Let’s go straight in. 
No anesthesia.

Leaders.
Exhausted, overloaded men — a well-known and deeply sad story.

Now, the facts.
Carrying everything on your back.
Being responsible for everything.
Constantly keeping your finger on the pulse.
That’s not cool.
Working until you collapse.
Not seeing your family.
Dragging everything alone “like a real man.”
Not cool.
Being a big boss and using that to justify the fact that you’re almost never home —
also not cool.
Now, the keys.
Key number one.
Society cannot be trusted.
All this nonsense about “a man should grit his teeth and carry the load” is a favorite trick.
Everything is built on weakening men, on suppressing their nature —
even though it’s framed as: well, he’s strong if he can handle it.
No.
That’s bullshit.
Life is not meant to be lived through constant strain.
This road ends in a hospital for a man.
His body will try to kill him to stop it —
because he’s collapsing the entire internal system.
And without preparation, no one survives that.
Fact.
Men who work themselves to the bone, in reality,
are incapable of carrying real responsibility.
It sounds like a cruel joke —
but it’s a fact.
Work is the safest, most stable territory for a man.
Here he is calm.
Here he is focused.
Here everything is under his control.
If something hits — he will handle it.
Here he is in his own waters.
Good job.
Let’s move on.
What about family?
Only God knows.
Because someone doesn’t like to look there.
To look means to see.
To see means having to decide something.
And deciding something means change.
So it’s easier to pretend he’s just working so much
that there’s simply no time for any of that.
Of course, he would love to.
But alas — he’s the provider.
He has to work.
Trigger number two.
Children.
If with a wife everything is more or less clear and stable —
maybe lifeless, but at least nothing has to change —
then children are a catastrophe.
The problem with children is how real they are.
With friends.
With a wife.
With parents — you can always distract yourself.
Everyone is an adult.
Everyone knows how the game works.
But children —
those who haven’t learned to fake it like adults do,
those who haven’t disappeared into their phones —
they actually want to live.
His daughter pours tea and sings,
serving her teddy bear, her bunny, and her beloved father.
He, of course, is a very important ass
and always keeps his finger on the pulse,
so his phone never stops ringing.
The girl is hurt.
What can you do — at least this way she gets some of her father’s attention.
With the boy it’s the same.
He would really like to spend time with his dad,
but dad is always busy.
Complete shit.
The wife nags that he doesn’t spend time with the children —
for him, it’s familiar territory.
He shrugs: work.
Now — without anesthesia.
Fact number one.
How did it happen that a man reads and listens to me
instead of his own wife?
That’s a problem.
I don’t feel sorry for him.
But I do feel sorry for her.
Back to the children.
He can’t withstand contact with them
because they live in the present.
Not somewhere else —
right here.
And he can’t tolerate “here.”
“Here” is heavy for him.
Because the present is full of problems
he usually avoids at all costs.
His wife.
His children.
His own fears.
He knows he has a pile of unresolved issues —
but he doesn’t solve them.
He escapes into work.
That’s where the taste for life disappears.
Nothing brings joy anymore.
That’s also complete shit.
Let’s go further.
In his head — a full cocktail.
Everything is at the level of survival and death.
There’s nothing worse than spending time with family,
especially with children.
Because that would drag him back into his own childhood.
And the pain would hit so hard
that he would run again.
He isn’t used to withstanding emotional load.
He doesn’t know how to regulate emotions.
Children are a massive release of emotions and pain —
and he can’t cope.
His identity is tearing at the seams.
He’s afraid of losing control and breaking down.
So he runs.
A favorite move:
“Yeah, I had a normal childhood.”
Lie.
“My parents did everything they could, I should be grateful.”
Also a lie.
“I had a happy childhood.”
Lie.
All lies.
Because if that were true,
memories and contact with childhood
wouldn’t twist his blood backwards.
So don’t strut around pretending.
The fact is obvious:
someone would rather die at work
than honestly look at how barely survived growing up.
But fine — he did grow up after all.
And the children?
He doesn’t think about that.
He needs to escape, preserve his own integrity,
survive.
Anxiety has been turned into a cult.
But if we’re serious — everyone knows what’s really going on.
He’s not jittery because of work or the world.
He’s jittery because he no longer knows
how to keep not noticing what’s happening.
He’s jittery because he knows things need to be resolved —
but he doesn’t resolve them.
The impulse is there.
He suppresses it.
And that’s where anxiety comes from.
Fact.
If we’re talking about real male strength,
then a man learns to deal with his emotions.
Maybe not immediately.
But he works on it.
And I damn well hope
that this choice will be made.