I recently spoke at a men’s wellness gathering, and before I said anything else, I asked the room a simple question.
Who here is married? Who is divorced? Who is widowed? Who is single?
Men’s lives are rarely simple, yet many of the struggles they face are quite similar. Most men genuinely desire peace—not just the absence of conflict, but a feeling of calm, order, and stability in their homes and relationships.
What stands out to me, as it often does in my work, is the burden of guilt and shame men carry. We frequently discuss ‘a mother’s guilt,’ but men experience similar, if not greater, feelings of guilt. Many men believe they have failed in some way—whether in a marriage, a relationship, or a family dream they once cherished. Others are still married but feel disconnected or discouraged. Some are in the process of rebuilding after loss or divorce. These experiences can leave men feeling judged, guarded, and uncertain about how to move forward.
My job that day was to remind them that relationships aren’t meant to be perfected. It was a talk about showing up.
Compatibility Is Built, Not Found.
One of the most common phrases I hear in my work is, “We grew apart.” It sounds reasonable…right? People change…life happens. However, before you use this as your sole reason for exiting the relationship, let me remind you that compatibility is not something you stumble upon. Early compatibility is mostly chemistry, shared interests, and shared season of life. Real compatibility grows through shared experience over time. Compatibility comes from a history of sharing – the good and the bad.
Think about teams you have worked on or trips you have taken with others. What binds people together is rarely easy. It is shared responsibility, shared sacrifice, shared suffering, and shared history. Delayed flights. Lost luggage. Illness. Financial stress. Parenting. Loss. These experiences shape people together if they stay engaged and connected throughout these times.
Marriage changes because people change. You are not the same man at 30, 45, or 60. Your wife is not the same woman. Life introduces illness, stress, disappointment, and responsibility. Marriage, then, becomes an active and ongoing process of intention.
When couples say they grew apart, it is code for: They stopped choosing each other.
Love Is a Decision.
This is where many people struggle. We live in a culture that treats love primarily as a feeling. But feelings are unstable. They shift with stress, fatigue, resentment, and fear. They are real, but they cannot carry the weight of a life. It is pretty hard to carry life’s weight on your own.
Love, in its mature form, is an act of the will. It is a decision to seek the good of the other, even when it costs something. This is where marriage becomes vocational. Not simply a lifestyle
choice, but a calling to become a certain kind of person.
Marriage forms men into fathers and husbands. It gives a man a direction like a ship’s rudder. It shapes character over time. It asks men to become steady, faithful, consistent, and present. God’s love for us is not based on His mood. (Thank goodness!) Human love, at its best, mirrors that steadiness and constancy.
Leadership, Authority, and St. Joseph.
When we speak about leadership in the Christian sense, we are not speaking about domination or control. We are speaking about responsibility.
St. Joseph did not speak much, but he acted. He listened. He fled when danger came. He protected. He provided. He did not abandon his post when things became complicated or when Mary became quiet. His authority came from presence and commitment, and because of that, he was able to institute law and order in the home.
In family life, this looks like setting a moral and emotional tone. It looks like taking responsibility for repairs when things are broken. It looks like not leaving the entire emotional burden to your wife or children.
Passivity does more damage to families than making mistakes. Showing up imperfectly is better than checking out completely.
When Things Break.
The painful reality is that some marriages do break apart. When this happens, failure cannot be the end of a man’s story, but it should teach him something.
Many divorced people later say, “I wish I had worked harder at my first marriage.” Not as condemnation, but as hard-earned wisdom. Grace does not mean pretending nothing mattered. It means learning, maturing, and not repeating the same patterns.
This wisdom is not meant as a judgment, but as a lesson learned through experience. Grace doesn’t require ignoring past issues; instead, it demands growth, maturation, and a commitment to break old patterns.
Even when relationships cannot be restored to what we hoped for, responsibility, humility, and growth need to be practiced. Fatherhood does not end when children become adults. Repair remains meaningful.
Love is not something we wait to feel. It is something we choose, again and again.
The measure of a man is not whether his life was easy, but whether he remained faithful to the path he chose when he said ‘I do’.