Why Men Need to Prove Their Worth (And What Happens When They Don’t)

Men are biologically set up to want to prove their worth and be recognised for it. Here’s what that means when things go wrong—and what you can do about it. 

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I WAS once called in to see if I could help the brother of a client. I found this guy in his early sixties, in a chair in his living room, almost catatonic. He rocked back and forth, saying, “I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have done it.” He was referring to the fact that he had emigrated, as many have done, from South Africa to Australia. However, in doing so, he had given up his share in a big insurance company he had built in his home country, and tried unsuccessfully to build the same scale of business in Oz. He had not succeeded, and had returned home, not just with his tail between his legs, but in this catatonic state.

The fact is, he was still worth something in the tens of millions of rands, but it wasn’t in the hundreds of millions which he had hoped for. Well, not just hoped for, and that’s where this becomes relevant. It was instantly clear to me that his sole identity had become linked to the idea of achieving an exit in the hundreds of millions. Having failed at that, he was not satisfied to say, oh well, at least I tried, and to be satisfied that he still had enough to live comfortably without working for the rest of his life.

I saw something similar happen to other men too. One was a doctor, a big shot in his hometown. He moved to another small town in another province to be close to his children and grandchildren. However, nobody knew him there and he was having difficulty getting recognised. He very quickly became depressed to the point of being almost suicidal. He reluctantly went onto medication and entered therapy and coaching and eventually recovered. Part of his recovery was to move back to his original town. However, people had moved on by then, and he never fully regained his status or his sense of self.

And just two quick examples of young men starting out, but headed in the same direction: one was a young man I coached who believed he needed a hundred million in assets before he could ask a woman to marry him. Another was insistent that he had to “influence a billion lives”. That was his phrase. I don’t mean to shame these guys, but I’m sure you’ll agree that those are not essential paths.

The biological reason for men’s striving

Now to my point. I could be wrong here, but my reading and research and experience all tell me that this is a male more than a female affliction. One person who has done a massive amount of work in this field is the neurobiologist and author Michael Gurian. His brain-based studies have shown that “there is a biological tendency in men to seek self-worth through personal, independent performance; in women, there is a greater tendency to experience worth through relationships and intimacy”. He acknowledges that some of this may be socialized but emphasises that “its origins lie in human biology”. [Gurian, Michael. What Could He Be Thinking? (p. 39). St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]

The biological link goes like this: a woman is able to gestate a new life within her body for nine months. (And historically, feminists, they have tended to do so.) This whole new person literally grows as part of her. That’s a profound experience and a profound level of connection that men can never have, nor even begin to understand. All a man can do is donate his sperm. After that, what? It all happens at arm’s length. Until recently, we weren’t even there for the birth. To top it all, in the first years, the child continues to draw food from the mother’s body.

For men, well, what could a man do, historically, and biologically, to feel wanted, useful, and like he has a purpose, after he has delivered his sperm? Well, he could go and hunt, and provide, right? Indeed, that’s how it is for us men. We have to look outward to find that connection to life and to feel like we have a purpose. The expression of that in our modern era is that achievement matters to men in a different way than it does to women. For women it’s a PART of who they are. For men, very often, it IS who they are. Various studies have shown that mortality rates for men spike in the range of two to five years after retiring. Why? In line with our argument above, could it be that they lose their worth and have nothing left to live for? I would put money on it.

While women lost their lives in childbirth, and gave up their lives for their children, men equally gave up their lives—both figuratively and literally—for their work.

In their haste to criticise the patriarchy for taking all the good jobs—well, all the jobs, let’s be honest—feminists have perhaps failed to factor in how much men sacrificed in doing that. I’ve covered this in a previous article, when I spoke about men working in gold mines, becoming sailors and soldiers. While women lost their lives in childbirth, and gave up their lives for their children, men equally gave up their lives—both figuratively and literally—for their work. And, for the most part, the purpose of their work was to provide; and providing was what gave them meaning, enabled them to feel connected to life, to feel useful, purposeful.

A different source of worth for men

Now this conversation could go in a number of directions. It could go south very fast and turn into a rant against feminism. But that’s not where I want it to go. The answer, my friends, is not binary, and it’s not opposite and it’s not to go back. We need to move forward, and we need to integrate. The bottom line is that women have every right to work, to pursue careers, to mix it up, to combine motherhood and career, if that’s what they choose. I’m all for it. My own mother worked right through my entire childhood, and I never thought anything of it back then. Perhaps as a result, every relationship I’ve ever been in has been with a woman who was at least my professional equal. I actually wouldn’t want it any other way. Yet I’m probably still not a good feminist—well, not a good enough one, for some.

We men are facing a world where we’re no longer going to be the primary breadwinners. We have two choices.

What seems to me to be a more relevant conversation is to recognise that there is a need for men to find meaning and worth beyond their work and beyond some financial number. Can you be a man who holds his head up high, even though your wife earns more than you, or even though you haven’t had a seven-figure exit? Once again, I’m one of those guys who can say yes to both, and I do hold my head high. And here’s precisely my point: getting to that didn’t come easy. There were honestly times when I thought about jumping. Literally. I remember a day in my forties where I didn’t take a lease on an apartment because it was on the 18^th floor. So no, it’s not easy.

We men are facing a world where we’re no longer going to be the primary breadwinners. We have two choices: one is to try to go back to those days when men were the only breadwinners. (I don’t see that as an option). The other is to face that fact and find your worth beyond your work. To do that, we first need to recognise how much work—and worth through work—means to us men so that we can develop a different mindset, find a broader set of references for our sense of self, broaden our meaning horizon, register that there can be more to life. Can we find meaning without being the main provider, the hero?

An exercise for men to kickstart the process

If you’re interested, then do this exercise.

Pause for a moment and hold the word worth out in front of you. Ask yourself, using exactly these words, What is my worth? What comes up? Is it a number? Is that number a monetary value? If not, what else?

Then ask yourself these questions: What worth do I have apart from what I do, or what I earn, or what I own? What worth would I have if I lost everything today? For that last one, imagine you had lost everything and somebody was there, offering to care for you. Could you accept their care, or would you feel you don’t deserve it?

If you’re struggling to come up with answers that are not a number, then, my friend, you’re at risk of either being a pain in the ass right now because you see no value in yourself or others apart from what they contribute, or what they “make”. Or you’re at risk of something much more serious: crashing out when you retire, or if you don’t make that number—and especially if you lose everything. You might find in those cases that there’s nothing to catch you when you fall.

If that’s you, then the time to start answering that question—What is my worth apart from what I do, or what I earn, or what I own—is now.

On the upside, when you have a sense of worth that is not a number, one that is independent from achievements and recognition, you open yourself up to a richer, more meaningful life. We’ll explore what that looks like in another episode. For now, continue to explore the question: What worth do I have apart from what I achieve?

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