You’d think that the more successful, intelligent, and capable a man is, the clearer he’d be about his own life.
But in my experience, the opposite is true.
The smartest, most driven men—the ones who build businesses, lead teams, and make things happen—are often the ones who feel the most confused about themselves.
They can dissect a human body or market trend, optimize a workflow, execute high-level strategies, or fly complex, multi-million dollar aircraft with precision. But when it comes to their own emotions, relationships, and inner direction?
Total fog.
They’ll sit across from me and say:
- “I should have this figured out by now.”
- “I don’t know why I feel this way.”
- “I can solve everything else—why can’t I solve me?”
- “I’m confused about what to do next.”
- “I can’t figure out how to stop feeling this way.”
And that’s the trap.
Because high-performing men are problem solvers by nature, they assume clarity is something they can acquire—like a skill, a strategy, or a piece of information they just haven’t found yet.
But that’s not how clarity works.
Clarity isn’t something you gain.
It’s what’s left when you remove something–confusion.
And most men are blind to what’s actually causing their confusion in the first place.
In the next few minutes, I’ll show you exactly why men–high-achieving or otherwise–struggle with clarity, how confusion keeps them stuck, and how to permanently shift into a level of certainty that most men will never experience.
Let’s get into it.
Clarity Isn’t Something You Find—It’s What’s Left When You Remove Confusion
Most men believe clarity is something they have to gain—like a prize at the end of a long search. But what if clarity is actually our default state?
What if the problem isn’t that we need to find clarity but that we need to remove the confusion blocking it?
Look at the word itself: confusion. It comes from the Latin confundere, meaning to mix together, to pour together.
Confusion isn’t about lack of knowledge. It’s about things being so tangled, so fused together, that we can’t distinguish what’s real from what isn’t.
And this is where most men get stuck. Not because they lack intelligence but because they’ve never differentiated themselves from the things they’ve fused with—relationships, achievements, opinions, circumstances.
They keep searching for clarity outside of themselves, not realizing the problem was never a lack of answers.
The problem is they’ve been asking the wrong questions.
Relationships Don’t Cause Confusion—They Ripen It
Many men assume that relationships—especially marriage—are the cause of their confusion.
But relationships don’t create confusion. They ripen it.
Marriage, fatherhood, and long-term relationships don’t manufacture uncertainty. They expose and accelerate what’s already inside you.
That frustration when your partner doesn’t meet your expectations? That’s not her creating confusion. That’s your attachment to an external source of identity being rattled.
That uncertainty when your needs aren’t automatically met? That’s not a marriage problem. That’s a you problem—or better yet, a you opportunity.
The real issue isn’t marriage itself. It’s that your sense of self is fused with external things—your relationship, your spouse’s view of you, the belief that external validation equals internal worth.
And this is why marriage is one of the greatest gifts a man can receive:
It doesn’t create his struggle.
It reveals it.
And when something ripens, you have two choices:
- Harvest it. Recognize the exposure as a gift, face it, and grow.
- Protest it. Blame your circumstances and fight against the truth it’s trying to show you.
Most men choose the second option.
They resist the ripening. They want the discomfort to disappear. And the easiest way to do that? Fuse themselves even tighter to their partner—or find a new one. Instead of facing themselves, they keep outsourcing their inner state to someone else’s behavior, expecting her to change so they don’t have to.
This is why so many men remain stuck in relationships that feel like endless negotiations—trying to get their partner to behave in a way that soothes them instead of becoming a man who no longer needs soothing.
But here’s the truth: Confusion isn’t the enemy—it’s the invitation.
You Can’t Diagnose Yourself by Looking in Someone Else
Most men (and humans), when they realize they lack clarity, do something that makes no sense.
Instead of looking within, they look outside.
They try to figure out who they are by watching how other men live.
They try to diagnose their own inner conflict by analyzing their partner’s emotions and actions.
They look for signs and signals in the external world instead of inspecting the internal one.
It’s like trying to diagnose your own cardiovascular health by looking inside someone else’s body.
Imagine going to a doctor and saying, “I’m trying to understand my heart, so I’ve been studying my neighbor’s blood vessels.”
The doctor would look at you like you’d lost your mind.
Yet, that’s exactly what men do every day when they try to understand themselves through their partner’s reactions, their boss’s feedback, or society’s expectations.
You want to know who you are?
Stop looking at her.
Stop looking at them.
Start looking at you.
Codependency: The Modern Definition of “Love” That Will Bankrupt You
Here’s what’s even more baffling to me—this external referencing isn’t just something confused men do by accident. It’s something professional culture is increasingly endorsing, promoting, and even redefining as “true” love.
Codependency used to be seen as dysfunctional. Now, it’s practically a virtue.
Men are told that caring means making sure their partner is always emotionally comfortable. That true love means adjusting themselves, their choices, even their integrity, to satisfy their partner’s definition of “okayness.”
But here’s the problem:
No one’s definition of okayness stays the same.
If you believe “If you really loved me, you’d…” then you’re doing this.
And this belief always comes with a double standard.
Let me give you an example.
A man thinks:
- “If you really loved me, you’d be sexually interested in me more often. You’d give me blowjobs three times a week.”
Most women would find this unfair and repulsive. They’d call it entitled, objectifying, selfish.
Yet, many enmeshed, dependent, and confused men would see no problem with it.
But let’s flip it.
Imagine a woman saying to a man:
- “If you really loved me, you’d work twice as many hours and bring home twice as much provision.”
Men would be equally angered and disturbed.
See the issue?
Trying to live by another person’s ever-changing definition of “love” is a recipe for bankruptcy.
Because in this model, someone—maybe both people—will eventually have to be inauthentic and out of integrity in order to satisfy the other’s definition of love.
And if that’s what we call “true caring” today, it’s no wonder relationships are crumbling.
For some people, love really is about money.
For some people, love really is about sex.
For some, it’s gifts, or words, or constant reassurance.
And who are you to say otherwise?
Which is exactly the point.
If love is nothing more than an ever-changing set of conditions that someone else gets to define, then love isn’t real—it’s just a contract of compliance.
A man with clarity about himself doesn’t enter agreements where his worth is negotiated.
A man with clarity stands on his own values.
He loves from who he is—not as a response to someone else’s definition.
And he refuses to entangle his identity with another’s shifting emotional state.
If you find yourself trapped in a dynamic where your partner’s okayness dictates yours, it’s time to step back. Because that’s not clarity—it’s transactional codependency dressed up as love
Clarity Comes When You Un-Fuse
If confusion is about things being mixed together, clarity isn’t something we acquire. It’s something we reveal by un-mixing what doesn’t belong.
It’s like sifting gold from mud. The gold was always there—it just needed to be separated.
And that’s what this work is about.
It’s about getting clear on what’s you and what isn’t.
- Your emotions are yours—your partner doesn’t make you feel anything.
- Your sense of self is yours—your career success or failure doesn’t define it.
- Your worth is yours—no one else determines it.
When you remove confusion, clarity becomes effortless. But un-fusing from external validation isn’t just about clarity—it’s about realizing that much of what we called love was actually a trade agreement. And once you see that, letting go feels terrifying.
You stop wondering if something is enough.
You stop second-guessing your decisions.
You stop looking for permission.
You just know.
Letting Go of Transactional Love Feels Like Free-Falling
As simple as this sounds, letting go is terrifying. Not just for you but for your “trading partners” also.
Because for most of us, transactional love was the foundation on which our relationships were built. We didn’t just wake up one day and become enmeshed—we began there.
It’s what made love feel safe in the first place.
It’s how most relationships start:
- You meet someone, and they make you feel a certain way.
- You learn what they like, they learn what you like, and you each adjust accordingly.
- You subtly shape yourself to keep their attention and approval.
- They do the same.
- And soon, you become two people feeding each other’s sense of self.
This works for a while. Until it doesn’t.
Because love—like life—must change.
If it doesn’t transform, it stagnates. And if we refuse to let it evolve, we don’t just lose love—we lose ourselves.
But leaving behind what once made us feel secure is uncomfortable.
It feels like free-falling.
The Lunchbox and the Lesson I Almost Missed
For years, my mom packed me a carefully crafted lunch in a Planet of the Apes lunchbox.
I can still feel what it was like to unclasp the lid and open it, then unfold the neatly wax paper around the ham and cheese sandwich on pumpernickel bread (with mayo and mustard, just the way I liked it). Green grapes. A Little Debbie snack. Cheez-Its.
And always, a note from Mom on my napkin.
Something simple. Maybe just “Have a great day! Love, Mom –OXOXOX”
But it made me feel seen. It made me feel special.
Then, one day, it stopped.
The lunchbox was replaced by lunch money left on the counter. Some days, she forgot. And on those days, I’d have to borrow money from the school office.
I was the only fourth grader I knew who was in debt.
For years, I felt pain from that shift.
I stopped feeling seen. I stopped feeling special. And I thought it was because my mom had stopped seeing me.
I believed it meant I wasn’t as loved. That I wasn’t as special anymore, that something had been taken from me.
It wasn’t until much later that I understood the truth:
Life wasn’t taking from me. It was handing me responsibility for myself.
Not to hurt me—but to empower me.
Because love changes. It has to. And real love—mature love—doesn’t just give. It also lets go.
The love in that lunchbox wasn’t gone. It had just evolved.
It had moved from doing for me to trusting me to do for myself.
But I didn’t see that. I couldn’t.
No amount of her seeing me or telling me I was special would have mattered if I didn’t believe it myself.
And I didn’t.
Not then. Not for another thirty-five years.
And for those thirty-five years, I searched for a replacement for those packed lunches.
I looked for it in friendships.
In relationships.
In achievements, wealth, and careers.
In sexual attention, respect, and the admiration of others.
When we believe that feeling seen, loved, and special comes from the lunchbox, the notes on napkins, the next invitation to be intimate from our wife, the praise from our boss, or the approval of our peers—we don’t just desire those things.
We depend on them.
And when something becomes a dependency, we become obsessed with figuring out how to keep it coming.
- How do I make sure she still desires me?
- How do I keep people’s admiration?
- What’s the right thing to say, do, or become so I don’t have to feel unwanted, unseen, unworthy?
We don’t realize it, but we’ve stopped living and started strategizing—tirelessly trying to crack the code on how to keep external validation flowing so we never have to feel the absence of it.
And in that process, we become ultra confused.
Because the harder we work to control it, the more fragile it becomes.
Because no matter what we do, it still feels temporary.
Because it is temporary.
Until…
We learn to be our own supply.
Until we stop looking to others to confirm our worth and start being the confirmation.
Until we stop needing to be loved a certain way and start being love itself.
And once I understood that—once I started living from that—everything changed.
The pain from the fourth-grade lunchbox, the debt, the silent questions I had carried for decades—they all began to unwind.
I encountered freedom.
The release of resentment.
The weightlessness of no longer needing to strategize my own worth.
And for the first time, clarity.
Love Must Evolve, or It Becomes a Prison
This is exactly what happens in relationships.
Just like we once looked to our parents to confirm our worth, we often enter relationships looking for the same thing.
The way we first experience love—the enmeshment, the emotional mirroring, the back-and-forth of “If you loved me, you’d…”—was never meant to be the final stage.
It was supposed to be the beginning.
Neither we nor ourselves nor love are not static. Each must grow and transform.
But most of us resist that growth transformation.
Instead of embracing the shift from dependence to self-trust, we resist and protest it. We try to force love to stay in the same form it took at the start.
And when we do that, love stops being love. It becomes a contract. A negotiation. A prison.
But here’s the truth:
The version of love that started your relationship won’t see you through to the end.
If you want to be free, you have to let go of what love was to embrace what it can become.
And when you do, something incredible happens.
You stop trying to extract love from another person.
You stop being afraid of love changing shape.
You stop feeling abandoned by the very thing that’s inviting you to grow.
And for the first time, maybe in years—
You breathe.
But here’s the thing—when men start to sense that love is slipping out of their control, they don’t just accept the invitation to grow.
They sometimes begin to look for a replacement.
Because if love—once their greatest source of validation—feels unstable, then success, achievement, and external status start to feel like a safer bet.
And that’s where many high-performing men take their confusion and channel it into their careers, their businesses, and their reputations.
Which brings us to another trap.
Success as a Mask: Why High-Achieving Men Stay Confused
Most high-performing men don’t just pursue success—they build their entire identity on it.
From an early age, they learn that their worth isn’t something they are—it’s something they prove.
Get the grades.
Win the competition.
Build the business.
Earn the respect.
Get the girl.
And when they succeed, they’re rewarded—not just with money or status, but with validation. People admire them. Women are drawn to them. Their peers respect them.
And that feels good.
For a while.
So they double down.
They chase the next achievement, the next milestone, the next metric of success. Not because they love it but because they’ve learned that this is where their worth comes from.
But here’s the catch:
When a man’s identity is built on external success, he never truly knows himself.
Because his entire sense of self is tangled up in:
- What he does.
- What he achieves.
- What others think of him.
This means the moment something shakes those things—
- A business fails.
- A marriage struggles.
- A promotion doesn’t come.
Confusion hits like a freight train.
Not because the situation is confusing but because the very foundation of his identity is cracking.
This is why so many high-performing men—guys who seem confident, competent, and in control—suddenly find themselves lost, stuck, and full of doubt.
Their problem isn’t a lack of clarity.
Their problem is where they’ve been looking for it.
Clarity doesn’t come from external success.
Clarity comes from knowing who you are when all of that is stripped away.
And that’s exactly what we need to un-fuse from.
How to Un-Fuse: The Process of Becoming Your Own Supply
Un-fusing isn’t something you can rush. It’s not a decision you make once and suddenly find yourself free from old dependencies. It’s a process. A transition. And like any meaningful transformation, it happens over time, often in fits and starts, with moments of clarity followed by moments of doubt.
It’s a lot like adolescence—that awkward, in-between stage where you’re no longer a child but not yet fully an adult.
When I talk to my kids about those years, I remind them:
“I know you’re desperate to get to the future—to independence, to freedom, to feeling settled in who you are. But slow down. There’s something valuable about this process. It’s not just a phase to rush through. It’s something to experience fully.”
And yet, what do most teenagers do?
They push, they strain, and they judge themselves for still being in the middle of it. They feel behind, like they should already have arrived.
Sound familiar?
This is exactly what happens when a man starts un-fusing from external validation.
He sees the work ahead and thinks, Why am I not already there? Why is this taking so long?
He gets frustrated with himself, desperate to reach the place where he no longer feels the pull of needing approval, admiration, or external reassurance.
But just like adolescence, this process takes time.
It’s not a sign that you’re failing—it’s a sign that you’re growing.
And the more you can embrace where you are instead of wishing you were already somewhere else, the easier the process becomes.
Because un-fusing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in relationships, over time, in the moments when you realize:
- You don’t need her reaction to feel settled.
- You don’t need their approval to feel worthy.
- You don’t need to “prove” anything to be enough.
But those realizations don’t come all at once. They come in layers. They come through lived experience. And they come when you have the right kind of people around you—mentors, friends, coaches, and guides who themselves have a solid, unshakable sense of self-worth.
That’s why this isn’t something you just decide to do.
It’s something you practice, over and over, until one day you look back and realize—you’ve changed.
The dependency is gone.
The endless strategizing to keep love or validation flowing has stopped.
The clarity has settled in.
And just like stepping into adulthood, you realize you’ve finally grown into the man you were always meant to be.
So don’t rush this. Don’t resent the process.
Slow down.
Lean into it.
Because there’s something here for you. Not just on the other side of this work—but in the work itself.
Want My Help? This Is What I Do—1-on-1.
Most men won’t do this work alone. Not because they’re weak but because no one ever showed them how.
This kind of transformation doesn’t happen by accident—it happens through deliberate, guided work.
That’s why every man I work with starts with a two-month private, 1-on-1 intensive—to break through confusion and accelerate this transformation.
This isn’t a course. It’s not a group. It’s not some PDF you skim and forget.
It’s you and me—one-on-one—going straight into the work that will change how you see yourself forever.
You bring the confusion. I’ll bring the questions that burn it away.
But I’ll warn you: This isn’t for every man.
If you just want tips and tricks, this isn’t for you.
If you’re hoping I’ll help you “fix” her, this isn’t for you.
If you’re not ready to see the truth and take ownership, this isn’t for you.
But if you’re serious—if you’re ready to break the cycle and finally see yourself with unshakable clarity—then let’s talk.
Your next step is simple: Apply here.
Tell me why you’re ready for this.
And let’s start.
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