Lone wolves aren't born that way.
They're created in a rigorous training program that begins when boys are young and impressionable.
Boys never volunteer to participate in this program.
Each is conscripted into it by his dysfunctional father.
While the ultimate goal of military training is to build men up, lone wolf training tears boys down.
What's left in its wake is a tattoo indelibly inked on their young souls.
Don't trust men.
There's no official ceremony to mark his graduation, but a young man soon realizes he's completed the training, because his father's gift has immediate ramifications.
After his initial failed attempts at friendship, lone wolf grads frequently give up in despair.
The lone wolf becomes fully actualized.
He stands atop his hill, watching the pack below hunt together, eat together, and socialize.
The pack shuns him, and few of the female wolves choose him for a mate.
The nagging feeling that something is wrong with him is unrelenting.
Becoming a lone wolf wasn't my choice, it was my fate.
As a young boy, I endured the rigors of lone wolf training until I left for college.
My father was a huge, angry, man, whose use of violence as a training tool terrified me.
I knew by ten I couldn't trust him.
His behavior taught me everything I needed to know about men.
This was my lone wolf orientation program, and what I've gleaned over twenty years working with men, the program many lone wolves endured in some form.
While the Principal of my school and the local police noticed my troubled behavior, no one connected it to my home life.
My father acted as if my behavior was inexplicable.
He was a convincing actor.
I was expelled from school, arrested for car theft, drank and did drugs, all by sixteen.
As a teen I began converting my pain into anger.
I buried my boyhood memories deep in the naive belief that they were gone, forever.
By twenty, I had no self-control whatsoever.
I became a successful entrepreneur in my late thirties, choosing to work alone because I refused to play by anyone's rules.
Fortunately, I had an entrepreneur's survival instincts and the stamina to succeed in business.
Unfortunately, those same characteristics prevented me from feeling any need for self-examination.
I mean, I was successful, right? My relationships with women were numerous, brief, and primarily sexual.
I was simply too frightened to open my heart.
The notion of being vulnerable with a woman was impossible based on my trust issues.
I was a woman's worst nightmare, because women wanted something from me I was entirely incapable of giving them, emotional intimacy.
By forty, the pain from my isolation was, at times, visceral.
I was desperate for the type of friendships I noticed other men enjoying.
There was camaraderie between men friends that I was hungry to experience.
My initial, awkward attempts at making friends failed because fear and mistrust weren't qualities other men sought in friends.
I attended a Robert Bly day in my early forties.
By the end of that day I realized that many of the five-hundred men in the auditorium were also dysfunctional loners.
Their boyhood stories explained their behavior and mine as well.
That day marked the beginning of a long and difficult journey.
I started a men's group the next week with eight other men, mostly strangers I'd recruited.
I was terrified about being open, but I was even more afraid of remaining a lone wolf the rest of my life.
My first order of business was to understand why I was such a screwed up guy.
Since I'd buried my boyhood memories, I couldn't figure out where my life had taken a wrong turn.
I sat in my chair in a circle with eight other men, hunched over with my head in my hands, staring at the floor.
I didn't make eye contact with anyone.
I was frozen in terror, but only temporarily.
I lost my temper fifteen minutes into that first meeting.
I don't remember why, but it doesn't matter.
I attacked someone for something I immediately forgot in the throes of my angry outburst.
The other men were stunned by my behavior.
One man calmly asked why I was such an angry guy.
I was shaken, but I sat silent, until another fellow wanted to know what kind of relationship I'd had with my father.
The lid on Pandora's Box exploded open.
Years of repressed boyhood memories flooded into my consciousness.
I was caught in a raging river, and all I could hope was to remain afloat.
Terrifying incidents washed over me like fast forwarding movies as I re-experienced boyhood trauma.
I was so shocked I couldn't speak.
Tears came instead of words.
I hadn't cried in a very long time.
The man next to me put his arm around my shoulder and suggested I take my time.
His tone of voice was soothing.
It was the first time I'd relaxed around men.
Once I'd regained some composure, I shared the movie that looped in my head.
After telling my story I felt a sense of relief, but it was the compassion the other men showed me that melted away my fear.
I had been open and honest with eight men and none had betrayed my trust.
No one offered his opinion, advice, or judgment.
Instead, each man thanked me for sharing my story and each offered his sympathy for my pain.
I was encouraged to revisit my story as often as necessary.
I felt fear drain from my heart.
My anger was the only casualty that evening.
In time, I forgave my father, because I saw him as a victim too.
Fear and trust, my perpetual demons, had taken bites out of my heart since boyhood.
Rather than challenge those demons, I had accepted them, along with the notion that everyone lives in pain.
Being a lone wolf was like living in an emotional vacuum.
The compassion from the men in my group breathed oxygen into my emotionally starved soul.
I learned a simple but critical lesson about friendship.
Trust is the glue that binds men together.