The manfluencers want you to be lonely and sad

They don't want you to care about relationships beyond your partner. Why is that?

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary and former Fox News host, on the cover of his book American Crusade

Since starting this newsletter just over two years ago, I’ve come across two mic drops that sum up what men today need the most:

The first is from

Ruth Whippman

, 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.”

I had to look up what kvetching meant when I first read it: complaining, whining, griping. Isn’t most of life dealing with people who are difficult from time to time? Navigating friend drama, raising kids, caring for your parents as they age, dealing with bosses at work.

Here’s the second, which I just came across:

“I find the question of ‘what kind of man do I need to be?’ much less helpful than the question ‘how do I strengthen my relationships?’”

That one is from

Garrett Bucks

, organizer and author of The Right Kind of White. He was writing about Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary and former Fox News host (pretty much a “manfluencer”), a “man who discovered through his military service ... verification that he, personally, was one of the most manly men in the history of the world,” Bucks writes, “[and whose] lifelong adversary has been his tether to the rest of humanity—his sense of empathy, care, and interdependence.”

If there was one guy to point at and say, “Don’t be like him,” it’s Hegseth, a cartoon character trying to prove his manliness and patriotism all the way down to the lining of his suits. I highly recommend Bucks’s full takedown.

The reason I love these two quotes is: It’s all about relationships, man.

That’s the biggest thing I want to get across through this newsletter every week and in my work with therapy clients. My mission has become to help men (including myself) strengthen our relationships. I want to figure out why men (including myself) tend to struggle with this stuff and make it easier for us.

I used to think I needed to meditate more and work out harder and eat better and get up earlier and grind more and make more money and take cold showers and do 50 pushups every morning. And yes, some of those things have helped me have a healthier relationship with myself—while many took me down unhealthier paths. But I’ve learned that when self-improvement is the only card we have to play, it’s like a treadmill. “You never actually reach the destination,” Bucks writes about Hegseth constantly trying to prove his manhood.

I’ve also learned there’s another way. Another road out of the persistent dissatisfaction and loneliness gnawing at my back since I was a boy. A road that by definition leads away from the isolation and sense of purposeless so many of us feel right now.

I wasn’t happy very often until I made my relationship with my partner, my friends, my family, my neighbors, my community the center of my life. Caring for myself is necessary and self-discipline has been useful. But what really unlocked my happiness was putting all that in service of caring for my relationships with others. Not to chase some imaginary world where I’m the hero at the top of mountain with all the money and resources and everyone worships me because of it, like some cartoon character of a man. Like Pete Hegseth.

Like many roads to recovery, it took hitting rock bottom for me to wake up.

Nearly ten years ago on the Fourth of July, I was driving on the Key Bridge from Washington, D.C., into Virginia. Even though I struggled back then (and still do) to cry, the faintest tears were gathering in the corners of my eyes. I’d just had my heart broken and was driving away from the apartment I’d shared with my (suddenly ex-) partner to a dingy basement I’d moved into.

I spotted a group of friends walking on the side of the bridge—friends who’d texted me earlier in the day to hang out. I’d declined so I could spend the evening trying to save my relationship, which had been teetering on the edge for months. They were laughing together as DIY fireworks exploded on both sides of the Potomac River. I didn’t want to be around anyone, so I kept driving. Yet, I was incredibly lonely, like I didn’t exist. I remember thinking I could try to date one of the women I was attracted to in the friends group. That’s the only way back then I knew how to escape the loneliness: Get a woman to love me.

I’ve come to learn that so many men struggle with relationships because capitalism privatizes our care and empathy. It pressures us to invest all of it in one romantic relationship with a woman and kids, so that the rich and powerful can exploit us at work while exploiting women’s unpaid labor at home, leaving us over-reliant on our partner and afraid of connection and intimacy with anyone else, especially other men. We forget about our interdependence, how we need other people just as much as they need us.

That’s why rich and powerful guys like Hegseth (and Trump and Vance and Musk) are telling us to go against our nature. Against what would actually make us happy and fulfilled. Against putting relationships at the center of our life, like humans are meant to do and did for tens of thousands of years before the cult of capitalist individualism took over. They want us to fall in line, listen to our boss at work (or be a boss ourselves), and blame people who aren’t like us (women, trans people, immigrants) for our problems so there’s no chance we can all join together to threaten their reign.

They tell us to “provide and protect,” but that’s not a mutual relationship. That’s treating other people like they’re property to take care of. Like we know what’s best for them. Like we’re different than them. Like we don’t need anyone else to have our back. Like everyone else is the enemy.

I’m still working on being there for people—and more importantly for a lot of men, asking people to be there for me.

I still pull away and close my heart more often than I’d like when my partner wants to connect. I still hesitate to text friends just to check in. I still forget to stop pretending I’ve got all figured out and ask for help. I still forget about big things that have happened in people’s lives—birthdays, losses, vacations, stuff they’re probably dying for me to ask about.

When I focus on relationships (especially beyond my marriage), it feels like I’m throwing with my left hand or walking upstream against a powerful current. The ideas we’ve inherited about being a real man—so-called “traditional” masculinity—haven’t been around a long time (only a few hundred years) but still, they’re deep-rooted. We’re up against a lot.

But at least we’re not the first to have to do this—to free ourselves from the limiting myths about gender the rich and powerful are trying so hard to make us believe. If we ever get scared on our journey to finding our full, true selves—which I definitely often do—we can look to women, queer people, and trans people for what courage looks like.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below (or email me: jeremy@mohler.coach). Why do you think guys like Pete Hegseth try so hard to prove they’re manly?

— Jeremy