Rebuilding Masculinity on Your Terms Post-Mormonism

Written by Ashley Kirkpatrick, LAC Inner Compass Counseling & Consultation

Leaving Mormonism can change a lot of things.

Your beliefs. Your relationships. Your sense of community. Your understanding of sexuality. Your relationship with authority.

But for many men, there is another question underneath all of that:

Who am I supposed to be now?

Mormonism doesn’t just teach men what to believe. It can also provide a pretty specific blueprint for what it means to be a man.

Be the provider.
Be the priesthood holder.
Preside over your family.
Be the spiritual leader.
Make good choices.
Control your impulses.
Protect your family.
Work hard.
Don’t complain.
Have the answers.

For some men, leaving the church means realizing that the blueprint they were given no longer fits, but they haven’t necessarily been given anything to replace it.

You may know what you don’t want to be anymore without knowing what you actually want to become.

Rebuilding masculinity after Mormonism isn’t about throwing out everything you were taught and starting from scratch. It’s about becoming more intentional about what you keep, what you question, and what you redefine for yourself.

Here are a few places to start.

1. Redefine What “Providing” Actually Means

Providing is often framed primarily around financial responsibility.

Make money.
Have a career.
Support your family.
Be successful.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be financially responsible or take pride in your work. The problem comes when providing becomes the primary measure of your worth as a man.

Because what if providing also means:

• Being present with the people you love
• Being emotionally available
• Showing up authentically
• Contributing to your relationships
• Taking responsibility for your own behavior
• Creating emotional safety
• Co-creating a partnership rather than carrying the expectation of leading it

Your value doesn’t have to depend on how much you produce.

You can still be ambitious. You can still want to provide financially. You can still take pride in being dependable.

But you get to decide what being a good man actually means to you.

Healthy masculinity doesn’t require hierarchy.

It can be rooted in connection, responsibility, integrity, and authenticity.

2. Shift From “Presiding” to Partnership

For some men, the idea of presiding created an enormous amount of responsibility.

You were taught that you were responsible for the spiritual direction of your family. Maybe you internalized the idea that you needed to have the answers, make the right decisions, and ultimately be accountable for how things went.

That can create a tremendous amount of pressure.

Partnership offers a different framework:

I’m responsible for my side of the relationship, and we build the rest together.

Your partner’s emotions aren’t yours to manage.

Their choices aren’t yours to control.

Their beliefs don’t have to be yours.

And you don’t have to be the person with all the answers.

You can communicate.
You can collaborate.
You can repair.
You can ask for input.
You can admit when you don’t know.

That’s not stepping away from responsibility.

It’s redefining responsibility in a way that allows two adults to actually participate in a relationship together.

3. Learn to Receive Support

A lot of men were taught to be the ones who give support rather than receive it.

Be strong.

Be dependable.

Handle it.

Don’t burden other people.

Don’t fall apart.

Don’t make your problems someone else’s problems.

So when someone offers support, receiving it can feel uncomfortablem or even threatening to your sense of independence.

But relationships aren’t supposed to be one-directional.

You get to need people.

You get to ask for help.

You get to say, “I’m having a hard time.”

You get to let someone take care of you sometimes.

Being supported doesn’t make you less capable.

It makes you human.

And learning to receive support can be an important part of developing emotional intimacy—not just with a romantic partner, but with friends, family, and the people who matter to you.

4. Rebuild Your Sense of Internal Worth

If you’ve spent years connecting your worth to things like obedience, righteousness, priesthood responsibility, sexual purity, church activity, income, achievement, or being the “good” husband and father, stepping outside of that system can leave you asking:

If I’m not doing all of those things, what makes me valuable?

That’s an important question.

And it can take time to answer.

Your worth doesn’t have to be something you continually earn through performance.

You don’t have to be perfect to deserve love.

You don’t have to be productive to matter.

You don’t have to meet someone else’s definition of a worthy man to have inherent value.

This doesn’t mean accountability disappears. Your choices still matter. Your behavior still affects other people. Growth still requires taking responsibility when you’ve caused harm.

But accountability and worth don’t have to be the same thing.

You can make a mistake without becoming a bad person.

That distinction can be incredibly important when you’ve spent years experiencing your worth as something that could be gained, lost, or restored.

5. Explore Who You Are Outside of the Role

One of the things I hear from men navigating life after Mormonism is some version of:

“I don’t even know who I am without the church.”

Sometimes that question comes after decades of having an identity built around roles.

Husband.
Father.
Provider.

Priesthood holder.
Missionary.
Leader.
Returned missionary.
Good Mormon man.

When those roles change, it can feel like you disappeared with them.

But this is less about losing your identity and more about finally having the opportunity to examine it.

What do you actually enjoy?

What matters to you?

What kind of relationships do you want?

What qualities do you respect in yourself?

What kind of father, partner, friend, and man do you want to be?

What parts of your masculinity feel authentic, and which parts were mostly about meeting expectations?

You don’t have to answer all of those questions immediately.

Identity formation is a process.

And sometimes the most honest answer is simply:

“I don’t know yet.”

That’s okay.

You are allowed to build from there.

Masculinity Doesn’t Have to Be Replaced

Rebuilding masculinity after Mormonism doesn’t mean becoming less masculine.

It means becoming more intentional about what masculinity means to you.

Maybe you still want to be a provider.

Maybe you still value responsibility, leadership, strength, commitment, or protecting the people you love.

You don’t have to reject those qualities simply because they were taught to you within a religious system.

You get to examine them.

Keep what fits.

Question what doesn’t.

And build something that feels less like a role you’re performing and more like a life you’re actually living.

Because leaving Mormonism may have given you the freedom to question what you believe.

The next step may be figuring out who you are when you no longer need your masculinity to prove that you’re worthy.