The Measurement Trap: Why Men Master Goals but Struggle to Love People

​Relationship problems among men often trace back to childhood and upbringing. I fear that many men do not understand the true purpose of life, and this misunderstanding leads to serious issues down the line.

​Growing up, men are taught many things—good things, even—that inadvertently lead to problems later on. From a very young age, boys are conditioned to be protectors and providers. We are taught to build ourselves up so that we can take care of others later in life, whether providing for ourselves, our parents, a spouse, or children.

​In short, men are taught to form relationships with things, activities, and goals rather than people.

​1. The Scorecard Mindset

​We condition men to be strong and in control. As a result, men bond with each other primarily through shared activities: playing sports, hiking, or serving in ministry together. To us, this represents connection. But the activity—not the person—is the primary focus. This is why men rarely have deep, face-to-face conversations in the way women do.

​We are not taught to value relationships with people, but with things we can measure and keep score with:

​If I invest in a business, I can see its growth and progression.

​If I play a game, I can track my stats and performance.

​But a true relationship with a human being—how do you track that?

​2. Courtship as a Conquest

​This difficulty with unquantifiable connection is why marriage becomes a stumbling block for so many men.

​In the early stages, a relationship feels like an adventure or a conquest. The man puts in effort, sees a return, and measures his progress as the woman responds to his overtures. He has a goal he can track—whether that goal is honorable or not. In reality, he is not building a relationship with the woman; he is building a relationship with the goal of acquiring her.

​Once they marry, the goal is achieved. The dynamic switches, and the man suddenly faces a reality where progress can no longer be measured on a chart. Disillusionment sets in.

​Because he has not been trained in the art of human connection, he reverts to what he knows: providing.

​Work becomes the priority.

​The bank account becomes the benchmark.

​The relationship with his wife and children takes a back seat.

​Why? Because relationships are hard to quantify. Why spend an hour talking to my wife? What does it accomplish? How can I track the return on investment of her love?

​It is far easier to track financial security. So, the man concludes: "I will work hard and sacrifice my presence so my family knows I love them." Then, one day, his wife says, "You don't love me. You're never here, and you don't spend time with me."

​The man is shocked: "How can you say that when I exhaust myself every day to provide for this family?"

​3. The Real Currency of Life

​His astonishment comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of life's most important currency: relationship.

​Life is not about conquest, performance, or metrics. It is about connection—getting to know someone, spending time with them, and discovering who they are day after day. Men must realize that while providing for a family is important, nothing is more vital than knowing them. People only feel they truly belong when they are known and loved for who they are.

​To know someone, you must invest time in conversation—not conversations aimed at achieving a goal, but conversations simply to know and love the person.

​Having a wife does not mean you have a relationship with her if you do not invest in her personally. Working 16 hours a day to fill a bank account while remaining emotionally absent is not genuine care. In fact, sitting with your family, listening to them express themselves without measuring or judging them, is a far greater sacrifice than working overtime.

​4. Emotional Avoidance and the Path to Wholeness

​Men are skilled at tasks with clear targets, but we struggle with emotional connection. When emotional issues arise at home, our instinct is to retreat back into activity.

​Instead of having a heart-to-heart conversation with his wife to resolve an issue, a man will work late or head to the gym. He does not realize that the very conversation he is avoiding is the only thing that will strengthen the relationship. Men play a massive role in marital breakdown by being physically present but emotionally absent.

​We are meant to be whole. Men are emotional beings, and neglecting our emotional development nurtures a weakness that eventually manifests as relationship failure.

​5. A Call to Unconditional Love

​Men, let us learn to develop relationships with people purely for the sake of love—not to gain an advantage, reach a goal, or hit a milestone. In true relationship, there is no rush, no benchmark to accomplish, and no metric to track. It is simply to love and be loved.

​God is love, and God is fundamentally about relationship with us. He makes time for us and desires to hear our hearts. Marriage is meant to reflect that divine connection.

​It is a tragedy that many men know more about sports teams, the stock market, and politics than they do about their own spouses and children. Let us shift our focus away from objects, jobs, and hobbies, and invest our lives in the people right in front of us.

Why you feel cheated

 During the courtship process, a man presents himself to a woman as a lover — someone who will take care of her, listen to her, and carry her through life. The man takes her out, pays for her food, opens her door, and treats her with kindness.

In the mind of the woman, she thinks this is what the man will always provide. She believes the man will always protect, provide, and shield her.

The woman comes to the date looking her best, looking beautiful. What message does her outward beauty send to the man? She is saying, "I will bring beauty to your life, pleasantness, and peace." She laughs at his jokes, checks on him, shows concern for his well-being, and presents herself as someone who is here to help build him up in every way. She wants to be an addition to his life, to improve its quality. She respects him and he protects her.

The man loves the woman for the beauty she brings him. External beauty, in the mind of a man, appears to be a symbol of internal loveliness.

The woman loves the man for the love he represents. Paying for the date, opening doors, waiting until she gets home — all mean to her mind that he will put her well-being first.

The man is willing to spend his all on her and she is willing to give her all, herself. This is the promise both genders implicitly make during the courtship stage.

But during the relationship or marriage, the truth is revealed that these things were not true. The man stops doing these acts of love, and the woman reveals that external beauty does not necessarily translate to inward beauty. Conflict arises as both genders abandon their own promises and shift into a blame game. You start to feel, "This is not the person I initially met."

Both genders feel cheated, deceived, and disappointed, and if they do not understand the reality of what is happening, they will seek these highs from a new relationship.

But the truth is, for love to be properly maintained, both have to keep their promises. The man should continue to be the provider — providing love, tenderness, and wooing — the same process from the beginning, and improving upon it. The woman should continue to develop and provide the grace and beauty she presented in the beginning, while finding ways to make things better.

It is the failure to keep our initial promises that leads to the breakdown of our relationships. For love is longsuffering, and love never fails, as the Scripture teaches.

The way you gain is the way you keep. A relationship is constant work. Keep working.

Why did God create Satan?

 Why did God create Satan?

This is a question many people ask, and I understand why. When we see all the suffering in this world, to think that there is a God — a loving God — who is presiding over all of this is maddening to many.

Christians will say, "No, God is loving and is not responsible for this evil. The culprit is Satan, the enemy of God and man." The question then becomes: Why did God create Satan, knowing that he would rebel and create all this chaos and suffering?

God never created Satan. Satan is a character assumed by the highest created being — a being with choice, just like you and me.

God gave all intelligent beings the choice to choose Him or to reject Him. God made a beautiful angel called Son of the Morning, gave him wisdom, and placed him as near to Himself as possible.

The highest being thought he had God figured out. He thought he was wiser than God and rebelled out of his own free choice.

Intelligent beings have the ability to question, to study, and to evaluate. Lucifer, or Day Star, began to question the divine will and concluded that he didn't have to obey the precepts of Jehovah, that he had sufficient wisdom to lead his own path.

You and I will ask, "Why would God give Lucifer free will, knowing that he would rebel?"

You and I wouldn't do it because we are not wise or strong enough to know the outcome of choice, and so we give limited, controlled choices.

But God is not like us. He is infinite in power and wisdom and knows the end from the beginning. He allowed the universe to see where choices outside of His will lead: chaos, misery, terror, and death.

No creature is wise enough to guide himself. No creature knows what the choice being made today will result in a trillion years from now.

The issue is not about not creating Lucifer; any intelligent being could have questioned the divine will. "Why do I need to obey God? Why can't I lead my own life?" Now all the universe has seen that life outside of God is ruin and misery.

Lucifer thought his choices would lead to greatness, to self-exaltation, etc. He never anticipated everlasting ruin. He couldn't anticipate that far because he is a created being. His earlier success in overcoming one-third of the angels emboldened him to believe that God Himself could be overcome. He believed in his wisdom, and his wisdom became foolishness.

How often we see similar things, from geopolitical blunders to our personal failures.

The US launched an operation in early January in Venezuela and captured Nicolas Maduro. It was, in military terms, an almost flawless operation on the US side with minimal casualties. Emboldened by such success, the US thought it had finally found the blueprint for success without the need to put boots on the ground and launched a similar decapitation strike against the Iranian government, killing the supreme leader on February 28th, the first day of the operation. One of the aims was to force regime change. We are now in August 2026 and fighting is still ongoing, with the global economy being held hostage through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The planners in Washington didn't plan for such a long war and didn't anticipate such a long fight, but here we are.

Even now in the United States, there is an effort to deport a massive number of immigrants. The policymakers think doing so will make things better, but the truth is we have no idea how the expulsion of so many people will impact us down the line.

Likewise, in our personal lives, we make choices that we think are tried and true — proven strategies that lead to ruin. We think we can control outcomes, and lo and behold, things end up in ways we never even thought of.

The issue is that you and I, no matter how wise, do not know everything there is to know, and as a result, there will always be factors outside of our control. We see leaders getting into power genuinely desiring to help their people; circumstances come into play and they end up being murderous tyrants.

We see people getting married, genuinely planning to love each other, and end up hating each other. They planned one thing, but circumstances developed that led them on a completely different path. They all thought they knew what they were doing and had sufficient wisdom to carry out their plans, but ruin is what they found.

The truth is that you and I simply don't know the outcome of our choices. We don't know where today's choice will lead 5, 10, or 15 years from now. The best way to be certain of our path is to put our trust in God and allow Him to lead.

This is the lesson the entire intelligent universe is currently learning with the rebellion of Satan, his angels, and mankind. No creature can guide his own path without God, and I am speaking of every decision here. Decisions have ripple effects, and we have no idea where they lead. God knows the end result of each decision.

Let us then put our trust in God in all that we do. This is the only true path to peace and prosperity, the only path to true wisdom. God knows, and I don't.

If Lucifer, who was the highest created being, by his own choice has led himself to everlasting ruin — and trust me, his choices and decision-making process involved greater thought and rationale than I have the capability to do — how much hope do we have in trusting in our own feeble thought process and capabilities? Without God to guide us step by step, our choices, even if they appear good today, will eventually lead to decay and ruin. Nations fall decades or even centuries after critical mistakes were made. Sometimes it is not until we reach the bottom that we see the path we were on. Historians look back and say, "Here was the beginning of the end." Let us be wise and put our trust in Him who knows the end from the beginning.

"I know, O LORD, that a man's way is not his own; no one who walks directs his own steps." — Jeremiah 10:23 (Berean Standard Bible)

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is the way of death." — Proverbs 14:12

Why

 Why?

​A lot of people think the United States is being run by a greedy oligarchy. These men are in government or behind government simply to profit themselves and make more money.

​Let's look at President Trump, for example. He is already a billionaire and yet he is seeking to make more money, using the office of the presidency to make more deals for himself, his family, and his friends.

​The question many people ask is: why?

​The president is 80 years old and already financially secure. Why in the world does he need more money?

​You look at these huge corporations making millions of dollars, and yet they are seeking to increase profits next quarter, to make even more money, to increase market share. Why?

​To leave behind economics and go into romance: some kings in history had hundreds of wives and concubines. Why? What true relationship can you possibly maintain with all these women? One is simply robbing other men of women and robbing the women themselves of genuine affection.

​You go to school, take out a lot of loans, and acquire multiple degrees. Why? Now, you are drowning in debt and the jobs you find don't pay you adequately.

​An Arab prince who has hundreds of cars in his parking garage: why? Will he seriously be able to drive all these cars? Isn't it a waste of resources that could benefit the nation?

​Or a person who has a closet full of clothes they never wear, buying expensive shoes that never see the light of day. I think there was a president's wife—Marcos of the Philippines—who had countless shoes in her closet. Why? A waste of national resources.

​See, the thing is, we can see the issue when the billionaire is not satisfied with his billions and seeks more, but we can't see it when it applies to us. It is said that this world has enough resources to feed us all, but greed has turned it into a place of the haves and the have-nots.

​See, the thing is, all these things we talked about are good, but taken to an excess, they cause ruin. It is good to have money, for the world system operates on money to help facilitate commerce; but when money becomes the aim of life itself, it corrupts the soul as a person seeks to fill his inner void at the expense of others.

​Having one wife is good—the Lord Himself prescribed it—but when women become the aim of life, they become objects to manipulate, use, and dispose of, or to have as trophy wives to put on display and nothing else, robbing them of their humanity and other men of a good wife.

​It is good to have degrees if the aim is to do a particular thing that requires degrees, but there comes a point where having the degree becomes a matter of ego and prestige, and it corrupts the soul.

​The reason we seek more and more of things that we know at a certain point no longer satisfy is to maintain appearances, to feed our ego, to compete with others, and to make ourselves seem better than them. It is a psychological attempt to fill the spiritual void deep in our soul—the need to feel important, loved, and honored.

​But these attempts can lead to the ruin of others, as with what oligarchies do, whether through robbing the workers, manufacturing wars for profit, etc. Or the Arab prince robbing the nation of its wealth while he lavishes it on expensive cars, or you robbing yourself of peace by being restless in keeping up with the Joneses and ruining your health or finances to maintain the appearance.

​The truth is, we all have something we believe will satisfy us if we can only have one more, like the drunkard who thinks one more drink will do it. The thing is, experience has taught us it's not true.

​The only thing that "one more of" will not only satisfy us, but also do no harm to self or others, is the love of Christ.

​While it is good to pursue things, do all things in moderation, lest you become consumed by them and start to live an absurd life that to you makes sense, but is in reality utter foolishness.

​The only cure for greed, the love of display, and keeping up with the Joneses is to seek more of the Lord; this alone will keep us balanced and content with what we have.

Sin as Identity

 The more acceptable a sin is to society, the worse it is for the person struggling with it. Sin seems like an easy thing until you try to break free from it. The more sin is nurtured, the more it grows. Eventually, sin becomes one with the person—it becomes your identity.

​This is why many who are caught up in a homosexual lifestyle identify with it. The hold is so powerful that it feels like this is simply who you are. From a young age, before we are even aware of it, a tendency begins to develop toward a particular vice. Unless it is checked early, it will—like an anaconda—envelop the entirety of our being. The vice becomes your defining feature, your raison d'être. Sometimes we mistake the vice for a virtue; we embrace its death grip, and it grows. The serpent may seem to smile at us as it tightens its hold, sometimes leaving enough wiggle room to allow us to think we are free. But try to escape, and the monster will reveal its true death grip upon the soul.

​A person struggling with things society condemns, like theft or prostitution, may find themselves in a better position to be rescued from sin's vice grip than those dealing with socially acceptable sins—such as the love of money, premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexuality, pride, and hatred.

​Why? Because those dealing with fashionable sins do not realize the power those sins hold over them, precisely because society does not condemn them. The thief knows there is human punishment if he is caught, so he may be more willing to accept that he needs help. The prostitute may see her degradation and realize she needs help. The drug addict may see his impending ruin and his impotence in freeing himself.

​In contrast, the man who loves money cannot see how much of a slave he is, and because society honors him for his wealth, he will not seek to break free. Similarly, a person caught in the grip of homosexuality is catered to by modern society and cannot see the destructive impact it is having on him. He fails to see that the depression and anxiety he experiences are the result of an unnatural affection; society tells him he feels this way only because others are unaccepting. Thus, he remains on the path to moral ruin without realizing it.

​A woman who is vain or selfish might be excused by society, but she is still dealing with sin, and it will eventually become her identity. Likewise, the man who is hungry for power or the person who is chronically impatient or unloving, are all dealing with destructive sins that will ruin the soul sooner or later, unless the sinner comes to Christ.

​When we say, "This is just who I am," if any part of the character traits we are describing is not in harmony with God's character, we can know we are dealing with something we need deliverance from.

​It is only as a person begins to come to Christ that they realize the power of sin in their life. You begin to see that your entire identity has been shaped by your particular sin, and that only God can save you. At some point, you realize the only way to be saved is for God to destroy who you were. The problem, however, is that the destruction of one's former self is so painful that many simply choose to find comfort in their old identity.

​The closer a person draws to God, the more they realize that true religion is not simply about going to church, but about the need to die daily to whatever identity they held before truly coming to Christ. The old self must die, and this process is perhaps more painful than physical death, for it means dying while you live. You walk through life while the Lord works to destroy the sinful self and recreate you in the image of His Son.

​The sooner we realize our old identities must die, the better we will understand the true nature of Christianity. Christianity is not the improvement of the old life, but its destruction and the birth of a new one. Everything impure in us must be destroyed as we are renewed in Christ Jesus. Unless we are continually dependent on God moment by moment, we will not be able to endure the severe ordeal of inner purification.

​When we hear that we are sinful, it means our very identity has been corrupted by sin. To be holy is for Christ to become our identity—to reach a place where our entire life is centered upon Him and every decision is made for His glory. He alone can accomplish such a work in our lives, but we alone can give Him permission.

This is why you are miserable

 The root cause of human misery is idolatry. What is idolatry? It is putting created things before the Creator.

​There is a deep void within man that needs to be filled. Man was made for relationship and connection. He wants something that can satisfy his deepest longings—the longings of the soul.

​Man is a dualistic being at minimum. He has a physical body and an inner being. The physical body can be defined as his earthly home through which he relates to the material world. The physical part of man needs physical food to survive and material comforts to thrive. The physical part of man allows him to relate to the other creatures on the planet. Animals eat, drink, have sexual relationships, etc., and man participates in the same via his physical nature.

​But life in the physical home alone will not satisfy him, for he also needs to feed his inner man, his higher nature. The higher nature needs deep, intimate relationships. The inner nature seeks a deep connection. The higher nature wants to be accepted, known, and loved as is. Man wants to be loved in his totality.

​But this is difficult because man is evil; he has flaws and can find it challenging to find someone who will accept him as he is if they were to know him in his fullness. To many, a mother's love is the highest form of love they know, for a mother or father tolerates us with many of our faults. They know us. But for others, even a parent's love doesn't cover the entire inner man. There is still misunderstanding; there is still rejection.

​Life can be frustrating when the needs of the inner man are not met—when you feel no one understands you. It is a painful experience to live without a deep inner connection with anyone.

​Idolatry is the attempt to fill that void with created beings or created things. The problem is that created things can't fulfill it; it's too deep. For you to feel completely loved, you would need someone to completely understand you: to know what you are trying to accomplish when you do something, what your true intentions are when you say something, and so forth. You need someone who understands your thought process and with whom you have a perfect understanding.

​The thing is, this level of intimate knowledge is hard to come by because many people don't even understand themselves, much less others. Many people are so distracted in life that they have no time for introspection, so forget about them trying to intimately know another.

​We try to force or manipulate others to love us, to stay with us. Some of us get clingy and basically suffocate others in our search for a deeper intimacy, and their lack of response leads to great misery. Sometimes in our attempt to get their love through deceptive means, they go away from us, which leads us to deeper despair. And so, human relationships end up in misery. To seek that deep, intimate relationship with humans first and foremost will lead to misery, frustration, and inner anger.

​Some people, having seen the failure of having true intimacy with humans, seek to fill the void with pleasure, materialism (money), and whatever else they feel provides them with some form of comfort. Yet these things, being inanimate, cannot fulfill, and the soul is left desolate. Violence and all manner of destructive behavior follow as a result.

​The Creator is the only One who truly understands us, accepts us, and can fulfill our innermost longings. The Creator, being a Spirit, can connect with our spirit. Being all-knowing, He knows all our innermost parts. Being all-loving, He loves us to the innermost core. He knows what we need, when we need it, and how we need it. He made us primarily for a relationship with Him, and from our relationship with Him, we learn how to have relationships with others.

​Idolatry is Satan's cruel work to make us seek satisfaction from material things—which are beneath us and can't fulfill the soul—or from other people, who are focused on their own needs being met first and yours second.

​Reliance on God will fulfill your deepest longings and make you strong. You will have Someone who is never too busy to hear you, never tired of hearing you, and knows how to sustain you.

​Idolatry makes us weak and feeble as we put our dependence on selfish human beings, but reliance on God makes you strong enough to sustain another person as you lead them to Christ.

​The best thing you can do in life is to ask God for the strength to remove all idols and to put Him first. Trust me, it's for your own happiness.

Source of true strength

​Life is immensely challenging, and every one of us needs an anchor to fortify us through its trials. The fundamental question we must ask ourselves is: where do we find our strength?

​As created beings, we do not possess infinite strength within ourselves. Consider a growing child. A child is inherently dependent on their parents, not only for physical sustenance, but for emotional stability. They rely on love and affection to develop into a healthy individual—mentally, morally, and spiritually.

​When I speak of the spiritual aspect, I am not referring strictly to formal religion; I am speaking of the inner person. The internal self requires nourishment to survive and mature. If a child does not receive that crucial affirmation at home, they inevitably seek it elsewhere—through friends, authority figures, or sometimes even destructive groups like gangs. Even in bad company, what they are fundamentally seeking is a sense of brotherhood, belonging, and affection that tells them their life matters.

​Without love and a sense of inherent worth, surviving life’s hardships becomes nearly impossible. Life cannot be reduced to merely eating, drinking, and tending to the physical body; the inner person must be fed. We see this vividly in many affluent Western societies. Material wealth may be abundant, yet depression, anxiety, loneliness, and despair run rampant. Many lose the very will to live because they feel unloved and disconnected.

​In response, people place their trust in substitute sources of strength: money and wealth, intellect and wisdom, and status and position. The fatal flaw with these sources is that they are inherently temporary and subject to failure. In your time of ultimate need, money cannot heal a broken spirit, friends may move away or pass on, spouses can be overwhelmed, health can deteriorate, jobs can disappear, and armies can desert their king. Whenever we anchor our lives to something that changes, we risk total collapse when that anchor gives way.

​This reality echoes the biblical warning in Jeremiah seventeen verse five: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord."

​Human support systems, while valuable, are finite. Only God remains constant. No bad weather, financial hardship, or physical trial can hinder God from stepping in to sustain us.

​When a person truly feels loved, valued, and anchored by God, they gain an inner resilience that makes them virtually unstoppable. The internal spirit is restored. Conversely, when we reduce ourselves to mere biological matter—random atoms with no higher purpose—it is easy to fall into despair during difficult seasons.

​To build an enduring life, we must make God our primary anchor. First, immerse yourself in His Word; discover how God views you. When the world tells you that you are worthless, Scripture reminds you that you are deeply valued and intentionally made. Second, maintain honest prayer; bring your genuine frustrations, fears, anxieties, and disappointments directly to God. Never hesitate to ask Him specifically for strength and fortitude.

​Materialism has its place, but it will never satisfy the inner soul. Seek your strength, wisdom, and purpose in the Lord. When He becomes your anchor, you will find the fortitude to endure any storm and truly thrive