When He Denies Needing Your Help, Here’s Why

3. Weakness or failure is painful because it confirms their secret insecurities.

His confident face is just a mask covering a deep vulnerability. On all of my surveys, three out of four men confessed to a very real self-doubt that was always there. For a guy, that self-doubt is like a raw nerve—which is rubbed even rawer any time he feels weak, uncertain or inadequate. As one very successful businessman put it, “I want to be a great husband to my wife, but am I? Or at work, I put on a good front, but secretly I’m always waiting for someone to find out I’m a total imposter. That’s why I’ll sit in my office for two hours puzzling over something instead of taking five minutes to ask someone how such-and-such is done: if I have to ask, it just confirms that I can’t cut it. I will take the trade-off and work the extra hours any day, in order to avoid that feeling.”