5. I Didn’t Ask to Be in This Position
A personal reflection on what it means to be steady in a situation you never chose to be in, and the quiet cost of staying grounded when everything’s breaking apart.
I never wanted to be in this situation. Not even close. I didn’t ask for solitude, and I’m one of the lucky ones. My children live with me most of the time and only stay with their mum a couple of nights a week. That’s rare. Most men I speak to don’t have that. They go from being a daily part of their children’s lives to watching from the sidelines and often not even that. It’s brutal.
And still, we’re expected to hold it all together. To keep showing up. To split our wealth without question. To navigate uncomfortable conversations, many of which don’t feel like conversations at all, more like scripted performances where the outcome has already been decided. You’re not really allowed to have a voice. Not unless it agrees with theirs.
We’re told to be strong. To be stable. To compromise. But what that often means in practice is this: we give up our beliefs. We soften everything we say. We suppress our emotions because we’re told they’ll be used against us. We ignore our health, mental and physical, to keep things afloat.
I didn’t ask to be the one carrying the weight of everyone else’s uncertainty. To be the calm one. The grounded one. The one expected to remain rational while being told how I feel isn’t valid, or worse, that I shouldn’t feel it at all.
And the hardest part? Being resented for the very steadiness people rely on. The same people who turn to you for strength will accuse you of being cold for not falling apart. As if your composure means you don’t care. As if drowning together is more noble than holding the boat steady.
I didn’t choose this position. But I’m in it. And the truth is, I’m strong enough to handle it. Not because I’m invulnerable, but because I’ve had to be. And I’m done apologising for that.
What people don’t talk about is how much shame there is in simply wanting to hold things together. There’s this strange, unspoken rule: once your partner says they’re done, you’re expected to nod, agree, and get out of the way. Be mature. Be reasonable. Be respectful. And if you don’t? If you say, “No, I’m not ready to give up on my family,” you’re labelled controlling, delusional, or emotionally weak.
No one stops to ask what it costs a man to surrender something he built with everything he had. No one considers that staying grounded, committed, and steady through the storm might not be denial; it might be integrity, or even that it might, in fact, be the right thing to do.
But the world doesn’t really reward integrity when it’s quiet and male. It doesn’t want to see a man grieving something he still believes in. It wants a performance. Either collapse completely, or pretend you’re fine. There’s no middle ground where you can just say, “This matters to me, and I’m not walking away from it.”
Trying to hold on is seen as weakness. But I know, and other men know, it’s often the strongest thing we do.
So no, I didn’t ask to be in this position. I didn’t ask to be the one who stays calm while everything around me fractures. I didn’t ask to navigate parenting, finances, and emotional minefields with one hand tied behind my back, just to avoid being misunderstood or made the enemy, and even then failing at that. It's a set of weighted dice.
But I’m here, and I’ve learned that being solid doesn’t mean being silent. It doesn’t mean erasing who I am to make other people more comfortable.
I’m allowed to hold on to what matters. I’m allowed to be steady without being seen as unfeeling. I’m allowed to want the family I built to stay whole. And I’m allowed to do all of that without apology.
This position wasn’t my choice. But I choose how I stand in it.
If this resonates, if you’ve ever felt like you’ve had to carry more than your share, stay quiet when you should’ve been heard, or hold strong in the face of being misunderstood, I’d love to hear from you. Comment, share, or hit the subscribe button. Your story matters too.