I'm Trying To Reclaim My Masculinity

It's no-one's fault you know. Let's get that solidified before we move any further. Before we start to point accusatory fingers at the people in the previous years of my life. We could blame those that were around me; but I've always been one for looking past the current problem and seeing where it began to form a solution. This is basically psychology 101. You don't look at the damaged person and accuse them of being damaged, you look at how, why and when they were damaged so that you can form an accurate solution.

But I'm no psychologist, so we'll leave it at that.

My Mum and Dad were a strange pairing off together. Dad was the typical man with NPD; sleeping with hundreds of women behind her back when they were both married, and Mum was the typical grounded-feminist of her time, all her friends were women, and most of them were borne to (sometimes several) failed marriages. I would hide when she had her friends over -- ten women in the house and one young teenage boy is particularly threatening if you were anything like me.

As a younger man my Mum loved to criticise my dad. Actually, scrub that, until he was dead and six foot under only five years ago was the day she stopped criticising my dad.

There was a point in my life when I had so much pent up anger towards my father that I refused to call him dad as I should have; John was the go to parental-annexed name I would call him. He may have been my father but there was no way I was recognising him as one because I had been free from him for over three years now. I had tasted freedom with my mum. Free from the abuse, free from coming into my bedroom late at night, stinking of his last alcoholic drink to wake me up and torment me until I cried. Mum definitely made sure how much better we had it without him. She was very vocal on this.

My Dad didn't help matters. He proved my mum right. You'd think in a battle between two parents there would be a lot of to and fro with both of them but there wasn't, not until the later years anyway. Mum was like, "Yeah, Son, your Dad is a cunt" and dad was like, "yeah, perhaps I am Son," as he introduced me to his mistress whilst he was married again. So, there was a one way flow of information here. Mum criticising dad, and dad just accepting his lot, that perhaps he was what a lot of people said about him. I doubt it was that though, I think mainly he just didn't care.

The hardest part of all this was that I had to form a role model of the sort of man I was going to become in later years from all this mess. Dad was in my life and I had unfettered access to him whenever I wanted to, then he was going to be the only person that I looked up to regardless who my mother formed a relationship with.

See, when I was ten he came back into my life again. My mum had fled in the middle of the night with me in a different country to go back to stay with her mother and father. Then, at ten years old, after the death of my dad's dad, when they were at the funeral together, my mum had a word with him. She told him that he had a son that needed him. She told him how well I was doing, A* student, in the golf team, hobbies, friends and well liked. Perhaps as I think about this I would have been better off without him coming back. Who knows, anyway.

The absolutely ludicrous part of all this is that I simultaneously craved his acceptance whilst hated the ground that he walked on. I mean the man was no short of amazing; he was a working class electrician elevated to big business in the Nuclear Power industry. I saw some of his paycheques and they were six figures. Yet on the other hand I hated him, I hated what he stood for; that he accepted defeat with me, that he treated everyone else's kids better than he ever did me, and he was always pulling some sort of scam on women. I hated dad, I hated the ground that he walked on entirely.

And thus my masculinity was whipped up from underneath me. I rejected men because of what I went through with my father. I found it more comfortable to be in the presence of warm women. My Mum, forever reminding me the things that dad did made me edge away from anything that could be typically considered as manly. My mums partners, for all that I went through with them, and the distance they kept from me, reinforced my perceptions of men. Men to me were the enemy. Men needed help. I was the only good man out there.

This is how I started my journey of self-healing, and it still continues to date. My world-view had been shaped by the people that were in it; strong women and weak men. Not what society typically considers as weak men, but men that don't face truth, men that shun away from their responsibilities, and men that cheat. The strong women I typically associated with had been made strong by the weak men that abused them. My worldview was that men needed help to recover, that men needed to be more in tune with their emotions like I had been recently coming to terms with.

As I grew and grew I began to realise that perhaps all men didn't need help. I was growing, and as I grew as a person I found myself in circles of better types of people. One thing that I found VERY significant is that "better" people is not typically related to class. I have friends from all types of social classes; at one point in my life I did mingle for a bit with upper-class, and one thing that I found across the board is that "good person" does not equate to wealth, belongings, or social standing. I've seen some of the most poverty stricken people take total accountability for their past transgressions, be good fathers, and try to move forwards in life, when on the other hand I've seen business owners and near-millionaires lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate. I've seen the reverse of this also.

As I began to realise that I shouldn't blanket statement men (along with women) because in my new job around that time I was meeting all sorts of people from all walks of life. It was about then that I began to embrace individuality; that circumstances for me are entirely different to you, the reader, and that our worldviews can be totally different and in another universe even if we lived next door to one another. The trick being, and something I was taught to do well, is to try and understand other perspectives. I learned that most people spend their lives trying to make people see things from their own perspectives that they forget to just sit, and listen to others talk.

I was previously a collectivist; set in the mindset that my experiences and outlook on life was commonplace, and that most people believed in the same type of equality as I did; well, those on the side of empathy and compassion. I've since been moving away from that the more people I talk to. Don't get me wrong I still wholeheartedly believe in love, compassion and empathy, I just believe that everyone has a right to individuality, and that everyone is awesome. YOU are awesome.

The more that I embraced individuality the more that my worldview changed. Firstly I began asking lots of questions and talking to lots of people. I talked to the whole spectrum of people out there and found one total universal truth; we'd like to believe that we're all similar in experience but we're not. Try having an opinion on Facebook these days to find out how true to that statement is. In every part of life. Yet although not similar in experience we all have things that we can relate to, and this is what binds us together. I began to tinker with the idea that perhaps men aren't as damaged in the way we think they are. Yes, men are damaged, but perhaps I was going about it the wrong way, because we can't all suffer from the same issues.

This is why I started the Man Cave. A place for men to be enriched and empowered creatively and financially; a place to learn, and to grow. And it was here that I reflected upon and learned where I went wrong. I see it everywhere. There are articles, groups and seminars for men to get in touch with their feelings all over the place. Embrace the emotions, get in tune with your body, become a better man. I needed this myself because there's one thing none of my family had and that was good emotional awareness, but as I wanted to take my journey further I realised one crucial fact.

How and where do I learn to be a man? How do I reclaim that side of myself?

You might think that a stupid question because I am a man, of course I know how to be one, but you'd be so far from the truth it hurts me at times. My dad, although he was around in my life occasionally, abused his status as a man, and he was always calling me a girly-man for rejecting what he did. My mum, wanted me to grow up anything like what he was.

This is my truth, is that my Mum raised me in the way she thought the qualities a man should have -- which were totally contrary to the men that she was dating, and the husband she has now. None of which she instilled in me was what attracted her in a man. It's not her fault though, because most people aren't self aware enough to know that what they want is different to what they need. I grew up in a female only household with no male role model anywhere. I always talk about modelling relationships with my son; the only person I could model from was my Mum. Again, not her fault, nor anyone else's for that matter. The simple truth was that I had no-one around to teach me how to be a loyal, respectable, and sensible man.

So contrary to popular belief, and my belief system previously, I've recently realised that I know more about being feminine than I do about being masculine. And this interests me because I've just stumbled across the entire concept. That for years I had been fighting for men to be more in touch with their emotions yet not realising I had no idea what it was to be a man in the first place. Now, this isn't a blanket statement for the record. I'm not saying this is men all the world over and somehow we have a scourge of womanised-men waiting to take down the patriarchy, or whatever it's called. No, this is my truth and mine only. If you relate to it, awesome, learn from it, if not, awesome, learn from it too. But this is the way my thoughts are going. I'm now super in-touch with the centre of my core. Now it's time to for me learn to be a man. What it IS to be a man. What it MEANS to be a man, and what that will cost me emotionally.

This is a journey for me, a very interesting journey.

 

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