Hey Reader,

I spent yesterday driving home from Washington, D.C., and dictated a lot of what I’m about to share, heading north on roads I could almost drive with my eyes closed. Being from the greater D.C. area and living in northern Pennsylvania for nearly 30 years, I’ve spent more hours than I can count on Route 15 — first with kids in car seats and a Pack-and-Play in the back, later with teens wearing headphones and zoning out the whole way.

A few hours earlier, I’d hugged my oldest daughter at the airport and watched her disappear past security for her first solo trip to Europe.

It wasn’t all that long ago that she came into the world, and my heart rearranged itself overnight. Becoming the dad of a baby girl awakened something in me I didn’t even know had been dormant. In those first days, new instincts surged in with a force I wasn’t prepared for. I went out and bought my first firearm soon after… and eventually a backhoe (okay, that wasn’t really about her, but it’s a running father–daughter joke between my girls and me—and their suitors). Something in me had shifted. I wasn’t just a man anymore; I was a protector.

She’s 20 now, and this isn’t the first time she’s ventured out into the world. She’s spent summers working at camp, traveled around the States on her own, climbed mountains, camped in the woods, secured new jobs, and handled herself well. She even planned and paid for this entire trip by herself. But this one is different. Trains. Planes. New countries. New languages. New people. And an ocean between us (4,149 miles, you know... not that I'm checking or anything).

Then this morning, I checked my messages and saw she was on a train to Dachau, the first concentration camp built in Germany during World War II.

My heart caught in my throat.
Proud of her curiosity and courage.
Yet uneasy about the reality she was stepping toward.

How did we get from the innocence and fun of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” to her walking the grounds of humanity’s darkest moments?

There’s a part of me that grieves that shift.
The part of me that knows she’s capable…
And the part that still sees her as the little girl who fell asleep on my chest night after night.

Both parts also came with me on that four-hour drive home, most of it in silence.

Underneath the swirl of emotions, I recognized something familiar. That subtle, desperate urge to control the future so I don’t have to feel powerless in the present. My brain did what all our brains do when fear shows up. It spun stories:

What if she misses a connection?
What if something goes sideways in a city I’ve never been to?
What if someone tries to do her harm?
What if she needs me and I can’t get to her?

If I let those stories take the wheel, I don’t become a wiser father; I become a controlling one. A man who “protects” by clipping wings and then convinces himself it’s for noble reasons. Fear is clever that way. It knows how to dress itself up as love, discernment, or responsibility.

But when I look honestly at what’s happening inside me, something else comes into view.

There is a deeper truth living underneath the justifications:

My brain is trying to predict the future, so I don’t have to feel powerless in it.
It is operating from old survival logic, making decisions with limited information and a narrow definition of safety.
When that part of me gets loud, it does its best to steer me away from anything that might expose me to uncertainty, discomfort, or emotional pain.

I’ve noticed over the years that this isn’t unique to fatherhood. The same mechanism fuels almost every hard emotion I’ve experienced and nearly every hard emotion I see men struggle with. The details change, but the root stays the same. The brain is projecting into a future it cannot control and bracing for impact.

Most of the men I walk with aren’t just facing this as fathers. The pattern shows up in marriages, partnerships, and even with other adults in their lives. The external situations shift, but internally, the struggle has the same fingerprints.

On the surface, it sounds like:

“I just want her to be okay.”
“I’m trying to protect the relationship.”
“If I don’t step in, everything will fall apart.”
“If I don’t say yes, she’ll think I don’t care.”

Underneath, the story is far more vulnerable:

“I don’t want to face what rises in me if I stop managing this.”​
Beneath that is the fear of not being able to stay steady in the presence of someone else’s disappointment or anger.
Below that is the quiet doubt about whether we can handle what the future might require of us.
Deeper still is the suspicion that we are not built for what is coming.
And at the core is the old belief that if we were not enough back then, we probably aren’t enough now, and won’t be enough later.

Most of this lives beneath awareness. Yet once those layers are active, the pattern becomes predictable.

We over-function.
We read the room before anyone speaks.
We smooth things over.
We fix what is not ours.
We rescue before anyone asks.

We call it love.
And often, the people we are trying to save may genuinely feel it as love.

But over time, almost without anyone noticing, it shrinks both people.

She receives the message: “You can’t handle your life without me.”​
We receive the message: “If I stop playing savior, I’ll lose everything.”

Neither message creates the kind of partnership, intimacy, or shared strength we long for. Yet both quietly shape the emotional landscape of a relationship until someone decides to do something different.

Meanwhile, resentment starts to take root. Exhaustion grows. A quiet sort of panic sets in. Intimacy weakens in small and polite ways that never look dramatic enough to set off alarms, yet they still drain a relationship from the inside.

This is the landscape I see again and again in the men who come into my world. They are good, loyal, devoted, committed men. Men who love deeply. Yet they are worn out from carrying responsibility that was never actually theirs.

One mental model has consistently helped me, and the men I walk with, understand what is happening beneath the surface. There are three domains in life:

1. My business
2. Their business
3. God’s business (or if you prefer, Life’s business, or anything outside human control)

Over the years, I have noticed a consistent pattern in myself, in the men I mentor, and in the women I know as well. Hard emotions arise when we begin focusing on domains where we have no agency and no ability to create the outcomes we want, or when we try anyway, and those domains do not respond to our attempts to control them.

Whenever we place our attention on someone else’s reactions, choices, emotional storms, or pace of growth, we begin to feel powerless. When we try to influence outcomes that belong to Life itself, we feel the same thing. Powerlessness produces the anxiety, fear, frustration, resentment, and quiet panic so many of us carry.

Not because we are broken, but because we are staring into a domain where meaningful action is impossible. If you have pain in your life, you have a story of powerlessness within and are waiting for something outside of you to change.

The way forward, every single time, is to return to our own domain. To the outcomes we can actually create through our choices, presence, integrity, and emotional steadiness. This is where agency exists. This is where movement becomes possible. This is where strength returns. This is the only domain where we are powerful.

When we come back to our own domain, we stop trying to engineer life for other people and start living as the person we are becoming. That is where healthier love begins.

For me, sitting in the car after dropping my daughter off, this meant choosing not to manage or control her life in the name of love. My love for her is deep and unconditional, and because of that, I want her to know her own strength, not depend on mine. I want her to become powerful in her domain, not shaped by the limits of my fears.

So in that moment, healthier love meant letting fear ride along without handing it the controls. It meant feeling the ache in my chest and still heading north instead of circling back. It meant remembering the three domains, recognizing what was mine, what was hers, and what belonged to something larger than both of us. From that place, I could release her and bless her desire to grow instead of tightening around it or shaming it because it stretched me.

None of this is cold or detached or the kind of performance-based stoicism that shuts the heart down. It is a deliberate act of love. It is choosing her growth over my comfort. It is choosing her future over my fear. And the surprising part is that my heart feels more alive and warm because of it. The space created by that choice strengthens my relationship with my daughter in ways control never could. It is love with open hands.

The same thing shows up in my marriage, although it wears a different face. There have been moments when my wife is overwhelmed and hurting, and her frustration comes straight at me because I am not stepping in to take the entire load off her shoulders. In those moments, something inside me wants to leap into action. I want to rush in, fix everything, quiet the pain, and prove that I care.

But when I make her emotional world my responsibility, neither of us grows. I take away her opportunity to discover her own strength, and I silence the part of me that is learning to stay steady rather than rescue. I end up communicating that she cannot handle her life and that I cannot handle mine.

So whether it is a daughter stepping onto a train in a foreign country or a wife expressing her pain in our kitchen, the same work is being asked of me. It is the work of placing responsibility back where it belongs and letting the fears inside me rise without running from them.

And this part is not easy.

When we stop rescuing, the fears we have been avoiding move quickly to the surface. Thoughts like:

“If I do not fix this, she might leave.”
“If I step back, she might resent me.”
“If I stop managing everyone else’s emotions, I will have to feel my own.”

This is where most men get stuck. Not because they lack strength, but because this is identity-level work, not a list of techniques. It asks us to grow ourselves rather than rearrange the behavior of the people around us.

You can read all of this in an email and nod along. You can understand the principles and even agree with them. But when your daughter is travelling through Europe and goes quiet for a few hours, or when your wife is overwhelmed and throwing sharp words because she is drowning, your nervous system does not care what you understand intellectually.

This is where most men fall back into old patterns. They try to navigate all of this alone. They hide the fear, the frailty, and the messy places they do not want anyone to see. They try to build emotional strength while keeping the very parts of themselves that need strengthening out of sight. And then they wonder why intimacy never deepens or why their relationships feel strained and fragile.

We cannot rewire our nervous system in isolation. Our fears and biases create a closed loop when we try to grow alone. We end up reacting to the same alarms, following the same interpretations, and repeating the same stories that keep us stuck. Change happens when others help us see what we cannot see. It happens when our internal world is met, not judged, and slowly reshaped through connection.

Growth like this requires other people.
It grows through honest conversation.
It grows by being seen by others who are walking similar terrain.
It grows when someone helps us notice the pattern we have lived inside for so long that it feels like the truth.

Emails like this can point toward that work.
They cannot walk it with you.

So I want to leave you with this:

Where in your life are you confusing rescuing with love?

Is it with a partner, an ex, a child, a parent, a friend, or even with the way you relate to God or the universe?

Hit reply and share one real moment where you notice yourself stepping into someone else’s domain because you are afraid of what you might have to feel if you do not.

You do not need to write a long story, although you can if you want. A few honest sentences are enough.

I read every reply, and I would like to know where this shows up in your life.

Warmly,
–Sven
P.S. Some men prefer the simple story and takeaway. Others want the deeper dive into the psychology and mechanics behind it. If you’re in the second group, you might appreciate the expanded Substack version here.