Thanks Dangermouse I am now in the next phase of recovery. Basically going back and attempting to live the kind of life I should have started living 35-40 years ago. I think the problem many of us face...especially men, is a lack of mentorship. My dad was like many fathers of that time period. Absent due to working long hours to support a family. No offence to the ladies but they are not really equipped most of the time to raise boys. Since I was not set up to play on sports teams as a pre-teen/teenager due to finances, time and location I could not learn much in leadership, having a sense of belonging or even confidence, it made it very difficult to sometimes make friends and so on. Now at 52 I am going to attempt that life. More on this later
I definitely agree with this. I know for sure that I
really needed a mentor but I was not lucky to find someone. Cause you mentioned your father you made me think of my own father. Was/Is my father the most badass masculine man out there? No, but he was at my age definitely "more man" than I am at my age. And this concerned me at one point. I was thinking, who should teach you how to be a man? What is a man actually? My father has been a great father when it comes to other aspects of my life, other people didn't even have that, but for most of the time he didn't even interact with me. I mean, he never even made it a goal to teach me the things he knew, how to do things around the house and stuff. I've found myself all my life having to always be the one who had to go after the people and ask them to teach me stuff, at work and at home.
Yes, maybe sometimes people would like to have a father like some of the people they follow on youtube, who talk about masculinity and Jiu Jitsu and all those things, how to solve your problems, how to deal with emotions, all the stoic quotes, all the "as a man you should deal with this in this way", "As a man you should learn skills, go do things, change a tire etc.", those type of people that wake up their kids and tell them "let's go, we have things to do", I know I wished I had this sometimes but it's not going to happen, I ended up following those very people on Youtube, trying to learn how to be a man because my father never had a conversation with me about more than trivial things. I've never known what the fuck is inside this man's head.
Eventually I came to my own conclusions about who I was and started medicating myself with porn, alcohol and eating.