You aren’t a “family man.” Your a man with a family. This distinction matters. And, it matters to the survival of our species.
You were taught to think of family life as the promised land – a blissful state wherein, once won, you collapse into the arms of an all-loving, all-sustaining woman, carried along in the euphoric carefree nirvana of procreation and whelp-tending . . .
That once you entered the paradise of marriage and family life, the need for seeking and striving and straining and providing will, at last, be behind you . . .
That you can slip gratefully into the rest and reprieve of being the “family man.”
That’s the mythical dream we’ve be sold for the last 50 years . . . interwoven within our cultures, media and folktales. But, as you know, it’s a lie. It’s a deceptive lie upon which stories and movies have been founded.
Deep down, you and I know it. What’s the point in trying if you know the game is rigged? For the satisfaction of knowing you are contributing to the greater good? That’s just the kind of stupid thing an intellectual Ivy League indoctrinated mind would regurgitate.
Family life demands much much MORE piss and vinegar, not less. Anyone who calls marriage the simple domestication of a man never actually successfully tried it.
In fact, it must always be the wildest of men who marry.
When you marry, you don’t “settle down.” You settle in for the long haul. The long haul is where you sweat and bleed and hammer to create, and attack and guard and parry and defend from the ever encroaching evil at that scale of creation . . . for the rest of your life. Being a man with a family is dangerous. It takes courage, and courage implies a risk. It implies a potential for failure and the presence of danger. Courage is measured against danger. The greater the danger, the greater the courage. And, courage is the only virtue that you cannot fake.
Family life isn’t some trophy to be won; some suspended state; some hall-pass that lets you opt out of the agonies and ecstasies of the masculine life.
Family life is a fitting and beautiful burden; a mantle; a forged function of the highest order that draws more vision, power, brilliance and greatness than any unattached life could ever offer.
Yet, if you get that fundamental mindset wrong, then married life will feel like a constant catastrophe, getting burned at the forge of creation with the supposed fruits of family life perpetually denied you.
The universalism of today’s society desires the “family man.” The universalism that can only condemn those who defend, and can only separate those who attempt to differentiate, is the product and unintended consequence of a global trade. The one true god of the universalist is Mammon, and he embraces anyone with a pocket full of cash who doesn’t scare away other infecund customers. This is why we are told to accept the unacceptable, to condemn religions that condemn, to share cultures with everyone as if they belong to no one, to deny all racial affinity, to pretend that men and women are interchangeable. Because exclusion and a real man is bad for business.
Again, you aren’t a “family man.” You aren’t some separate, cloistered categorical shell of a man. That’s what every educational institution, every government and every feminizing organization within the world wants you to think.
You are a MAN with a family – a man subject to all the gauntlets and crucibles and devastations of our sex.
So, quit the myth of the well-adjusted, happily-sequestered family man. Drop every pretense of arrival you were sold; lest you rob your family and yourself of your full power, your abounding glory, let loose your native self.
You are just getting started.
You and I, we are, each of us, alone. Even with a family, this is the first law of masculinity. And it is the most important law. Your value is equal to the value which you bring to your family and to your tribe. We are not equal. You are not special. Your masculine respect is earned, not given.
This is why men make fun of the “the family man.” Your brothers will not love you unconditionally for who you are, just being a man or yourself. They will criticize you. They will push you to your limits. They expect you to bring out your best, put on your “A” game. And, then, they only give you their respect when you’ve earned it, family or no.
This isn’t shocking at all. It’s common knowledge to any man because deep in your genetics, it is hardwired into you, ready for use.
Your childhood is over. The boy is dead. Wake up, step up. It’s time to be a man with a family for the rest of your life.