How to Recover from a Passive or Ineffective Father

Having a passive, ineffective or absent father has an enormous effect on a man’s development and eventual self-confidence. The quality of your relationship with your father, and his ability to pass on to you his positive masculine wisdom and energy are the most important factors in you developing your full potential as a man.

A passive father will damage your sense of masculinity

However, if your father was relatively passive, non-assertive, ineffective, absent physically or even just shy and withheld, you may have some work to do in order to recover what you missed out on. Here are some suggestions on how to fill the gap your father left:

Join a Men’s Group

The most important indicator of confidence in a man is your secure ability to relate meaningfully to other men. Your relationship with other men is modeled on your relationship with your father, and on your friendships with other boys while growing up. You can’t improve on this by yourself, nor can you do it with women: you need to find other men who you can relate to on a deeper level.

Find men you can trust who are prepared to drop the usual competitive male bravado and talk straight with you about their successes, failures, frustrations and joys in life.… Continue reading…

Men’s Group

The discomfort and apprehension is so palpable you can feel it just watching Men’s Group, as six men meet for the first time in the leader’s home to begin the painful cathartic process of talking about their lives. Half of them are ambivalent about even being there; some are there under duress, and all are struggling in some key area of their life. They’re in pain, and their learning how to heal and sort things out by sharing it with other men. It’s a practical lesson in learning to trust and how to do intimacy with other human beings, with no printed agenda or how-to-style self-help book to guide them. It’s as simple and as difficult as talking about what’s going on, and listening to each other… really listening.

What really goes on in a Men’s Group?

I could relate immediately to this movie. I’d even visited the particular men’s group in Sydney that it’s modeled on a couple of times before recently finding a group more to my liking. The guys in this movie aren’t just acting; they’re being very real. At times the comments seem inappropriate but they’re learning to stop self-censoring and talk about what’s real. It’s not always what they want to hear, but it does always end up bringing them closer together.… Continue reading…