How to be truly confident as a man—unlike Elon
No, society shouldn't be run by “high-testosterone alpha males."
In my relatively new career as a therapist, I spend a lot of time around women. Most of my clients are men. But my colleagues and work friends tend to be women, as women make up an estimated two-thirds of therapists.
One thing I’ve noticed compared to being around other men is that women tend to ask more questions. Not directly to me about my life or experience—though that seems to happen a bit more often too, maybe because they’re therapists? But out loud. Into the air. For the both of us (or the whole group if we’re with others) to consider together.
I also notice this with my partner. We’ll be walking through a new city on vacation and she’ll ask, “Where should we get lunch?” Again, not directly to me but as if we were some collective organism joined at the hip, mulling over the answer in tandem.
It happened the other day while touring a house we were considering buying. “How do you redesign a kitchen?” she said, as we stared at the old, worn out cabinets. I know a little about carpentry, so I explained that it’s relatively easy to rip out old cabinets and build new ones. Our realtor, an actual expert in redesigning houses, gave advice about taking time to settle into a new space and let the design unfold intuitively.
When someone asks a question or at least appears confused, some part of me feels pulled to give an answer. Like there’s suddenly a void and I have to step into it. Like I’m being tested. Like I have to act confident, even if I’m really not. Like I’ll be seen as less of a man if I don’t know the answer.
I’m not saying these thoughts consciously go through my head. It happens in a split second. It’s automatic. I just start talking, often in a lower voice than normal, and in shorter, to-the-point sentences. Maybe halfway through, if it’s something I actually don’t know much about, I realize I’m bullshitting. But even then, I usually can’t stop. This part of me thinks I need to keep up the appearance that I know. That I’m competent.
This happens most often around women, but I’ve noticed it around men too. In my experience, men so rarely ask questions in that let’s-think-about-it-out-loud-together kind of way. We try to explain things to each other, one-up each other, prove each other wrong, give advice, fix the problem, win the argument. We have a lot of fun together too, but we’re—I’m—scared to admit when we don’t know something.
The reason I’m going on and on about this is because…
The billionaire who’s currently running the world’s most powerful government—Elon Musk, the world’s richest person—seems to think society is best off being run by “high-testosterone” men who govern not based on “consensus” (or one might say “democracy”) but instead on the “freedom to think.” “Alpha males” should be in charge, not “women and low T men.”
He didn’t actually say that. But he retweeted a tweet last fall that said as much, calling it an “interesting observation”—right in the thick of the presidential race between a woman and man.
While Musk hasn’t outright shared his vision for what it means to be a man, he seems to be increasingly embracing the more unhealthy aspects of so-called “traditional masculinity.” He challenges other billionaire men to cage matches. He regularly embraces his inner teenage bully, calling one of the 2018 Thai cave rescuers a “pedo guy” (and getting sued for it), promoting tweets mocking federal workers who are women, and buying up companies to quickly fire workers and issue ultimatums to who remain to “work long hours at high intensity.” He repeatedly punches down at trans people—even though he has a trans daughter.
But it’s that retweet about “high-testosterone alpha males” that’s stuck in my craw. It not only reinforces the danger we’re in with Musk and Trump in charge for (hopefully just) the next four years, but it also reminds me of my loneliness and pain as a man.
It reminds me of that empty feeling I get at the gym or in public around other men when we don’t acknowledge each other’s presence. It reminds me of my boredom when men keep their feelings bottled up inside and instead talk at me about sports or cars or how to use a table saw (things I think are cool too, by the way). It reminds me of the frustration I feel toward my buddies who say they’re suffering but think they have to figure it all out on their own and refuse to go to therapy or join a men’s group.
It reminds me of the hazards of believing in “traditional masculinity,” the idea that men are supposed to be naturally, biologically, innately one way. Even though as humans we are capable of so much more. This one way includes pretending were confident even if we’re not, never showing indecision or weakness, always appearing cool, calm and collected. Never letting anyone in deep, other than maybe one romantic partner who we can still struggle to be vulnerable with.
And it’s isolating us and making us miserable.
While a recent survey found that men aren’t any lonelier than women (despite all the talk of a “male loneliness epidemic”), men do report turning to others less often for social connection and emotional support. A recent decades-long study found that emotional support networks among men shrink by half between the ages of 30 and 90.
I’m no anthropologist, but research is increasingly revealing that humans are designed to be social. What sets us apart from other animals is how much and often we cooperate with people who are non-relatives, even strangers. “The history of life on earth is a history of teamwork, of collective action, and of cooperation,” says professor of evolution and behavior Nichola Raihani. “Cooperation has been and still is the route to our species’ success.”
And yet there’s a part of me that wants nothing to do with that. I’m scared to give off the impression that I don’t know the answer all by myself. I’m afraid to communicate the way I see a lot of women communicate: figuring out the answer together. Or at least supporting each other through the experience of not knowing. Crying and laughing together. Being with each other in the messiness.
This isn’t to say that women have it all figured out. Or that those of who’ve been socialized as men need to be more like women and less ourselves. Women are socialized to “take turns in conversation, downplay their own status, and demonstrate behaviors that communicate more accessibility and friendliness.” These are good things in many situations. But some women burn themselves out putting the needs of others above their own. Others fawn and appease others so much that they don’t know who they are or what they actually want themselves.
True confidence, like most things, is somewhere in the middle.
It’s knowing when you know something and when you don’t. It’s knowing that there’s room for all perspectives—that everyone’s perspective matters. It’s knowing where you end and someone else begins, even if that line is, evolutionarily and spiritually speaking, blurry. It’s knowing that without someone’s informed, enthusiastic consent, there’s no way to tell if they’re actually doing or saying what they actually want. It’s knowing that your freedom to truly be yourself is dependent on others’ freedom to truly be themselves. It’s knowing that relationships matter more than being right. Because they actually do matter more—they’re all we really have. It’s knowing that even if others disagree with you, you still have your own truth.
Another thing that’s been stuck in my craw is this quote from
, author of BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity:“In the vast majority of situations we are likely to encounter in the course of a lifetime, there is no hero or villain, no death and no glory, but rather just a bunch of needy humans kvetching over who said what. Understanding how to navigate that with grace and skill is the beating heart of human connection.”
Or as
puts it:“I woke up Monday morning and packed some lunches and soothed [my kids’] pre-adolescent nerves ... I checked in with friends and learned that the neighborhood ice rink won’t go up this year but that nobody’s too worked up about it. That’s all we want. We don’t want a billion dollars or to have world governments at our beck and call. We don’t want ... the ability to kill another human being with our neck. We want to be loved and heard and believed. We want to wrap our arms around each other as tightly as possible and never let go.”
I’m not counting on Musk to wake up one day and suddenly get it. The spoils of capitalist success—the power, the prestige, the luxury—are too intoxicating. Even if the loneliness and emptiness at the very top of society must be pretty gnarly.
The rest of us will have to get organized and build the economic and political power needed to stop the billionaires. Those of us with relative privilege will have to help protect immigrants, trans people, and other vulnerable folks. All of us who aren’t “alpha males” will have to stand up to those who think “alpha males” should run the world. And for that we’ll need plenty of true confidence. Because we’re going to need lots of us, and we’re going to need each other.
Now, a question for the comments below (or email me at jeremy@mohler.coach): How confident do you feel?
(P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you’ll get occasional additional posts—plus the warm feeling of supporting my writing!)
Welp… wish I knew about that research article before I literally made a post titled “There’s an Epidemic Among Men” and it was about loneliness. 🫣 The angle I was trying to take was the type of loneliness that exists within relationships because of guys being afraid to open up or be vulnerable.
But, I think you and I are on the same page and saying more or less the same thing. Grateful for your work, as a therapist and writer, and putting language to such necessary topics.
I appreciate the nuancing of the idea. Easy to realize you don't do a thing and then decide the not-doing is Wrong to be Ended. "Guy who confidently asserts an idea" is the necessary complement to "Guy who wonders aloud what the solution is." And some people are more comfortable in one role than another naturally. The issue is when you become locked into or somehow shame-motivated around one role.
In my head linking to Conversational Doorknobs (https://www.experimental-history.com/p/good-conversations-have-lots-of-doorknobs) and ContraPoints' "Twilight" point about duality (that is, that people might have more enriching sexual and romantic lives if they located both their desire and desire-to-be-desired, and switched up their place in the pursuer/pursued dynamic sometimes.)