19 Jan The Seven Male Attributes (ALON GRATCH) | Part B’
The third male attribute, Masculine Insecurity (I’m tired of being on top), goes to the essence of what men secretly harbor beneath their rugged and guarded exterior. One patient, a driven, hard-nosed entrepreneur, put it this way: “Sometimes I just want to be flattened,” by which he meant literally lie down and stop moving, and figuratively put down arms and withdraw from the business wars. But this was not merely an indication of exhaustion or a wish to quit the rat race. Rather, it represented a deep desire to abandon the active pursuit of bravado and to become the passive recipient of care. Consciously or unconsciously, these kinds of wishes — to be pursued rather than pursue, to be the object rather than the subject (of attention), to “be done to,” rather than to do — are shared by all men. At the same time, such feelings pose a fundamental threat to men’s sense of manliness. Therefore, men must overcompensate by searching for, and always seeking to assume, an ever more masculine stance.
This conflict plays a central role in the psychology of that most common of male afflictions, sexual impotence. On a conscious level, impotence is almost always about performance anxiety, which is why the more the person puts pressure on himself to be cured, the worse it gets. Unconsciously, however, the man’s reluctance to be firm bespeaks his wish to escape the pressures of masculinity to a feminine place of softness. Paradoxically, then, the treatment of impotence requires that the therapist ally himself with the uncooperative penis, rather than with the demanding patient. In doing so, the therapist invites the patient to experience in feelings and thoughts what his body is displaying in action (or inaction). The patient then might uncover such feelings as “I’m tired of having to be successful and provide for you all,” “I wish I could have intimate friendships,” “I wish I could stay home with the children,” or “I wish I had a strong man to protect me.”
Notwithstanding all the positive changes the women’s movement created, it has left us profoundly confused about our gender identity. If the President groped a woman, we ask, was that a sexual assault or a “boys will be boys” type of indiscretion? Or is it a good idea for a woman to be aggressive on a date? Or should I be a successful provider or an available father?
Psychologically, these types of questions represent an attempt to integrate our old, rigid, yet safe, gender identifications with our new postfeminist freedoms. Theoretically we now know that there are no right or wrong answers to many of these questions. We tell ourselves that it all depends on what kind of man or woman we want to be. But many of us are still confused or conflicted precisely about that.
While the women’s movement initially attempted to deny that there were psychological differences between the sexes, it ultimately came to see that acknowledging differences was not the same as accepting inequality. Similarly, after its initial backlash to feminism, the men’s movement now seems willing to concede that femininity is not the enemy. These days, I suspect, most reasonable people think that while sex differences exist, they can be bridged through better communication. Now while it’s hard to argue with that notion, I’m suggesting we take it a step further: differences cannot only be bridged, they can be integrated. That is, men can learn to accept their own femininity despite the threat it poses for their masculinity. And they can do so without becoming “wimps.” And women can, as they often do, play an important role in this integrative process. The good news, then, is that men don’t have to choose between masculinity and femininity — they can have it all. And women don’t have to choose between a wimp or a bully of a partner. The bad news, however, is that it takes quite a bit of work to achieve this kind of integration. Yet whether you consciously work on it or not, as we shall see throughout this book, men’s attempts, failures, and successes at integration, and women’s reactions to these, have a powerful effect on both genders — in the bedroom as well as in the boardroom.
Before the women’s movement, one of the most common forms of marital discord was the psychological polarization of the traditional couple. This couple had an untenable division of labor in which the husband did the thinking, the wife did the feeling. He was calm and cold, she was emotional and hysterical; he enjoyed sports and action movies, she liked shopping and romantic comedies; he went out drinking with the guys and she played canasta with the girls. This split was untenable not only because it created conflict in everyday life, but also because the partners in this kind of marriage had little in common.
Today, while such relationships still abound, marital therapists see more and more couples struggling with the opposite dynamics. These couples are polarized along the same masculine-feminine dimension, but in reverse. The woman is an assertive, take-charge, action-oriented, bottom-line type, while the man is sensitive, supportive, receptive, and emotional. When these differences become polarized, this newer version of what I call the masculine-feminine split is also untenable: the wife complains that the husband is a passive, submissive doormat, and the husband feels that the wife is a control freak and a cold fish.
Clearly, the war between the sexes thrives on extremes, which, amazingly enough, are still easy to fall into. As we visit and revisit the conflict of masculine insecurity, we will see that the techniques used to resolve it almost always involve the integration of the masculine-feminine split within each gender. For example, in the case of the “aggressive” wife and the “submissive” husband, the more the wife complains that her husband is passive, weak, or unassertive, the more she continues to dominate him with her demands and criticisms. Unwittingly — and unconsciously — she actually reinforces the dynamics which she presumably wishes to change. What she might want to do instead is to work on facilitating or promoting her own latent or dormant passivity, receptivity, and sensitivity — her own “feminine” qualities. If she is then less directive or aggressive and more emotionally vulnerable, she leaves some room for the husband to step up to the plate. The same, of course, is true for the husband: if instead of whining that she is too bossy or insensitive — thereby subjugating himself even further — he undertakes to work on expressing his own denied, masculine aggression, he will in effect invite his wife to tone down her own assertiveness and raise the volume of her feminine sensitivities. Clearly, the same principle applies to the traditional couple, where the husband is hypermasculine, the wife, hyper-feminine.
Now, unfortunately, in both types of couples the masculine-feminine split is deeply fissured and highly self-perpetuating, which makes my integrative solution an easier-said-than-done proposition. But if it can be implemented in therapy, it can be implemented in life — and by using the same basic strategies.
Part A’: https://www.lecturesbureau.gr/1/the-seven-male-attributes-part-a-2016a/?lang=en
If Men Could Talk: Translating the Secret Language of Men
Alon Gratch
