Archive for the ‘Men’ Category

I doubt my Grandpa has ever finished fifth grade. Yesterday, June 30th he would be 97. Born in Polignano a Mare, a village in the eastern coast of the Italian boot, moved to Brazil where he worked since he was a child, leading a very hard life. Back to Italy for the military service, he married and built a family, until he had to emigrate again to Brazil in 1950.

He betrayed my Grandma once, during the time they lived apart, she with the children in Italy, he in Brazil working to gather the money for their tickets. Evidently, the extra conjugal relationship continued after Grandma arrival, and went on until the day she suspected something, as he walked out in the Sundays afternoon, well dressed and perfumed (he was Italian!). Grandma took her two daughters by hand, my Mother and my Aunt, and the three women of the house followed him. When his mistress opened the door to welcome him in, Grandma – who also didn’t completed elementary school but was no fool – shouted, from the other side of the street: “Shame on you! How could you, a married man, with children! What a shame!” And various other adjectives in dialect I could not repeat. Read the rest of this entry »

Machismo has different facets. The explicit one is not in fashion anymore but it still happens. The barbarity of spanking a woman because she went out with her girlfriends or forcing her to a sexual relation when she doesn’t want to, is found among the lower social consciousness. Twenty years ago, the father of a seven-year-old boy I treated, sat in front of me and said: “To me, women are worth from the waist downwards.” That was his first session, after one year he was not the same man, however he didn’t change enough, giving the fact that he took his son out of therapy as soon as the boy stopped his violent behavior and began being able to relate and converse. Read the rest of this entry »

Men who want to be good meet some feminine stunts in which, in the majority of the cases, they fall like fat ducks ready for the Christmas roast.

I do not believe that these men are particularly stupid, at least, not more than the tough ones who use violence to solve their relations. To realize that one is being misled by certain kind of tricks is objectively hard, and even when they become evident, get out from them may imply being responsible and to bear a huge emotional catastrophe. For this is where women attack.

Besides the famous “non expected” pregnancy, making a scene is one of the favorite feminine ways to hold a man. Women throw themselves on the floor, yell, shed tears, plug their hair off, go after, implore, talk, and talk again. Suffering and victimized women.

The man who means to be good, what can he do? The man who doesn’t want to be identified with the aggressive and unjust guy, the man with a gentleman soul who doesn’t accept the violent path, what can he do?

Generally, in the absence of a better alternative, he simply bears, shut up and tolerates. If an evil man is the one who takes advantage of women, the good one, can only assume the burden of his masculine responsibility: take care of the women, in this case of his. Therefore, he throw on this shoulder his cross and seriously faces the inevitable destiny.

Childish and manipulative women hence gain space based on the guilt they indoctrinated in the naïve souls of their male companions. It’s easy to recognize a couple like that because he and she are not similar in their real needs. From the outside, a person rightfully wonders why the two of them are together.

When available, it enters the scene another feminine blackmail: the children. In their name many fathers do not separate and keep a fake marriage (as if it were healthy for the children), they cut off meaningful relations that could threaten their marriage, and sink more in the reciprocal dependence with the mother of their children. She needs him, he needs her in order not to feel a bad person if he leaves.

With time passing by, men who wanted to be good lose their horizon, blending more and more with their wives personality, becoming accomplices and dropping the ability to say the truth. At last, to survive, they seek a comfortable niche, getting accommodated. They make themselves at home in the small life that if they were sober, without the affective narcotic, they would never accept.

It’s curious and even funny. I have encountered the masculine discomfort when they read about themselves, mainly when they see exposed their ugly side. The first thing they do is to bounce back the shot, pointing to a correspondent feminine problem, or whatever else.

The mirror test seems to be harder for men than for women. After all, the latter are accustomed to critics, historically they have never been the “most important” and in many family they still aren’t, and when they are they are not acknowledged for that. Now, men… Their ball of light illuminates the four directions of the planet. When that light is the reflection of the fire of hell they do at home, their dedicated spouses are the ones who brighten their images up, to hide right away beyond them, occulting the truth as well.

It’s extremely difficult for a man to recognize that he is wrong, most of all when he has to admit it to his woman, and perhaps also confirm that she was right. And it’s also delicate for them to see themselves in the psychological mirror and confront their other face, the one that shows their unpleasant side, their injustice, insensitivity, and lack of love.

Unfortunately, that’s the only way to evolve. Being capable to maintain the vision of whatever is seen is healthy, for in this way it’s possible to jump to a new level of civilization. It’s needed more courage to face oneself than to win marine monsters and horrible dragons. The external braveries don’t make much sense in the world of today, the great small gestures are the ones that make the difference, the ones that speak loud from a meaningful simplicity, such as saying sorry.

The hero of today is the man who assumes his violent side, his omission and cowardice. It’s the man who stops avoiding his emotions and feelings, and doesn’t use rationality, work and money as weapons or shelters, depending on the situation. I believe that any woman to whom I’ll ask will be able to cite such an episode about her husband, boyfriend and father.

Hero is the man who faces the internal ugly terrifying being without identifying with it, because the goal of all this is not to knock men down, and inverter the situation putting them in a position of inferiority. I don’t think women want revenge. They surely want justice and, most of all, they want to move on. There’s much to do, and no time to lose. A masculine evolution is benefic to everybody, men and women, as well as feminism is a balm to renew the couple. I remind the words of that patient of mine: “I have so much love to give…”, but love must go holding hands with justice. It’s time.

He falls in love with a woman who resembles his mother. He comes from a life story where the mother figure had a relevant role contrasting with the father’s flaws. His spouse, therefore, reminds him in some way how his mother was important in his life. The mother, his savior. The spouse, his companion and somehow also savior. He feels in debt with mother and wife. Gratefully, he opens his arms to them.

Until here, it’s okay. It’s nice that there are men like that… In a chauvinist and patriarchal world, men who value women are precious.

But, looking closer, one observes some oddities: the man knows how to estimate a situation, but doesn’t use the same criteria to evaluate what happens in his home. From the outside, one realizes that there is a blind point that his eyes don’t notice. He rationalizes and justifies a reality that wouldn’t be overlooked if it were about his neighbor. The faults that he sees in his wife “don’t work”, his tolerance, apparently, has no limits.

Getting even closer, behind the appearance, one perceives that his spouse is subtly manipulator. Her smiles and speeches are produced, even without her active doing (which is more common than one can imagine), with the purpose to keep herself in the position she occupies. She knows that she doesn’t deserve what she has. Being continuously “forgave and forgot” leaves anyone insecure, who receives so many privileges naturally needs to demonstrate that she’s worthy of them. Thus the crucial role of manipulation, which must be as subtle as her husband is intelligent.
The man with a positive mother complex will have a blind trust in the woman on whom he projects his feminine model. By “blind trust” I don’t mean that he won’t realize certain traits and won’t dislike others. It could also be in some cases, but in this way the man would miss his masculine pride. What more frequently happens is a camouflaged perception of those fatidic details that, if faced, would definitely change his attitudes towards his wife. That is, this kind of man always finds a way to save his woman from the truth that would debunk her. And in doing so, he maintains her on control of the affective tricks and himself in the limbo of the pseudo-consciousness.

He falls in love with a woman, and fluctuates on the clouds of joy. He has searched for a woman like her, the other relationships didn’t work, the other women “have nothing to do”. Now, for sure, he has found his “soul mate”; he’s ready to start a new couple life.

Times passes by and, in spite of the great love, some rifts crack the compact unity of the relationship. Poisonous perceptions and interpretations pollute the pious belief of a happy union. The men, however, keeps believing, engaged as he is by his own dream, meanwhile his behavior betrays another perspective. He is jealous and suspicious. Insecure, he gets scared of how his woman dresses and when she looks outside the car windows when they drive. Not even realizing, he reads refusal in her gestures, worse, he starts reacting aggressively to any presumed rejection of hers, without checking, asking, talking.

The ghost of betrayal enters the scene, powerful and tyrant. Under its wicked light, her ways are interpreted. Her facial expressions, behavior, choices and words are harshly scrutinized. Nothing more is spontaneous and trustful. Any time he expects to be betrayed: she, with somebody else, she, going away, she, abandoning him. He waits for it and he’s actually terrified, he better rejects her then before being rejected. Guided as a puppet by the specter that haunts him, he turns her life into hell.

Love (or its echo) continues alive, throbbing it asks for respite and grace. But the relationship totters under the weight of the monster of perfidy and disloyalty. He doesn’t trust her. When he loosens up is almost by mistake, soon he’s tormented by the obsession that pokes his mind: to defend himself, to watch out for the very woman who loves him and whom he loves.

Confused by his contradictions, she’ll suffer the relations and in time, the weight of this martyrdom will become unbearable. She’s verbally harassed and used as a scapegoat, all support is taken away from her. She has an enemy at home, who doesn’t trust somebody cannot be his friend. Until when will she withstand it? That will depend on her consciousness. Because women are historically accustomed not to be treated as queen by the men they love, she’ll take it for a while. But if she is a women with personality she will not allow her self esteem to be destroyed and the day will come that she will say “enough”, even though she might have to dilacerate her heart. Love that only gives pain must be sickness.

She goes away, and he confirms to himself that all women are betrayers, that one must not rely on love, that maybe he doesn’t even deserve it (but he won’t admit it openly) but the point is that love and woman doesn’t work. Women and sex, yes. Women and love, no – better watch out. The heart eager to love will bleed in the chest but the man devastated by the negative mother complex will lock it in a dark trunk, will water its soil with whisky and easy women (who are the one he doesn’t love), he will stiffen up his body and move one through the valley of tears. Amen.

This desolated picture is the result, among other things, of a psychological unbalanced condition. At the roots of the affective experience of this man there is a relation with his mother marked by betrayal. The maternal embrace wasn’t sincere, in it there were not loving surrender, reception and acceptance – which are vitals in the building of the human person in his early childhood. In the moment of maximum vulnerability the child lacked true motherly love.

There are different levels of the problem and diverse reason for it to be:

• The mother wasn’t there because of reasons she couldn’t control; in this case, the feeling of rejection is strong by can be soothed by her true presence in the quality time the can spend together;
• The mother didn’t want to be a mother, she didn’t choose the pregnancy, she doesn’t have aptitude for motherhood, she prefers other kind of things. The rejection is explicit and very painful. The only way out here is being lucky enough to have a surrogate of a mother close by: an aunt or a grandmother.
• The mother is not happy in her marriage and didn’t want to have children, or she didn’t want to have this particular child, maybe because he is the last one and she had enough already, or maybe because this child looks like the husband she doesn’t love, or either because this child is linked to her by not happy ties from their past lives and the hate of those times is not yet dissolved.

Whatever the situation is, this boy will grow up without maternal love. Unless the rejection is explicit (which is not so common), it will be disguised by hypocrisy, and the secret about the true feelings will be kept by both of them: mother and son. By the mother, because she can’t tell to herself that she doesn’t love her son (it would be a giant social and psychological scandal); by the son, because, as any kid, he will think that he is the evil one not worthy of her motherly love, and because if he admitted that he’s unloved “without reason” his self esteem would collapse. Mother and son are linked one to another by fraud.

The day this man will fall in love (because, despite of his history he is able to love), how will he really be giving himself from the bottom of his heart to a woman? All his soul knows about women was learned with his first woman: his mother.

At Mother’s Day  all kinds of loving messages run throughout the Web related to those heroines called mothers. These women withstand everything, go through any trouble, take care and get worried until their last breathe. But who does help the mothers while they are still young and active, caring about house, children and food? Who does rescue the mothers in their daily routine?

Nobody. Being a mother is wonderful but also tiring. And they are alone.

Truth is that it still exists an enormous amount of couples who live unfair gender relations. Spouses of any generation and economical status unanimously present the same pattern. There are exceptions, but the general rule persists, and it says more or less this: the man when he is a father has to play with the children (or scold them), if he can and wants. The woman is mother in any other moment and situation.

Despite the social and cultural advances, it seems that men are still missing the notion of what it means taking care of house, food and children. Meanwhile, many women besides their tough daily work the also want to be conscious educators. But they are alone. Their lives twirl around house and children’s emergencies, while their companions maintain the stable rhythm of their distant world, little susceptible to accept changes.

A kind of overwhelming lethargy dominate the man. Even the ones with good intentions seem to be almost groggy by their traditional passive domestic role and keep going. They drag themselves at home, between the street door and the couch in front of the TV, doing the less possible and only when strictly necessary. Why?

Addiction, habit, comfort, childish behavior. A little of everything. We need to get a psychological point here that usually does not depend on the good will when consciousness is missing. Body and ego are happy to be comfortably resting. Nobody, unless he or she is a enlightened mind, leaves a comfort niche for work and effort.

All movement implies energy. To start moving, an object requires a bigger amount of energy than the one that is already moving. That’s physics. The same goes for psychology. A long masculine tradition ensures to the man his passivity once he get into the house, and that’s the first obstacle. Men may not be aware of that, and he surely will find tremendously hard to change this because there’s a long history and much culture that support and justify his passivity.

Transforming this behavior therefore depends less on the man and more on the woman. Who suffers the most is the one who’ll throw her load on the floor and ask for help. She can start with a “please”, it doesn’t cost trying. But how long? Soon the woman realizes that her “please” is quickly forgotten, averted and erased. The request for help must overcome several obstacles before being attended.

A woman gets tired. She dreams with better days. The ancient feminine patience unites with the love she feels for her companion, “one day he’ll change”. Maybe, and maybe no. Meanwhile, mothers need to take care of themselves, paying attention at they tired eyes, heavy heads, and body’s demand for rest. And last but not least, they need to listen to their heart that feels alone.

The couple’s relationship seems to be supported by this womanly patience to the point that she look like a mother to her spouse, the wonderful mother who bears everything. Mistreatment, disregard, lack of understanding and valuing about her job is tolerated in the name of an indefinite different future.

As mothers know, motherhood means being down to earth. It implies responsibility, realism and courage. Thus, let’s review Newton’s Laws because women need them.

First Law or the Principle of Inertia: “An object at rest tends to stay at rest, or if it is in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by a sum of physical forces.”

That means that who is still tends to continue still and who is in constant moving tends to keep it. Thus follows that women will likely keep moving non stop and men will maintain their passivity. Consequently, the first ones will probably evolve in the next twenty years and their men will be still wondering “what’s going on”, as anybody can check in their own lives or neighbors, relatives and friends’.

Second Law or Principle of the Proportional Movement: “A body will accelerate with acceleration proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass.”

That is, to modify and inertial state it’s necessary an equal or superior force to the objects mass we want to move.

In human psychology it sounds like this: the one who is still will modify his state (getting into movement) only if an external force acts upon him and only in the case this external force is strong enough to overcome the resistance of his inertial mass (the bigger the mass the more difficult it is to move the “object”, and we include in the “mass”: convictions, ego, history, friends and etc.). On the other hand, who is in continuous movement will stop only when she’ll receive a blow strong enough to make her brake. Generally this relates to women and it means that they have reached exhaustion or a severe illness with psychological aspects. Then women stop. And talking about men, they will change status only by the external force coming from the only person interested in seeing their movement: their spouses.

Third Law or the Principle of Action and Reaction: “Every action has a reaction equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.”

That means that nobody changes alone. Her changing of state corresponds to his changing of state.

Conscious and free beings wouldn’t need to undergo the Three Laws of Motions created by Isaac Newton three hundreds of years ago. But history shows that consciousness, in the enormous majority of cases, arises solely after much blood and suffering. Let’s hurry up, then, to that shining goal without fearing being realistic and practical. For the time to change is now.

Men* love. Their way, but they do. When a relationship gets into trouble they take off their favorite card (of they have it) out of their sleeve: they pare the credit card they had given to their darling, ask back for the check books and, if they didn’t do it before, open a bank account on their name only, and start to hold in their hands the financial reins of the house. Not only that, everything that will promote their women’s emancipation is, depending on the status of the relation, subtle boycotted, openly devalued or looked at with rationalized perplexity, the bit enough knock down her castles in the air.

They say they love, and they even do, but when a relation is not the way they want, instead of questioning they adopt their strategy meant to be invincible. Their women, on the contrary, start to wonder frightened: “Is it my fault? It is because I didn’t have sex with him that night that I was exhausted? Or because I burned the dinner? Or maybe because Little Jo got an F at school… or is it because it’s raining??” Whatever justification serves. Untiring, they continue: “What can I do to fix things?” Because of course they are the one who will “solve” the situation. You can’t count until 5 that women readily take job and responsibilities. Meanwhile, their men are silently arranging things to isolate their better half from the contact with the productive and profitable external world, numbing their willing and gnawing their self esteem. To do so, there is nothing better than letting them be at their mercy.

The most powerful way to bend others will is divesting the “rebel” person of her means of survival. The fact that this person is also the mother of one’s children do not alter the general political lines of action. Men obviously love their children, but in their heads there are priorities, therefore they don’t pay real attention to children’s pain. Who’s under the rain gets wet. It’s life.

What does it remain to women? As usual there are only two ways: accepting the yoke and selling the soul to the devil, or roll their sleeves up and facing the hard time. Among the ones who accept the masculine economical authority there is who destroy herself because the husband is terrible, drinks betrays, and etc., and there is the one who, having a rich husband, disguise the real oppression with dresses and jewelry, travels and cars, and complete their show looking at their poorer sister with their nose up.

The ones who are lead by personality and life circumstances to wake up and react will walk through other kinds of stones paths, with the difference that they will be able to believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Probably they’ll “poor”, but they’ll be living the truth of their lives and will have the chance to give themselves and their children a better future.

We have the power of the choice. Any time it’s possible to take an attitude and show to ourselves and the world who we are.

* There are many kinds of men, with different personalities, problems and relations styles. There are also the dumb and manipulated by no brains or unscrupulous women. However, there is a a big group of them who share the same attitude towards women and it’s about them that I’m writing.

There are men who want to appreciate women and be nice to them. Nevertheless, something is missing, and this little “it”, curiously, put them always in a higher position, looking at us from above. They are not necessarily bad, it’s just that they do not know how to be different. Unfortunately, in this way they end up neutralizing their good intentions and reaffirming the values we want to change.

To the patriarchal man it’s almost impossible sitting at a symbolic round table with women. By “round table” I mean the ideal relation space where there is trust: one speaks and one listens. Men are able to listen but usually not to open up, therefore they give “advices” keeping themselves out of the game. They have trouble to tell about their own feelings, questions, and inner experiences.

This kind of man is nurtured by women’s material. The feminine side of the human nature, usually embodied by women, gives them that internal life they seem not to possess, fertilizing the arid masculine soil, thirsty because of too much dry mental or body activity. But no soul.

This social & psychological pattern is ancient and universal, but in mutational transition, we‘d like to accelerate. Conventionally is more powerful who doesn’t cry or expose his heart and feelings. Who keeps his game covered is opaque and hidden but “stronger”. Not sitting at the gender round table, men keep their mantle of superiority from where he can judge what women express. If it’s a positive or a negative verdict, what does it change? It’s still a hierarchical relationship.

The majority of men accepts this role without being aware of it. Educated by family and society since an early age, they take what have been given to them as a holy grail. They don’t question in the same way many women maintain the limits their social role imposes them as a divine law. On the other hand, men hold themselves on to this behavior because they are scared to death to reveal themselves. They have learned that opening up is for “weak” people.

Since they were a child, they went through a tough training that forced them to swallow their tears and feeling. However, that child who one day was innocent and felt pushed to repress his sentiments in a time of his life when social masculine role didn’t matter so much to him, will understand this training as a judgment against his inner contents. In his head, if the entire world (that is family, relatives and friends) wants him to shut off what he has inside, this means that this content is worthless and ugly. Therefore, who carries inside bad things no one wants to know about is bad.

Conclusion: beyond the closed tough male figure who doesn’t open up, there is a child who believes not to be worth it. He’s ashamed of himself. Generally, these are the men who less appreciate women’s inner life or who tend to reduce it to “no more than”, they underestimate women’s feelings and easily loose their patience.