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Chapter 4 - Boundaries (Part 2)
Declaration of Independence
A boundary says, "I am separate and can learn to emotionally take care of myself". Boundaries are psychological declarations of independence. A boundary is also a dividing line between the boy's world of the village and the adult world of the wilderness. By boundary setting a man states he no longer needs a mother to watch over him. He also states he no longer is afraid of not pleasing the mother and is ready to suffer the separation of abandonment.
A boundary needs two components to be healthy and initiatory. First the man must be able to willingly separate emotionally and even risk the end of a relationship. He must stop being a boy trying to keep a comforting mother object, as in David's case. Or, as in James case, he must keep from basing his actions on pleasing a mother object who gives his life structure and direction. The test of a man's readiness for boundary setting is his ability to risk, and then face the consequences of his actions. Even though there is often no total separation when a man sets boundaries, a man must be able to risk it. As one of my clients put it, "I needed to be able to leave before I could set boundaries."
The second step in boundary setting is using the separation to move toward one's inner life. The adolescent boy was separated during initiation in order to face his ordeal. He was starting over and leaving what he no longer needed behind. Separation is always for a higher purpose. The litmus test of a healthy boundary is the insight a man finds about himself in the midst of the pain. If separation isn't for a higher purpose then the boundary is not a boundary but a wall.
John Gray portrays some of this idea in his book Men are From Mars And Women Are From Venus. He talks in this book about men needing their cave to retreat to, especially after a long day in the workplace. Men need time alone to unwind and make the transition to home and family. Men sometimes read the paper or watch the news or putter in the basement. John Gray makes the point that women often see this behavior as a man walling himself off from the relationship. However, Gray sees the cave as a healthy place, a boundaried place, a final frontier. If a woman will give a man this space, and he has healthy boundaries, the man will return to the woman, after a time, ready for relationship and intimacy.
Perhaps men need these spaces and intervals because of a hardwired initiatory pattern. This withdrawal may be an unconscious movement toward an initiatory space of aloneness and personal search. Many in the women's movement complain that men separate too easily. They don't necessarily buy the cave idea. They believe that the real problem for men is joining and relating. They are skeptical of talk of boundary setting. In some ways this is a restatement of the old complaint about men not being able to commit. Many feminists feel there is an overemphasis on personal independence in society and in the men's movement. They are understandably wary of the rugged individualist, the man as cowboy, and the competitive society that evolves from this model. This is why they emphasize relatedness and the return to the mother, and to the feminine as a fount of relatedness.
I do believe that men are taught to build walls as a way of seeming independent. Men are taught to build walls instead of boundaries as part of being manly. This teaching is toxic to men as well as women. This wall building is a pseudo-independent construction with no real separation and no real hope of joining in a healthy relationship later. The walls become another obstacle to a man's inner life. However, returning to the mother is too dangerous for a man at this stage in his psychic life, too fraught with land mines and ambushes. Moving toward the world of men is a healthier, safer answer.
Women should have no fear of healthy boundaries. A separated man will also be a man who can relate from his inner life. An initiated woman will easily recognize healthy boundaries, and respect a man who sets them. However, women have the right to be critical of walls. For this is often the only kind of boundary they experience from men. Let me explain.
Walls
A wall is a pseudo-separation where a man withdraws more deeply into his defenses, usually numbness and addiction. Most men, as I have mentioned, are taught to be walled off. They learn to act and feel detached. This is the Boy Code. This is Frank Pittman's masculine mystique. This is all in the patriarchal training manual. Men must show no fears, much less abandonment fears, if they want to be considered manly. In the face of emotional pain men are taught to retreat behind walls.
This kind of separation neither separates a boy from a mother nor allows him to find a separate adulthood. In fact, the boy becomes trapped behind the walls of the village with the very mother he must separate from. Walls are purely protective. They insulate from pain. There is no higher purpose. There is no real separation. There is no growth. Walled off men never come out from their cave.
It is not a coincidence that the cowboy is the model of manhood in our society. The Marlboro man has sold more cigarettes by far than any other marketing icon. Cowboys are independent, have few loyalties or connections, and can move on at any time. The best cowboy never settles down. He seems separated. But for what purpose? The stereotype is that he goes around selflessly righting wrongs, as a modern knight errant. Closer to the truth is that he mostly smokes and wanders through plains and saloons. These men are bunkered behind their walls unknowingly afraid to take the next steps of separation. Inside they feel safe. No person can hurt them. No woman can get to them. They often retreat into an addiction to relieve any pain they have. The dark mother complex has her in the grips of her greatest weapon, unconsciousness.
Ed had a drinking problem and denied it. He spent much of his free time in bars picking up women who also had drinking problems. During the week he would cruise the bars and find someone for the night. However he would always have one woman he would see regularly on week-ends. This woman, I told him, was home base. She would not know about the others and would think he was dating her regularly. Every year or so home base would change, usually after home base found out about his weekday activities.
Ed was incapable of being honest with any woman. He lied to cover his actions. He lied to make himself look better. He was not even honest with me about some of his abusive drunken behavior. One of the telltale signs of walls is dishonesty. The truth becomes too painful, too close to the ordeal. The truth is too much of a risk. Ed seemed detached and separated from a mother object. He could easily leave any person he was close to. He did leave whenever a woman failed to meet his needs. He seemed a modern cowboy, smoking and wandering.
Ed was actually overconnected to a mother object, be it alcohol or a woman's body or home base. He was neither detached nor separated. Neither was he free to find any meaning in his life beyond the next pleasurable moment. He was miserable behind his walls. But you wouldn't know it if you saw him at a bar. He was "the man".
A man who builds walls is not open to any relationship that calls for the pain of honesty and compromise. Neither is he open to the pain of the ordeal where he must face his aloneness to find his direction. Like all uninitiated men he is caught up in getting his own needs met. Like most uninitiated men he is obsessed only with how he can be loved and pleasured.
John Lee in his book, The Flying Boy, talked of his own experience in battling with his walls: "I was always leaving, flying away from women, jobs, commitments and myself. No matter who the woman was, I was as good as gone the moment we made love. It was at that moment that I always touched something taboo- perhaps my mother, perhaps my pain- and I would have to fly away. The woman with me might think our relationship wonderful. Yet I worried and waited for the most appropriate moment to take flight. If I didn't fly away I ran them off. Either way I knew I couldn't be with them."
Boundary as Betrayal
Unfortunately, loved ones will often see a healthy boundary as a typical male wall. Uninitiated partners will not understand. They will see the boundary setting as withdrawal or control. An uninitiated partner will often see boundary setting as a betrayal. Separation for a man in our culture is invariably misunderstood. This misunderstanding is most painful when it involves an uninitiated partner.
Initiation in our modern culture usually means disappointing those who love us. Setting boundaries for a man regularly brings him face to face with being called selfish by loved ones. Sometimes it just means looking at the fear and sadness in a loved one's eyes. Most of the time it involves facing one's guilt.
Men who set boundaries find themselves having to disagree with their female partners about what constitutes love. There is an assumption in heterosexual society that women know much more about relationships than men do. Love and relationship is considered the domain of the woman. Women are assumed to be the authorities in the field. As Bernie Zilbergeld says, "Today's man is caught in a very peculiar position because the definition of love has become feminized."
Separation, like having caves, is not the usual part of the female way of relating. So separation becomes fearful and foreboding for women as much as men. Some feminists don't help this situation by overemphasizing heterosexual relatedness as the panacea for all men. Unfortunately, we live in a modern, uninitiated society where women are just as much in the dark about a full heterosexual relationship as men are. Women are as much a victim of the patriarchy as men. And the Empress has as few clothes as the Emperor. Yet, in our society, women tend to write the agenda for relationship, and men rarely question the agenda items. Male boundary setting is rarely part of that agenda.
The healthy male mode of relating is not understood. I have experienced many responses by uninitiated partners to boundary setting. With one man an uninitiated partner responds that he only sets boundaries for her, instead of for his friends or family. Other partners react by calling him "selfish" or "irresponsible". Another calls him "cold".
A man will usually find himself criticized in one way or another for boundary setting. An uninitiated partner might also withdraw emotionally, including sexually, as a response to boundary setting. This is usually the greatest test of a man's abandonment fears. Sex to an uninitiated man is often his only connection to anyone. At this point of conflict any man will be greatly tempted to withdraw the boundary. If he has gone this far he will be starting to come alive. Yet he will feel many other feelings, too. He will be sensitive enough to feel badly about displeasing so many people, including spouse, extended family. His guilt will tempt him to give up on his need to separate. His uncertainty, without elders around, will cause him to waver. His sense of loyalty, as protector, will kick in. He may then go back.
Going back does not have to mean defeat. It is often part of the process. The important thing is that a man has tasted, just a little, the sense of manhood from the inside out. This cycle often happens several times before a man will make his boundaries firm enough to go the next steps of initiation.
The Warrior
One of the archetypes that I bring up in counseling when talking of boundaries is the warrior archetype. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette write about this archetype extensively in their book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. The warrior archetype in every man gives great guidance if a man can access him. For the warrior teaches a lot about boundaries and boundary setting. I have found that men who can get in touch with this archetypal energy learn the strength and wisdom they need to set boundaries. They can then relate to their hardwired knowledge in a new way. The warrior is one archetype a man understands most easily.
Unfortunately, the idea of a healthy warrior has been just about lost. The idea of warrior that we have in the modern West has become synonymous with destructive aggression and organized violence. A warrior is someone who wages war. In the best case, he uses violence for the higher moral purpose of his society. In the worst case, he uses violence for the less than noble political and personal ambitions of the mercenary. Whenever warrior energy is brought up in the context of the men's movement there is a negative reaction. For men are seen as primarily violent and the cause of most of the violence in our society. Women, especially, are afraid of warrior energy. As Moore and Gillette mention, "Women especially are uncomfortable with it, because they have often been the most direct victim of it in its shadow form."
Warriors today have a bad name because of the moral ambiguity of war, today, as well as the degeneration of the moral code of a warrior. Warrior energy also has a bad connotation because it is the manipulation of warrior energy by the leaders in our society that cause men to sacrifice themselves, and their own true feelings, for someone else's mission. However, the strength of the warrior, given the proper values and code, is necessary for every man to cultivate within himself. Healthy warrior energy is an extremely valuable and effective energy to connect with. In the context of boundary setting it is the warrior who guards the boundaries. In every man it is warrior energy that sets the boundaries and cleaves to them in the face of any opposition. It is the warrior who then guards the integrity of the initiatory journey.
One of the paradigms of the warrior that comes from the East can give us insight into what healthy warrior energy is all about. The Samurai of Japan had a code called bushido that laid out the philosophy and behavior of a warrior. Much in that philosophy can give men insight regarding healthy boundary setting.
The primary goal of the ideal samurai was to protect his lord and all that the lord symbolized. He would lay down his life instantly if his Lord commanded. He had little need or desire to focus attention on himself. He also had no desire to show his prowess by overcoming or intimidating someone not a threat to his lord. He was to protect his lord and the ethic his lord embodied with the least force necessary. It was actually a defeat for him if he had to use his sword. He should be able to understand any dangerous situations far ahead of time and defuse the danger before violence was needed. A good samurai needed only to show his sword at the right time and opposition would dissolve.
A samurai was not interested in personal revenge nor personal honor outside his duty. He learned to sacrifice his ego to a higher cause, represented by the values of his lord and his own ethic of bushido. There was an ethic here whose purpose was to cure the natural egotism we all have. A samurai was only justified in disobeying his lord when his lord no longer followed a royal ethic.
Much of the great literature of Japan centers around the ronin, the samurai who had no lord. Because of the social degeneration and chaos of the time many samurai were downsized. Many of the best had to be let go because their lord lost his land or his life. Many of the great Japanese stories revolve around the moral choices that samurai made when they were tempted to use their impressive skills for baser purposes. Their greatest literature explored which samurai could keep to bushido and a higher calling and which samurai merely served their own ego.
One of the greatest movies of modern Japan, The Seven Samurai, tells the story of a chaotic time in Japanese history when there were many ronin , as well as outlaws, wandering the countryside. This was a time when greed and opportunism, enabled by widespread violence, was rampant. The victims were always the poor farming peasant, unschooled in self defense or the martial arts, who toiled to make a subsistence living. Outlaws would steal any surplus, leaving the peasant just enough to survive and plant for the next year. Then the cycle would repeat.
This story tells how an extremely poor village sends out "recruiters" to try to find samurais hungry enough to work for a pittance of rice. One poor but extremely able samurai, who represents the highest goals of bushido, has compassion for the poor peasants and agrees to try to protect the village against a large gang of over 40 outlaws and ronin. In making his decision he is prepared to die for the higher values of justice and compassion because of his quiet adherence to a life of bushido.
The odds are very much against him. In order to accomplish his task he goes out to recruit other samurai with similar ideals or purpose. He finds four other skilled samurai, a samurai impostor, and a young samurai wannabe. Their stories show different motivations for service, though none as pure as the leader. All in their own way show compassion for the peasants, without being maudlin. They strive only to protect the village. On the way they encounter a number of other samurai who are more interested in money and status and refuse the offer of the leader.
The leader needs many more samurai but ends up with seven, counting himself. In the end the village is saved at the cost of most of the seven. There is no reward. They had been paid the agreed upon wage of daily rice. The leader moves on. The American movie, The Magnificent Seven, is based on this Japanese classic. Today, there may be some emerging masculine consciousness of this healthy warrior energy as seen in this movie, as well as others such as Kung Fu, The Karate Kid, and a movie I will be talking much more about, Star Wars.
The Warrior Within
Just as with an ethical samurai, boundary setting using warrior energy is not aggressively destructive. It should be compassionate and primarily protective. It doesn't get offensive just to prove a point or win an argument. Neither does it get destructively angry as a way of hurt or revenge. It is not used to prove a man is right. It is used to help him find his right way.
Warrior energy is used to protect the value and the purpose of a man's life. It is first used in the intiatory process to separate from the world of the mother. As such warrior energy is motivating, positively aggressive. It is the antidote to the passivity and unconsciousness brought on by the mother complex. Warrior energy is then used to protect the King, the emerging mature man. Warrior energy protects and enables the right mission by protecting the initiatory process. This energy keeps a man focused on the goal of his personal search for identity and purpose, the true source of his manhood.
As such, Warrior energy can be seen as impersonal, at times. This is because boundaries emphasize the personal, private part of a relationship, instead of the relatedness. Healthy Warrior energy also speaks to purposes beyond the man's personal relationships, what Moore and Gillette call transpersonal goals. This is not to negate relationships but to put them in context. As Moore and Gillette say, speaking of Warrior energy, "it makes all personal relationships relative, that is, it makes them less central than the transpersonal commitment." The King represents this transpersonal nature in all men.
All healthy Warriors must be obedient to a King, to the values inherent in identity. Men alos have to say no before they can say yes. Men have to set boundaries and experience initiation before they can truly carry on a healthy relationship. Wives, lovers, and friends are really looking for this type of initiated man. They are looking for the King in each man. They need not be afraid of a man with this seasoned Warrior energy. For the Warrior protects the King.
A man will need boundary setting at each stage of his growth. Most of these examples talk of boundary setting from a mother object. Yet a man will also need to set boundaries in separating from all that the father represents. Mysteriously he will also need boundaries to ultimately separate from the elder and all he represents. As such, boundary setting triggers each next step in a man's initiatory process. Boundaries ultimately provide the psychological space for a man to get in touch with his own sense of self. The Warrior within helps to define and protect a sacred space. As a man separates from the village he moves closer to the sacred space where he will find what he needs.
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Larry Pesavento ©2004
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