INTIMACY: THE MASCULINE PATH
February 2000

I have been thinking recently about the primacy of the internal journey in the lives of men. And the fact that society prepares men least for what is most important in the search for manhood. Society prepares men only to look outside of themselves to find a sense of mature manhood. From early on a boy is taught to perform out there, to appear strong out there, to work out there, to be successful out there, to be a person out there. Looking out there becomes a way of life.

A man is not only taught to look out there for his manhood, he is also taught to be a permanent lookout. He finds himself automatically looking out to protect his family, looking out for the well-being of his children and spouse, and looking out for himself in a competitive working world. He is taught to be ever vigilant for external danger to the financial well-being of his family and to the existence of his job.

Looking in is another matter. When I see heterosexual couples in counseling I am still amazed at what an advantage women have. Relationships, heterosexual or homosexual, bring out most directly the weaknesses in men's training for manhood. Relationship involves looking toward a single beloved person instead of looking out there. Healthy relationships involve looking in as much as looking out. In this scenario men are seriously Division II in a Division I league.

Women look inside and see something, feel something, and have a good idea of what they need to feel better. Many more women than men come into counseling because women know they're hurting and know there's an answer to their pain. Most men come in to counseling because their spouses are unhappy with them.

Men aren't taught how to look inside and don't have a sense of their needs or their pain, especially in relationship. A good lookout must ignore his own pain, subsuming his needs to those he is looking out for and sucking it up. A good lookout should have no needs. Therefore men as lookouts rarely seek counseling for themselves.

Women are at home looking in. They are at home in this inner realm, men are not. Men tend to come into contact with this inner realm only through the moods of their female partner. Many men feel through their spouse's feelings, often seeing the world through the eyes of their spouse.

The scenario that most often develops in heterosexual relationship counseling is the unhappy wife complaining while the husband lamely tries to defend his mission. She wants feeling from him and the sharing of the inner life. He cannot understand her ingratitude for all the looking out he does for her. Men are tremendously confused because they have been looking out for their wives and family, following their training and mission, and get anger and disappointment in return. Instead of feeling proud many men feel like a soldier returning from an unpopular war.

I find that fewer and fewer women seem to respect this lookout mission or the man on it. Part of this is a result of a healthy feminist movement that recognizes the destructiveness of this patriarchal mission. Modern women are also sharing the lookout shift through their own outside work and financial responsibility. Women, today, are sharing the looking out yet are frustrated with men who will not share the looking in. So their respect diminishes.

And the women have a point. Men are often defending a non-strategic hill, a lookout point with no significance. Their wives and children need them to look back and come back to them, to share more of themselves. However, men have not been trained nor prepared for this new mission. When it comes to looking back, toward loved ones and towards the intimate life, men are like old soldiers; necessary in war but useless in peace.

This is not to put men down, which would be putting myself down. We have been taught to be warriors for 10,000 years. Warrior energy is good energy. Warrior energy is protective energy. Men are being minimized and vilified for looking out for family and friends. Warrior energy is seen as destructive instead of protective, ignoring the protection of family and society that goes on daily.

However, part of this criticism is grounded in truth. As I point out in my book, a man who has not looked inside will be a destructive man, even though unknowingly. Protectiveness can become defensiveness. Defensiveness can easily turn into anger and aggressiveness. Men who are too dependent on women's feelings can turn on those they love. The dark side of warrior energy will strike out at anything that threatens fragile self-esteem.

The truth is that men have not been betrayed by critical women, but by older men. And without an honest look at this betrayal there can be no positive model of manhood to replace a negative martial one.

In prehistoric, indigenous times elders, as opposed to olders, taught men how to look inward as the initial step towards manhood. Looking inside meant looking for something beyond performance, beyond being a good hunter or a fierce warrior, beyond being a lookout. Looking in meant finding the direction for the rest of one's life. Looking in also meant finding one's own authentic feeling. Because looking inward was essential, the elders would let no boy escape this step.

This kind of initiation has been lost in modern times, especially the necessary look within. So men have a very hard time dealing with modern relationships that involve the kind of intimacy that includes sharing the inner life. This inner territory - terra incognita to men - is as familiar as their own back yards for most women.

As a result of lack of initiation men are also finding themselves burnt out. The lookout is becoming more and more lonely and bored. The mission is both unrewarding and unsatisfying. The generals are starting to be questioned. Unknowingly, motivation is slackening.

Where do men go when they start to question their present mission? Do they look to women to be their guides since women seem to know the terrain? There is a tendency, even in the psychological community, to look for a feminist answer to men's dilemma, especially in terms of intimate relations. This answer involves getting in touch with feelings like women do and acting in relationship like women do.

I believe the feminist answer is not an answer for men. For example, sharing the inner life is a part of intimacy, the part that women do best. Feminine intimacy has essential components of healthy intimacy. But it isn't the only game in town. There is more to intimacy than sharing or just being in contact with relational feelings. There is more to healthy relationship than good feeling. Unfortunately, the only modern intimacy is assumed to be the "feminine" version. Bernie Zilbergeld in his book The New Male Sexuality remarks:

"Today's man is caught in a very peculiar position because the definition of love has become feminized. In the past what men did - working to support the family, spending time at home, not running around with other women, not getting drunk too often, doing the kind of chores they could - was accepted as showing their love. No more. Now men are expected to show love the way women do, by sharing feelings and talking in a personal way."

Warren Farrell also talks of this relationship shift when he describes his Stage I and Stage II marriages. (See the book review for more on this and how and why men have become such burnt out lookouts.)

Like other aspects of masculinity which have been given a bad name, masculine intimacy involves the inner life in a different way, a masculine way. And this form of intimacy is also necessary and essential for a healthy relationship. Such things as preserving one's personal life direction, setting boundaries, containing intense feelings in order to focus on a value, absorbing pain for a higher purpose tend to be more masculine traits. That is, men are more suited by training and archetypal history to understand these things and do them well.

Men come to intimacy by a different path than women. It is this different path that needs to be explored if men are to find the inner life that is key to both their life direction and their intimate relations. This path involves venturing inside, into the wilderness of their own psyche and soul, and looking around. Looking in before looking out is what my book is about. Looking in is looking toward manhood.

Larry Pesavento, Copyright © 1999, 2000  

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