A short talk by Connor Beaton about the emotional 'father wound' many men carry — the pain from an absent, abusive, or weak father figure and the resulting lack of transmitted masculinity, guidance, and role modeling. Beaton frames the father archetype as providing what a boy actually needed (not just what he wanted).
A lot of men carry a very deep wound from their father. Not having a father present, having a father who is abusive, a father who is kind of complacent or weak willed, let mom run the show, etc. And what it is is essentially the pain of not being loved for or cared for in the way that you needed from your father. It's the pain that you carry as a man for having been a boy who needed something different from his father. Maybe you didn't get certain guidance, maybe you didn't have a role model to look up to, a direction that you could move towards as a man for not having gotten the transmission of masculinity, the transmission or the modeling of what it means to be a man within the world. And so I've wandered through the world without a real sense of having had a father. So part of the father archetype is about not giving you what you want but providing you with what you actually needed.
How to Raise Strong, Unshakable Boys in Today's Culture, with Dr. Shefali Tsabary
