Stephen Kuhn

In the past few weeks we have been taking a deeper look at a few false identities men are prone to latch onto. So far we have looked at how men turn to Social Groups and Hobbies to define them. This week, we will be looking at how some men pursue romantic relationships in their search for an identity. Please feel free to subscribe to the blog and follow along with us through this series.

Romantic Relationships

Perhaps one of the more damaging tricks Satan plays on men is to convince us to look to romantic relationships to find our identity. This is one reason why men are so easily drawn to porn—because it can temporarily make them feel as if they’ve found the missing piece of their soul they’ve been searching for. But no woman, regardless of whether she is flesh and bone or pixels on a screen, can ever give a man his true identity.

I bought into this lie big time. I sought my identity through romantic relationships for the majority of my postpubescent life, which explains why most of those relationships were long-term but always ended in disaster.

I can now see that the pattern was quite predictable. I would meet a girl who was interested in me and quickly become captivated by her. I’d adjust my entire life to orbit around her—spending as much time with her as I could—often at the expense of all other relationships. Her friends became my friends. Her interests became my interests. We would quickly become sexually active, which made me feel validation as a man. All of this fed into me establishing my identity—and seeking my fulfillment—in being “So-and-so’s guy.”

Over time, though, the identity I was seeking would never satisfy because it wasn’t the true answer to who I was. The feeling that something was missing in the relationship would become stronger and stronger, and I would begin to feel a desire to look elsewhere for answers. Once I reached this point, the girl would inevitably sense me disconnecting from her. She would begin to feel like she wasn’t good enough for me anymore but didn’t know why. Once this began to happen, it was only a matter of time before we would start drifting apart.

Eventually, I would meet some new girl and start to feel like she might be the answer. My current girlfriend wouldn’t seem to be meeting my need for fulfillment in life, so perhaps this new girl, complete with all the passions that come with a new relationship, would be what I was missing. So I would break up with my current girlfriend and move on to the new one, and the cycle would repeat itself.

This same pattern defined my marriage as well. By the time I started to feel that my wife was no longer satisfying my need for an identity, she had already sensed my distance and taken personal responsibility for it as if it were her fault. Her self-esteem plummeted as she became more and more confused about what was happening to us. My expectations of her validating me and providing me with an identity had put her in an impossible position. It was wreaking havoc on her and on our marriage. It breaks my heart to look back at this now because I see how much pain I could have saved my wife, as well as my previous girlfriends, if I had recognized this pattern earlier.

I can’t tell you how many couples I have seen divorce for no better reason than “we just don’t get along anymore” or “irreconcilable differences.” But what causes two people who deeply love each other to grow apart and eventually give up? What causes a couple to move from craving each other’s company every chance they get to fighting intensely about which brand of coffee to buy? Are these fights actually the outpouring of frustration resulting from your spouse not meeting your need for validation—a need she was never designed to meet in the first place? Are you placing unspoken and impossible expectations upon her and setting her up for inevitable failure? As long as you look to someone other than God to provide your identity, she will fail you, and it will cause pain for everyone involved.

Continue on to Part 5: Who God Says You Are

This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available now.

For more information, or to sign up for updates, please visit the
Belt of Truth Bookstore.

In the past few weeks we have been taking a deeper look at some of the more common false identities men are prone to latch onto. Last week, we looked at how our Social Groups can distract us from discovering who God says we are. This week, we will be looking at how we use Hobbies to define us. Please feel free to subscribe to the blog and follow along with us through this series.

Hobbies

I could write an entire book outlining all the ways I’ve attempted to find my identity through hobbies, but there is one that stands above the rest—being a mountain man. Here’s a segment I wrote for an outdoor podcast explaining what I mean in a little more detail:

Once I got a taste of mountain climbing I was hooked. Our shared hobby of hiking as a couple had mutated into a singular passion that my wife didn’t share. She would have been more than willing to go for a hike with me along a beautiful river, or even an overnight backpacking trip to a majestic mountain lake, but I had become obsessed with climbing and, over time, allowed the “We” trips to all become “Me” trips. I’d be gone for hours on training runs or hauling my pack up the local hill multiple times a week. In the rare event that I was home physically, I was in the mountains mentally. The more I pursued climbing, the less I pursued my wife. I started to see her as a hurdle in my climbing quest. I stopped asking her if I could leave for the weekend and started telling her that I would be gone. I couldn’t see it at the time, but I had chosen the mountains over her. (If you’re interested, you can hear the whole story here.)

I had allowed mountain climbing to become my false identity. I had found something I was good at, and it seemed to impress others. I could strike up a conversation with people and once they found out I was a climber they were suddenly more interested in talking with me. People knew me as the guy who climbs mountains, which made me feel rugged, macho, and manly. As Dr. Phil might say, it stoked my male ego.

But hobbies can never define you on the deepest level or show you who you truly are. You can keep climbing taller mountains, master your golf swing, or take bigger and bigger risks in the stock market hoping that it will finally meet some unknown need in your life, but you will always need to come back for more when the satisfaction inevitably wears off. Sure, hobbies are great and highly fulfilling, but if you are honest with yourself, you probably sense that no matter how much time and effort you devote to them, you will always crave just a little bit more.

Your hobby may be something you do, something you enjoy, but if you allow it become who you are—your false identity—it will fail you.

Continue to Part 4: Romantic Relationships

This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available now.

For more information, or to sign up for updates, please visit the
Belt of Truth Bookstore.

Last week, we began a new series taking a deeper look at some of the more common false identities men tend to latch onto, as well as the truth about who God says you are. Today, we will be looking at how our social groups can distract us from discovering who God says we are. Please feel free to subscribe to the blog and follow along with us through this series.

Social Groups

I had no idea who I was as in middle school, so I kept trying on new identities to see if any of them would bring me lasting fulfillment. And like most teenagers, I believed that fulfillment would come once I discovered an identity that granted me acceptance into the right social group.

I tried out life as the funny kid, desiring to be loved and accepted for my wit and humor. When that didn’t work, I tried to define myself as a Rollerblader, hoping that the athletic adrenaline junkie crowd would think I was cool. I actually wore my kneepads and wrist guards all day at school so everyone could see how hardcore I was (it was the 90s—cut me some slack).

Photo credit: geo462rge

Nothing ever fit quite right, so I started experimenting with shadier identities—rebel, smoker, stoner, raver, and on down the line. Every time I tried on a new identity, I would jump into the new culture with reckless abandon in an attempt to gain answers to who I truly was. This pursuit led me into all kinds of negative behaviors, like shoplifting, drug use, and heavy partying. Ironically, I continued to stay involved with my church youth group this entire time, yet I never thought to look at who God said I was. I kept looking to my circle of friends to define me.

We really aren’t that different as adults, are we? We may have become smarter about navigating social circles since we were in high school, but the underlying search for an identity still continues. Many of us are still searching for our identities in the sports team we root for, the political party we support, or other social circles we are proud to be a part of.

For example, are some Yankee fans so passionately opposed to Red Sox fans because they have placed their identity in being a Yankee, and to root against the Yankees is to root against them personally? Likewise, if your identity is in a political party and someone votes for the opposing party, it feels like they are voting against you personally. Every time they state an opinion your party disagrees with, you take it as an assault on your own character.

When you allow your social circles to define who you are, you end up seeking fulfillment and happiness from a group of people and the circumstances that surround them. When things are going well, you are happy. When people agree with you and accept you, life seems wonderful. But what happens when things change for the worse, as they inevitably will? This is why it’s so important to find your identity in something—or more specifically, Someone—who will never change.

Continue to Part 3: Hobbies

This post has been adapted from my new book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available now.

For more information, or to sign up for updates, please visit the
Belt of Truth Bookstore.