I watched some men do real damage to themselves this week. Relapses. Childish blowups with the very people they love most. The whole catalog of ridiculous, beta style coping that a grown man knows better than to reach for and reaches for anyway. I am not writing from a high horse. We all do bonehead stuff. I sure have, more times than I would like to admit.
Here is the part you need to hear first. None of that diminishes you as a man. You are human. Everybody trips and falls. The fall itself is not the thing that defines you, no matter how loud the shame gets afterward.
The Dividing Line
But there is a dividing line, and it is the whole ballgame. Real men correct their mistakes and fix what they themselves have broken. They apologize when they have been wrong, and then they do whatever it takes to dust themselves off and go again. The boy makes the mess and disappears into his shame. The man makes the mess and gets to work cleaning it up.
One of the men I worked with this week told me he had lost everything. He felt like a total loser over what was, frankly, a juvenile reaction to some things that set him off. I told him the truth. It is not over, brother. Own it. Recalibrate. You fumbled the ball. You threw an interception. You were a jackass for three hours. You slipped back into the old, irrational, unhealthy coping you swore you were done with. Fine. None of that is the end of the story unless you decide to lie down in it.
Apologize, Then Expect Nothing Back
So forgive yourself, and ask to be forgiven by the people you hurt. Then do the hard part. Expect nothing in return. The apology is yours to give. The response is not yours to control. You do not get to demand that they soften, forgive on your timeline, or hand you relief. Your only real demand should be of the man in the mirror. Give him a pep talk and a stern shot to the chest, and carry on.
You are okay. Get back to being the man you were created to be, and lean on the Power who created you to do it, because some climbs are too steep to make on pride alone. Hear me clearly on the way out. Falling is not the failure. Staying down is. Get up.