You can’t read the label from inside the jar.
Perspective requires being outside the jar. Becoming a father puts you inside one. Being willing, competent, and loving helps make a good father, and most men come to it with those traits already. But that isn’t the same thing as being prepared for this specific chapter, and this chapter isn’t something you can fully prepare for anyway.
I’m writing this as a therapist, but also as a father myself. I’ve been in the trenches I’m describing. In fact, as I write this, I’m trying to keep my toddler from hand-smashing my keyboard.
What New Fatherhood Can Feel Like
New fatherhood: you’re exhausted in a way that lack of sleep doesn’t fully explain. You might be having the same argument with your partner for the third time this month and can’t seem to make it productive. You feel a flash of something, maybe resentment, grief for your old life, overwhelm, and then immediately feel guilty for feeling it, because you’re supposed to be grateful, and because you believe everyone who tells you “it goes so fast, don’t take it for granted.”
That’s the jar.
Why an Outside Perspective Helps
This is where a lot of people get stuck, or at least can’t shift into a higher gear they sense is possible. Evaluating your situation using the only vantage point you have is a limited strategy. A seasoned pair of eyes in the crow’s nest, a coach of sorts, can help.
I saw a version of this for years before I became a therapist or a father, as a college athletics coach. An athlete in the middle of a long season, sleep-deprived, beat up, grinding through the ups and downs, usually has a hard time seeing the forest for the trees: the larger journey, beyond today’s exhaustion and today’s problems. The coach’s job, a lot of the time, isn’t to tell the athlete something they don’t know at some level. It’s to be the outside eye when they’re too deep inside the jar to see the label themselves.
New fatherhood works the same way, except most men don’t have anyone in that role for this particular transition. There’s no coach on the sideline telling you what to look for.
A few things worth knowing from outside the jar, if you’re currently in it:
If your relationship with your partner feels like it’s changed, that’s part of it. Repeating fights that you know, deep down, aren’t the most important thing, or feeling like you haven’t really connected with each other in months, are two common signs of it.
Feeling something other than pure joy, like frustration, overwhelm, or just wanting a break, is normal. It’s better to acknowledge and work with those feelings than to suppress or ignore them.
The version of yourself that feels maxed out right now is not permanent.
The Jar Is Also Where the Growth Happens
Here’s a critical part that’s easy to miss while you’re in it: the jar is also where the growth happens.
People often look back on a demanding first job, one that felt touch-and-go at the time, or a difficult stretch of life, and realize that’s where they grew the most. Early fatherhood tends to work the same way. You find out you’re capable of more than you thought. You can function on far less sleep. You are a leader. You can help bring others along. You can keep moving forward when it matters.
You also learn something about how you relate to people. Can you ask for help? Can you communicate honestly when you’re stressed instead of shutting down or snapping? A lot of that shows up first with your partner, since no one is closer to you during this stretch, and then again in how you learn to read and respond to your child.
Your patterns get stress-tested and become visible in ways they weren’t before. That visibility can be uncomfortable, since it couldn’t happen without the stress that caused it. But it’s also useful. A pattern you can actually see is a pattern you can work with. That’s the label. You just can’t read it from inside the jar.
None of this makes the jar disappear. You’re still in it, for a while. But knowing you’re in one tends to make it easier to reach for an outside perspective instead of white-knuckling it for months or years “until the kids are older.”
If you’re in the middle of it and want to see if a sounding board and an outside perspective can help, reach out.
Also, see my service page: Therapy for New Dads