Men Need Purpose More Than ‘Respect’
This month, the conservative podcaster Matt Walsh tweeted a thought that went viral, with about 18 million views. “All a man wants,” he wrote, “is to come home from a long day at work to a grateful wife and children who are glad to see him, and dinner cooking on the stove. This is literally all it takes to make a man happy.”
The message was obviously intended to generate outrage. But it touched on an important question: How much should a man’s selfworth depend on the respect or gratitude of others?
I raise this because evidence — from suicide, to drug overdoses, to education achievement gaps — indicates that millions of men are in crisis. And while many men demand respect, what they need is purpose, and the quest for respect can undermine the sense of purpose that will help make them whole. What men need is not for others to do things for them. They need to do things for others.
Many Americans — especially in evangelical circles — are familiar with the saying, “Men want respect while women want love.” The concept was popularized by a writer and pastor named Emerson Eggerichs, who wrote the book “Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs,” but it is hardly an exclusively Christian concept. Eggerichs found that in times of conflict, men felt disrespected, not unloved, and if forced to choose, they would choose respect over love.
The demand for respect is a hallmark of much right-wing discourse about masculinity. In this narrative, too many women do not respect their husbands, and the culture more broadly devalues men.
Yet finding happiness in another person’s regard is elusive and contingent.
More important, a demand for respect or honor should be conditioned on being respectable or honorable. When a man demands respect without being respectable, that often looks like domination. To elevate himself, he must belittle others.
But is respect a key to meaning? Let’s consider veterans. They form one of the most respected communities in America.
Yet as The New York Times reported in 2021, the suicide rate for veterans is “1.5 times as much as the rate for civilians.” For younger post-September 11 veterans, the suicide rate is 2.5 times the rate for civilians. Men I served with have died by suicide. Clearly, even profound familial and national respect is not enough.
If you speak to struggling veterans, many will tell you that they have respect, but they do not have purpose. That lack of purpose is often exacerbated by the loss of fellowship. Every person endures dark nights of the soul. One of the worst of my life was at the end of my deployment in Iraq, where I served from 2007 to 2008, the first evening after I departed my base to begin my long journey home.
I was a reservist, so I did not return with the unit but by myself. I had longed for this moment — I was returning to my wife and children! — and yet I felt bereft. Empty. After almost a full year of having a very clear, decisive and delineated mission, I was returning to a more complicated, confusing reality of often conflicting responsibilities.
I was confused by my feelings at the time. Now I understand. My mission was over. My brothers were gone. Our relationship could never be the same.
Veterans’ groups are supremely aware of this need for fellowship and purpose. “Next mission” is a common phrase in the veteran community,
Little is more rewarding than helping others.
and it is explicitly intended to help veterans find purpose in their lives. And the need is great.
I rediscovered my own sense of purpose in my family and in a different cause, defending civil liberties in courtrooms across America. But it took time. Nothing at home was comparable to the sheer intensity of my deployment abroad.
A man can and should find immense meaning in the simple yet profound daily rhythms of fatherhood, friendship, healthy romantic relationships and an honest day’s work.
The challenge is much more about a man finding his purpose, and there are few better purposes than helping the people you love walk through life.
Virtuous purpose is rooted in service and sacrifice, not entitlement. And those qualities bring a degree of meaning and joy far more important than the gifts that others — the “grateful” spouse who cooks dinner, the implausibly reverential children — can ever offer. What we do for others is infinitely more rewarding than what we ask them to do for us.