is some kind of breakthrough. We stop feeding the illusion that minimal, partial love is enough.
It’s not.
Women are in need of taking accountability as well, to what we’re saying yes to and getting to the ‘why’ underneath our settling.
And the truth is, there’s something beautiful trying to happen in the masculine. But it won’t happen if we keep shielding them from the initiation they need. If we keep holding back the natural consequences of being unskilled in matters of the heart and mind. Coddling is enabling. There is no awakening without some kind of ego death. And there is no ego death without friction, loss, and space to feel it.
So if you feel that you’re unkind or rigid for withdrawing, you’re not. You’re not cold for walking away. You’re not unspiritual for no longer having a desire to teach a man how to feel and name his own feelings and take accountability for them.
You’re just clear.
And your clarity might be the very thing that finally allows his inner work to begin.
