Men sometimes need help – and I’m determined to start asking for it

Up until an Ikea bunk bed got the better of him, Oliver Keens preferred to figure out his own solutions to his problems. Asking for help, even at its most banal, felt like a step too far

‘All those entrenched fears about appearing weak cloud my better judgement. I’m a man – I should be helping others, I insist, not asking for help myself’ (iStock)

I was doing fine as a recently single dad-of-two, right up until I reached page four of the manual for an Ikea bunk bed for kids. This was a few years ago, when despite going through a sad break up and then having to face making a new home for my kids and me, I felt deep down that I’d be – to quote Alice Deejay’s 1999 trance-pop masterpiece – better off alone. I felt cocky. I felt like I didn’t need anyone ever again, least of all to help assemble a flat-packed bunk bed for my darling kids to sleep in. And then I turned to page four, wherein the figure of a mystery, unannounced second human appeared in the diagram, helping hold the bed’s supporting beams. My solo bravado came to a screeching halt.

I begrudgingly had to ask a friend for help, which was the start of a process of finally understanding the importance of reaching out to people around you when life is actually a big steaming cauldron of WTF. I’m slowly learning not to be one of those frustrating people who never asks for help. I know it’s a flaw. I know there’s been a huge amount of dialogue in recent years trying to get men especially to open up, admit things are a bit shit, and reach out. But while I like to think I’m a fully modern human, when it comes to asking for help, I’m a caveman who other cavemen think is “a bit old school”.

All those entrenched fears about appearing weak cloud my better judgement. I’m a man – I should be helping others, I insist, not asking for help myself. Gendering personality traits is mostly pointless and reductive, but I have to say I recognise this so often in the psyche of many other men I know. It’s an almost sinisterly deep feeling of shame and embarrassment about having to ask for help with anything – from a full-blown mental health crisis to holding a piece of wood and twirling a tiny Ikea Allen key.

Despite the world living through a pandemic, during which asking for help suddenly felt radically normalised, it’s worrying how many men and women in all our lives seem to have the same inclination. As I get older and life gets more complicated, the cursed plague of stubbornness seems to get worse, not better.

It’s everywhere. As a man sandwiched between two children and an elderly mum, you’d assume I’d be drowning in a constant sea of “help me’s”. But no: both ends of the family spectrum annoyingly want to pretend they’re absolutely fine, thank you. My kids want to display their maturity. My mum wants to prove she’s still young and able. They don’t seem to notice I’m quietly catching them as they slip from vertiginous monkey bars, or discretely letting the handbrake off when she’s driven half way down the street.

I worry more, though, about those friends many of us have who are intensely kind, thoughtful and generous enough to offer help at the drop of a hat, yet on the inside are crying out for help themselves. They’re not easily classified. They’re not people pleasers and they’re not people with a saviour complex. This used to be me – convinced I was being bravely resilient and stoic, yet on the inside building up a grudgeful resentment of friends who couldn’t magically tell that I needed help.

If only I trusted in people sooner. We revel in the drama of life’s cruelties and its villains but humans on the whole are a top species. Even on the supposed moral wasteland of social media, you can ask an audience of relative strangers for recommendations and advice, and people will respond out of nothing more than a desire to be helpful. Trusting that your friends are actually your friends, that they’re in it for the long haul and aren’t going to delete your number if they ask for help moving house is also vital. If your closest friends aren’t willing to pick you up after a routine hospital procedure involving mild sedation, then frankly, are they actually your friends?

‘The world doesn’t need a superhero who helps – we need one who asks for help’ (iStock)

I wish we could celebrate asking for help, as a way of crushing the ridiculous notion that there’s a sense of failure or frailty attached to it. More and more with my kids, I’m trying to point out all the ways in which daddy can’t do things by himself. Whether or not they appreciated the visual metaphor of me sitting alone on a see-saw in a playground for 45 minutes is up for debate, but whenever I ask a friend over to help with something, my young DNA clones know I’ve asked for help.

A part of me wants to deface every motivational “You Got This!” or “Hang In There!” sign I see, but it would probably be more constructive to have some actual reaching-out role models instead. We need a hero, but not a clichéd fixer, solver or white-knight saviour. The world doesn’t need a superhero who helps – we need one who asks for help. If a Hollywood studio decides to start a long-running franchise titled “Useless Man”, I’d be there in a heartbeat. Before that, I’m off to Ikea – could one of you help me build a wardrobe next Thursday please?