Breaking the Cycle

These chapters comes from someone who’s felt the sharp edges of modern fatherhood. You might wonder why my advice is even worth reading — or whether it’s valuable at all. That’s completely up to you.

Why am I writing this down? Over the past six months, I went through the most uncomfortable time of my life — an experience that challenged not only my role as a father but also my identity as a man. After a conflict at home, I was forced to leave for eight weeks. Even now, my joints can still experience phantom aches from sleeping on hard surfaces. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the fear of not knowing where I would sleep the next day.

In those moments, I felt the weight of expectations that many fathers carry in silence: to be strong but gentle, a provider but also emotionally available, to show leadership without losing respect.

Fortunately, the situation was resolved without legal consequences. But even more fortunately, I met good people along the way: individuals who shared small kindnesses in the most challenging moments; AirBnB landlords who offered affordable long-term leases; friends who opened their homes to me when I had nowhere else to go; an attorney and a therapist who gave me professional guidance without judgment. Along the way, I learned that sometimes accountability can’t be learned in easier ways.

When I returned home after all that time away, I often felt like a target for emotional bullying. I felt ignored, shut down, defeated, and shamed — like I had become a man I didn’t even recognize. To cope, I started to numb myself to negative feedback. I felt numb almost everywhere. That numbness crept into my work, where I performed below my best. I struggled to respond to criticism the way I should, and soon I was sidelined. Within a month, I was let go from a high-pressure job — yet another blow to the fragile identity I was trying to rebuild.

While job hunting, I was stressed — rewriting my resume, networking, preparing for interviews. At home, I tried to help: doing chores, driving my child where he needed to be — because I was the one without a job, and it felt like the only way to prove my worth. Losing access to my therapist didn’t help either. I felt like a pressure cooker, experiencing emotional bursts when I felt that no matter what I did or said, nobody actually took that seriously. I started to fear that if I let that continue, I’d end up back in the same place I had worked so hard to move past.

During this time, my child’s behavior was getting worse, and family tensions were high. I’m not denying that I contributed to much of this. All I wanted — desperately — was to preserve my child’s childhood and future, while I felt my own identity slipping away. Meanwhile, my partner would text me about not giving her enough gifts, not planning a trip, or not organizing a surprise dinner. In her words, those were the things that would win her trust back.

It felt like I was living in a constant tug-of-war — between being the father my child needed, the partner my relationship demanded, and the man I was trying to rebuild.

Strangely, the manager who sidelined me — who was heavily involved in my departure — actually said something extremely valuable: “Writing is a way of thinking.” So I started writing. For some reason, when I write, the anxiety is gone. The more I write, the more I feel calm.

The changes and solutions to all the chaos I helped create don’t live in other people’s hands. They’re in mine — although I know the challenges ahead will be hard.