Asking for Help Sucks

Here’s Why It Feels So Bad for Men

He’s sitting alone on the couch, squinting in a pathetic attempt to bring the picture on the wall into focus. It’s the two of them laughing, back when it was possible to feel happy. She’s been gone for over six months and it’s still there, a constant fucking reminder of how much better things used to be.

There’s an empty glass half-glued to the coffee table by spilled whiskey. The light in the kitchen is the only one on. The kids cried themselves to sleep again because they missed Mommy. And the one parent they have left is self-destructing just one floor away.

He knows he’s falling apart and has no idea how to stop it. His phone is face down on the table. He already knows who he could call. He’s got guys who care about him. They text every once in a while and say things like, “If you need anything.” Which he hears as, “Call me if you’re too weak to get your shit together.”

He flips the phone over and, for the fifteenth time, types the first few words. “Hey man, I’m not doing great.”

He stares at it, reads it again, and deletes it. He tells himself he doesn’t need to drag anyone else into his mess. Talking about it won’t change a damn thing anyway.

So he pries the glass off the table and pours himself another drink. It’s the only way he can sleep without being tortured by the nightmares. Eventually he staggers to bed alone. A few hours later he’ll drag himself out of bed, plaster a smile on his face for his kids, and do it all over again.

He’s not weak. He’s trapped between needing help and believing that needing help makes him a failure.

I’ve been there. Screaming in my head that I needed help and being too afraid to say the words out loud.

If you’re a man who’s struggling, people will tell you to “reach out.” Easier said than done. What they usually skip is how that actually feels.

It doesn’t feel brave, strong, or noble. It feels weak and humiliating. How could admitting you can’t handle your own life feel any different?

That feeling isn’t a sign you’re broken. But it sure as hell feels like it.

So you do what you’ve always done. You buckle down and push harder at work. You drink yourself into oblivion to shut off the noise in your head. You doom scroll until your thumbs cramp up and your eyes are bugging out. You watch so much porn that it turns into another way to hate yourself.

Somehow you still convince yourself you’re managing. The alternative is admitting you’ve lost control of your life. That scares you more than the damage you know you’re doing to yourself.

Most men don’t avoid asking for help because they don’t know they need it. They avoid it because the cost to their identity feels too high.

From the time you were young, the rules were clear, even if they were never explicitly spelled out. You learned by watching your dad like he learned by watching his dad. Your job is to protect, provide, and preside. You handle your shit and fix problems. You do not become someone else’s problem.

Self-reliance wasn’t optional. It was the price of respect. And there’s more going on here than culture or conditioning.

There’s biology at work too. Testosterone pushes men toward independence, action, and status. It makes them prioritize solving problems over talking about them. They’d much rather do something than sit around feeling helpless.

That wiring is useful when the threat is external. It turns against you when the problem is internal.

Grief. Trauma. Addiction. Depression. Chronic stress. These aren’t enemies you can overpower. They don’t respond to force, effort, or willpower. You know this but you don’t know what else to do.

When a man asks for help, it doesn’t just break a social rule men have lived by for generations. It feels like tattooing the proof that you can’t handle your shit on your forehead.

Of course it feels awful. The pain isn’t evidence you’re weak. It’s evidence you’re pushing against something ancient and ingrained.

Here’s what most men are never taught:

There’s a difference between handling what’s yours and trying to handle everything alone.

Handling what you can keeps things from falling apart.

Refusing help means they eventually will.

Dealing with everything alone costs you your sleep, your patience, your relationships, and eventually your health. You’ve already lost so much. Now you’re putting everything you have left at risk.

It doesn’t matter if you agree. It’s reality.

If this is hitting close to home, listen carefully.

You don’t reach out after you feel strong. You reach out when keeping it together is costing you more than you can afford.

The voice in your head will mercilessly go for the throat. It’ll try to convince you you’re weak, embarrassing, and a failure. It’ll tell you that other men are able to handle this and you should be able to handle it too. Believing it is making a deal with the devil.

You won’t be able to shut it up. That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means you’re choosing to fight the programming that’s squeezing the life from you.

Some problems don’t respond to force.

You’re not kicking addiction on willpower alone. You’re not living with devastating loss indefinitely without it taking a toll. You’re not lone wolfing your way past childhood trauma.

If you think you can, stop and look at yourself in the mirror. How’s that been working so far?

This is where things usually get worse, not better.

What you don’t deal with doesn’t disappear. It shows up as anger, wrecked relationships, and problems you pass on to your kids without their consent.

This isn’t a warning. It’s cause and effect.

And if all that isn’t bad enough, here’s one more kick in the gut:

Asking for help won’t feel good afterward either. You won’t say it right. You might feel stupid after you blurt out the words. There probably won’t be a magical feeling of relief. And the other person might say the wrong thing or say nothing.

You may walk away thinking, That didn’t fix a damn thing. That’s normal.

You’re probably asking yourself why the hell you’d bother doing it. Here’s what reaching out actually does:

It gets you out of your own head. You can make almost anything make sense if you leave it rattling around in there. It interrupts the spiral where your worst thoughts sound reasonable because there’s no one there to challenge them. It puts another set of eyes on a situation you’re too close to see clearly.

It doesn’t solve the problem. It gives you traction again. And traction is the difference between digging yourself deeper and finding a way forward.

Reaching out isn’t a solution. It’s a step toward getting your life back together. Strength isn’t pretending you’re fine. Strength is doing what needs to be done even when it costs you your pride.

This isn’t about becoming a different kind of man. It’s about being one when it actually counts.

This is the moment.

You can hate it. You can resent it. You can feel ashamed the whole way through.

Do it anyway.

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If this made you uncomfortable, that’s probably the point.

Here’s a short guide I wrote called 10 Realities Men Run Into After Loss (And No One Warns Them About).

It lays out what loss actually does behind the scenes when you’re dealing with a loss. and why grinding through it backfires.

No fixing. No speeches. Just a clearer picture of what you’re dealing with.