Sometimes, the Soundtracks of Our Youth Became the Scripts for Our Struggles
Welcome to this month’s Musical Monday Musings, where I take a song from the soundtrack of my life and explore the truths it reveals about the journey of becoming a man, husband, father, and human being.
Some songs don’t just play in the background.
They program you.
They embed themselves in your soul like code, running silently, shaping behavior, worldview, longing.
For me—and a lot of men my age—that’s what Don’t You Forget About Me was.
That song wasn’t just in the background. It was the background.
And when you mix it with Alive and Kicking and a steady diet of John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink, you end up with a full-blown operating system. One that whispers:
“You are nothing without her.”
And you believe it.
You feel it.
You grow up waiting for the woman who will call your name as she walks by…
And when she doesn’t?
You question everything.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey…”
The Setup for Emotional Dependency
Let’s just look at the opening lines:
“Won’t you come see about me?
I’ll be alone, dancing… you know it, baby.”
It’s not even subtle.
There’s this baked-in expectation that unless she shows up, life is hollow.
That, unless she comes, you’re alone.
Dancing.
In the dark.
Pathetic, but hopeful.
Hurting, but performative.
And then it escalates:
“Tell me your troubles and doubts
Giving everything inside and out…”
The male role here is emotionally hungry, boundaryless, and wide open.
He’s the safe place. The emotional sponge. The guy who will hold her heart and dissolve his own.
And we were trained to believe that this is romantic.
That this is what it means to be a good man.
But let’s call it what it really is:
Emotional fusion. Codependence.
Desperation masquerading as devotion.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t…”
The Soundtrack of Panic
I used to belt that chorus with everything in me.
And when the girl I was dating wouldn’t call back?
I felt those “don’t you forget about me” cries in my bones.
It didn’t feel like art.
It felt like identity.
And here’s the thing I didn’t realize until much later:
When you’ve been programmed by this kind of music, love stops being about connection.
It becomes about validation.
About not being forgotten.
About securing your emotional oxygen supply.
So when she does walk away, your soul screams:
“As you walk on by, will you call my name?
Or will you walk away?”
And that moment?
That question?
It becomes the defining one of your life.
Alive and Kicking
The Anthem of Emotional Enmeshment
If Don’t You Forget About Me is the cry of the emotionally starving man,
then Alive and Kicking is his manic high.
“You turn me on.
You lift me up…
Don’t you ever stop, I’m here with you.”
It’s not love.
It’s emotional dependency dressed in synthesizers.
She’s not a partner.
She’s a drug.
A mood stabilizer.
A lightning rod.
And it doesn’t stop there:
“Who is gonna come and turn the tide?
What’s it gonna take to make a dream survive?
Who’s got the touch to calm the storm inside?
Don’t say goodbye, don’t say goodbye
In the final seconds who’s gonna save you?“
Let that line sink in.
It’s not just emotionally immature, it’s a total abdication of masculine strength and personal sovereignty.
He’s not asking who will support him.
He’s asking who will rescue him.
But It Was Never About the Songwriters
They Were Just Singing What They Knew
I don’t think Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill sat down and said,
“Let’s write the emotional gospel of codependent masculinity.”
No, these weren’t villains.
They were just older brothers.
Singing their hearts out.
Pouring the ache of unprocessed longing into anthems, we all blasted through our headphones.
They were addicted lovers—just like us.
Writing psalms of panic and praise to the feminine, not knowing they were handing us a script we’d follow for decades.
And follow it, we did.
The Unconscious Programming of Our Youth
From Song to Script to Struggle
I didn’t realize until much later that these songs formed the emotional blueprint for how I pursued love:
• Show up fully.
• Lose yourself completely.
• Hope she picks you.
• Panic if she doesn’t.
Even now, if one of these songs comes on, my body remembers.
Not just the lyrics.
But the feeling.
The ache.
The surge of devotion.
The craving for someone to tell me I mattered.
The deep-down belief that my aliveness was contingent on her love.
“Stay until your love is… alive and kicking.”
That line isn’t about presence.
It’s about condition.
“If you stay, I’ll be okay.”
“If you leave, I’ll fall apart.”
And that’s what so many men are still living out in their marriages.
The Cost of That Programming
And the Path to Freedom
Here’s what I’ve learned in mentoring hundreds of men:
The problem isn’t that we feel deeply.
It’s that we were taught to outsource those feelings.
To wait for someone else to light us up, rescue us, make us whole.
But here’s the truth:
No woman can do that.
Not your high school crush.
Not your wife.
Not the stranger at the airport who makes eye contact and awakens something old.
Because the ache you feel?
It was never really about her.
It was about you.
Your disconnection from yourself.
Your disowning of your own aliveness.
Your unwillingness—or unknowing—to generate fire from within.
So What Now?
Do We Stop Listening? Stop Feeling?
No. I still love and listen to these songs.
We don’t avoid it. We reclaim it.
I still feel Don’t You Forget About Me in my chest.
I still sing Alive and Kicking with the windows down.
I don’t shut it off.
I just no longer submit to it. true.
Because the man I am today?
He doesn’t need a woman to remember him to know he exists.
He doesn’t need her touch to calm the storm.
He is the calm in the storm.
That boy in me—aching, reaching, craving—he’s not dead.
But he’s no longer running the show.
Now, I meet him with compassion.
I sit with him when he plays those old songs.
And I remind him:
“You’re not forgotten.
You’re not alone.
You’re alive.
And you’re kicking.”
Not because she stayed.
Not because she called your name.
But because you finally did.
Because you finally called your own name.
Because you stopped outsourcing your aliveness and started owning it.
And here’s what I’ve found, brother:
That shift doesn’t just change your relationship with women.
It changes your relationship with men.
Because the men who are still chasing her out there?
They don’t know how to see you.
Not the real you. Not the grounded, present, emotionally honest man you’re becoming.
And that leaves a lot of men isolated—awake but alone.
Unplugged from the matrix but not yet connected to the tribe.
That’s why I created Masterful Men.
Not just to talk about these truths, but to live them.
To walk alongside other men who are done performing, done pretending, done panicking for connection.
Men who are turning longing into leadership.
Fantasy into fulfillment.
If you’re ready to stop singing your soul to the wind and start anchoring your life in presence, power, and purpose, check out Masterful Men.
It’s not a podcast. It’s not a Facebook group. It’s not a hack.
It’s a place where men get unstuck, unshakable, and unstoppable.
And we go deep into this very journey.
You don’t have to walk it alone.
You weren’t meant to.
Still feeling the ache?
Start here.
Download the free guide:
“The Longing That Won’t Leave: Transforming Longing into Leadership and Fantasy into Fulfillment“
It’s not the whole journey, but it’s the first honest step.
And the man you’re becoming?
He’s already waiting for you to take it.
⬇️ Grab the guide below and start now.
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