We’ve become a culture of shortcuts. Quick dopamine hits instead of slow growth. Virtual affection instead of human touch. Excuses instead of effort.
And while some substitutes come from heartbreak or loss and deserve compassion, others are chosen out of fear, laziness, or comfort.
Let me start with empathy. Not everyone has access to what we call “the real thing.” Some couples can’t have children of their own and pour their love into nieces, nephews, or rescue dogs. Those animals become their kids, their joy, their companions. That isn’t fake, it’s sacred. The heart adapts. It finds ways to love when life or biology says no. Nobody should look down on that.
But then there are the rest of us, those who could reach for the real thing and don’t.
When I was a young man, asking a girl out was terrifying. You risked embarrassment, rejection, and sometimes, in my case, the father’s glare. I still remember asking Dawn’s dad if I could take her on a date. He scared me to death. But she was worth it. That risk turned into a forty-year marriage, three grown children, and a few grandchildren who remind me daily that courage pays off.
Today, young men are retreating. They’re hiding behind controllers, screens, and excuses. They spend more time in digital worlds than real ones. And now, with 8K porn and AI-generated “girlfriends,” they can simulate intimacy without ever risking rejection or having to grow. The algorithms know what turns them on, how to flatter them, and when to whisper back. It’s a fantasy world where you’re always good enough and never challenged to become better.
Scott Galloway said it plainly in Notes on Being a Man: “Discomfort is a feature, not a bug, of maturity.” The problem is we’ve trained a generation to see discomfort as trauma and effort as optional.
Men aren’t the only ones struggling. Women have been told to chase independence so hard that many are now alone, not because they wanted to be, but because the idea of love started to sound like a threat to their freedom. Career and autonomy are good things, but not when they cost us connection, partnership, and the kind of love that still takes your breath away decades later.
And let’s be honest, parents have been part of the problem. We’ve confused protection with paralysis. We’ve overdiagnosed awkwardness as autism and medicated discomfort and energy into submission. We tell ourselves our kids are “not ready yet” when the truth is we’ve made them afraid of failing. Therapy has sometimes joined the chorus, offering validation without direction. Counselors, myself included, need to remember that comfort isn’t healing. Growth begins in discomfort.
We’re raising and counseling people who have learned to avoid the sting that forges strength.
The deeper issue isn’t technology, porn, or ambition. It’s avoidance. We reach for substitutes, sex without love, success without service, validation without vulnerability, because the real thing demands risk. Love demands rejection. Friendship demands honesty. Family demands forgiveness. And none of that comes easy.
In Notes on Being a Man, Galloway talks about how discipline and discomfort are the building blocks of meaning. You can’t scroll your way to fulfillment. You have to show up, sweating, scared, and hopeful. That’s as true in therapy as it is in marriage.
We need to start calling people back to the real thing. Real conversation. Real work. Real love.
That means teaching our sons to risk embarrassment for the chance at connection. It means teaching our daughters that vulnerability isn’t weakness. It means telling parents that the goal isn’t to make their children happy in the moment, it’s to make them whole and fulfilled adults.
And it means reminding ourselves that the easy road, the one paved with porn, filters, avoidance, and fake intimacy, doesn’t end anywhere worth going.
The real thing still exists. It just requires courage to pursue it and maturity to keep it. So, if you’ve been living on substitutes, maybe it’s time to decide: no more counterfeits. No more artificial comfort.
Step back into the awkward, glorious, difficult pursuit of something real. It’s the only thing that lasts.
Dr. Wesley