Somebody reading this is worried about a man. A husband, a brother, a father, or the friend you have known since you were fifteen who has stopped answering the group chat. You have noticed something is off. He is drinking more, or sleeping less, or he laughs at the right moments but there is nothing behind it. And you have said nothing, because you do not know what to say and you are afraid of getting it wrong.
I want to take that fear off you, because it is the thing that gets men killed. Not the absence of people who love them. The presence of people who love them and do not know how to open their mouths.
You do not need the right words
There are no right words. I ran 2,300 miles from Los Angeles to Jacksonville in 56 days and I still do not have the right words. What I have is a willingness to be awkward, which turns out to be the whole thing.
When you wait for the perfect sentence you are really waiting for permission, and it never comes. The clumsy version works. “You have seemed off for a while and I have been thinking about you” works. It works because it is obviously true, and men can smell a script from across a room. What they cannot easily dismiss is somebody who clearly came to them on purpose and is nervous about it.
Ask twice
This is the only piece of this I would call a rule. Ask twice.
The first answer is almost never the real answer. It is the reflex that was installed in him when he was about eight years old. He is fine. He is tired. Work is busy. That is not a lie exactly. It is a door being held closed by a man who is not sure yet whether you actually want it opened.
So let the first answer sit there for a second. Then ask again, smaller. “I hear you. I meant the other thing though. How are you actually doing.” Half the time that is the whole conversation. The second ask is the part that tells him you were not just being polite.
Do not lead with advice
The instinct when a man finally tells you something heavy is to fix it immediately, because the weight of it is uncomfortable and fixing is how we make discomfort go away. Resist that for as long as you can stand to.
The moment you start solving, you have changed the subject from him to the problem, and he will feel that happen. He will also feel the quiet implication that what he said was a request for a plan rather than a confession. It was neither. It was a man finding out whether he can say a true thing out loud and have the room stay the same.
So let the room stay the same. Say that sounds heavy. Ask how long it has been going on, and whether anyone else knows. Those questions keep him talking, and him talking is the entire objective. You can get to advice next week.
What to do if he says yes, it is bad
If he tells you he is in a dark place, do not panic in front of him, and do not hand him a phone number and leave. The phone number is right. The leaving is what undoes it.
Ask directly whether he is thinking about hurting himself. People are terrified that asking plants the idea. It does not. It is usually a relief, because he has been thinking about it alone and now he is not. If the answer is yes, stay with him and get him to a professional that day, and in the United States the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a free call or text away.
If the answer is no but things are clearly bad, your job is smaller and longer. Your job is to be the person who follows up. Not once. Thursday, and the Thursday after that. Men do not believe they are worth checking on, and the only argument against that is a person who keeps showing up after the dramatic part is over.
What to do if he says nothing
Sometimes you do everything right and he still gives you nothing. That is not a failure, that is a timeline. He knows you asked. He will remember that you asked on a night you are not present for, and that is worth more than whatever closure you wanted from the conversation.
Then do the thing this organization is named after. Go for a walk with him. Side by side, no agenda, no eye contact required. Something about moving forward next to another man loosens things that sitting across a table never will. That is not a theory I read. That is 56 days of it.
Why this matters to me
I ran across this country because I got tired of hearing about men after it was too late to do anything for them. Fifty six days, 2,300 miles, Los Angeles to Jacksonville. You can watch what that looked like in our documentary here: Miles for Men.
But I am not the point of this article. The point is that you are already close enough to a man to have noticed. That is the hard part and it is already done. What is left is a conversation you are overthinking.
Go have it badly. Badly is fine.
Questions we are often asked
What do I actually say to start the conversation?
Name what you noticed and nothing else. “You have seemed off since the summer and I wanted to ask about it.” Specific observations are hard to wave away, while a general “everything okay?” is almost designed to be answered with yes. Then stop talking and let the silence do its work.
He said he is fine. Do I just drop it?
No. Ask a second time, smaller, and then leave the door open instead of pushing on it. Something like “alright, but I am around and I am not going to make it weird” costs you nothing and changes what he believes is available to him. Then check in again in a week or two without making it an event.
Should I tell his wife, or his family, that I am worried?
If you believe he is in immediate danger, yes, and tell them today. Short of that, going around him can read as a betrayal and can cost you the access you currently have, which is the one useful thing in this situation. Try instead to get him to tell someone himself, and offer to be in the room when he does.
How do I keep checking on him without becoming annoying?
Keep it short and ordinary. A text that says “thinking about you, no reply needed” is not a demand and cannot really be refused. Consistency is what reads as love here, not intensity. The man who texts every other Thursday for a year does more good than the man who has one long emotional conversation and then disappears.
What we do
Walk With Me Brother exists to get to men before the obituary does. We are a 501(c)(3), which means everything we do runs on people deciding this is worth paying for. If this article was useful to you, make a donation here and it goes straight into reaching men who are not being reached.
And if you are responsible for a room full of men, a company, a team, a church, a union hall, I come and talk to them. Not a motivational speech. The real version of what I just wrote. Enquire about a speaking engagement here.