I’d known Ben casually for many years. We met at a local gym. I didn’t know many men when I decided to start a men’s group, and I invited him because he was older and I hoped he’d add some wisdom to the mix. His clothing and unfashionably long hair gave him away as a guy who had sorely missed the sixties but was trying to make up for it by looking and acting cool. Most of the men had never met prior to our first meeting two decades ago.

At that meeting, Ben told a couple of raunchy jokes about women. But they weren’t funny as much as they were angry and mean-spirited. He suggested that a woman’s best use in life was as a pleasure unit, and went on to add that he’d never had an intelligent conversation with a woman. There were nine men at that first meeting, and eight of us sat stunned and mystified by Ben’s overt sexism. I worried I’d made a terrible mistake inviting him.

His blatant anti-feminism seemed anachronistic. The women’s movement had only been popular for a few decades, but had already been embraced by all but a few Neanderthal holdouts. I didn’t know any other men who shared Ben’s sexist attitude. When Ben and I occasionally met for lunch, his behavior with waitresses embarrassed me. He hit on them like the world was ending and he desperately needed to have sex before Armageddon. He talked about having sex with women, actually any woman other than his wife.

He never succeeded, when I was with him at least, but I knew he’d had many girlfriends over the years. He was proud of his extra-marital affairs and even took some foolish risks of being caught, just to add some spice to his adventures. He behaved as if his marriage was important primarily for social reasons.

I asked Ben at one of our meetings, why he felt it was okay to cheat on his wife. His rationale was that men in Europe had affairs and mistresses all the time and that it was no big deal. He further added that there were no reasons to remain faithful to his wife because they had both grown bored with each other sexually. When I asked him about the level of emotional intimacy in his marriage, his reply was that he didn’t trust his wife enough to be open and honest with her. When asked if his wife had boyfriends, he became angry and insisted she didn’t, even though that didn’t really make any sense to any of us. Ben wanted to have his cake and eat it, his wife’s feelings notwithstanding.

As the group found its footing and began talking about emotional intimacy, Ben sat quietly, not saying much, except to make jokes about women. He was becoming a distraction to the other men who wanted to deepen the intimacy in their relationships. Deepening our emotional connections with each other first, helped us figure out how to accomplish it with the women in our lives. When a man was asked how he felt about his particular issue, and he responded by beginning with, “I think”, he was reminded to tell us what he felt instead.

Accessing and speaking our feelings was incredibly hard work for all of us because none of us had any experience speaking from our hearts instead of our heads. I found it particularly hard since I’d locked up my emotions since a turbulent boyhood. Emotional intimacy involved making myself vulnerable, which just didn’t fit into the family or neighborhood I grew up in.

Ben didn’t try very hard, and he became agitated when anyone corrected him about talking about his feelings, instead of his thoughts. He fancied himself an intellectual and needed to be recognized as one, the group’s purpose be damned. He’d made a lot of money in stocks and bonds and used it to insulate himself. Outside of the group, Ben surrounded himself with men who winked and nodded at his infidelity. He strutted like a peacock with his friends, never considering how foolish his behavior made him appear.

Finally, after listening to his stories of sexual conquest for the umpteenth time, someone asked him why he had such disdain for women and held them in such low esteem. He was pushed him hard and told that the group wasn’t going to back off until he answered. He grew angry and pushed back, but all of the men put their weight behind demanding an explanation. No one really expected much, but we all felt he owed us an explanation. After all, digging deep and telling our stories was our methodology for moving beyond them, and Ben hadn’t picked up his shovel yet.

He sat quietly and didn’t speak. He remained silent for a few minutes, and we realized he was about to say something profound. Looking down and holding his head in his hands, Ben began to cry. We were shocked. Ben hadn’t ever cried before, in fact he’d never shown any emotions before, except anger. We waited patiently until he could speak, and what came out explained everything about Ben’s behavior.

Ben had served in the Air Force in his early twenties and had been stationed in Korea for two years, during which time he’d met a beautiful young woman, Kim, who was studying English. They had fallen in love and were spending every free moment and weekend together. He’d never been in love before and gave up any control over his emotions. His face glowed as he spoke about her. He was to meet Kim at 4:00 in the afternoon at the train station for a weekend trip to the country. He showed up with flowers and sat on a bench on the train platform. She never showed.

He found a phone booth and called her at her home where she lived with her father, mother, and two sisters. She answered on the first ring, and without any greeting, told him she could never see him or talk with him again, and then hung up. He described his pain as so severe that he doubled over as if he’d been kicked in the belly. He sat for hours on that train platform trying to make sense of something that made no sense.

When he quieted down, I asked him what he’d done about the pain he’d felt. His reply explained everything about his subsequent attitudes about women. He said he stuffed that pain so far down in his psyche that he was positive it was never going to surface again. He was certain he’d succeeded because he’d never thought about Kim again for decades, until this evening. He was genuinely surprised that she’d risen from the grave in his heart where he’d buried her. He added that the pain of recalling that incident on the train platform was nearly as bad as it had been when it happened.

Now we understood why he held such anger in his heart for women, and we also understood why he felt women were untrustworthy. During those decades when he thought he had the pain safely locked away, it was actually eating away at his heart and destroying his ability to feel anything for women except contempt. He had carried that bombshell around in his heart and didn’t know it was exploding a little bit, every day of his life.

I was proud of Ben for finally sharing the feelings in his heart and suggested he might want to share that story with his wife, who he’d married on the rebound from Kim when he returned to the States. After all, he hadn’t really ever shown her his heart during their marriage. I thought there was a terrific opportunity for he and his wife to connect on a level they hadn’t ever before.

He slumped in his chair, looking down at the floor, his face hardened. He offered a one word answer. No. He said he was too afraid of the consequences. He didn’t trust his wife enough to give her the benefit of the doubt, and he feared her reaction. He preferred the status quo to intimacy.

Ben’s story turned out to be a good news/bad news scenario. The good news was that Ben figured out why he felt as he did about women. The bad news was that he failed to make us of this information to strengthen the intimacy in his marriage. In fact, he continued on his path of infidelity, but he did admit that as he retold his story a few times in the next several months, he noticed that it hurt less and less each time he shared it.

Perhaps because I think men’s work is all about becoming a better man, Ben’s behavior seemed sad to me, especially since he had succeeded in setting his heart free, but failed to implement the lesson. The point of Ben’s story, however, isn’t whether or not he decided to change. The point is that by telling his story he had discovered why he had been in so much pain for so long. That he didn’t change his behavior or his marriage is less important in terms of how Ben’s story applies to every man’s painful past. Men carry around their past pain in gigantic steamer trunks that are locked and sealed in their hearts. A man can’t begin to let go of that pain until he first unlocks that trunk and figures out why it was so full in the first place.

Ben’s story is a recruiting poster for men’s groups, but it’s also a wake-up call to every man whose behavior reflects some past pain. There’s always a connection between the two. I was an angry man until I was pushed to talk about the reasons for my anger. It didn’t take long before I allowed my memory to recall my boyhood with an angry, out of control father who beat and berated me. His anger had served as my example for manhood.

Most of the other men discovered the roots of their dysfunctional behavior, and were able to let go of the pain that they’d locked up. Men can do better, much better, and sharing their stories is the first and best step towards becoming better men. It doesn’t take any courage for a man to inflict his pain on those close him. It takes enormous courage to find the source of that pain and stop inflicting it on them.

I would appreciate hearing from men and women.