Pressure Points

Insane house prices, work stress and digital overload are making life increasingly tough for the average Australian man. Learn how to ease the five most common pinch points in your life.

- Ian Cockerill

We all know Dave.

To all appearances, he’s sailing through life, the breeze at his back. In his mid-30s, he’s got a three-bedroom home, a job in sales, a couple of kids and a Staffy called Max. His second car’s a Toyota, he drinks Carlton Draught and hits the gym a couple of times a week to sweat it out.

Yes, according to a mashup of last year’s census and various industry surveys, Dave is Mr (Average) Australia.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? Chances are that, like you, Dave’s gleaming life isn’t nearly so perfect under the bonnet. That, like you, something, somewhere, is giving offthe sort of furnace blast that has you both studying the ceiling at 3am.

It’s called pressure, and in many respects the pressures facing 21st Century Man are different to those experienced by your father, and his father before him.

Don’t have a clue where your remit begins and ends on the home front when it comes to covering bills, cooking meals, cleaning toilets, clearing gutters or taking the kids to the doctor? Watching forlornly as your property dream canters out of sight, or scrambling to service the eye-watering mortgage that keeps you in the game? Sensing the robots circling your cubicle as another round of redundancies thins the office ranks?

It’s scant comfort to know you’re not alone. Hell, you’ve found yourself among those unshaven, between-jobs blokes at the local café, their urgent eyes betraying their attempts at outer confidence; you’ve listened ad nauseum to the griping about partners who don’t realise how draining a man’s workday can be.

You know you’re either a kindred spirit already, or drifting dangerously close to the shoals.

And you don’t like it. Not one bit. So change it, with help from experts who spend their days looking at the same issues through lenses both wide and microscopic.