What’s Going On Underneath A Man’s Cover
“If I was to say what is the major emotion of American masculinity, it is anxiety. Why? Because you have to prove your masculinity all the time.” ~ Michael Kimmel
Most men on the deepest level want to be understood and the programming growing up was to hide our feelings.
“You’re weak, stop crying, you’re a fag, man up, bang that girl” … the list goes on and on of what boys hear while growing up which often times shuts down their emotions.
We’ve all been conditioned about WHAT it means to be a MAN (and MASCULINE) based on our upbringing, the male role models in our lives, our favorite action heroes and how secure and emancipated we are from the stereotypes of our own gender. A man who can feel his feelings and is secure enough inside himself to be vulnerable and share them, is a sign of true courage, wholeness and strength, not weakness. We are at a turning point in our evolution where we need to OUTGROW the stereotypes and see each other through the HUMANITY of a CONSCIOUS heart.
Men want LOVE so badly, but there’s a lot of masculine prejudice to overcome and often it takes a fall before a man can rise.
Underneath the mask there’s a boy wanting to step up into his full manhood and feel without fear.
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*sigh*
Jonathan –
You sent us an email today about men, and their habit of Future-ize-ing.
(Some of us cal it “Future Faking” — but that’s a discussion for another day.)
Thank you so much for trying to explain this to us. Seriously. We really appreciate it.
But this explanation doesn’t even make logical sense.
You stay “flat” without purpose and goals? What does that even mean?
And how does “when it comes to the initial stages of dating if there’s a lot of chemistry, we focus on the future believing in the moment you might be the one” logically follow from “We stay flat without purpose and goals” …?
Seriously, just because you put one sentence after another one, that doesn’t mean the second one has any kind of logical relationship to the first – at least without some sort of further clarification. Clear as mud.
*smh*
But finally – and most importantly – none of this takes any responsibility for the man having, yet *again*, done some stupid thing that cracks a woman’s heart in two when she has invested her precious time, energy, and probably more into something with some man that goes nowhere. AMOF, he has actively encouraged her to believe it was going somewhere … and that lame “explanation” TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT.
I have noticed that it is an extremely common habit of men, when we get fed up with all the ways you are just crashing around hurting us – really, it’s like an epidemic; do you all think we have nothing else to do?? – to just “explain” what you all think are the “reasons” for the stupid things you’re doing.
The conversation usually goes something like this:
W: Men do this horrible thing to hurt women.
M: Well, that’s because …
We don’t want some trumped-up explanation. We want you to STOP DOING IT!
STOP HURTING US!
YOUR EXPLANATIONS DO NOT JUSTIFY YOUR HORRIBLE BEHAVIOR! Don’t *EXPLAIN* IT – IF YOU VALUE HAVING US IN YOUR LIVES, JUST STOP DOING IT!!!
BTW – some of us were clued in about Marni’s seminar waaaay before you ever showed up with your alert. Some of us as women really are — really — invested in trying to get this stuff to work better, but that’s really, really tough when a relationship includes *both* a man *and* a woman … and yet every single solitary dating & relationship “expert” is hyper-focused on what WOMEN need to understand and what WOMEN aren’t doing … and nobody can be bothered to even *try* to get the MEN to do better.
Thanks anyway, though.