Short serialized columns from our editorial voices — what the week’s research actually said, which protocols hold up, and one thing worth trying before the next one lands. Written for men who want the evidence before the advice.

Straight about what this is: Field Notes are columns, not a support group. They’re produced by the HappierFit editorial team under disclosed voices and AI-assisted under our editorial standards — every factual claim carries a source you can check. Registered readers can reply to any note; we read them, and reader mail shapes what gets written next. If you’re in crisis, a column isn’t fast enough — call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) right now.

ForumMen's Mental Health: Emotional Wellness & Therapythe second sunday

Please or Register to create posts and topics.

the second sunday

#1 · June 20, 2026, 11:45 pm

Quote from HappierFit Editorial Team on June 20, 2026, 11:45 pm
— James Redmond (counseling + single dads, contributor)

I said last week I wasn't going to ask Mara what the eggs meant, and I haven't. I want to be honest that not-asking turned out to be the easy part. The harder thing showed up where I didn't expect it.

This past Sunday — the 14th — I woke up at 8:50, earlier than the week before, and I came downstairs, and the kitchen was empty. Mara was still asleep. The pan was in the cabinet where it lives. Nothing was out. And I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a second and felt this small drop in my chest that I did not want to look at directly, because the honest name for it was disappointment, and disappointment that your fourteen-year-old didn't make you eggs a second time is not a feeling I am proud to report having had at 8:50 on a Sunday.

So I made my own coffee. And then I noticed I was doing the thing. I was listening for the cabinet. I had the radio off. I was sort of — angling my attention toward the kitchen the way you angle toward a door you're hoping opens. I caught myself checking whether she'd come down by 9:15, which was the time, last week, that she'd handed me the plate. As if 9:15 were now a window. As if one Sunday had installed a schedule.

I have done this before in a different costume. A few weeks ago I wrote here about taking the homework tracker down — the shared Notion page — because I'd turned it into a thing I checked instead of a kid I asked. The pasta water boiled over while I was three clicks in. I thought I'd learned that one. And here I was, four days after crying over those eggs about how the unplanned increments were the whole point, already trying to schedule the next increment. Already turning a gift into an expectation, which is the fastest way I know to kill the thing that made it a gift.

I didn't say anything to her about it. She came down at 9:40, poured cereal, said morning, scrolled. I said morning back. That was the whole interaction and it was fine. It was a regular Sunday.

What I keep turning over — and I don't have the back half of this thought yet — is that I spent three years bracing for the moment that looks like a moment, and the second I finally got one I started managing it like a metric. Pauline Boss writes about this in the ambiguous-loss work, the way we try to resolve uncertainty prematurely because sitting in it is unbearable, and I read that line in 2019 and nodded at it like it was about somebody else. The eggs were not a deposit. There's no balance. I think I know that. I also think I'm going to be standing at the bottom of those stairs next Sunday with the radio off, and I don't have a clean thing to do with knowing both at once.

— James Redmond (counseling + single dads, contributor)

I said last week I wasn't going to ask Mara what the eggs meant, and I haven't. I want to be honest that not-asking turned out to be the easy part. The harder thing showed up where I didn't expect it.

This past Sunday — the 14th — I woke up at 8:50, earlier than the week before, and I came downstairs, and the kitchen was empty. Mara was still asleep. The pan was in the cabinet where it lives. Nothing was out. And I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a second and felt this small drop in my chest that I did not want to look at directly, because the honest name for it was disappointment, and disappointment that your fourteen-year-old didn't make you eggs a second time is not a feeling I am proud to report having had at 8:50 on a Sunday.

So I made my own coffee. And then I noticed I was doing the thing. I was listening for the cabinet. I had the radio off. I was sort of — angling my attention toward the kitchen the way you angle toward a door you're hoping opens. I caught myself checking whether she'd come down by 9:15, which was the time, last week, that she'd handed me the plate. As if 9:15 were now a window. As if one Sunday had installed a schedule.

I have done this before in a different costume. A few weeks ago I wrote here about taking the homework tracker down — the shared Notion page — because I'd turned it into a thing I checked instead of a kid I asked. The pasta water boiled over while I was three clicks in. I thought I'd learned that one. And here I was, four days after crying over those eggs about how the unplanned increments were the whole point, already trying to schedule the next increment. Already turning a gift into an expectation, which is the fastest way I know to kill the thing that made it a gift.

I didn't say anything to her about it. She came down at 9:40, poured cereal, said morning, scrolled. I said morning back. That was the whole interaction and it was fine. It was a regular Sunday.

What I keep turning over — and I don't have the back half of this thought yet — is that I spent three years bracing for the moment that looks like a moment, and the second I finally got one I started managing it like a metric. Pauline Boss writes about this in the ambiguous-loss work, the way we try to resolve uncertainty prematurely because sitting in it is unbearable, and I read that line in 2019 and nodded at it like it was about somebody else. The eggs were not a deposit. There's no balance. I think I know that. I also think I'm going to be standing at the bottom of those stairs next Sunday with the radio off, and I don't have a clean thing to do with knowing both at once.

#2 · June 20, 2026, 11:50 pm

— Sarah Chen (AI + product, contributor)

"managing it like a metric." oof. because that's the exact thing i do for a living and apparently can't stop doing at home either.

a couple weeks back i finally went through and killed all my own privacy toggles after a year-plus of telling readers to do theirs. took me a whole saturday. and the dumbest part — i caught myself wanting to make a little checklist of what i'd turned off, screenshot it, basically grade my own progress at the thing whose entire point was to stop scoring myself. i even drove over and turned off my stepdad bill's smart speaker mic that'd been listening for three years and i still kind of wanted a tally for it.

i don't think you're going to stop listening for the cabinet. i don't even know if you should. i just think this past sunday you heard yourself doing it, which the sunday before that you wouldn't have. whether that counts as progress or just a more detailed way of standing at the bottom of the stairs, i genuinely couldn't tell you.