What’s Up With Dudes Who Don’t Want to Work?

The Outrageous Amount of Men Who are Work-Averse is Startling

Okay, I’m just going to come right out and ask the question, trying to imply what many of us are thinking: what in the world is up with all of these work-averse men? Is it just me, or are others out there experiencing it, too? I’m not talking about the little, menial tasks and monthly pile-ups of emotional labor, I’m talking about a good-old-fashion, run-of-the-mill income, productive output for the cash we need to survive — what’s happening to the men around us in today’s workforce? I look around and can count so many of my male friends who simply don’t want to work. But even worse than this, they don’t want to work and they refuse to admit that they don’t want to work and refuse to admit the reasons why they’re having difficulties entering the workforce and supporting themselves. It’s frustrating to everyone around it, mostly because we’re expected to play into the self-deceit and go along with the lies. If this doesn’t describe you, congratulations, this story isn’t about you, but it’s probably about someone you know.

Honestly, I don’t have the same experience with my corresponding female friends. I feel like the grand self-delusion that has been the experience of the so-called strong, independent American male is finally running out of steam.

In truth, this isn’t going to be a nice article. I’m not here to co-sign anyone’s bad beliefs, nor am I here to feed anyone soft lies. This will be a lot of what some people need to hear and less of what they want to hear, but if you bear with me and get through it, I assure you, I’ll make it worth your while, whether this applies to you or not.

We men, as a sex, are deflating rapidly as our illusions are shattered by the cold reality that we were left out of the American dream. Propped up by media culture and salesmen that promise everything, we adopted convenient lies that were less likely to bruise our egos. One of those lies was convincing ourselves that we’re permanently on the cusp of “making it big” in some field. Corporate behemoths with armies of marketing departments convinced us that if we just bought their products and fell in line, we too could have the life of our dreams — the life we see on the images of the television, the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of hardworking men out there. Trucking is a pitifully undervalued industry dominated by a male presence, so too are construction and landscaping. These male-oriented trades aren’t fields we should be taken for granted (even if they are, sadly) and are certainly industries characterized by lots of hard work. There are countless others I could name. But there is an underbelly of forgotten, sad guys out there who just can’t seem to get it together no matter how many opportunities they’re given. I sense that untreated mental health problems, media culture, emotional problems, as well as a sense of unbelonging in our hyper-rigid corporate culture are all to blame.

The more I look around at my peers, as an independent guy, the less and less I recognize myself in them. I sense the overbearing corporate monolith that we live under, the one which has been hand-feeding us to keep us as placated and sedate as possible is in-part to blame. Passive, placated people make better consumers. Happy customers make passive, placated people. Alas, we have a cycle on our hands. I sense it’s a mixture of quiet desperation, fear, sadness, and self-loathing.

There’s my friend in California who’s working on his third girlfriend in a year, and by “working on” I mean trying to secure a sugar-mama, and by “girlfriend” I mean a woman who pays his bills in exchange for affection, love, and empty promises. Then there’s the beloved musician on the East Coast, the guy who has high hopes and big dreams, can talk your ear off and tell you all the great things that he’s about to do — the day after tomorrow, of course. There is never any advance in his field that yields any serious economic results. Two years will go by and he still hasn’t done a damn thing. Dear wannabe-actors, yes, I’m talking to you, too.

Then there’s Mr. Change-Fields-Every-Year once the work itself begins to get tough, once the newness wears off and the thrill goes away. He’s work averse in the truest sense, work-averse once work becomes, you know, actually a bit like work. Then there’s the guy who’s “finding himself” still— in his late forties. Of course, he couldn’t just start making money without a plan, yet, an official plan that makes money is what he needs, but it never comes, and alas, he ends up planning his next step for years on end, never accomplishing anything. He puts the cart before the horse and thinks that if he engages in enough hobbies (that don’t pay) he’ll someday get paid for them. If you’re not getting paid to play guitar, you aren’t a professional musician. If you aren’t getting paid to paint, you aren’t an artist, at least not for your profession. There’s nothing wrong with writing as a hobby in your spare time, as many of us writers know, but until it pays the bills, we can hardly call it a profession or a career.

We need to drop the self-delusion bullshit and stop trying to convince ourselves that we’re about to make it in some field when we’re really not. This logic is pathetic, frankly. But I’m not here to be the judgmental critic, standing proudly on my privilege and personal victories, I’m here to empathize and say I understand that the system is weird, man — it values profit above all things human, a despicable game that rewards low-key sociopathic behaviors at the expense of human beings. But, guess what, if we don’t play that game, if we don’t at least learn how to be independent and support ourselves in life, there’s no way around it, we’re asking someone else to foot the bill for us. This is taxing on their humanity.

A friend of mine, when in a discussion about his lack of income, recently asked me if money was all that important. He’s having a woman pay his bills and surviving off of credit cards. He followed up that question with, “Money isn’t everything, you know; what about Van Gogh? What about all the other artists who sacrificed everything to leave us with all of this wonderful art?”

First of all, you’re not Van Gogh. Secondly, nobody today really cares about Van Gogh outside of people who love art. Posthumous celebrities shouldn’t be what we aspire to be. Third, this isn’t the 1990s, life has gotten pornographically expensive over the last three or four decades and it’s not so easy anymore to skate by and survive on bare minimum effort. Apartments rent for $1,400-per-month, on average as of 2018, the world just isn’t what it used to be.

What all of these men have in common is the fact that they seem to buckle under the pressure of any sort of resistance, all-too-often leaving their loved ones caught with their pants down footing the bill. What American men lack today is a true understanding of empathy and common consideration for others. Of course, I have to say it, this doesn’t apply to every single American man, but if we were to take American men, on the whole, it’s safe to say that we’ll find a large portion of them to be a very self-absorbed group of people. Some of them are just frankly too soft and can’t handle the fear, rejection, and anxiety that working induces (I’ll get to this, later). I don’t believe there’s anything innate about us American men that make us so, I believe these to be byproducts of a culture of unfettered capitalism and unadulterated consumerism. We believe our advertisers’ lies, we American men, and it was only a matter of time before our illusions caught up with us.

There was the dude who thought we were good friends who, upon hanging out when I spotted him a few bucks to get coffee (he confessed to me his lack of income), told me in-depth about how he would invite girls out to bars and restaurants, coffee shops, etc., and suddenly pull the “whoops I forgot my wallet“ trick. I had to immediately stop hanging out with this dude after this exchange. Women were all-too-understanding of this ruse, even though I’m certain they always knew what was going on and just patiently and kindly went along with it anyways. If reading what women have to say on Medium has taught me anything, it’s that they absolutely do know this is happening, most of the time, but damn, loneliness sucks and fuck it, what’s a date or two going to harm, even if you have to pay both tabs?

Come to think of it, I’ve had many men confide in me that they do this same activity. I’ve been through a lot of rough times, myself, and always just said, “Yeah, I’d love to hang out, but I don’t have any money, so I wanted to put it out there and leave this on the table, here, for you to decide with full disclosure of what you’re getting yourself into.” The answer has literally always been yes. The cost of a cup of coffee is a small price to pay for that kind of unusual integrity and someone who’s up-front about their situation. Authenticity is hard to come by in today’s world.

The general disposition of all of these guys is, “Just relax, everything will be okay,” and, “I don’t know why you’re freaking out, it’s just money.” They say this all the way up until they can’t pay for something and those around them refuse to, or they have to hear about why people are tired of supporting them.

We’re Here to Understand Your Problems…

I think a lot of this stems from the trust issues most men have in our culture. A lot of men out there are walking around with severe trust issues and can’t ask other people to help them, or even so much as to be honest with us about what’s really going on. I’ll get back to this in a minute, but first, I want to qualify a little bit.

You see, when it comes to economic hardship and going through tough times, you will certainly get an extremely sympathetic ear from me. Actually, you’ll probably get the most sympathetic ear there is. I’m highly critical of the infinite-growth capitalism we have going on and question the idea that we force people into work that they hate to make money to pay the bills, paying the most valuable people among us (coffee farmers — admit it, you crave that damn coffee) the least, and the least valuable among us the most.

I spent a lot of my life very poor. I struggled through tough economies, working long hours at low wage jobs just scrape by — it was never fun, but I did it anyway. It took me a long time and a lot of exploration (and failure) to find what works for me, but I did it. If something happened to my career, tomorrow, I would try the best I could to secure a decent income for myself at a decent establishment. But if I found that nothing was available, I might have to turn to fast food to pay my bills. This is just the reality of the capitalist system we live under, for better or for worse. And it’s wrong for us to coax others into footing for us the bill so we don’t have to do that (I also never bullshit anyone and told them that I was or was about to be more successful than I really was). We need to stop pretending that “rough patches” aren’t a big deal, especially when your “rough patch” starts to tally up into the years where nothing has solidified. If need be, I’ll turn to whatever means necessary to support myself and at least try to survive and if you don’t like a system that forces you to do that, at least speak out against it.

This is all a sign of hard-won maturity that comes with years like those I’ve experienced. It took getting put out at a young age to understand the value of work and the necessity of paying for yourself when no one else will. I’ve slept outside, and it sucks, and I never want to do it again against my will. I’m officially confused as to how so many others have simply missed out on this invaluable life-lesson, especially people who belong to the generations older than mine. It’s as if they pretend they can float forever and the same experiences will never come for them. I was young when I weathered the painful storms of poverty, I couldn’t imagine it in my fifties. Alas, perhaps we need to taste a little bit of hell in order to understand it and make the commitment to ourselves never to go back there.

I went through a vicious streak of depression in 2016 where I struggled to get up and out of bed, much less could I progress very far in my career. A breakup, a loss of a lot of things I’d worked very hard toward, my mother’s ill-health, a lot of things piled up to make my life a living hell. A close friend helped me get through that rough patch economically and I’m still thankful to them for it to this day. This lingered in the backdrop throughout 2017, as well, but I eventually got over it. I sought the help I needed and treated the underlying cause of the depression with mental health professionals (note: not YouTube or other unproven methods) and managed to get my life back in order.

I’m not here to be mean, but what I am here to do is highlight why this drives us crazy — it’s not the inability to work or the inability to secure a lot of money that bothers people, what truly drives the rest of us crazy is the denial about the whole thing. Look, our economy is competitive as hell (which is outside of our control), depression happens, injuries happen, and I totally understand not wanting to go to some corporate hellhole every single day and be treated like hot, fresh garbage — but we need to be honest when these things are happening and not just dump the responsibility on someone else while we pretend it's not happening and that everything is okay. It’s the most insulting when these people pretend that the people paying their bills are nuisances when they bring the subject up.

Life isn’t about frolicking through the meadows, joyfully, while someone else pays our way and pretending that something isn’t wrong with this picture. Every meal we eat, every moment we exist cost someone some hard work somewhere if this is us and we find ourselves in this situation.

What drives me crazy is when people with no money, no income, and no discernable plan to acquire either, have someone else pay for their lives and pretend that everything’s fine — that the world is some rosy place where everything magically falls into place. It’s as insulting as someone who spends 18 hours in surgery only to turn around and thank themselves for pulling through, not the doctor who spent 18 hours fighting to save them. This is what’s insulting to us who have to witness it and, God forbid, those who have to foot the bill for it. The main point I want to drive home, here, is that we owe it to other people to at least be honest with them about what we’re going through. We shouldn’t cover up our economic problems by just casually pretending that everything is okay. If I had a dollar for every unemployed guy I’ve seen pretend to be the CEO of some small company and put that on their social media accounts, even if they hadn’t taken step one toward making that company a reality, just so they wouldn’t have to admit, “Yeah, I’m unemployed, I’m broke, and this sucks,” then I’d be as rich as the multi-level-marketing guy thinks he is.

The thing is, the system will never change until we first admit something is wrong. It’s like we’re going through a significant change in the way work is conducted and pay distributed, yet, everyone refuses to admit when it is affecting them badly and nobody wants to work to change their situation. It's easier, for many people, to mooch off of the goodwill of others, oftentimes lying to save face and keep the facade going, than it is to be upset with our economic circumstances. If you’re depressed or have serious mental health issues going on, if you’re sad over a breakup or a broken marriage, please seek counseling and, or professional psychiatry to see if you can get better. We can’t “help ourselves” or “tough it out” through mental health crises, that’s not the way it works — these things are best dealt with by a professional.

I’ve never been to a city in America where I couldn’t find free or near-free mental health clinics available to anyone who walked in the door. For those interested, simply turn to Google (I prefer Bing) and search for your local city with the words “mental health clinic” or “behavioral health clinic” and almost everywhere can get you into an outpatient program. There’s no shame in getting better, just as there’s no shame in asking others for the help you truly need. But it all starts with us getting honest with ourselves. We must get honest with ourselves and become honest with others before we can start down our path to personal well-being and basic responsibility.

Lastly, if you’re in this situation where you’re absolutely struggling to get on your feet economically, now’s not the time to date. You have literal years ahead of you to secure a healthy and robust dating life in the future, there’s no need to impulsively try to cling to someone else and drag them into your situation. When we get into these types of situations, it’s best for us to sort out our own lives first and then date once we have our shit together. If we don’t do this, we can only give people promises, IOUs about our future selves that may or may not come true. This is dishonest, guys, to say the least. It’s lying, whether we want to admit it or not, and it’s lying because you can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.

We need stronger social safety nets in America. We need healthcare and decent wages. I’m pretty sure these values transcend party affiliation. We need them but people pretending that nothing is wrong while living off of the hard work of others are in-part standing in the way of us getting these things accomplished. We can build a better society and better versions of ourselves if we try and we diagnose the social illnesses we face correctly in the first place.

It’s time for us men to take responsibility for ourselves that we should have been taking all along. If we’re going to claim we’re responsible people, or act like it, it’s time we actually become responsible people. It’s time for us to own our issues, our fuck-ups, and our hang-ups, and it’s time for us to grow and prosper like I know we can. It’s time we ditch the unadulterated egoism and pretend fantasy worlds that make the lives of those around us miserable. We owe it to others, most of all, to become responsible for ourselves, even if that takes place within a system stacked against us. To those of us who are supporting you and who have made it, we’re here to listen, but we need you to be honest with us about what the problem is — we can’t help you if we don’t know, and I think I speak for all of us when I say we refuse to keep throwing cash into the wind in exchange for empty promises and self-delusions of grandeur.