The burden of performance, and how to escape it

In this email, we want to bring a few concepts together: nice guyism, the male burden of performance, and the missio Dei.

So, what is the male burden of performance? We came at it obliquely in the last email by talking about man’s creational vocation of dominion. Today we’ll explain it more fully.

Rollo Tomassi summarizes the idea quite well in The Rationale Male: Preventive Medicine:

Men are expected to perform. To be successful, to get the girl, to live a good life, men must do. Whether it’s riding wheelies down the street on your bicycle to get that cute girl’s attention, or getting a doctorate degree to ensure your personal success and future family’s, Men must perform. Women’s arousal, attraction, desire and love are rooted in that conditional performance. The degree to which that performance meets or exceeds expectations is certainly subjective, and the ease with which you can perform is also an issue, but perform you must.

He goes on to write:

For Men, there is no true rest from per…