The Unarmoured Man: Reclaiming Strength in a Fractured Age

We are watching an old archetype die.

The stoic, self-contained man; trained to endure, to conquer, to need nothing… this kind of man and the need for this man is fading from relevance. Yet what replaces him is not weakness but a unique kind of awakening. The modern man is not collapsing; he is evolving. He is learning that real strength is not found in armour, but in awareness. Through this transition of what is needed from the world of men, there has been an ambivalence to that need. A lot of men today have struggled with their place in the world, and what is expected of them, and what they expect from themselves. 

For generations, men were conditioned to equate strength with suppression. Emotion became the enemy; vulnerability, a source of shame. But this conditioning has left many emotionally stranded—islands in the stream, as Hemingway wrote—unable to voice pain, deprived of intimacy, and spiritually starved in the quiet isolation of their own endurance.

In my work as a psychotherapist, I see it daily. The soldier who can face combat but not his own grief. The father who can provide for everyone but himself. The young man who scrolls through images of perfection, wondering why achievement still feels hollow. Beneath the thin veneer of what man should be lies the same quiet ache, a yearning to find meaning and to express the inner chorus of one's struggles. Boys are not taught how to hold space, and so, men fail to recognise the relationship of internal parts and so fall to internal conflict. 

Carl Jung warned, “What is not made conscious, comes to us as fate.” The unexamined life becomes repetition. A recursive loop of pain, of powerlessness, of pretending. The very armour that once kept men safe now keeps them unseen. Buries them in the dark of their own making and they become eaten by all the things left unsaid. 

The ancient Hero’s Journey, as Joseph Campbell described, was never about the sword or the dragon; it was about transformation that one must go through in order to find a true understanding and their meaning within life. The battle was only ever a metaphor for the inner confrontation each man must face. The descent into the unknown parts of himself. Our ancestors fought for land; today, we fight for meaning, for connection, for a self not defined by performance.

This modern hero’s journey begins not with glory but through the recognition of the inevitable and ineffable fracture: a divorce, a breakdown, a loss of identity. The fall is the initiation. The call for man to embark on the journey of selfhood. When the persona cracks, what emerges is not weakness but truth. The man who dares to face his inner wilderness will find that the dragon he fears is often guarding his most sacred treasure. This of course applies to everyone; it is not only man that must embark on a journey. But the current state of what it means to be a man has been in such disarray; it is a subject that needs to be talked about. 

Psychology confirms what myth has long whispered: vulnerability is courage in motion. Men who stay emotionally connected through fear are not fragile, they are the ones who heal. Emotional intelligence, as Daniel Goleman reminds us, is not a “soft skill” but a mark of mature power. The maturation of man is one who has embarked on the hero’s journey. He has battled within the jaws of the dragon and found himself in the belly of the beast, only to rise through despair and find reverence in a journey that is both great and purposeful. 

Modern masculinity is not about becoming less of a man; it is about becoming more human. It asks for integration, to unite the warrior with the lover, the stoic with the empath, and the protector with the poet. To be powerful and gentle, disciplined and open, rational and feeling. This synthesis is not contradiction; it is completeness. It is the sacred praxis of ALL parts, and this is necessary for finding balancing and continuity in the evolution of this modern man.. 

But this work cannot be outsourced to culture or to movements alone. The same way that healing the soul doesn’t happen in the therapy room alone. It begins in the quiet moral choices of everyday life. The approaching of the fear, the understanding of what it means to love. The recognition of multiplicity and the establishing of discipline. It’s to listen when every instinct says defend, to love without possession, to apologise without shame. To say, “I no longer know who I’m supposed to be,” and trust that truth enough to rebuild from it.

A man’s duty today is not only to protect but to make safe. It’s to create a form of safety that transcends the physical. Emotional safety. Psychological safety. The kind that allows others to breathe around him without fear of judgement. 

Strength, then, is not measured by how much a man can carry, but by how deeply he can connect. The bravest act is not to win, but to remain open. To stand unarmoured in a world that still romanticises hardness, this is a radical act.

The invitation is this: take off the armour. Step into the myth of your own becoming. Face yourself as both the dragon and the knight. Because only when a man confronts his own depths can he rise with an offering to the world that can truly make a difference.