Ken Solin

Men rarely show up, emotionally, relegating women to compete for the few who know that in the tech age emotionally savvy guys are the new musclemen. For the rest, relationships remain a flabby mismatch. Just as physical flab indicates physical laziness, emotional flab suggests emotional laziness. Men have no training in the emotional arena, which means that they are either going to face up to their shortcomings, or continue to lag behind women.

One-sided relationships, one in which only one partner is emotionally savvy, never move to a higher level of intimacy. Absent deepening intimacy, relationships stagnate, and like a stagnant pond, begin to smell of decay. Not a very pretty image, but an appropriate one.

The old masculinity died with the start of The Industrial Revolution, 150 years ago, creating a vacuum in which boys never become men, and men behave like boys. There’s no balance between macho and wimpy. Men who lean too heavily on their emotions become sobbing basket cases. They are no more desirable than men who are completely out of touch with their feelings. So where’s the balance?

Women no longer seem willing to ignore men’s dysfunctional behavior. While they are rapidly evolving in business, medicine, and government, men are devolving. Men are lost, and women are frustrated because, for lack of a better term, amateur men, are unable or unwilling to meet their relationship needs.

Men are going to have to ramp up their game, just to catch-up to women on an emotional level. In practical terms, that means men have to stop being afraid of their feelings and learn to understand and control them. An angry guy becomes tedious and exhausting, and strains a relationship to the breaking point quickly.  Unless, or until he can figure out why he’s angry, and begin to work through his issue, a woman shouldn’t feel responsible for moving on without him.

It might help if men could watch other men on television in particular, behaving appropriately. Sadly, the men on television are the opposite. They’re shown to be stupid, foolish, and incapable of acting like men who set the bar higher. I suppose some people find that guy funny. I don’t, and I doubt most women do either.

Alternatively, men in public life have set an even worse example. Every male politician who lies to the public becomes just another man who can’t be trusted. Every thieving businessman suggests that men are not trustworthy. Every male celebrity who ends up in rehab suggests men can’t even take care of themselves, let alone a woman in a relationship.

So where are the good guys? Where are the men who are making a difference because they’re making an effort to relate to women, emotionally? One place to find men on the right path is in small, confidential men’s groups. There aren’t a lot of these men, yet, but their numbers are growing. I’ve been working with men in small groups for over twenty years, and in that time, every single man who dug deep and faced his issues, was able to overcome them, in time.

Men carry a tremendous amount of fear around with them, and it acts like an anchor. It’s heavy and severely limits a man’s maneuverability. Fear of not making enough money, of looking less manly, of being betrayed, of failing in career, of being unemployed, and last, but not least, of other men, all contribute to a dysfunctional man whose behavior reflects fear more than anything else.

An evolving man is one who understands his emotional shortcomings and works to overcome them. He understands that absent getting on top of his emotions and taking control of them, he will remain a victim of his emotions. When a man challenges his emotional issues by talking about them with other men, he begins the process of leaving them behind, like any excess baggage. Once he lightens his emotional load, he’s better prepared to work with his partner to deepen the intimacy in their relationship.

Women are drawn to his authentic power, because he wields his newly developed emotional strength with dignity and fairness. Other men want to emulate him, because he represents the new male paradigm; confident, courageous, emotionally strong, and with a clear sense of cultural position.

Do men’s groups really make that much of a difference? More than I could ever explain. I was an angry guy who raged in every relationship I was ever in, until I began my men’s group two decades ago. I talked about my anger and received helpful feedback from other men who had overcome their anger. I haven’t raged for years, and when I got married four years ago, I was grateful for the help I got from other, like-minded men. I never could have married if I was still wielding my anger like a weapon.

Individual therapy is always an option, but a better one, for most issues men face, is working those issues out with the help from other men. Once a man faces his biggest fear, fear of other men, change begins. There is no judgment, advice, or opinions offered in men’s groups. Men share their experiences instead, what they did that worked, and what they did that didn’t work. A woman’s support can make the difference between whether or not a man chooses the right path.

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.

Nothing I had ever experienced prepared me for what came after my divorce. The only thing about myself that was clear to me was that I was angry. Not just angry, but outraged. My ex-wife was an alcoholic who insisted at the end of our marriage that I was 100% responsible for the divorce. She insisted she had done nothing wrong.

I didn’t focus on the obvious, which was that it takes two to make a marriage work or end in divorce. I was focused on the notion that a woman had hurt me and done me wrong. My outrage was being left with children to raise and no acknowledgement that was going to prove difficult. I think I hated women with such passion and resolve that I dated for a long while as a way to get back at women. Sex became angry sex, and my out of control anger infested each relationship I became involved in until it spun out of orbit and crashed on the trash heap.

Sadly, what I’ve noticed over twenty years working with men is that few travel a different road than the one I chose. It’s easy to see how another man is ruining his life by allowing his divorce to influence every relationship after his divorce.

I remember vividly a time soon after my divorce when I met a woman and after a while asked her out. She said as kindly as possible, but firmly, “Call me in a year when you’re over your divorce.” That statement made me feel awful enough to consider its validity. Of course, she was right not to want to be with an angry man who was living in the past and couldn’t let go. But I also wondered where that left me in the dating world.

I brought my dilemma to my men’s group to discuss and found that every single man who had gotten divorced, behaved similarly. All of the men talked about angry sex and the desire to punish women for what they felt their ex-wives had done to them. But each man had figured out that his temporary blindness towards women was just that, temporary. A few of the wiser men decided to take a time out from dating until they’d struggled with their divorce demons and won.

I had always had a woman in my life since I was a teenager. I’d never taken a break from dating or being in a relationship. So I decided to follow what appeared to be wisdom, and stayed home until I no longer felt I was on a mission to take revenge on womanhood. It took several months to become self-aware regarding my “issue” with women, and a few months more to realize how wrong I’d been about any woman being responsible for my anger or grief.

I’ve written many blogs about angry men and men who seem oblivious to the emotional aspect of relationships. I’ve read many responses to my blogs from men who contend that women don’t deserve or need any emotional connection because all they want is sex too. They further contend that if and when a woman mentions the word emotional, that they want to run away as fast as they can. This type of disrespect for women is pervasive and troubling. That’s fact. What’s not written yet is whether or not enough men will take the bull that is their issue with women, by the horns, and wrestle with it sufficient to let go of their anger.

There’s another aspect of divorce that seems to throw a steady stream of gasoline onto an already raging blaze. It’s about children, child support, custody, and visitation rights. For many men, not paying child support is a method for getting back at an ex-wife. I understand that feeling of being seen as just a checkbook and not a man. But the child support a man pays to his ex-wife typically doesn’t begin to cover the true cost of raising children. I have rarely met a woman who was living high on the hog because she received child support.

Those children are the product of a man’s best intentions gone astray. A man who can let go of the notion that he can get back at his ex-wife by denying her child support is a man who will rapidly let go of his anger and move on. While I was mostly a single dad, there were times when my children lived with my ex-wife, and I recall how used and abused I felt writing her a check each month, and being asked to buy my boys new sneakers or clothing on top of what I sent.

These are your children, guys, and the more involved you remain, the better your relationship will be with them as they grow up. Write the check each month, mail it, and let your anger go at the mailbox. Don’t remain angry because it will preclude you from ever being in a good relationship again. Look at your anger and the causes for it, preferably with other men who’ve gone through your drama and come out the other side intact. A man doesn’t punish his children through his ex-wife. He recognizes his part of the fiasco and tries to do better the next time. An angry man who marries while still angry will only inflict pain on his new wife and himself.

The woman who declined dating me until I’d spent a year working through my divorce was right on the money. A woman who dates a man who recently divorced is only going to get his leftover anger and disappointment, not his heart.
Act like a man!