I begin writing this piece in the small hours of the morning in a whitewashed room on a Greek island. It's my good fortune to be here running a course for men. Why choose this moment to begin writing about relationships between men and women when I should be concentrating on men? The practical reason is that I've a deadline to meet and I'm late. But in my life, nothing has taught me more about my own masculinity than attempting an intimate relationship with a woman. But what has inspired me is that I have just heard a story from this island, and whenever you work with myths, as we are about to, they often seem to come into your life.
| "with all this shit there must be a pony somewhere!" |
The story I heard was about Achilles himself. He was on the run and in hiding on Skyros, disguised as a woman. Odysseus, another hero, who was after him, was displaying a wonderful sword in the marketplace. Achilles was watching furtively until he got so excited to see this powerful thing that he inadvertently let slip the woman's robes he was wearing. Odysseus discovered him and dragged him out by his heel, to meet his grisly fate.
I began to think that as men our challenge may often be our relationship with the Feminine, whatever her form: our wives and girlfriends, our mothers, our inner life, our receptive side (which Jungians call the Anima), Mother Earth, and how mankind has mistreated her. And yet often our weak spot is our identification with the Masculine, the bright sword that we long for. Many of us on the heroic journey to become self-aware develop sensitivity but have trouble in "owning our power". We may be so afraid of being overwhelmed by the strength of our anger that we repress it and leak it out; we may find it hard to say no at the right time. We may disguise ourselves in "women's robes", as "nice guys", and hide at the inevitable appearance of conflict in our relationships. Myths often hint at the need for going on a journey, clearly of self discovery, in which we have to get to know our own weak spot, in order to complete ourselves, to make our fate into our destiny.
There is little doubt that there is a problem with men. We are most often known by our emotional unavailability, our sexual greed, and our tribal competitiveness. We have a tendency to relate to people as things, and things as people, which so often ends in violence. Achilles Heel readers know that beyond these aspects the male has a capacity for deep caring and wonderful creativity: that he is both vulnerable and strong, and that the world is profoundly bereft of his loving and aware presence. But to develop these bright aspects men have to wake up.
I know of three routes towards awakening that men can take. The first I call The Way of One, the path of Introspection, the way of yoga, meditation or therapy. The second is Two, The Path of Relationship, the 'tantric', and the third is The Road of the Many, of the village, of community, of men's groups. This article is an attempt to report on some personal and professional research on the second way of awakening, through a committed relationship with a woman.
The Dancing in the Dark workshops which I run with Helena Løvendal-Sørensen were borne out of our personal experience. I must state at the beginning that I have found nothing more difficult in my life than the challenge of being really intimate with a woman. Despite being in and out of therapy end psychological training since the early eighties nothing has provoked me or evoked as much of my stuff as this task.
Firstly, women are so different. They are cyclical beings whose emotional and mental life seem to be so totally different to my own. As for intimacy itself? Deep inside me I have had to admit that although I long to be loved and accepted, to be close and companionable, there is something about intimacy itself that terrifies and repels me. It seems to be so damn hard, constantly coming up against my shyness, my fear of not being enough as I am. It has presented me with the difficulty of being with another human being at moments of intense emotion or, perhaps more challengingly, when nothing is going on to fill the gap between me and the other. There was nothing in my upbringing to prepare me for it, except what I saw going on between my father and mother, which was mainly teasing, absence, irritation and sulking. Despite training and working as a divorce mediator, couple counsellor and individual therapist, my own failures at conscious, intimate relationship with a committed partner were too hard to ignore. But of course mostly I believed it was her fault.
| Two therapists in constant conflict is not a pretty sight |
Between us we have three failed marriages. In order to be together I had abandoned my first wife and let chaos into the lives of my two sons; Helena had left her husband after less than a year. We were both psychotherapists and workshop leaders; supposedly experts at communication and listening. But after a brief honeymoon period, and a tragic abortion, we found that we were doing nothing but furiously rowing and bringing out the worst aspects of each other. And two therapists in constant conflict is not a pretty sight: each is convinced of the direness of the other's pathology! God knows what the neighbours thought. Had we thrown everything away for this torture?
Some years on, within this nightmare, questions began to formulate themselves in our minds: was it possible that this conflict actually had some purpose? I thought of the story of the innocent child shovelling manure in the stable - "with all this shit there must be a pony somewhere!" Could it be that evoking these unsavoury self-pitying, maligned parts of ourselves was what "The Relationship" wanted in order to transform us? Could there be such an entity as 'The Relationship' which actually had a healing potential, or was that just jargon? We began to be interested in this and to search in psychological books and myths and stories to see if there was some ancient or modern evidence for this ideal. At the same time everyone we knew seemed to be in trouble in their relationships, though some couples, particularly in our parents generation, seemed to actively pursue the avoidance of conflict, while others seemed to be addicted to it. Was it possible that this was the same dynamic in different forms? And could there ever be lasting happiness?
And so when in moments of sanity we tried to consider such questions we began to have a little compassion for the task of relationship. For it began to seem as if there was some outrageous death process at work. We had already experienced how many of the very things which had attracted us to one another were becoming sources of intense irritation.
For example, I had loved how 'laid back' Helena was, while I had been brought up in a regimented boarding-school way of dealing with time. But soon I became preoccupied with how she consistently kept me waiting and was never on time. This began to drive me absolutely nuts. And for her part, she had heard me promise that I would never leave my children. The little girl in her imagined that here was a man who would finally not desert her, like her father had done, but in practice she found herself always playing second fiddle to my real children, while I allowed my ex-wife to pull the guilt strings. She had been attracted to my strength and then found out how insecure I really was. What seemed to be dying was the image we had had of one another. As we began to make less effort to attract one another I became more and more the reluctant tyrant and she the furious witch. It seemed as if we were being forced to acknowledge parts of ourselves which we did not show in other areas of our life.
Gradually it began to dawn on us that this process of dying, to our own self-image and the images we had of each other, was part of the natural law of the cycle of life/death/life, and served the inclusion of disowned parts of ourselves - in order to fully integrate and include them. The cycle had reached into places which therapy had failed to penetrate. It seemed to be an organic process whose nature was archetypically feminine and chaotic, frightening and healing, like the Goddess Kali or Baba Yaga. And as we began to have respect for ourselves in attempting to ride the bilious waves of conscious relationship our hearts began to open to each other and we experienced that we were starting to relate from a different level.
It was at this point that we decided that we wanted to start teaching what we were learning, and began designing the workshops. We also recognised that to let this chaos happen between us we needed stronger boundaries. It was not enough just to stay together as long as it felt OK. Most of the time it did not; and our emotional life, though important, was so ephemeral that to give over the command of our destiny to it seemed reckless. After all, feelings are simply energy on the loose - repressing them is dangerous, but so is not containing them. We decided that we needed to get married. And that's when the fans really hit the shit.
| We decided that we needed to get married, and that's when the fan really hit the shit |
The next period was the hardest. We were recognising a lot of patterns but were yet powerless to alter them. We had not yet understood the nature of what we now know as Bonding Patterns, but we were deeply in their grip. In essence this is where the inner parent part in each partner bonds or spars with the inner child part in the other.
In the attraction stage I had fallen in love with the supportive 'good mother' part in Helena which could genuinely listen to and nourish the 'needy child' in me, which in my previous marriage I had repressed by being the one who held it all together. (Of course there was a pay off: I was more comfortable with such a self-image ). But as Helena became more secure in our relationship she was less inclined to play supportive in order to have a role. Now she complained that I was always talking about myself; in my eyes she turned into the resentful, reluctant mother. As our illusions of each other died there followed a terrible repulsion stage, like winter following summer.
For example, we were always running into problems with sex. I had come from a marriage with a woman who seemed happy to provide sex on request, and would orgasm readily, all of which made me feel good about myself. Only later I realised what sort of a deal for security this involved, and how we had both been avoiding relational intimacy within this set up. But in the new relationship I was forever pushing for sex, and she was hard to get. I felt cursed by an ironical god, particularly as Helena is a remarkably beautiful woman. Later we discovered what a system that was, and, for example how much more comfortable I was with being the pursuer than the pursued. We had discovered the laws of what we call The Chase.
| And so we were hurled around on an emotional Catherine wheel |
This is how the bonding pattern worked in our erotic life: I would be feeling virile and would make an overture for sex; if she said no I would immediately feel cheated and rejected and become energetically a little boy. Now the last thing a woman wants to make love with is a self-pitying little boy, so she would become the angry reluctant mother. Then to deal with this assault I would have recourse to a furious tyrannical father (never far below the surface), which drove her into her frightened-to-be-abandoned little girl. To defend her she would need to bring out a raging witch-mother.
And so we were hurled around on an emotional Catherine wheel in which we got hurt and hurt each other with the speed of lightning, but which would take days to recover from. Recognising and accepting the bonding pattern was an enormous help. Working on other issues of sexual shame took us further. But it wasn't until we had dealt with the pain caused by my sexually 'acting out' in secret outside the relationship that we got to the bottom of it. I had to acknowledge the depths of my jealousy and fear which "drove" me to prove that I could get "love", rather than keeping that level of desperation and vulnerability within the relationship. In hindsight this would have been the more honest, brave and creative thing to do.
In all these areas pain and disillusionment had been the teachers. We started to be certain that 'The Relationship' existed as the 'Third Being', that it had both needs and purpose, and required nurturing and maintenance if it was to become the container which would sustain us. Getting married from a position of lost naiveté, really made a difference to us, but each couple must work out their own contract. The work is still in progress but we are teaching what we've learned anyhow.
The Dancing in the Dark workshops, which we finally began, have been extraordinary powerful events. Couples who have made a commitment to work on their relationships come together for a very long weekend. Often there is one partner who drags the other along. The dragged are usually, but not always, the men. Just being there with other couples is a huge step, and often people discover what they had been suffering individually to be more universal than they had imagined. We work with a myth which always has its own life, with our story and those of the participants, with teaching models, and whatever processes break out over the weekend. Music and poetry and good dinners help us to have fun, and we also spend time in gender groups.
Everyone's story is unique, but there are some frequent themes. One is that men went to be accepted as who they are, and commonly seek peace; women are often pushing for changes and for their men to put themselves in more. By the end of the course men often reluctantly find that they do have to keep developing, especially learning to listen and to witness the women's anger without feeling rejected, or pulled. This can be a major step in developing true power and inner authority. We say that men need to learn to be "On Patrol", rather "In Control". Women frequently find that to sit in their genuine femininity becomes in fact the opposite of losing power, and the drive to be resignedly placative or over assertive declines. There can follow a profound reward for both partners.
| In all these areas pain and disillusionment had been the teachers |
We contextualise this process as being in service of the Sacred Feminine, with its cycle of death and rebirth. Interestingly, in some cultures the Bull, a profoundly masculine symbol and one we have both dreamed, is said to be the symbol of this guardianship of The Feminine. We offer a follow-up course called "Coming Together" where we build on these themes, consider the inner masculine and feminine within us, and tackle sexuality more directly and pragmatically. To date about 65 couples have been through the workshop.
As I write this final section I am in Denmark visiting my in-laws. I think it important to accompany my wife on these trips, because I knew how easy it is to regress around one's parents. So I want to support her, and nowadays I find I can enjoy both that role, as well as the delightful aspect of being the young ones again. On the first afternoon we are sitting in a kind of a bus shelter opposite a little fishing harbour, drinking beer and sheltering from the wind. Danes resent the price of beer in pubs and love to drink outdoors. Two shaggy old guys in their 60's appear. They look like they have a head start on us, boozewise. They pull out bottles from the bags they are carrying and open them on two screws fixed on a rafter for that very purpose. The caps drop obediently into a tin can nailed right underneath. Delighted to join us, they sit and make an ecstatic toast: "Skol ! And congratulations to our mothers for their lovely children, and especially the boys!"
We all laugh with abandon, and I reflect on the mixture of innocent and wicked celebration of mothers and sons - this could be wisdom. Engaging in that delicious, terrifying, unpredictable tension of relationship between opposite genders has helped me celebrate being a man.
Nick Duffell is a psychotherapist, trainer and workshop leader and co-founded the centre for gender psychology.
For information on courses including Dancing in the Dark, Images of Masculinity, Boarding School Survivors, ring 0181 341 4885.
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