Trapped on the Treadmill: How Society Keeps Men Chasing an Impossible Ideal

​Many men today feel like they’re falling behind, unable to meet traditional definitions of success. They see that others have succeeded, both before them and today, and conclude one thing: This is my failure.

In our culture, men are expected to be providers and achievers. You’ve “made it” if you can pay your bills and land promotions. The social status of another person is what we use as a shortcut to judge who he is. And so we assume others do the same about us.

When a man feels he hasn’t reached the level he should, he works harder. He will bring work home with him, physically or mentally. Anxiety over unmet expectations builds, making it harder to get things done and often leading to burnout. The looming fear of getting fired - the ultimate blow to manhood - becomes a constant source of stress.

These pressures are made worse by how work is set up. The primary goal of any employer is to get the most output for the least amount of input. So they put workers on a treadmill and gradually increase the speed. If they see you can run at 4 MPH without faltering, they increase it to 5. From 5 to 6. If at 6.5 MPH you struggle to keep up, then they now know what your max speed is.

Some employers may demand 7 MPH, and the job market is such that if you can’t do it, they will find someone who will. But either way the preference is that you alone do it. Paying you $60,000 to do a ton of work leads to more profit than paying two people $50,000 to do it.

So if we know work is naturally set up to always have us on the verge of breaking, why do we feel so terrible when we do?

Times are changing, but much of it is still to do with a pressure to “man up.” Our grandfathers overcame the fascists without complaint, so the story goes. Being able to work through pain is the highest cultural virtue. And that mindset is exploited by those who want things from you. If you are not able to cut it, then it is ‘your’ failure.

​Buy an expensive watch and you can convince people you have succeeded. If they are convinced, maybe you can convince yourself. Buy the biggest TV and you have the most impressive way to distract from the nagging pain in the back of your mind.

Go into debt. The same people who promote the idea that you must be strong, independent, and constantly working are more than willing to lend you money—at interest rates they control.

In therapy I see again and again that the symptom is not the real problem. Men come in all the time with vague feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. They tend to want “tools” to get rid of the anxiety, so they can get back in the race.

But anxiety is not an ailment, it is a beacon. It is a red flag. It is an alarm going off that says “here, over here, this is what needs attention!”

Just addressing how not to feel anxious is putting a band-aid on a lopped off finger stub. We need to talk about how you got here in the first place. How we all keep getting here. And we need to question in what way we would like to participate in the culture that is exploiting you and grinding you down.

I often will ask “what does being a man mean to you?” I find that the answers are not usually ones that we have independently come up with. Rather they are usually just a re-frame of what we have been told being a man means.

Which to me means we are living someone else’s life instead of our own.