Men and the Myth of Martyrdom ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the difference between sacrificing for something and sacrificing as something, and why it's important to know the difference. I also talk about how I learned to be the responsible one in my life, and how it shaped me into the person I am today.
Transcript
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Every time you say things like, well, I had no choice. Stop it. Knock it a huff. Ask yourself,
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is that really true? Did you really not have a choice? Or was it just uncomfortable? Or was it
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just something you couldn't sit with? Because usually it isn't that you didn't have a choice.
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It's usually that you made a choice, potentially a reasonable one, maybe even the right one.
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But you're framing it as an obligation to avoid owning the fact that you made the choice.
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somebody didn't make the choice for you. That ownership of choices is the beginning of
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sovereignty. I want to start with a question today that actually took me a really long time
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to ask myself honestly. And the question is this, am I sacrificing for something or am I
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sacrificing as something. And there's a very big difference between the two because those two words
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for something or as something, it seems like a really small distinction, but the difference
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between them is the difference between what I would say is a life that's centered and revolved
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around purpose versus a life that's built on performance. And I didn't, I didn't really come
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to that question as, as quickly or succinctly as I would have liked, I came to it in the
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way that I think a lot of guys do through a very slow, tedious, long accumulation of
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being exhausted and building up resentment in my life that I just kept calling strength.
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probably through a pattern that i really couldn't see very clearly until i was
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so far in the chaos and the noise and the frustration
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that i had already shaped the way that i showed up as a husband or as a father
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as a man a business leader and when i finally traced it back to the
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foundational question. I really traced it. I found myself standing in this little small house
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that I grew up in Southern California. Like a kid who learned really early on that
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my job was just to hold things together. And that's where this conversation starts today.
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not not with some theory about it but but with a little bit of a story a backstory
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and and i was the boy who i felt like i either i felt like it or i learned that i had to carry
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i had to shoulder the weight of everything because i was the responsible one growing up
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and when i say that i want you to actually hear what it means because on the surface it sounds
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like, oh, that's a good thing. That's a compliment. That's how you should show up. And in a lot of
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ways, it was. I was capable. I could be counted on. I was reliable. I showed up from the time
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that I was little and even to today. But underneath all of that, something else was being conditioned
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or programmed. Because when things were uncertain at home, and there were stretches where they were,
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i learned that my stability that the way that i showed up was part of what kept the system
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running not not conscious i didn't do this consciously you know no nobody sat me down
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my mom didn't sit me down or or my dad who was you know in and out of the picture said to me
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you know ryan it's your job to hold this together no nobody said that to me but i but i did feel it
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it's it's the way that a kid feels things before
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and then i adapted again even subconsciously i got serious earlier than maybe i should have
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or could have i learned to read rooms really well to manage the emotions of other people
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like i i picked up on subtle cues and clues about how people were feeling
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i tried to make myself really useful before anybody even asked and i and i learned to
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i learned to need less in my life or at least perform needing less i probably needed things
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when i was a boy that i didn't communicate because needing things felt like adding to
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the problem it felt like adding weight to a situation that was already heavier rather than
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just carrying it myself and and this is a lot of what happens or at least some of the theories in
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carl young's work and what happened next to me was what what he calls a form of persona formation
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it's the the persona is this is this performative person that we become to to navigate the world
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it's the face that we put on to present to other people it's the role that we play and mine was
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the capable one i'm going to be the capable one the steady one the one who could figure it out
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the one who could handle it and here's the thing about that persona it's it starts as a strategy
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it's i think it's genuine i actually believe it's an intelligent response to an environment
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you build that persona because it works and that's what young says we build that because
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it works and the problem is when you start to mistake that persona or that mask for the actual
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face because I didn't just act like the responsible one. I really became the responsible
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one. It stopped being this role, this part that I played. And it started being the answer
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that I gave when I asked myself, like, who am I? Like, who, who is it that I am really?
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Who am I at my core? And once your identity is fused to
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what i would call a function the way that you show up once your identity is only yourself
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when you're carrying weight you're gonna seek out weight even when you none is required you're
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gonna make it harder on yourself you're gonna manufacture burden you're gonna find ways to
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actually suffer because the suffering your life is how you prove to yourself and to other people
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that you're worthy that you're valuable and that right there guys is the trap
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and i walked right into it because i didn't know any better and you might not have known any better
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and and i didn't have i didn't have the words to express this i didn't have the the cognition to
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understand it but when i started reading and studying and pouring into the work and all of
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this sort of thing over the past well almost 12 years now i found that some of the the most
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incredible minds in human history had been ruminating and pontificating and circling around
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this exact problem for centuries there's a philosopher uh jean paul sartre and he says
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it's called bad faith. And in his framework, bad faith is what happens when a human being
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denies their own freedom, their own liberty, even their own sovereignty by pretending they
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have no choice. They, they reduce themselves into a role, into a function, into some sort
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of fixed thing and that reduction is is just is just the way it is have you said that that's just
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the natural order it's just the way it is it's it's that waiter who is
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so much a waiter that he has no self outside of that role it's the it's the father that is
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so much a provider that he can't tell you what he wants to be outside of a father. I mean,
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I have friends who have kids who are leaving the home and they're about to be empty nesters.
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And, you know, my oldest son is graduating and I've wrapped up so much of my identity and being
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a father that even though I have four children and my, it's only my oldest who is leaving this
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year that that's that's hard to wrestle with because i don't know who i am beyond providing
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as a father it's that man who's responsible so responsible even that he doesn't know how to
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exist without some baggage or weight or rock to carry and sartair's point wasn't that roles are
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bad necessarily. It was that they become bad faith the moment you use them to escape the freedom
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of actually choosing who you can be. Because the moment you say, well, I don't have any choice.
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This is just the way it is. This is what I have to do. This is what my load to carry,
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my load to bear. When the truth is that you have nothing but choices you can actually choose
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and you're just afraid to own them and that's what i call the martyr
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and and for the martyr bad faith or that you don't have a choice it's the water almost that
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you swim in it's the air that you breathe i have to do this someone has to do this there's no other
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way every statement that a martyr makes removes your agency every every conversation every belief
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every thought pattern every sentence places weight on our choices on on somebody else's shoulders
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every sacrifice that you might be called to make or feel like you need to make is framed this way
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it's it's almost like an accusation look what you made me carry look what whether it's your
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your wife or your boss or your kids or the economy or the president or even god look what you made me
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carry but that but his framing of bad faith isn't the only lens because there's a lot of
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conversations about this with the stoics as well marcus aurelius epictetus they were deeply deeply
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concerned with a very similar problem and that's the confusion between what is virtuous
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please hear me when i say this what is virtuous and what is simply difficult
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but what's interesting and i had to study this i didn't know this but epictetus
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he was born a slave and obviously as a slave in those times you knew something about suffering
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but he made a distinction that cuts right to the very core of this he said in essence that there's
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no virtue in endurance for its own sake hear that man if you're struggling as this as this
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foe martyr there's no virtue in endurance for its own sake what matters is not how much you bear
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but why you actually bear it that's what took me so long to figure out and also whether or not
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bearing it is in alignment with what is actually moral and good and righteous that took me a long
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time to figure out in other words let me say it this way suffering for the sake of suffering is
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not virtuous but that's what martyrs do that's what we as men do often because we think it's
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virtuous to be in pain. It isn't unless as Epictetus said that it's an alignment with what
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is actually moral and good. And then a Mark Marcus Aurelius said, he said a little bit differently.
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He said, waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one, not a man who is
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performative, like some actor on stage performing goodness, not a man who just suffers publicly.
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so others will see him and praise him and worship him because he's, you know, suffering.
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But a man who just quietly and very simply acts in accordance with what is right and what is good.
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And I know it because I failed that test over and over again.
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Because at times in my life, I've always needed an audience.
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that the suffering only counts if somebody sees it and the the the worst part about this is that
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it's so subconscious that you can't even see it and then and then there's carl young who you know
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i keep coming back to but he understood this wound that we had underneath the the persona
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the bad faith better than i think just about anyone and he said that the the persona that
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that role, the identity that we build for the world always has a shadow. This is the framework,
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the basis of shadow work, that the things that we buried when we built this persona for ourselves,
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it's the desires that we had and we suppress them. It's the needs that we had for ourselves
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that we learned to ignore and deny. For the man who became the responsible one, especially early
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on in life, that shadow is everything that he never got to be. It's the boy who wanted to be
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taken care of. It's, it's you who wanted to be seen as something other than useful. It's you
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who wanted to need things without that need being a burden on somebody else. And his warning,
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young's warning was was that we don't integrate the shadow we project
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and what we don't own and adopt and embrace in ourselves or at least acknowledge we just
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project that and see that on other people or we act out in ways that we don't understand and can't
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explain that's why the martyr is often resentful but it's not really about the people around him
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It's that little child, that kid that you learned to be the martyr, you never got to put any of the weight down.
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Like this is very philosophical, but I've been studying a lot about this lately because I've got to figure out what's going on, even in my own life.
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So, so what does it actually look like when you're practicing it? Because philosophy, I mean, there's a lot of philosophers out there, even now in modern times that aren't useful because they're just ruminating about things and not actually putting it into practice. So here are the patterns. And I want you to see if any of these apply to you.
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So number one, there's what I would call an unspoken ledger that the martyr I'm talking
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about, again, I'm pointing to myself here just as much as you.
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And I want you to see if this applies to you, that martyr, he keeps score.
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It's not like a spreadsheet or an Excel document or a Google sheet or something like that.
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It's not out loud, but internally inside, even subconsciously, there's a very, a very
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meticulous methodical accounting of everything that you have given everything that you've done
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everything that you've endured everything that you've sacrificed all the costs that you paid
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and then eventually the ledger that you've created it surfaces maybe it's in a bad tone
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very minimally maybe it's resentment towards your wife or your kids or your business partner or
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somebody else in society. This is the epitome of a nice guy. Maybe it's an argument that's
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technically about something small and minor, but it's really about all of the years that
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you've been putting forth work and denying yourself. It's like, I do everything around
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here. Nobody sees how much I'm sacrificing. Nobody knows what this costs me. Nobody knows
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what i've done nobody understands that's not a complaint that's you reading off the spreadsheet
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you you created that in your mind and you're not complaining you're just reading it and you're
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saying hey we're in the red here and it creates frustration and contention and resentment and
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animosity and sometimes worse the next thing i want to talk with you about is refusing help
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the martyr I'm talking about will not accept help without feeling like a threat there's this funny
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scene in the office I wish I could tell you which season but Andy and Dwight are trying to outdo
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each other with compliments and and favors I think Andy if I remember correctly brings donuts in
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and then Dwight brings I don't know lunch in and then Andy opens the door for him and Dwight
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compliments him and then andy calls one of his clients and follows up it's like they're just
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trying to outdo each other because the martyr cannot accept help without feeling like it's
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some sort of threat or i'm gonna owe that person because if somebody else has to carry my weight
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even if it's for a day even if it's for a minute the question surfaces like who am i like if that
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person's suffering I need to save them I need to rescue them who am I it's it's not the weight of
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that it's not just a burden it's the it's the proof of my value right like if that person's
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suffering I'm less valuable if that person's okay then I am valuable so we decline offers for help
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what do we do as men i'm fine i'm good life's good i've probably sent three messages alone
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like that i'm good i'm fine everything's great everything's wonderful
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and so we we as as men who feel into this role we we take on more because the alternative of
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of it like rest and relief receiving help it feels like a threat to our identity
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and then there's resentment and it's it's not just resentment but it's resentment that's
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has the costume on of dedication and this one's hard because it's pretty subtle
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the martyr often looks from the outside he's sitting on the fringes like the most committed
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man in the room we work the hardest we stay the latest we show up when others don't and underneath
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there's this slow festering infection because we aren't if we're being honest we get and we got to
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be honest here we aren't giving freely we're giving with an expectation that somebody else
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will see it right somebody else will see it and acknowledge it they'll acknowledge it they'll
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return it they'll pay it forward and then when the acknowledgement doesn't come or maybe it just
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doesn't even come in the right form of what we expected or it's not enough then the resentment
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compounds so you might take your wife on a date this weekend and maybe maybe she's not feeling in
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the mood maybe she doesn't like the restaurant or maybe she just had a bad week and she's not
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showing up the way you wanted her to you don't put it on her of like well maybe she's having a
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bad week or maybe she's frustrated maybe she's not feeling well maybe she's on her period and
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instead you're like well what does this say about me it's an indictment against you and that's where
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that ledger i was talking about comes in where you think well she doesn't love me she doesn't
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appreciate me she doesn't see what i do she doesn't see how hard i work that's not service
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what we do in those moments is we're actually just performing service
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and and we're waiting for some sort of i don't know like a standing ovation that that never
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comes and then another thing we do this one's this one's wild is we remove our own agency
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through language we shift responsibility that's what most people would say but really what you're
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doing is you're just taking away your your agency through mental gymnastics through rhetorical
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jousting or or rationalization maybe that's the way to say it rhetorical rationalization
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like i had no choice what was i supposed to i had to do it
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every sentence like that is what sartair said is bad faith in action
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a free man doesn't pretend that he's actually free and liberated placing the weight of your
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own decisions on the people around you isn't isn't noble if you're going to place it on them
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and then resent them for it so i want you to be really honest about what this pattern actually
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costs you because like i said i've felt a lot of this myself it costs our relationships
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because nobody is nobody loves a martyr cleanly the people around a martyr like they feel that
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ledger i was talking about even if they don't understand quite what was going on because you
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say little things and you make little digs and they feel the resentment underneath that quote
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unquote, dedication. They feel that there's conditions or terms under the sacrifice. It's
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not altruistic. It's measured. It's calculated. Your partner doesn't want a man who just suffers
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for her. She wants a guy who's going to choose her. And this is why a lot, you'll hear this a
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lot from women. Well, they'll say, well, I didn't feel chosen. And I know it's hard for men to
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understand because of the myth of male martyrdom, which is what I'm talking about today, where we
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think, what are you talking about? Of course I chose you. I go to work every day for you.
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I sacrifice for you. I do these things for you. I was going to do this, but I did this for you.
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And really a lot of the times is we're just doing it for ourselves and she will acknowledge it.
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She'll feel it. And that doesn't feel chosen. It feels like a duty, right? Like an obligation
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but that the the choice of not needing to be with her but wanting to be with her and not feeling
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like it's some sort of obligation or duty that's i think what intimacy is built on
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if you're a martyr but it's just built around expectations it's it's it's built around
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what you can do for me in return it poisons the relationship it costs you your mission
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martyrdom mimics or cloaks or clone maybe clones is the best way to say it clones
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the purpose that you have in life it looks the same right long hours hard work staying at the
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office late making payments and extra costs and sacrificing what you want but purpose if it's
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done correctly asks what am i what am i trying to build what legacy am i trying to create where
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martyrdom is the question, is anyone watching me? Is anyone praising me or acknowledging me or
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giving me accolades or notoriety or acknowledgement?
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And I think that a guy without an answer to that first question of what am I building,
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I think he'll always default to the second one, which is, is anybody watching me?
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And if your life is built around being praised and witnessed and acknowledged,
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If you have kids, especially sons, they're watching you.
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And they're learning that it's not just about what you do.
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They're learning why you do the things that you do.
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and whether or not you have your agency over their lives whether that the sacrifice is
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something that you're choosing or you or something that you just feel obligated to do out of some
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sort of false sense of duty you're you're writing their story i would say the first chapter of their
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story you're writing the first chapter of their story so if that's true then you need to make
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sure that the draft you're writing is actually the one that you want and ultimately if you don't
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it's going to cost you yourself it's been that way for me and the the man underneath all of this is
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the responsible it's the guy with desires and curiosity and things that he actually wants he
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he starts to kind of disappear and he puts himself on the back burner and he lets other
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things take precedent and it doesn't happen suddenly or overnight it happens slowly could
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take you decades actually until one day you realized like i have in my life where i've lost
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contact with my real self like the man i actually wanted to be and then i blamed it on other people
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my wife and my kids and the economy and the president and god and whoever else i could
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latch my story on too. And I don't want you to get to a position where you don't know how to
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find your way back. And that's the cost I think about most men. It's not the resentment. It's
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not the relationships. It's, it's not the disappearance of the man that maybe you were
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before, it's, it's the disappearance of that guy. It's, it's the guy that you were before learning
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that caring things was just like the price of belonging to something that I, I'm not part of
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my family. If I don't just shoulder this weight all the time, or that I'm not part of this team
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So I don't wanna just leave you with this diagnosis
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Like you don't wanna put this on somebody else.
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am i giving this freely of myself or am i keeping that ledger i was talking about
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and that's the stoic move to go back to what marcus aurelius said yes he kept a private journal
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not for publication although it has been publicized at this point and not for posterity
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but for himself it was a journal for himself a daily practice of self-examination of self-exploration
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of lessons learned not to perform virtue but to actually be virtuous not to argue about what it
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means to be a good man but to actually be one you can't change what you know won't name you have to
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start there and the second thing is that you have to reclaim your sovereignty we've been talking
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about this for 12 years every time you say things like well i had no choice stop it knock it off
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ask yourself is that really true did you really not have a choice or was it just uncomfortable
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or was it just something you couldn't sit with because usually it isn't that you didn't have a
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choice it's usually that you made a choice potentially a reasonable one maybe even the
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right one but you're framing it as an obligation to avoid owning the fact that you made the choice
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somebody didn't make the choice for you. That ownership of choices is the beginning of
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sovereignty. Sartre, his insight wasn't meant to be crippling about bad faith. It was meant to be
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actually liberating. And that's the impetus of sovereignty, liberty over yourself. You are
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always choosing, which means that you can choose differently today just because you want to.
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next is i want you to get acquainted with this is kind of the idea of shadow work get acquainted with
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the boy who's still carrying all of that weight this one's probably the hardest
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somewhere underneath the man you become who's very capable very bold very courageous
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has a skill set making money is is a little boy who learned that being needed was the price of
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being loved. Who learned that if I rest, it's irresponsible. That if, if I need things that
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I'm a burden to somebody else and he's not gone. Like that little boy is not gone. He's just been
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running the show behind the scenes from the shadows. That's the shadow work. You don't
00:31:15.180
have to go to therapy to do all this work guys. There's, there's, and look, there's no shame if
00:31:19.780
you do, but you just have to be willing to ask yourself, what did I have to give up to become
00:31:27.800
the man that I am? And, and is it maybe time to reclaim some of that for yourself?
00:31:37.460
Because you don't have to be a martyr. You're not obligated. You're not required to be a martyr
00:31:42.080
fourth, choose the sacrifices that you make consciously. There's nothing wrong with a
00:31:48.340
sacrifice. I'm not telling you that just because I don't want you to be a martyr, that I don't want
00:31:53.080
you to sacrifice for the people and the things that are important to you. Because I think the
00:31:58.040
man who sacrifices nothing is selfish. Like he loves nothing but himself. The question is really,
00:32:05.880
is your sacrifice conscious or is it compulsive?
00:32:11.640
being deliberate about the sacrifices that you're making is am i choosing this because
00:32:20.780
it serves something that that matters to me where i know the cost i accept the cost i'm willing to
00:32:27.360
pay the cost or is it or is it compulsive which is like i have to there's no other choice what
00:32:33.440
else would i do nobody else is going to do it it has to be me i want you to move from compulsive
00:32:39.620
behavior to conscious behavior that's not that's not selfishness that's integrity
00:32:44.560
next is is build an identity that doesn't require suffering to to sustain the identity it's the long
00:32:54.660
game like who who who are you when things are good when everything's firing on all
00:33:01.200
cylinders correctly you know when you're rested when there's when there's margin in life when
00:33:06.840
There's nothing on fire, no fires for you to put out.
00:33:10.980
And if you don't have an answer to that, if you, if you only know yourself in hard times,
00:33:18.320
It's not productivity like it is for me and so many men, but identity, building a confidence
00:33:26.940
in yourself that's rooted in, in the values that you have, the vision you have for yourself
00:33:32.580
and not just simply and quietly suffering in sacrifice.
00:33:50.920
not because you don't know who you are without it.
00:34:00.680
he says seek not the things which happen should happen as you wish but wish the things which
00:34:10.680
happen to be as they are and you will have a tranquil flow of life i used to read that as
00:34:19.720
passive like it's just like you're just resigning like just whatever happens happens but i don't
00:34:24.840
anymore i read it as a call to stop performing to stop being a martyr to stop organizing my life
00:34:31.180
around how it might look to other people to stop measuring how worthy i am based on how much i
00:34:38.720
suffer and and this is this is really this is harder than it sounds like be the man that you
00:34:47.020
actually are in the circumstances you actually are with the choices that are actually yours
00:34:54.400
and i'm not saying settle for less than you're capable of i'm saying acknowledge who you are
00:35:00.060
and make conscious choices about who you want to be
00:35:04.980
it's the boy who carried the family really early in his life i get him i was him
00:35:14.140
and i'm grateful for what that built in me it's like the worth that work ethic the reliability
00:35:20.460
the understanding that somebody has to step up but i'm also learning to put that weight down
00:35:26.420
when appropriate when it doesn't need to be carried and to receive abundance without guilt
00:35:33.300
about it to make choices about the sacrifices i want to make and to rest when i don't need to
00:35:42.520
make those sacrifices not because i don't care or not because i'm a less of a man not because
00:35:48.220
them a beta or a cuck or a simp or these terms people use to categorize guys who take care of
00:35:53.880
themselves but because i've really started to understand that a man who knows who he is doesn't
00:36:00.420
need to suffer to prove it now you might suffer but as long as it's virtuous suffering righteous
00:36:07.260
meaningful purpose-driven suffering so i hope this conversation sat with you and if you heard
00:36:13.680
yourself in some of it, I relate with you, but I would encourage you to sit down with that for a
00:36:18.640
minute, for the day, for the weekend, not to fix it right away necessarily, just to put the
00:36:23.660
face with the name. And that's where I think the real work starts. So if this resonated with you,
00:36:30.480
if you have other tips and insights and strategies for not making yourself the martyr that you might
00:36:37.360
think you need to be, then drop it in the comments on YouTube, youtube.com slash order of man,
00:36:42.200
make sure you subscribe on youtube make sure you share this with other men who might need to hear
00:36:47.620
it when you see a martyr who's just killing himself for the sake of killing himself send
00:36:53.660
him this video and and help him see that sure there's righteous sacrifice there's righteous
00:37:01.560
suffering but not all of it is and hopefully this gave you some insight into how to differentiate
00:37:08.120
between the two all right guys make sure you subscribe leave a rating and review connect with
00:37:13.260
us on the socials at ryan mickler we will be back next week until then go out there take action
00:37:19.140
become a man you are meant to be thank you for listening to the order of man podcast you're
00:37:26.040
ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be we invite you