A man's path to overcoming neediness | Infinite Devotion Episode 142

Last week I went live to walk through Receiving To Give, the essay for the women. This week I'm going live again for its twin, Giving To Receive, the men's essay I published Friday. It's the most personal thing I've written, about a pattern I lived inside my own marriage for years without being able to name it: a man who gives everything and still comes up empty, because underneath the giving was neediness.

This one's for the men. If you're a woman listening, there's a section near the end written just for you, and it may help you understand the man beside you in a way nothing else has.

In this episode:

The child support story: the years I covered everything for Dawn's daughters, called it generosity, and the quiet sentence running underneath it, now she'll love me, now she'll want me

The simple test for whether a gift is really a gift: what happens when nothing comes back

Why I wasn't actually a giver at all, I was oriented around getting, reading Dawn's mood every day to know if I was okay

Needs versus neediness: a real need resolves when it's met, and why the ones that never resolve aren't needs at all

Why sex was where this showed up loudest, and what I was actually trying to get from it

The boy who learned his feelings weren't welcome, and why that closes a man's heart to survive

Why it wasn't that Dawn didn't love me, it was that I couldn't receive love no matter how much of it she gave

The two men in the same kitchen, same touch, and why she can feel the difference between a gift and a test

The only way out: taking her completely out of the equation and learning to give yourself what you never got