The best men are those who've been broken by life
and have pulled through, have come out the other end.

Why?

Because they've been forced by circumstances
to drop the illusion of their strength and power,
they've known that they couldn't keep that going.
They've hit rock bottom and they've had to reach out
and say 'I can't cope'.
Men become rather glorious when that's happened to them
because that's when there's true humanity, sympathy, etc
But some men, they never get there, it's posture, posture,
posture. It's defensive posture all the way. I can spot
them a mile away.

What do they look like?

You just sense there's a modesty, deep down there's a
modesty. I think people give off a sense of how much
you could tell them and how much they'll able to bear.
Often it's picked up in little things you know.
People say 'How's your weekend, is it great?" "Was it good?"
you go "ooh wow" "that person really needs my weekend
to have gone well" because they don't have much space
for my weekend to have gone badly.

If someone goes "How was your weekend?"
there's space in that, you feel the space you're like
"Oh, I might have been crying on the bathroom floor"
"that could happen, I might have wanted to take my
life on Saturday, but Sunday things cheered up"
you know there's room for the extremity of what it is
to be human and those are the people you want to watch
out for.

Alain de Botton