Why a Popular Man Is Not the Same as a Good Husband

Key takeaways

• Popularity is a teenage measure. Adam Mesa said that admiring a man for how his friends follow him fits a thirteen-year-old, and looks like immaturity in adults.
• Initiative can be checked. Adam pointed to speaking up, personal discipline and taking the lead in the relationship itself.
• Peace needs someone to lead. A man who keeps everyone happy by never stepping forward leaves someone else absorbing the cost.
• Friendships show character. How a man treats his friends, and which friendships he keeps, hints at what home will be like.
• Polish proves little. A designer jacket or a loud crew says nothing about how a man will father or handle money.

A clip about the leader of the pack

Adam and Ashley Mesa opened this episode of Beyond I Do with plenty of teasing, then turned to a TikTok clip their team member Nancy had sent them. In it, a woman says that when she meets a man's friends she wants to see that he is the leader of the pack. She wants her man to be the head honcho, and as the clip goes on, the age of the people who still think this way keeps climbing.

Adam said the conversation was aimed at singles but would reach into marriage too. The habits you look for before a wedding are the habits you live with after it.

Why popularity is a teenage measure

Adam's first reaction was that a thirteen-year-old might say this and it would make sense. When people in their late twenties, thirties and forties still look for popularity and fanfare in a man, he saw a sign of immaturity.

He questioned the picture of a healthy friend group as well. Where friends hold each other accountable, he said, leadership may be shared, but nobody stands above being called out. Adam added that a friend group is a community with loyalty in it, and that loyalty does not mean being a slave to it, since "a friend group isn't a pack".

Ashley asked where the leader of the pack is actually leading his friends. If the answer is the clubs, with him as the confident one who goes to talk to women, she said he will treat you the same way he treats everyone else. The group also shared a story about a sister who dated a man. He said he was very interested, then admitted he had a fling back home in London. Their verdict was that being the head of a crew does not mean a man will lead a home.

What to look for instead

Adam said that what a woman can measure, even apart from his friends, is initiative. Does he speak his mind, even if he is an introvert who has to stretch to do it? Does he have disciplines of reading, writing, the gym, work or family? Does he take initiative in the relationship?

He described what that looks like in dating and marriage. He tries to give the other person room to say what she wants to do, and he keeps an idea in his back pocket in case she says she does not know. As Adam put it, what carries over from youth to adulthood is this: "It's initiative. It's care. It's compassion. It is a healthy leadership."

The man who only responds

Adam also told of a recent conversation with a man who has children. This man had become the responder in his marriage and family. He wanted everyone happy and peaceful, so he did what he thought everyone wanted, even at his own cost.

Adam encouraged him to start acting on what was in his heart. He said that pursuing peace at someone's detriment is not peace. It means one person in the family is taking the blows for everyone else, and sooner or later everyone reaches a breaking point. Adam's view is that the man is meant to initiate and his family is meant to respond, and he pointed to how God made us as the reason. He said a husband who avoids leading because it might stir up conflict is a different case from one who plans a trip to Disneyland.

How he treats his friends

Ashley spoke for the other side of the table. She said that the woman in the clip may want a man who leads, but you want someone who leads in a healthy way and treats your friends and his own with respect. In their dating days, she and Adam rarely hung out alone, and that gave them both a chance to see how the other behaved around friends.

She remembered an evening when Adam and his friends got into what she called a full-on argument, and the next day she told him, "I don't like the way you guys talk to each other." Adam explained that he and those friends had always loved to debate. He said he learned a different way of being with friends, and he learned that someone who leads has to lead with love and compassion.

A friendship Adam had to end

Adam gave a harder example from his own life. He had a big brother figure who was about ten years older, in his mid thirties when Adam was twenty-three, and who had once been his roommate. The man got them into trouble often. After a dinner out with Adam and Ashley, when they were engaged, the man lost his temper and flipped a table, then drove so fast on the freeway that Ashley feared for their lives.

Adam told him he needed to stop drinking and stop acting foolishly. The man answered that Adam was just a kid and should be quiet. Adam called it the start of the end of a long friendship. He described ending it as "a judgment call I had to make", and he said the reason was that the friendship was affecting his mood and his anger. A healthy marriage and family, he said, comes before friendships, and God sometimes asks us to cut off weight we were never meant to carry.

Peacocking and a tap on the shoulder

Adam compared the leader-of-the-pack idea to the high school quarterback. A quarterback who gets by on natural talent says little about being a life partner, he said. The discipline the quarterback shows could just as easily show up in a business student or an art student. As Adam said, "it's not a 1 for 1 match."

The same goes for peacocking. Adam is glad when a man shaves, gets a haircut and presents himself well. He laughed at the idea of saving three paychecks for a designer jacket and wearing it every night to impress, and said that no jacket tells you whether a man will be a good father or stay out of debt. He added that men were made not to be alone, and that when a man is ready to do life with someone, the way there is conversation and care.

Nancy then shared how she met her boyfriend at Punch Bowl Social. At her birthday dinner her friends played a game with dares written on a torn receipt. Hers was to compliment a man, so she tapped a man on the shoulder as he walked in alone and told him he was handsome. He came back later and asked her friends whether he could take her aside to talk. The hosts did not call that being the leader of a pack. They called it initiative, together with respect for her friends.

What this means for you

If you are single, the next time you are drawn to someone who commands a room, ask what you can see of him beyond the room. How does he treat his friends, and what do they hold him to? Does he speak up, keep any disciplines, and ask what you want to do?

If you are married, the same questions can be turned toward yourself. Are you leading your home, or keeping the peace by saying nothing? Are any friendships dragging on your marriage? You can ask God for the courage to make the hard call and for the humility to listen to a spouse who sees what you miss.