Hey brother, welcome.

In this article, I will tell you one reason you might be struggling to fix or repair your broken marriage. Then, I will tell you how you can avoid this widespread mistake men make when experiencing marriage difficulty.

So let me get right to the point.

Books don’t fix broken marriages any more than movies fix broken bones.

Books don’t fix broken marriages any more than movies fix broken bones.

Sven Masterson, Professional Men’s Mentor – Mentoring.Men

Woah… what have you got against books, dude!

I love books and reading. In fact, I’ve often repeated the quote that someone who doesn’t read has little advantage over someone who can’t! We’re all about reading and educating ourselves here on Mentoring.Men!

So what’s the problem then?

It’s this… the most pervasive recipes given for men to overcome broken marriages don’t work on their own. Reading more books, working out, intermittent fasting and a few more hobbies are all great actions to take and habits to build. However, none of those create lasting change and deep connection and trust in marriage.

Upon discovering they might be having marriage trouble, most men turn to information. They believe they can intellectually work their way out of a problem using the same intellectual-based methods that got them into their problem. That doesn’t work!

While intellect is a meaningful part of the journey, it’s only a tiny part of it. It misses the most powerful, transformative, and impactful force available to men seeking to repair their relationships – connection and community with other men who’ve walked the same path.

Marriage is 3D journey that requires 3D tools to be effective.

Most men experiencing pending separation, divorce, or a wife who just said: “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” often turn right to the internet and to books. While this is a good place to start, many men then continue seeking to solve their troubles using the same.

They don’t realize that they’re trying to experience 3D transformation via 2D information.

In our work, we’ve discovered that this rarely works.

They don’t realize that they’re trying to experience 3D transformation via 2D information.

Sven Masterson, Professional Men’s Mentor – Mentoring.Men

Relying on merely new two-dimensional information is like trying to enjoy a trip through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado by staring at them via a powerful telescope in KS. 

It doesn’t matter how powerful the telescope is or what is seen through the lens – it cannot show the one looking through it the necessary three-dimensional landscape. It fails to fill their nostrils with the smells of the cool and crisp mountain air. 

The viewer may behold the outline and peaks of the Rocky Mountains in part but miss all the depth of what can’t be seen from a distance. It cannot convey the interplay between the birdsong and butterflies in the high meadows. Those can only be seen up close and personal.

Unfortunately, this is how most men try to experience their masculine growth and solutions to their most challenging chapters of manhood. Though a telescope and in 2D.

Men that engage in even minimal 3D connection and community with other men nearly always report an uplift, growth, and encouragement. However, many of these then go right back to having a solo 2D journey. They never really realize that we get out things that we put into them and that a $19 book, though it may be powerful, is often playing pretty small in life.

We never outgrow the need for an ongoing 3D experience with other men’s masculine journey.

Most of a man’s most profound transformation comes from the journeys he takes in his whole person and not those he isolates to his body in the gym, his belly in the kitchen, or his mind as he reads books and blog articles. Transformation happens in the “walking” itself. 

We get much of it from who we experience within ourselves and by our side along the way.

In our experience as a community of men journeying together, the level of passionate participation a man invests his heart into a brotherhood of men is often the best indicator of a man’s “results”.

The men with the most skin in the game tend to score the most points.

Information is never initiation and rarely invitation.

When a man in a long-term relationship like marriage is uncertain in his value, worth, and significance as a man, he tends to take that uncertainty to his female partner. Making him more confident is a role she neither wants to fill nor can.

Sven Masterson, Professional Men’s Mentor – Mentoring.Men

The other missing link with information is that masculinity has always been experienced through the ages partially by invitation and impartation.

We’ve lost much of this in the modern West. We have very few forms of healthy and transformative masculine initiation and invitation. As a result, many men sincerely wonder, “Am I a man? Am I a good man? Do I have what it takes?”. This existential crisis of manhood is often the precursor to marriage conflict.

When a man in a long-term relationship like marriage is uncertain in his value, worth, and significance as a man, he tends to take that uncertainty to his female partner. Making him more confident is a role she neither wants to fill nor can.

Many men experience unhealthy and impotent versions of initiation and invitations into “manhood”. They get initiated into forms of “manliness” that can’t endure hardship. They aren’t based on character, virtue, and heart but on arbitrary milestones of behavior or performance like having sex with a woman the first time, shaving, growing a beard, killing an animal, shooting a gun, ritual hazing, joining the military, getting naked by a bonfire and howling at the moon. 

While many of these might be enjoyable to do in the presence of other males (not the naked campfire stuff though, no thanks!), they don’t impart to a man’s heart an answer to these deep questions about the nature of his heart, mind, and body.

Toxic masculinity?

I’m going to suggest that most of those forms of initiation are ego-driven forms of initiation, and some are what the world is labeling “toxic masculinity”. 

It’s a shame that they’re calling this “masculinity”; they’re right to call it toxic because these are a toxin to the souls of men.

We find that these weak substitutes for masculine initiation leave men high and dry when facing something extremely challenging because they’re all based on some form of “doing” your way to value and worth. 

We see this in many clients and members, many of whom are very successful entrepreneurs, former fraternity members, elite special forces, etc. None of these experiences prepared them to be the kind of man they’d need to be to endure and overcome marriage challenges.

Masculinity based on doing is masculinity that can be easily lost.

At Mentoring.Men have an entirely different kind of initiation and invitation in this community – one that is all about being versus doing and one that cannot be lost, though a man may feel lost one day.

Sven Masterson, Professional Men’s Mentor – Mentoring.Men

Common in many of these forms of imparting masculinity is “achievement”. These immature men haven’t yet realized that eventually, one can’t “do” as they used to, and once they stop doing, they stop also knowing the way to their value and worth.

At Mentoring.Men have an entirely different kind of initiation and invitation in this community – one that is all about being versus doing and one that cannot be lost, though a man may feel lost one day.

No man lacks the means of accepting the invitation.

The only ones who can’t accept our invitation and initiation are the ones who won’t. Why won’t they? Because one can’t accept an invitation or be initiated without ownership.

Without ownership, they must seek the permission and approval of someone else, and it is the fear of letting go of that way of being – boyhood, which scares these men to death.

Leaving behind approval and accepting the invitation into ownership, responsibility, and accountability for one’s self is the invitation to the masculine – one that leads many to stay hiding in the flanks and stay watching it all afar in 2D.

Tired of 2D Manhood and Impotent Initiations?

Are you on one of the most challenging journeys a man can take in marriage? Are you on the verge of experiencing separation, divorce, a cheating partner, or a woman who needs more space?

If that’s you, we invite you to take a deep look at your journey and ask yourself, “in these moments, as I’m struggling the most, am I walking beside other men, or am I solo?”

If you’re going solo, you are trying to endure one of the most demanding challenges in a man’s life – one where he needs maximum clarity solo and in 2D.

Stop peering through the telescope from afar. Upgrade your journey and enter the 3D experience with men who know the way to the victors’ podium of life and marriage.

Ready for more initiated men and to connect face-to-face with men like Sven? Apply to become part of our community today.