How to Be a Strong Man Without Being a Jerk
Want to know how to be a strong man without being a jerk? Strength is what you can carry and control, so train your temper, hold your standards calmly and own your mistakes.
By Your Bro · · Self Improvement
In Road House, Patrick Swayze's character Dalton has one rule he gives every new bouncer he trains: be nice. Be nice until it's time to not be nice. Then the whole movie is a guy who can break your arm and would honestly rather talk you out of the door. That's the picture most of us carry around of a strong man, and somewhere along the way a lot of guys got the first half of the lesson wrong and decided strong means loud and always right.
So you want to be strong without turning into a jerk. Maybe somebody told you that you come off as harsh, or you caught your kid flinching when you raised your voice. Maybe you went the other direction and spent years being agreeable, and now you're wondering where your spine went. Either way, you're asking a better question than the guy who never asks it.
Strength is what you can carry
The fact of the matter is simple: a jerk is a weak man with a loud voice. The guy barking at the waiter or flexing on his wife in front of friends is trying to look big because he doesn't feel big. Real strength shows up in what you can carry without needing anybody to notice. Can you pay the bills, protect your people, keep your word and stay level when the day goes sideways? I've written before about why you should be the provider, and it fits here, because a man who handles his responsibilities has nothing to prove at the dinner table.
Control yourself before you control anything else
Ask yourself how you act when you're tired and stressed, because that's your actual character. Most guys who snap at their family aren't bad men, they just never trained the half second between feeling something and doing something. Build that gap on purpose. Breathe before you answer, walk out of the room if you have to, and come back when you can talk like an adult. Hell, a man who can lose an argument gracefully is stronger than the one who has to win every single one.
Hold your standards without punishing people for them
Nice guys and jerks make the same mistake from opposite sides. Neither one is willing to say a hard thing calmly. The nice guy swallows it until he blows up, and the jerk says it with a knife in it. A strong man says it once, plainly and without heat: this is what I expect, this is what I won't accept and here's what happens if it keeps going. I wrote in You Get What You Accept in Relationships that people only treat you as well as you let them, and that applies to how you treat other people too.
Own your mistakes out loud
I spent years in relationships I should have left much sooner, and plenty of my worst moments came from covering up how I felt with attitude. A lot of jerks are just guys protecting something sore. I wrote a Bro Chat about that called Your Shame Is Trying to Save You, and if you recognize yourself in the guy who gets defensive the second he's wrong, start there. Saying "I was out of line, I'm sorry" takes more guts than any shouting match, and your wife and kids will remember it a lot longer.
Be the guy who is safe to be around
I leaned on Swingers in You're a Big Bear for a reason, because a confident man doesn't have to prove anything and everybody around him can feel it. Kids run toward that guy and his wife relaxes when he walks in. Do you want to be feared in your own house, or counted on? The answer to that question tells you how to behave tomorrow morning.
Where to start
If you want a step-by-step plan for building the discipline and the calm that real strength runs on, take a look at The Strong Men System. It's built to give you something to do this week, so you can stop wondering what a strong man looks like and start acting like one.