The Men We Pretend To Be

There’s a version of me I invented to survive. A man with a steady jaw, measured speech, good posture. A man who doesn’t cry. Who handles things. Who doesn’t flinch when insulted or praised. He shakes hands firmly. He looks people in the eye. He knows how to fix shit and kill shit and protect shit. He’s competent. Capable. Solid.

He’s also a fucking lie.

But the world doesn’t want the real thing. The world wants that version. The sturdy one. The unbreakable one. The quiet storm. So you play along. You build the armor. You live inside the performance. And eventually, you forget where the mask ends and your face begins.

I’ve played that man in every room I’ve ever walked into. In the Navy. In the marriage. In the gym. At the dinner table. Even in therapy. Especially in therapy. I learned how to make people believe I was okay so they wouldn’t ask what was underneath.

Because underneath was a boy who never learned how to be held. A boy who had to earn love with obedience. Who knew how to read a room before he knew how to read a book. Who was praised for being quiet, not kind. Who survived his own childhood by becoming invisible in plain sight.

And then I grew up and became a man the way they told me to. I went to war. Got the job. Got married. Had a kid. Bought the house. Paid the bills. Kept the lights on. Carried the weight. Said the right things. Swallowed everything else.

And somewhere in all of that—he disappeared.

Not all at once. Slowly. Bit by bit. Drowned in expectations. Sanded down by years of pretending I didn’t need what I desperately did. Softness. Safety. Space. A break. A hug without agenda. A conversation without performance. A moment where I could say, “I don’t know who I am anymore,” and not be met with confusion or disgust.

But that’s not how it works. Because once you become that man, no one wants you to be anything else. You’re the one who can handle it. The one who “never complains.” The one who doesn’t need reassurance or rest or reassurance that it’s okay to rest.

Until one day you wake up and realize that no one actually knows you. Not your wife. Not your parents. Not your friends. Maybe not even your own kid. They know the version. The role. The silhouette.

And by then, it’s too late to start over.

So you keep pretending. You lift heavier. You smile tighter. You talk less. You keep showing up in the costume, even after it starts to rot. Because taking it off now would mean answering questions you’re not ready for.

Who am I, really?

What do I want?

What would I say if I wasn’t afraid of being left behind?

What would I sound like if I ever actually told the truth?

Strength without honesty is just performance. And men like me—we’ve been performing for decades. We are not strong. We are exhausted. And the applause we used to chase now sounds like static. Numb. Meaningless.

But we keep going. Because it’s all we know.

Because if we ever stopped, even for a second, we might finally hear the sound of everything we buried screaming to be let out.

But the thing about pretending is that it works—until it doesn’t. You wear the costume long enough, you start to rot underneath it. Quietly. Out of sight. You show up to work, you do the walk, you make the small talk, you change the oil, you say I’m good when someone asks how you are, even when you’re thinking about disappearing. Not dying. Just… not existing. Not having to perform anymore. Not having to explain anything to anyone.

You tell yourself this is what being a man is—staying silent, staying useful, staying strong. You tell yourself that falling apart would make you weak, that no one would stick around if they saw what was underneath the armor. And maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they never really loved you. Maybe they just loved that you didn’t need anything from them.

There’s no safety in strength. No comfort in being dependable. When you’re the one everyone leans on, there’s no one left to lean back against. And when you finally collapse—because we all do—it’s not with a bang. It’s with a whisper. A quiet admission in an empty room: I don’t know how to do this anymore.

I’ve had that moment. More than once. In the dark. In the shower. Behind the wheel of a car parked on an empty road. I’ve stared at the dashboard and thought, This isn’t life. This is sentence. A performance I can’t stop giving. A role no one ever asked if I wanted. I’ve stared at my reflection and tried to remember when I last felt real. When I last felt like I was allowed to feel at all.

And the truth is: I don’t remember.

I buried the boy I was to become a man that wouldn’t scare anyone. I traded vulnerability for reliability. Intimacy for stoicism. And what did it get me? Respect? Maybe. Fear? Sometimes. Love? Conditional.

I became the man who doesn’t flinch, who doesn’t cry, who doesn’t need. And people admire that—until they realize they can’t reach you. Until they realize they’ve never actually met you.

I don’t even know what I’d say if someone asked me who I really am. My likes, my dreams, my fears—replaced by routine. My personality—replaced by responsibility. The boy who used to laugh too loud, cry too easy, love too hard? He’s somewhere deep down. And I’m afraid if I dig too far to find him, the whole thing will come down with me.

But maybe that’s the only way to start over. Maybe that’s the only way to stop pretending.

To let it collapse. To let the mask fall. To stand there, exposed, stripped of the performance, and say:
This is what’s left of me. Do you still want me now?

That’s the real question. That’s what keeps men like me up at night. Not fear of death. Not pain. But the quiet, suffocating thought that maybe, after all this time pretending to be enough—we never were.