A year ago, everything was falling into place for Brandon Faulkner. He was 22, engaged, and the most professionally successful of his group of friends. When he was hired as a Web designer at a glitzy Downtown advertising agency, it was the icing on the cake.

“I expected to be there a long time,” he said.

The job sent Faulkner on an all-expense-paid trip to Disney World. It bought him and his new wife a Segway tour of Paris as a wedding gift. But everything came to a halt in November, when he was unceremoniously sent packing.

Faulkner had left a stable job for what looked like a golden opportunity, and now here he was — a jobless newlywed during the biggest economic crunch of his generation. “It was a big blow to my confidence,” he said.

Faulkner’s friends were sympathetic, but he couldn’t help feeling like he had let them down.

“I entered the professional world while most of them were still working toward degrees,” he said. “I think they kind-of looked up to me in a way. So the whole getting-let-go-thing was a slap to my pride.”

Faulkner’s pride didn’t fare much better at home, where he spent weeks in front of a computer looking for work while his wife hustled to make ends meet as a barista. “Sitting at home while she was doing thankless work was tough,” he said.

Getting sacked sucks no matter who you are. But according to Emma Johnson, a multimedia journalist for MSN Money, it’s especially hard on guys.

Men, Johnson says, are hard-wired to provide. And when they’re deprived of the means to do it, it affects them on a primitive level.

“I go back to that primordial self,” Johnson said. “It was men who went out to hunt big game. They shot stuff with spears. They were always working to provide.”

Johnson believes those ancient gender roles still prevail, in spite of the sexual revolution, the feminist movement and other social shifts.

“Guys are still the breadwinners,” she said. “To this day, guys’ identities are tied tightly to their job titles, how much they make and how much they’re providing.”

Faulkner has shored up his financial situation with a few different contract jobs. But he’s still on the hunt for new work, trying to placate that deep-seated need to provide.

“The hunter-child bearer paradigm has kept us thriving,” Johnson said. “We can’t get it out of us. It’s part of who we are.”