Larry Pesavento is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, a therapist, an author and the Founder of CHRISTOS - A Center for Men located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"In 1993 Larry Pesavento started CHRISTOS men's center to help initiate a dialogue about how a man in this confusing, elderless world can find a sense of identity, place and pride. He had been counseling men for close to 25 years and learned from their struggles as well as his own. He then decided to write a book about the internal journey that a man must take in order to find a sense of peace and generativity. He felt called to write this book to share what he had learned as part of his own journey and struggle with manhood.

For more info about Larry Pesavento, visit his web-site, http://www
.christoscenter
.com/
E-mail: Larpes@aol.com

MENSIGHT will publish a chapter each month and we would like for you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.

Chapter 11 - Part 1
Damsels

Has anyone noticed how a great many of the books written about men have titles referring to knighthood. There are Knights In Shining Armor, Knights Without Armor, Knights in Rusty Armor. Robert Johnson writes of the knightly myth of Parsifal in his book, He. Robert Bly talks of slaying the Red Knight on a man's way to maturity.

It could be argued that the time of the knights started a unique era in the development of men's psyche's. This is the time when the idea of the common man's individual search for self took hold in Western society. This era could be considered the beginning of the adolescence of our culture. The idea was born of the man, as knight, going on an individual search for God and self, while serving the community.

Knights were heroes and heroes could be any of us, not just royalty or clergy. The idea of knighthood introduced the modern sense of emotional maturity. To the knight, maturity involved the endurance of emotional and physical pain for a spiritual good. This warrior had a higher power to be subservient to. The knight's king was Christ.

The spiritual good was the welfare of the community based on the value of love and generativity. The knight's quest for spiritual enlightenment mirrored the adolescent stage of questing and questioning. The knight moved away from his village at this time, moving toward the other side, moving toward spiritual values. Starting on this quest marked the continuing of his ordeal, as well as the proof of his manhood.

Modern Damsels

Knighthood also introduced the cultural ideal of a healthier relationship to women. The time of the knights marked the beginning of the idea that men and women could have a different relationship than that of boss and slave. This was the first time in Western culture that men and women could love each other, rather than just join as an economic unit. The idea that a woman could be a partner and inspiration to a man started at this time, with the concept of courtly love.

Courtly love was a man's non-sexual devotion to a woman other than his mother. This love introduced the notion that a woman could be something other than a mother object. Courtly love brought women into partnership with men on the spiritual journey. Women gave men the inspiration to take the spiritual journey. They were a catalyst for men to mature.

Adolescence can bring a man to a new relationship with women, one that is more mature than the young boy and his mother. The knightly ideal has some authentic goals for the adolescent to strive for. Unfortunately, the knightly quest in our culture has become a detour from the road to maturity, especially concerning a man's relationship with women. Though a man has grown to a new maturity level in relationship with women, the temptation to get stuck, or regress, gets stronger.

Robert Johnson, in his extremely wise book We, talks of this same devolution of courtly love. He talks of knightly love, starting as a spiritual pursuit, becoming in our culture the pursuit of romantic love as a goal in itself. On this pursuit by both men and women, men have substituted the love of a woman for their own search for identity. Romantic love becomes a substitute for initiation. Romantic love keeps a man stuck at the crossroads. Romantic love becomes permanently adolescent love.

Harvey Hornstein in his book, A Knight In Shining Armor, talks of an agreement a man often makes with the woman in his life at the beginning of a relationship. He will provide for and protect her, in the form of bigger castles and more ornate carriages, as a damsel in distress who is meant for higher things. She will then make him feel like a man by massaging his manly ego in a form of chivalrous adoration. The romance will turn both their heads. Infatuation will bring both to a level of intoxication that feels noble and meaningful. The man will feel like a questing knight who is close to the Grail.

As the infatuation ends (in Johnson's book, this is after three years) the quest degenerates into the ordeal of the marketplace, as castles are quite expensive. The knight finds that he has never left the village. In fact, he has regressed to the world of the father. He spends him time being paternal, finding his identity in providing. He then finds that his damsel's acceptance of his castle, and all those gifts and goods, does not make him feel like a knightly man.

Today, damsels as inspiration have become mere damsels in distress. As Harvey Hornstein points out, finding the right damsel has become the end of a man's search for self. Instead of finding inspiration to start the search for manhood, men see women as the means to manhood. And the quest is lost.

Rescuing a dependent damsel makes a man feel strong and manly in an adolescent way. The adoration from a desirable, but naive, damsel can substitute for self-esteem. So the knight settles for this shortsighted adoration and never leaves his castle, just as the adolescent in our society rarely leaves the village, just as the father never leaves the marketplace.

The stereotypical damsel in distress is an affront to feminists and is tedious to mature men. At least the damsel of the knightly era, though one dimensional, sent a man off to find his manhood elsewhere. The modern damsel, as the one to be rescued, ultimately becomes a frustrated hag, whose castle never relieves her distress. She keeps him home out of dependency. He stays home out of fear. The adolescent then becomes a frustrated father before he ever becomes a man.

A Knightly Tragedy

Harvey Hornstein calls him manservant. Warren Farrell calls him a disposable protector. According to Aaron Kipnis, he is the man trying to be a Hero by protecting and sacrificing for a woman and family. According to Mark Gerzon he is the hero as Breadwinner. Jan Halpern quotes an executive saying, "Women think we are the privileged sex. But have they ever got it wrong. We are the slaves, sacrificing our needs for the company and the family." I call him simply protector-provider.

He is the beleaguered and misguided Don Quixote, with wonderful ideals that just about kill him. Like the man of La mancha, this man is trying to find that inside feeling of manhood and integrity that has so eluded him. The sadness is that he is strong enough to sacrifice for a purpose other than himself. He has enough masculine energy to go part of the way. He has reached an important adolescent stage, and separated from the most regressive parts of his boyhood. The modern knight has qualities that are admirable, and he has admirable motivation. But. like the misguided Don, he is like a man living in the wrong time.

Often this man gets started by trying to become the hero in the eyes of his mother. She unknowingly becomes his damsel. He starts on the search to give her the dreams that have eluded her. The mother is usually a kind but fragile woman, the original, distressed damsel. Often this hero is the oldest boy in the family, a boy with an absent father. Sometimes he is the second oldest if the oldest son absconds under the responsibility. Sometimes, he is the only responsible boy in an irresponsible family. He is usually the most sensitive and compassionate one.

Because of an absent father, this son starts taking over some of the father's responsibilities around the house. If the father is totally absent through death or desertion, the responsibilities become quite large. The boy starts having to act like a man way before he is ready. He becomes the man of the house before he is a man. He unknowingly puts his adolescence on hold, as he jumps to the persona of manhood.

He tries to give his mother what his father could never give. He does this out of caring, less out of the regressive need for mothering. The patriarchy colludes in this misbegotten hero drama by encouraging men to be responsible and protective. The patriarchal voice calls him selfish or wimpy if he doesn't protect someone. Uninitiated mothers unknowingly collude by looking to their sons to give them what no man can, and what a father never did.

The adolescent boy becomes the ideal of society's values, as he protects his mother. He does become a cultural hero, treating all woman with respect. He comes to believe his heroism will make him a man. When this boy attains an adult body, to match his hero role, he will find himself attracted to distressed damsels. These damsels will look up to him for strength and guidance.

By this time his self-esteem will be very fragile because of his lack of male guidance. The damsel's adoring eyes will be a powerful attraction. The man will feel he can be a hero again. He will feel like a knight. His damsel will make him feel strong and noble. She has already buoyed his self-esteem. He will be her protector. He will provide for her. Unfortunately, he hasn't thought to wonder why she needs protection, or why she is in need of his providence.

To the adolescent knight, rescuing can become a habit and a reward. As Robert Fisher says in his wonderful allegory, The Knight In Rusty Armor, "When the Knight business was slow, he had the annoying habit of rescuing damsels even if they did not want to be rescued, so, although many ladies were grateful to him, just as many were furious with him."

Often he will marry the first distressed damsel who finds him attractive. Through marriage, the adolescent finds a way to fit in. The hero mask seems to be working. His damsel treats him like a man. His dark father voice tells him marriage is the manly and responsible thing to do. The same voice tells him that being single is basically selfish and irresponsible.

The poor adolescent wants badly to become a man. This seems to be the perfect route. So he marries. He has children, soon, and usually becomes a good father. Up to this time his damsel has continued to be adoring and distressed. However, as children come the infatuation spell is broken. The castle becomes just a regular home. The damsel finds that the work of motherhood is tough and demanding, especially with no ladies in waiting. The romance of chivalry fades as the knight and damsel become father and mother.

She has started to realize that the armor, the knightly persona, keeps him from being a real person with her. He is a knight not a friend. She soon feels alone with the children, while her knight is out slaying dragons to support the family. His heroism, the basis of his self-esteem, starts to fade in her eyes. As the wife of Fisher's rusted knight said, "I think you love your armor more than you love me."

The damsel also realizes that her white knight no longer relieves her distress. If she is uninitiated, she will start blaming the knight for her continued distress. She will realize that motherhood is far harder than damselhood. Her distress will increase, even though she loves her children. She will start being critical and unhappy. She will talk of him being gone all the time and not helping with the children. She will wonder what happened to her hero.

The knight will wonder, in his own growing distress, where his adoring damsel went. He will wonder why she is complaining about the very things that knights are supposed to do, providing her with a safe, protective castle and lifestyle. He will not understand what she means when she demands to know who is inside the armor.

The adolescent inside the armor will start to get angry. He will not know how to handle his feelings. His damsel has been replaced by a witch. He feels that someone has cast a spell on her, not realizing that she is coming out of a spell, not entering one. She has been changed. Someone has taken his manhood away. He has no idea who cast the spell, or how to remove it. He struggles with how to get her back. He neither wants to lose her nor does he want to lose his armor. Yet she complains about the very knightly role she always adored about him.

Is there hope for this confused warrior? Will the distressed damsel ever find a life free of distress? Will this knightly tragedy become a nightly tragedy? Is there hope for Camelot?

It depends.

If a knight gets some healthy guidance from a healthy father and wise elder, he will start to realize that he does identify with his armor. He will realize that his armor gives him a sense of meaning that seems to cure the emptiness inside. He will realize that he may be more in love with his armor than he is with his wife. As Frank Pittman says, "Most men have a far stronger passion for their masculinity then for their women, or even for their sexuality, but they try to keep that a secret." Masculinity, here, means the masculine persona.

If a man can realize that this cultural masculinity is not really masculine, he can start to look for other answers. He can start to be open to other men who have a different message, pointing to a different road. He will then move on from the crossroads. If a damsel starts to grow she will realize that she also fell in love with her knight's armor. She will understand that she wanted a hero more than she wanted a partner. She will realize that she wanted a father object more than a husband. She will realize she was looking for someone outside herself to relieve her distress. Both will realize that the answer is not in another damsel or another knight.

In Robert Fisher's book, the knight and his damsel start to grow toward initiation. They start to take up healthy adolescent tasks. The hero knight finds he is stuck inside his armor and can't take it off. The armor was too much a part of him. His wife sets boundaries and threatens to leave him if he can't take it off. The knight, in despair, decides to go on a quest to have someone help him remove his armor. He starts on the road to initiation. He starts looking for an elder. The story of his initiation is a good one that will be continued later.

Good men stuck in patriarchal roles can't have healthy relationships with women. Distressed damsels, with hero needs, cannot have healthy relationships with men. Adolescence is the time of experimenting with relationships outside of the matriarchy and patriarchy. It is a time when a man starts to find out who he is behind his knightly persona of protector-provider. It is a time when he starts to find that women can be equal friends, not distressed little girls.

Romantic Love

The drama of heterosexual love starts to unfold in adolescence. Romantic love and sexual feeling is a symptom of the adolescent trying to individuate, to become a separate self. This type of love can signal the need to leave family, and the relationship of woman as mother object. This romantic spell, sometimes called infatuation, is also the first taste of the other side. If understood properly, it can be a strong motivation for an adolescent to grow. As Robert Johnson says, "Romantic love has always been inextricably tied to spiritual aspiration." In other words, this love has a lot to do with initiation.

Adolescence always brings with it the yearning for a connection to the feminine. The feminine for men represents the mystery of the other side. This connection can be healthy for a man if he realizes its real meaning. But it is a path strewn with obstacles. Indigenous peoples realized how regressive relationships with females could be, and usually kept the sexes divided all through adolescence. The adolescent was still too close to the mother object to handle women in another way. It was only after initiation that young men were free to interact with women in a serious way.

Our society skips the stage of healthy adolescence. There is great social pressure to fit into the patriarchy by prematurely getting married and starting a family and career. Our culture confuses the individual need for romantic love with society's need for marriage. The need behind romantic love is the need for individuation. It is each man's need. Marriage is more society's need. Marriage is much better for the marketplace. It provides a growing, stable market. It also provides motivation for men to produce. Single men are less stable, less procreative, and less obedient.

I have talked to numerous men who speak of getting married because it seemed to be the right thing to do at the time, and everyone else was doing it. This seems especially true for Viet Nam vets who, like their fathers, just wanted to feel normal again after returning from war. Marriage provided vets with normalcy and a sense of nurturance after the horror and deprivation of war. It also gave men a reason to forget.

Being deprived of a healthy adolescence robs a man of the foundation he needs for initiation and beyond. This deprivation robs a man of brothers and the freedom of experimenting with his newfound sense of self. It also robs a man of significant emotional relationships with women.

For example, a 52 year old man, Alex, comes to counseling because of his conflict over marrying a woman he had been living with for 3 years. He feels he loves her, keeping his commitment through the birth of an unplanned child. He wants "to do the right thing", yet stays hesitant. This would be his second marriage.

He married his first wife just out of college. He knew he didn't love his first wife when he married, but she was persuasive. He thought it was time to marry, and his patriarchal voice said he should fit in and be responsible. He stayed married for 23 years and had two children. He was not happy in the marriage, feeling that his wife was too preoccupied with raising the children and creating a "perfect family". He was very successful in his career as a financial planner, and responsibly provided much of what a perfect family would need. He became a good protector and provider.

All the while he neglected his adolescent inside by trying to be responsible, fitting in, following his father's agenda. Like many marriages of uninitiated people, he became a traditional father, and she became a traditional mother. They never seemed to relate well outside of those roles. The traditional marriage does not have room for an intimate relationship between the spouses. It is built on the primary goal of raising children and creating a sound economic unit. There is a lot of father and mother in these marriages. There is very little husband and wife. There is little room for the healthy adolescent in need of a friend and partner.

Alex had reached the empty nest time. This is the place a lot of marriages arrive at, once the children are older and there is less and less need for fathering and mothering. This is often the time when either member of the couple has an affair. The frustrated adolescent often tries to emerge at this midlife time in a misguided effort to get his growth needs met. Unfortunately, an affair rarely accomplishes this growth, because healthy initiatory needs are still not met.

This is also the time when divorce is prevalent, especially for the man who identifies strongly with father. He has stayed in the marriage to contact a father. Once his fathering days seem limited there are not many healthy adolescent reasons to continue the relationship. His wife is not friend or confidante. She often looks forward to grandchildren in order to continue her mothering role. She is still too identified with the mother role. She seems uninterested in being a friend and companion to him.

Alex fantasized throughout his marriage about having a fun, female companion who would share "irresponsible" things, like travel and partying. He did not realize that his fantasies were his adolescent's way of getting his attention. He didn't understand his adolescent needed the adventure, including the initiatory adventure, that he never had when he was younger.

He finally separated from his wife, probably because he felt he had fulfilled most of his responsibilities, and she could not share his fantasies. He met a woman friend, Janice, after 2 months of dark, adolescent partying, including addictive behavior. She was dating someone else, which made her safe. They were "irresponsible" and partied and drank a lot together. He described this time as the best in his life. She didn't verbalize a need to be serious, which was fine with Alex. For the first time in his life he was free, with little responsibility, and no commitments. He unconsciously contacted his adolescent, who could finally just be an adolescent.

Then Janice became pregnant.

Alex's adolescent inside had acted out by getting drunk and not having safe sex. His adolescent came out, unbidden, in an irresponsible way. His adolescent brought him to a crisis. Alex felt responsible for fathering his child, and the old fear of responsibility returned. He was terrified of being talked into anything. However he also felt a real affection for Janice and a growing respect for her.

They decided to move in together. Alex didn't want to lose Janice as a companion. His adolescent was also afraid to be alone. And there wasn't an elder around to help with alternatives. He was caught in the middle. He was not ready for initiation. He was not ready for this relationship. He thought maybe this time responsibility would be different. That was his desperate hope.

Soon after they moved in, the child was born. Alex was the head of another family. As in many marriages, when a child comes, the adolescents inside are ignored and lost. His relationship with Janice immediately started changing. They no longer could communicate as before. Instead of being fun companions, he found her more and more worried about getting married and settling down. They fought about their different ideas around child-raising, a topic they had never discussed. They fought about his commitment.

She started talking about having another child. Alex felt he had lost his adolescent friend and found another mother. Alex was despondent. He felt like he was reenacting his worst nightmare. He came for counseling, confused and depressed, when his new daughter was about 1 year old.

Alex communicated that he felt, on the one hand, a loving commitment to Janice and his new family. In many ways he loved and respected Janice more than he had any other woman. However, he also felt a hesitancy to go down the road of responsibility again and give up his fleeting experience of "freedom". His new relationship was starting to feel like the old traditional marriage he had just left. He wanted the old Janice back.

Many people, especially modern women, would label the man a hopeless commitment-phobe and relegate him to the trash heap of wounded and dangerous men. I saw his story differently.

Alex never was able to be fathered through the healthy period of early adolescence that is all men's birthright. And then his older adolescent was never guided by a wise elder toward a process of initiation into psychological adulthood. He missed his healthy adolescence, as have millions of other "responsible" men. He wasn't ready for healthy, adult commitment because his adolescent within was not given a chance to grow up. He was stuck in a kind of adolescent limbo where most elderless men end up. He was stuck in the sibling society.

This limbo is composed of men who are neither healthy adolescents nor healthy adults. Instead this limbo consists of half men, with the bodies of men and the brainwaves of adolescents. Like one eternal beer commercial, this limbo is peopled with grown men, playing adult, sneaking as much adolescent fun as possible. It's a shame that "it doesn't get any better than this."

Just as limbo is the place of unbaptized Christians, this is the place of unanointed, uninitiated adults. And like the Christian limbo, men's landing there is through no fault of their own. The yearning for masculinity is still there. These are often sensitive and compassionate men, whose compassion comes out for others, but not for themselves. This limbo is exactly at the crossroads at the edge of the village. A very good place to be, if there were an elder around to explain and guide. A hopeless and unsatisfying place when a man is paralyzed there. And not a good place to get stuck in a relationship.

Larry Pesavento ©2005