Ken Solin

Few men of this generation received any rites of passage—lessons on how to be a man—from our fathers, so knowing how to raise our own sons can be a daunting task. By the time they’re teenagers and struggling with peer pressure while trying to establish their unique place in the world, their fathers are often the last people they want to listen to. Maintaining a voice of loving authority in your son’s life during these tumultuous times can be a real challenge, especially if you haven’t laid the groundwork for a mutually respectful relationship early on.

From the very beginning, make sure your son knows that you love him. Tell him every chance you get. Make yourself vulnerable with him and encourage him to express his feelings with you. And show him your love by being involved in his life. Talk with him and listen to what he has to say. Take an interest in his activities and share your own experiences as a boy. Coach his sports teams or at least attend the games and cheer him on. Instill good values in him by your own example. Actions speak far louder than words, and only by walking the walk can you show your son what it means to be a man.

If you want him to respect your authority and play by your rules, you have to respect his rights as well. Some things are nonnegotiable, for example not lying or stealing, staying away from drugs and alcohol; doing homework and household chores, and behaving respectfully to adults. You should establish penalties for not adhering to those rules and be consistent in exacting them. But give your son a lot of leeway in the things that don’t really matter. His clothes and hairstyle, the music he listens to, how he keeps his room are choices he needs to make to explore who he is apart from you. You don’t have to love his choices, but you do have to love him enough to let him become his own man.

Even if you do, though, when he enters his teens, he’ll probably still rebel and reject everything about you. And that’s as it should be, because he needs to decisively break from you to be able to step out on his own. When that happens, you just have to ride it out, trusting in the strength of your love for him and the bond you’ve forged. And if your son is anything like mine were, when he’s grown, he’ll be grateful for having such a father.

Is unconditional love only found in romance novels or does it exist in real life? For many of the guys in my men’s group, unconditional love means that a partner will overlook his faults, quirks, and habits and not make her love dependent on his changing them. This doesn’t mean that men should be unwilling to make some modifications in their behavior, though, because absolute inflexibility doesn’t serve a relationship either.

The characteristics a man exhibits during courtship are a good indicator of his future behavior, and if these qualities are deal-killers, a woman would be wise to admit that and move on. If she pursues the relationship, she will likely try to get him to change what she doesn’t like about him. A man craves to be loved for who he is and what he does, and if, instead, he’s attacked for those qualities and actions, he’ll feel betrayed and judged. This will prevent him from trusting his partner and achieving true intimacy with her.

To expect a man to undergo a major personality or behavioral make-over is unrealistic and self-defeating. It’s called projection, and it never works because it’s based entirely on a fantasy—rather than the reality—of who someone is. If a man snored when a woman met him, she shouldn’t assume that he’ll undergo surgery to correct his snoring later on. If he’s been playing basketball with the same friends every Saturday morning or taking motorcycle trips with friends for a decade, he’ll probably want to continue those activities. In the early stages of the relationship, she might indicate that these behaviors or activities are problematic for her and ask if he’d consider modifying them. If he adamantly resists, she must either accept who he is if she can or admit that he’s probably not the man for her.

Expecting some degree of change is completely reasonable, though. For instance, my wife sat me down the other day to discuss how she felt when I forgot an activity she’d scheduled and made other plans. She didn’t say she’d withhold her love if I didn’t change my behavior but merely asked me to be aware of and acknowledge how being treated that way affects her. I promised to try to be aware of her feelings and take them into account. And as I’ve done that, my behavior has become more thoughtful and respectful.

There’s no double standard where love is concerned, and everything I’ve said applies equally to how men treat women. Both sexes need and deserve to be respected and loved for who they really are—not for who their partner wishes they were. Accepting each other’s basic qualities and the need for a certain amount of behavioral modification and compromise is the first step on the path to unconditional love. Relationship may never fully attain it, but if the partners consciously pursue that goal, they’ll be well on the way.

Male anger ranks high on a woman’s short list of relationship issues. Irrational, uncontrolled male anger devastates a woman’s sense of safety and well-being. It is particularly frustrating because the reasons behind the anger and the potential for resolving it are mostly out of her control. Women are not responsible for male raging, no matter how much an angry man insists otherwise. What’s behind male anger? How can men learn to control it? What can women do to help?

What I have gleaned from decades of working with men is that male anger is nearly always linked to painful past events in a man’s life that he mistakenly believes he has resolved simply because he stuffed the pain deep into his psyche and never consciously thought about it again. There is no magic act for making past pain vanish, however; and stuffing it simply keeps it just beneath the surface, where it simmers and is easily triggered.

Failed Relationships

Peter was in our men’s group for several years before he finally told his story which explained everything about his relationship issues. His heart had been shattered by a woman decades before.  Instead of working through his pain when he first felt it, he convinced himself he could simply make it disappear by never thinking about it again. His unresolved heartbreak affected his relationships with every woman he met afterwords. Since his heartbreak was never resolved, his attitude towards women grew into mistrust and anger for all women, including his wife, who he had married on the rebound. He developed a chauvinistic sense of humor about women and disparaged them whenever the topic of women arose. After telling his story a few times he admitted that it no longer held as much charge and that his attitude about women had softened.

What Women Can Do to Help

Men can’t be pushed to do their emotional work—either in therapy or in a men’s group. A man has to want to end his angry cycle and has to realize that only comes with facing the damage his behavior is causing him and everyone around him. What women can do is to encourage their partners to unload the baggage that interferes with their lives together. Listening without judgment or opinion will facilitate this process and make a man feel more comfortable about sharing his feelings. This is the time for a woman to be her partner’s best friend. This is the time for unconditional love.