keep hearing men are trying to find their identity that why they are lost. So men who have find their identity, in specific details what would you describe your identity as, and how have you found it, and what does having an identity mean to you
keep hearing men are trying to find their identity that why they are lost. So men who have find their identity, in specific details what would you describe your identity as, and how have you found it, and what does having an identity mean to you
Comments
Please do not delete your post after receiving your answer. Consider leaving it up for posterity so that other Redditors can benefit from the wisdom in this thread.
Once your thread has run its course, instead of deleting it, you can simply type “!lock” (without the quotes) as a comment anywhere in your thread to have our Automod lock the thread. That way you won’t be bothered by anymore replies on it, but people can still read it.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
I see it as finding out what your purpose and responsibilities are so you can be useful to yourself and others.
I look down into my pants and it affirms my identity as a man.
Men need a purpose to be fulfilled. That purpose is different for all. Some find it in their family, some through work. But a man without purpose will not thrive
It’s bullshit marketing nonsense in the same way that shit like Eat Pray Love is sold to women who want to find themselves. Truth is just try and be a decent human being and find your purpose in life, whatever that maybe, and don’t worry what anyone outside your small tribe of family and friends think
For me, just trusting myself and my choices. I don’t focus on the identity itself, I focus on what naturally serves me mentally and physically. Whatever those things are is what makes me, me.
You may not even realize it, but when you’re young you spend a lot of energy thinking about what other people think about you. Worrying about the perceptions of others is a normal phase in learning how to navigate becoming a socially desirable human being, but at a certain point in life it becomes counterproductive to worry too much about what other people think. Part of finding that involves surrounding yourself by friends and partners who you can learn from.
Little by little, that shifts to focusing on the things you care about regardless of the perceptions of most others. It doesn’t matter what the details look like, but it boils down to what my dad called personal integrity. Who you are is defined by what you think and believe, not what anyone else thinks. Someone can hate your guts, and you can decide what they think of you is really none of your business. It doesn’t mean you don’t reflect to make sure you’re not being too much of an asshole, but that determination belongs to you now, not anybody else. You still care a bit about what your colleagues and loved ones think about you, but you also accept that you shouldn’t try to change who you are for them unless that aligns with your personal values.
For me, that means being a good partner to my wife, a good team player who makes life easier for those around him, a playful person who enjoys games, and a bit of a hedonist who worries more about making something tasty for dinner with friends than I do about my waistline. And a thousand other little things that change a little bit day to day.
The details don’t matter. What matters is that you know who are you and act according to your internal compass.
Judging by post history I’d waged this account is trying to get data to train an LLM.
Know thyself
One of my many favourite Discworld quotes: “people are riddled with Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model aeroplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up into knots. Early morning is the worst time – there’s that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking.”
That last sentence is the pivotal part for me. Granted age helps, but I suspect it’s not really “identity” so much as common or garden insecurity. Too many men had a stereotypical idea that “being a man” meant working and having a family, physical strength, something like that. But that was never really being a man, that was just what a lot of men did, and that’s not the same thing at all.
I really struggle to think of any concept of “being a man” that doesn’t apply just as much to women. Working, providing, looking after family, being responsible, blah blah. It’s all just “being a functional adult”. I think a large chunk of what was defined as “masculinity” wasn’t fully its own thing, it was more just “not being a woman”. And as women have (rightfully) moved towards equality, some men feel like something’s being “taken” from them. It’s not, at all.
My “identity” is…being me. My interests, my personality, my own personal responsibilities. Doing the things I want to do, doing the things I don’t want to do but which need doing. Being as patient as I can, as kind as I can, while also recognising that we’re all human. Having a pitch black sense of humour but knowing when that is or isn’t appropriate. Not being threatened by other people living their lives, or how other people define themselves. Being secure in myself, flaws and all. Understanding that someone else’s choices or achievements don’t actually affect me, directly. Recognising that how I feel and how things are aren’t the same thing. But there’s no single answer, because human beings are complex.
Way too many men and women try and define themselves by other people. Who wants to fuck them or not, who has a better job, who has a nicer car, what other people think of them. Seeking approval or external validation, being afraid to look within themselves and find that everything they need is already there. If nothing else recognising that they have it within themselves to create or grasp what they’re missing.
To some extent, men who are desperate for an “identity” need to stop looking. Just be. Do the things they want to do, without harming other people. Stop feeling like they need to fit other people’s ideas of what a man is or what they should be like. Stop blaming “society” for “pressuring” them. That’s not a thing, not really. “Society” doesn’t have a gun to anyone’s head. What most people mean by that is “if I do something different from most other people, I feel insecure or self conscious, and I can’t cope with that feeling, so I’d better try and fit in”. But that often ends up making people feel unhappy, because they know they’re lying to themselves.
Stoicism.
Not whatever red pill BS they go on about now. The actual stoic tradition, thinking, being involved in your community etc.
For me it meant finding a way to be sure of myself in my own skin – for my young adult life I was floundering somewhat on that front which was impacting my confidence and the way I looked at the world. This was largely tied to my experience in interacting with people as a man and how I perceived their expectations of me – indeed often I would apply social expectations on myself within my own head. When I found myself wanting in some particular sense, this would then deeply challenge my self perception on my own manliness and male identity.
The ultimate conclusion for me was that being a man wasn’t something I could be in a vacuum, it was tied to this notion that I had to be providing for others, that I had to have responsibilities, and that I had to hold myself accountable against those things. In doing this I learned that I was dependable – as others would come to see me as dependable. Thus my sense of self as a man was built up around this and it came to represent what it means to me.
There’s personal identity, then there’s “what is a man?” and the latter is what you’re probably hearing about. Masculinity comes in different forms in different cultures, and I think a lot of men who feel lost are feeling that way because they’re being told that they can’t be boorish, take what they want by force, etc.
Hobbies, passions, relationships, work, these are all areas where you can find purpose and identity as a man. Don’t let podcasters or YouTubers tell you what a man is because they’re just as clueless, but they’re making money off the rudderless.
Nothing, it sounds stupid.
I think the idea of having to “find an identity” is honestly part of the problem. It implies that people eventually find some answer to life that just doesn’t exist. I spent a lot of my 20s trying to define myself by what I wanted to be. All it did was tie my self worth to my ability to do those things or achieve those goals. It’s an external form of self validation which is a recipe for disaster.
A lot of guys define themselves by a purpose, goal, or profession. It’s all external and static. They don’t actually have an internal identity that carries through when circumstances change. For example, a guy defines himself by his job and then loses his job, can’t help but to fall into depression. The saddest are the guys who just go with whatever identity their community, society, culture, etc., tells them it is. They don’t put in the work to really reflect on themselves.
For me, my identity is about who I am as a person. My values, my beliefs, my morals, and how I am in relation to others. I think identity can transform over time, so I’d include interests and passions as well.
The journey is downward, always. The man who would be whole must descend: into silence, into grief, into the father he feared or never knew, into the animal body he was taught to neglect. He must learn the names of his anger and weep beside them. He must bury something before he tries to build anything. No amount of climbing will save the man who refuses to go underground.
The masculine gift is not dominance—it is the ability to contain volatile energy without dispersing it. A man’s task is not to crush chaos, but to hold it. This includes a child’s crying, a friend’s panic, his partner’s sorrow, and his own breaking. He learns to build fires—not to burn things down, but to warm those who’ve forgotten they have skin.
The masculine soul grows quietly. It takes the shape of trees—slow, patterned, underground-connected. It does not require the applause of strangers or the agreement of headlines. It becomes local. Mythic. It reads old books and learns the names of tools. It sends things into the world that do not carry its name.
This masculinity still plays. It wrestles in the leaves, tells terrible jokes, builds small useless things with joy. It befriends the boy and the fool, lets them speak, but does not let them steer. The man who forgets his own mischief becomes brittle. The man who remembers it becomes a river stone—soft and steady.
At its end, the masculine spirit moves toward fatherhood—not merely of children, but of spaces, communities, ideas. He becomes one who tends, who guides, who stays when the fire goes out. Not to be seen. Not to be thanked. But because the world needs more shelter than noise.
The men who are lost in search of their identity are lost only because they’re looking for it in traditional dying gender constructs, when what they should be doing is letting their own authenticity contribute to the aggregate definition what it means to be a man.
Where do you hear that? I do hear it from the LGBTQ community where I guess it makes some sense. But I’ve never heard about a man looking for his identity.
I do hear about people looking for a purpose in life though.
Finding ones identity “as a man” means letting go of whatever you have been told that a man is supposed to be.
I’m 50 and have no idea what that means
My gender is a part of my identity, but nothing I do is really about it or reinforcing it. Being a man is simply what I am — so I’d first try to think outside the gendering of behaviors or personality traits.
Once you accept there is no external definition of a “real man”, you realize the people who talk about it are usually trying to sell you something.
For me, I’m a creator. I write. I sing. I play instruments. I want to pick up acting/VO and video editing, too. The goal is eventually to stop selling my creativity for a corporate salary. I want my output to be both my livelihood and legacy.
Am I anywhere close to that? Nope! It’s going to be a lifelong journey, and that is what’s so exciting.
I found who I .comfortable being.
I fix things, I take charge, I’m tough and a fighter.
I’m a goofball, I like lying down whenever possible.
I love cuddles from my kids. I don’t like other people touching me.
I like working with my hands, I love tech.
I’m a hard man who spent years taking other people’s heads off. I’m a geek who loves talking comics with other geeks. I played rugby, I also play board games.
Who the hell knows what my identity is as a man. I just want to do the things I like and not have any expectations
Having kids shows you exactly who you are and where you’re flawed.
It means life has become too easy for a lot of people and now they have to look for things to get worked up about.
In an agrarian society we would be too tired for such drivel.
You can’t “Find” an identity. It’s not something you buy and wear like a hat.
You’re currently building your identity, whether you want to or not. Lost young man that fell for psychobabble is your current identity. You want to be know by that forever? Just keep doing what you’re doing.
You want to be known in another way? Get busy. Quit talking. Quit deciding. Quit contemplating.
Start doing something.
There’s no such thing as identity. It’s a woowoo word on the internet designed for clickbait. Men’s issue isn’t with who they are but why they are. It’s classic existential angst brought to the surface by sheer boredom and too much time on our hands. Productive men who have families to take care of don’t have time or energy to navel gaze like that.
I have no clue what they’ve been talking about the whole time.
You can’t find your identity when your parents and their parents already fawked it up for you. You’re now just a lost orphan human who just trying to do some good humanity in the world now.
Identity of a man involves with the root of how He became who he are today. His ancestral lineage and what they have done good in this world as part of it.
I never searched for my identity. Turns out, you ARE your identity. Just be yourself, be who you are. No sense searching for someone you aren’t.
I never really understood what people mean by identity in this context. You used the term 5 times in this post, but what does it really mean?
Finding your identity as a man is the same as it is for any human being. It means figuring out what your purpose is in this life, and then getting the hell on with it. Also, treat people decently while you’re doing it — we’re all just trying to fumble through this mess as best we can.
I recommend reading or listening to the audiobook “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. It is a good meditation on the subject of finding one’s own personal journey.
Why it’s the latest razor and deodorant that makes my manly identity what it is. But only after all those supplements that help me replace my gym workout.
Accepting every inconvenient part of myself and moving on from it