Notes from the Book Why Can’t Men Open Up? by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Why Can’t Men Open Up? By Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, ©1984 by Woodward/White, Inc. Notes from the Book

Don’t allow your emotions to control you; you control your emotions. If you feel pain – physical or emotional – don’t let that raw feeling out. Absorb and refine it. Only show the world what you choose to. The more something affects you, the less you show it. You can cry when your team loses, but if you cry when your dad dies, you’re admitting too much.
Hurting is inevitable, both physically and emotionally. Injury is likely and pain inevitable. Physical sufferings is minimized. A man is cheered for suppressing his feelings – for gritting his teeth and bearing it. He’s condemned for allowing feelings to show. A man is allowed to weep maybe if his whole family’s been killed. Men see tears as “losing it,” a betrayal, treachery by their feelings against their manhood. Pain, pleasure, sadness, fear and love well up and wash over a man, but he must carefully regulate their expression. It’s unmanly to be passionate.
Never give in to emotions. You may be affected by them, but never controlled by them. Reason, not feeling, is the master. Men learn to fake it. Fake self-confidence when you’re in a panic, fake knowledge when at a loss, fake interest when indifferent, and surprisingly, men fake orgasms, too.
Men must reject, suppress or ignore their feelings.
There are no irascible (irritable, grumpy, hot-tempered), crabby genes. Men are not naturally cold and unreachable.
A common plot – the grumpy, lonely man, pestered, then won, by a child’s persistent need for love.
Men and women are not just built differently. The emotions are the same but thresholds are different – what it takes to elicit a response.
Many men really do not like women. They consider them predatory and manipulative, while subservient, lacking strength of character, and intellectual lightweights. Some are so afraid of their own feminine feelings and dependence upon women that it leads to hostility. The possibility of rejection is associated with dependence.
Men fight the world. Every man has been deeply hurt by a woman at some time in his life – that woman is his mother, who failed to satisfy all his desires. Women are seen as fearful, indecisive, physically weak, squeamish about seeing blood, unadventurous, more easily hurt and killed than men (more tender), afraid of getting wet or fearful of electric shock. They scream in emergencies instead of taking charge.
Men taste pain, feel joy, shed tears, heed love, suffer jealousy, but often in silence and alone. Being emotionally open risks getting hurt. He doesn’t want to let a woman into his life. His heart aches with love but his lips won’t budge. He guards his feelings or denies them, holds himself at a safe distance from others’ emotions. Competitive, aggressive, thick-skinned, goal-oriented. A rock of strength and endurance. Independent. Just plods ahead.
Women get what they want by pleasing others. Men protect their feelings from people who could hurt them.
His emotions, desires, and dreams were just below the surface. Some expressions of feelings are just meant to manipulate the other person – emotional blackmail and bullying. Confusing to tell your troubles in a self-centered way versus genuine emotional sharing between people who care about each other.
In opening up, a man fulfills his need for catharsis but also the other’s need for empathy. He has a need to be cared about and she has a need to care.
Love for a woman can become sexual domination, for another man as a handshake or slap on the back, a child as a strong disciplinary hand. Many men express tenderness by toughness. Control and repression hides innocence, authenticity, and spontaneity in every man. Feel free to smile and cry, to touch and to be touched.
There is the notion that men have it better and enjoy certain privileges and reap benefits of cultural favoritism. Men have greater achievement but lower emotional.
Boys don’t cry. Men learn to take themselves very seriously.
Crab apple wars.
Hardship is savored, pain is good for you, and competition is man’s highest achievement.
Has trouble admitting he’s wrong. The man is usually the one who says “I love you, too,” instead of being to one to say, “I love you.”
Women are limited by their dependency and are seldom self-sufficient or independent. They’re traditionally expected to raise children and maintain the family. Men do the business sin the community and provide for their families.
Men are visual, with good hand-eye coordination, spatial, math, and gym skills. They enjoy visual sexual stimulation like Playboy magazine.
Women are verbal and have better cognitive skills, and enjoy reading and writing. They prefer the sexual stimulation of romance novels.
Men have constant pressure to prove themselves, to compete. Goal-oriented, competitive, in control, and independent, inexpressive, obsessed with goals, a need to be in control. The point is ‘the point.’
They enjoyed each other’s company. Wanted to be together not for business or to achieve some goal but because they took pleasure in a quiet exchange of observations, ideas and emotions. A free-flowing conversation unusually unknown to men. They enjoyed each other’s company.
Most men need reasons for everything. They have to be doing; being together is not enough. But intimate conversation can be trivial, silly, playful and without clear objectives.
Men get bored after a woman says yes and he gets the conquest of sex, emotions, or marriage and there’s no longer a goal for him or a prize to be won. His interest and his desire wanes.
The goal of a man in sex is orgasm. They want and need their partner’s orgasm as a sexual gold medal. They want the genuine applause and response of their audience of one. Men often don’t know how to touch, hug, cuddle or caress without wanting to proceed immediately to intercourse.
Winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing!
A guy with a wife won’t risk his life it she’s waiting for him. A man with a wife and family makes compromises – without them he can afford to accept the impossible challenge and fight the good fight.
To really be a man, the cowboy had to be alone.
He had to reject any demands from those close to him. Emotional intimacy with a woman must be on a no demands basis. He cannot respond to her demands or he loses control.
He finds it easier to support a woman if she doesn’t demand support; to give love if she doesn’t request it; to answer if she doesn’t ask.
Some men fear women will trap them in intimacy and then betray them or be unfaithful. They distrust. Girls want pretty things and pretty smells and to be cuddled and kissed. Most of all, they want to be wives. Men’s wants are more basic, so they may weaken and let a promise slip off his tongue while he’s panting heavily with desire. Then he’s dead. And he deserves it.
Women who are searching for husbands “bag them,” “set a trap,” finally “catch” one, “land” him, “got her man.” A man is quite a catch/prize/find. The more directly a man is confronted with emotions from a woman, the more he may feel ambushed. Women use tears as weapons, to badger, pressure, manipulate, and lay guilt trips. They cry when they want something or when you do anything not in keeping with their desires. Instead of allies, men treat women as adversaries.
Sons keenly watch their fathers. Chauvinistic domination exercises absolute power over the son, then the son grows up to dominate his wife and family. The failure of a son is a father’s very special pain. The ultimate withdrawal of love is absence – emotional and physical distance.
Men obtain protection by withdrawal. If nothing is extended, nothing can be cut off. If a man doesn’t care about another person, he can’t be hurt by the failings or withdrawal of that person. A father might teach his son that men don’t offer love to others.
Two men can possess a strong friendship, camaraderie, self-sacrifice in the face of danger, and undying devotion, selfless, intimate and enduring. They may travel to the Wild West, a mountain cabin, a local bar, or the bowling alley. Close male friends create their own special world.
Women evoke responsibility; where there are men, there is freedom. Men share with each other things they will not share with women. However, the reality doesn’t always live up to the legend.
There is no emotional support or sharing of problems. Men don’t make real friends. The closeness of men under fire is not based on mutual interests or shared emotions but on solidarity in the face of danger, arbitrary and undiscriminating. “Best friends” are drawn together by the common experience of loneliness and danger. They are accidents of association like accident victims, not of two people caring for each other in an alliance of love. Their friendships with other men are inarticulate, informal and sometimes outright lazy.
There’s an edge of competition that makes it sharp and exhilarating.
However, the fear of homosexuality can inhibit intimacy between men. They touch with exaggerated roughness – a slap on the back, firmly gripped hand, sharp jab on the shoulder. Contact is brief and hard – best if it hurts just a little. Nothing tender or gentle.
Men can enjoy intimacy in groups, boys’ night out, to relieve their loneliness, nonthreatening and free from implications of forbidden sexuality. They find companionship but rarely emotional intimacy.
Most men now find it easier to open up and share emotional intimacy with women than with other men, preferring the company of women. Women are experienced as the primary validators of masculinity. Almost all married men say their wives are their only close friends and the only person they really trust and their primary confidants.
The presence in a man’s life of a strong relationship with another man can reinforce and enrich his capacity for intimacy. There can be a fear of alienating their sole source of intimacy.
Discourse among men is a sport in which points are scored with decisive finger jabs and conclusive table poundings while adversaries (the other participants in the conversation) are blocked with shoulder thrusts or tackled with sudden interruptions. They believe talk should have an objective to make it worthwhile, to change someone else’s ideas or actions.
Men take control in a conversation. Male students controlled ¾ of class discussions in college. In mixed groups of 6 or more, men generally speak most of the time; the conversation is centered on topics of interest to men, women tend to smile and ask questions of the men, and men tend to interrupt more often and in less supportive ways.
Men control by interrupting and redirecting to subjects they find more agreeable. They usually ignore interruptions by women. Thus, they win. They are unable to admit to being vulnerable. Real men don’t have doubts, hopes or ambitions that may not be realized, self-loathing or hate or dislike, or fears and disappointments.
Men use a language of facts, specifications, performance, details, focused on the quantifiable, verifiable and definite, not on elusive emotions. The emphasis is on information, not analysis, results, not reasons.
Men don’t want to hear about men’s problems. They want a pretty girl admiring them.
You can trace the degree to which two people are becoming intimate by watching how their talk moves from factual information to intimate revelation. Generally, new acquaintances restrict their conversation to facts. As they know each other better, they begin to trust each other with opinions. Finally, if they have become genuine friends, emotions will emerge. A transaction from facts to feelings.
Men do have bursts of intuition, irrational urges, and emotional reactions, but they’re taught not to trust them.
“I don’t care how you feel. I’m interested in your brain, not your stomach.”
A man gets in the habit of hiding his emotions behind a façade of facts.
Men’s favorite conversations are about work, sports, and sex.
Linguistics and speaking styles vary considerably between men and women. Men speak even and unemotional. Women use emphasis and emotion. Women reach for extremes. A man is angry, but a woman is enraged or indignant. A man thinks something is great where a woman thinks it’s marvelous. Women use intensifiers, e.g. so, very, etc. to convey conviction. Men avoid intensity. They even talk “in control,” in a monotone and rely for emphasis by pauses, the masculinity of the words and casual profanity, rare in women’s speech. E.g. “It’s such a nuisance.” versus “It’s a damn nuisance.”
Women tend to undercut their statements with questioning tags, e.g. “Isn’t it?” “Don’t they?” If the question isn’t added explicitly, she’ll add it implicitly by her voice tone going up into inquiry. Men tend to compensate for tentativeness with exaggerated certainty. “God, it’s a great book.”
Men are competitive in their speech; women, cooperative. Men give commands, women make requests. When men try to express feelings, they neither say what they mean nor mean what they say. They resist expressing themselves directly. They only hint at love instead of coming right out and saying “I love you.” He protects himself with indirection which allows him to test a woman’s feelings without revealing his own, to see if she will lower her guard before he lowers his, to asses her vulnerability without surrendering his own. Indirection is a toe in the water. It saves a man from rejection, a fate worse than freezing.
Where honesty invites honesty, if a man tells a woman she’s made him unhappy, he may hear that she doesn’t care. If he says “I love you,” he may get silence in return. Any direct statement of emotion is a gamble some men aren’t willing to take. An indirect statement leaves the speaker in control. If the response isn’t the one he seeks, he can claim, also indirectly by a laugh or puzzled look, that she misunderstood what he said.
Some men who’re afraid to reveal their feelings resort to teasing and joking, serving as a barrier and a false front which helps them avoid the need to reveal true emotions. Through teasing, men can displace affection as well as hostility. Teenage boys use this with friends they like. Adult men use it to establish contact with children.
A man’s most difficult or serious feelings are most likely to surface in the guise of humor. A man may shield himself from potential hurt by finding little time for calls, correspondence or contact with a woman he cares about but is insecure about, even if his worries consume him night and day. He may express his anxieties through joking. Though it’s easy to see through his bravado as it often is with men who are driven to express their deepest fears in the clown suit of humor.
Why is it so hard for en to say “I love you”? Men balk at saying it and feel they’ve expressed their love in hundreds of ways, daily gestures, routine comments said with a special emphasis. The feeling is more important than the phrase. It can be cloaked in a factual statement (You’re the best friend a guy could have.), hidden in a pledge of support (You can count on me.), mentioned indirectly (I want you to be there.), or buried in a joke (Why do I put up with you?). It may come as a clap on the back, a laugh, or just a look that says (You and I are the only two sane people in the world.)
It is not that men don’t express affection but the way they express it is not experienced as an expression by most women. From “They’re playing our song” to “I think I’ll trade her in for a new one,” men express their love in a language most women don’t know. “Is dinner ready?” can mask grand passions.
Very often women don’t really want men to open up. They may fear intimacy and respond warily to men who offer it. Women choose closed men on purpose. It’s no accident. Women are affected by the same stereotypes of men as men are. They are sexually attracted to men who are aloof and unknowable. It’s part of what turns them on. They feel vaguely cheated when the cowboy who won their hearts with a steady gaze and choice words unexpectedly exposes a soft heart filled with unromantic anxieties. Silence is sexy, an irresistible allure.
Women traditionally rely heavily on men for their economic and emotional support. A man who shows anxiety, doubt or weakness threatens their security. A man with a problem is like a boat with a leak. Sometimes a woman’s first thought it isn’t that the boat needs repair but that she might drown.
Women are drawn to men who respond to “I need you” with a strong hand and “I love you” with a silent stare. The closed men is a frustration and an enduring fascination. He is unresponsive and inaccessible, who refuses to share his feelings or give emotional support – the shadowy romantic male who lurks in many women’s fantasies.
You don’t want to depend upon a vulnerable man. You want considerate behavior from a man that proves you can depend on him. They look upon men as their rescuers or salvation.
The sex kitten of a man’s fantasies has to be able to transform herself into the mother of his memories, a sultry mistress by night and a conscientious homemaker by day. He expects the impossible no less than a woman who wants a vulnerable stud and a mysterious friend.
A men is often paralyzed by his fears of rejection, dependence, or that he’s not the man he ought to be. However much she might want to, no woman can alter the circumstances of a man’s past. She can alter the present. She might even be giving off signals that she doesn’t really want him to open up. Does she want him to remain strong and silent? A change in their relationship may demand more intimacy than she is willing to give.
Emotional fulfillment is more important than aloofness and competitiveness. Feelings are there even when you deny them. In the end, only the man has the power to open up.
A woman’s approach of support may be seen as a threat to his independence: manipulation, an attack. He retreats. There is a way for a woman to move closer without triggering a man’s fear of dependence or seeming dependent herself. Don’t be dependent and demanding. Many men find this behavior unattractive, midway between a whine and an order, relying on the power of guilt and coercion, and it throws up a red flag that says “manipulation.” Be independent and giving.
Giving is different from subordination, being constantly available and never offering a moment’s difficulty or disagreement. Love doesn’t require such a sacrifice. Don’t feel you always have to be attractive and helpless so men won’t hurt you or reject you, putting men on a pedestal. This leads to a buildup of resentment. Men feel the need to reciprocate such dependent behavior and his emotional-detachment defense mechanisms are triggered and he moves out of reach. She gets angry at his lack of affection to commensurate her sacrifices.
Don’t demonstrate your independence by being bossy, demanding, calling him on the carpet, getting angry. Men generally react negatively to demands from women, especially if she is belligerent or emotional.
Let him be distance when he’s in a bad mood, let him complain when he’s had a hard day, let him have moments of privacy. Don’t be inclined to endow men with too much power and subordinate yourself into a position of dependence. Don’t become demanding to assert your independence. Distance yourself from your man’s problems instead of seeing him struggling as a rejection of you. He is not an all powerful man depriving you; he is flawed like you and needs your strength and tenderness. Give him rest and set him free. Give him respite from the demands of masculinity and independence.
Become independent, elusive, and mysterious, and a man will climb mountains to go after you.
Attraction, withdrawal and stalemate is a pattern women can get caught in.
Attraction, stage one: new relationship, suitor and mistress role playing. Test of male prowess. Rooster strutting his colors to attract the hen. Winning the “prize” bolsters his masculine self esteem. This winning may require more than a show of feathers or sexual potency, like a show of affection, indications of openness and a willingness to give emotionally when called upon. Even a closed men is on good behavior in this first stage and can allow a level of vulnerability and intimacy he won’t permit later on.
The relationship settles into a routine and he gets closed, uncommunicative, silent and withdrawn. Compelled by his intense desire for intimate and lasting sexual involvement with a woman, a man may at first be delighted to find himself involved in the stable, captivating relationship he has longed for. But the very fulfillment of long standing and insistent desires for sexual acceptance and gratification can evoke deep seated fears of becoming too open, too vulnerable, and the risk of painful depression should the relationship fail.
Reactions are to either take up with another woman simultaneously or bolt the relationship altogether. They are terrified or becoming engulfed and so make a fetish of freedom. They refuse to commit themselves to a single woman even for a short time for fear of becoming too dependent. For most men, the attraction of intimacy is too strong to abandon so easily. They stay in the relationship but withdraw psychologically.
Intimacy involved commitment and choice, closing off of other possibilities, the decision that this one is for keeps. Men give up certain freedoms and run the risk of failing. Women perceive this and request reassurance, some subtle insistence that the man stop holding himself back from real commitment, which the man sees as a demand.
Withdrawal, stage two: Ironically this stage often follows an outward sign of commitment, typically moving in together or marriage. The man may feel suddenly trapped but the public commitment has brought anxieties and fears to the surface. The minute they marry, no more courtship, flowers or attention.
His fear of dependence on her may cause a reaction of hostility and resentment, so he emotionally detaches himself to control the torrent of unexpected feelings.
A woman may fear being suffocated in a relationship as much as a man. But to a man, dependence is equated with weakness. Guilt is a demanding emotion. Transition from attraction to withdrawal is marked by the transition of the woman’s role from mistress to mother. He wants to be her “good little boy” so he doesn’t share anything that might tarnish his image.
Stalemate, stage three: The relationship slips into a pattern of mutual withdrawal and emotional distance. He is sullen, moody, isolated, given to long periods of silence and sudden, unexplained outbursts of emotion. The man in this stage resists sharing even major emotional problems, such as job insecurity, death, illness or impotence. Nothing contrasts more sharply with the masculine image of self-confidence, rationality, and control and disillusions women.
To break free from this pattern, a woman must add the role of friend so she can override a man’s protective mechanisms and establish an intimate relationship immune from approach-avoidance inner conflict. To the mistress, a man is the lover. To the mother, he is the perfect son. Only to a friend can a man open up entirely without fearing dependence or loss of his masculinity.
They start out sexually attracted but stability comes with friendship. With commitment and love, almost any relationship can be remade into a friendship that provides both sexual and emotional fulfillment.
Often in the first stage of a relationship the primary source of inner conflict for a man is sex, as both a proving ground for his masculinity and an invitation to intimacy. Sex becomes the focus of his fears of dependence. Sex accelerates a relationship. The old way, when sex was the natural and beautiful culmination of the long process of getting to know someone intimately, had its advantages.
Nowadays, a woman tells herself she has to sleep with a man or he’s going to find someone else. However, if you want to build a relationship, hold off! Wait until you have some depth of shared emotional experiences. Plan for the long haul. True intimacy is the gradual breakdown of the barriers people form to protect their egos, the sharing of life experience.
Learn about each other and develop mutual trust. By the time you face the challenge of sex, you’re already good friends. Premature sexual intimacy can trigger defensive mechanisms in a man. One symptom is the falling off of sexual attention. Accept these changes in relationship to counteract a man’s natural tendency to withdraw from a relationship in which he fears the breakdown of his freedom. His sexual confidence is undermined and his masculinity is placed on the line. He is more likely to withdraw than give more.
In the withdrawal stage, men and women forget how to read each others’ signals. When people in a relationship hurt each other, instead of trying to communicate their feelings they try to protect themselves from further hurt. This leads to a breakdown in communication and giving out the wrong signals, not communicating their real feelings or what they want from each other. A man gets afraid of rejection.
A husband and wife arguing is like two people standing up in a canoe. They’re both going to fall into the water together.
A relationship reaches stalemate because a couple has refused to deal with their problems. This results in a gradual falling off, a long period of estrangement, and then a letting go – going their separate ways. Patterns of hostility, resentment or indifference develop undisturbed and get a hold on a relationship.
For some, the prospect of getting to know each other again is exciting. Sometimes a relationship is put on hold not because two people are incompatible but just because they’ve gone their separate ways – him to a career, her to raising kids. But the spark that ignited the relationship in the first place is still there, just waiting for a little attention to rekindle it. Getting to know each other again can be truly exciting.
How hard the road is depends on how much is left to salvage, how much trust remains. Start rebuilding intimacy at the common threads, common ground. If there is no focus of common concern, the marriage can become extremely stressful. A partial separation can help – finding time apart from each other during work hours, vacations, evenings with friends. As a man feels more independent, he will fear dependence less. They can confront their problems, retract their defenses, put hostility behind them and begin to rebuild a relationship based on trust and acceptance of dependence that are necessary for genuine intimacy.
The woman refuses to allow the man to be independent.
This couple should put their lives on separate but parallel tracks. Don’t confuse spending time together with intimacy. Merging your lives and doing everything together is not the answer for this couple.
In other relationships, the problem is the opposite. The man refuses to allow the woman’s independence. He’s too patriarchal, too domineering. He doesn’t acknowledge her as a real person or recognize the validity of her point of view. She plays the masochistic Cinderella, complementary role. She needs to become more independent.
The best way to overcome a man’s fear of dependence is to bring friendship into the relationship, not buddy/buddy superficial sense but in the deeper sense of understanding, independent support. A close friendship is essential to maintaining the quality of a sexual relationship. Put friendship first and the relationship and sex will fall into place. After the heat of a sexual infatuation has diminished the ability to be affectionate often determines whether the sexual attraction will last. When sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy are allowed to enhance each other, the result is a relationship that includes friendship but is more expansive and more profound than friendship – the kind of total relationship that’s also known as love.
Some women are better at dispelling the fears of dependence that keep a man closed. They have the gift of caring and empathy, friendliness. She is eager with questions and rapt with interest, and makes every conversation easy and inevitable. Thoughtful questions and sympathetic noises make everyone around her feel energized and enlightened. Be friendly, not demanding. Give but don’t demand being given back. Withholding things and silence are not always a rejection of another person.
First, understand why the man is closed up. Constant criticism can drive someone in a shell. Understand why feelings can be awkward to communicate. See the problem from his perspective. Men are often very adept at concealing their problems. Everyone sees the world through different eyes. Partners may view issues differently. People have insecurities.
Men who won’t open up are usually kept from it by anxiety or anger. If the problem is anxiety, he’s probably telling himself that if he reveals himself to you, he’ll lose himself and his identity. If the problem is anger, he might think it’s terrible you constantly ask him to express his feelings. Neither are rational explanations.
He won’t really lose himself if he shares himself or be less of a person. You are not terrible for wanting him to open up. But the man and woman both bring expectations less to do with the relationship than with their respective childhoods and painful memories. You may expect your spouse to behave like someone in your past. You have to free your man from your past and stop trying to use an existing relationship to resolve problems left unsolved by an earlier relationship. Your partner is a different person with his own identity.
In opening up and showing vulnerability, you have to risk rejection. If you want a man to do something – express himself, send presents, give flowers, write poetry – do it for him enthusiastically as a model. Be as transparent as possible yourself. Then your partner is likely to respond by opening up in a way he’s undoubtedly longed to do, perhaps for years.
Candor begets candor. Be honest with a man and chances are he’ll learn to be honest with you. Candor doesn’t always mean saying the first thing that comes to mind; you’ve got to strike a balance between understanding and consideration. Honesty is an ideal, but all-the-time, constant honesty really acts out aggression and hostility. Consider the impact of your words and think through what you’re going to say.
To distance himself in a relationship, a man will reject emotions altogether. He’ll look to the woman for all emotional responses. The woman must temper her emotions so she doesn’t overwhelm and frighten the man. By refusing to be automatically responsible for emotional behavior, the woman sends a nonthreatening signal that it’s his turn to show emotions.
Women often feel it’s their job to be the nurturers and caretakers for the man because he can’t do it for himself. The stereotype is of the stoic man who turns to his wife and expects her to cry or at least be upset. The man should be responsible for his own feelings. He’s capable of expressing the entire range of emotions and feelings all by himself. If you assume he can’t talk and talk for him, he’ll assume he doesn’t have to talk and won’t bother.
If you try to force a man with insecurities to open up to intimacy, you’ll trigger a defensive reaction and he’ll feel more unsure about his inability to satisfy your needs within the relationship. Avoid a demanding power struggle. Convince him that if he opens he’ll still be desirable. He can be vulnerable and exciting, dependent and masculine.
Let him know it’s okay if he doesn’t win all the time. Convince him he’s even sexier when he’s vulnerable. It’s more than good to show emotion – it’s appealing. His life can be changed if he really comes to believe that he’s loved because of his ability to show emotion.
It’s a heavy burden to think you must live up to a woman who thinks you’re flawless, some kind of “god.” He needs to know she does not need him and that there are better men, better lovers, and those more godlike, but she does love him.
Men might have three fears: that they are vulnerable, that she will find out he is vulnerable, and that she will leave him (reject him) because he is vulnerable. Once he realizes you won’t reject him, you can decide to live together.
The final essential element that contributes to an open intimate relationship is trust. If he can’t trust her, he’ll never open up. In the best relationships, you can say “I hate you” sometimes or “I’m leaving for three days until we cool off” and know the relationship has not ended. Trust is confidence in your relationship and in your partner.
A false assumption of intimacy is that it consists only in sharing feelings or love talk, talking about their feelings for each other. This is not the most definitive proof of emotional commitment even though it’s common in the initial infatuation stage. This doesn’t last. Only unrequited love can live on itself indefinitely and when it does, the result is obsession, not intimacy.
Once infatuation passes, a relationship needs to be sustained by shared experiences. You must have something to talk about – shared action and experiences. For women who meet, it’s How are you? For men it’s What are you doing? What have you been up to? Men find it easier to base a relationship on interests outside the bounds of the relationship itself. An inexpressive man disguises personal sentiments in the seemingly impersonal. Men share their feelings with emotional give and take and establish intimacy about a common shared interest in a group of men, e.g. football games.
Women can start talking to men about football, movies, books, news or TV plots and then gradually bring the forms of sharing closer to a man’s own inner life.
Two people who begin to talk about their feelings about each other or emotional problems in a relationship must know how to express themselves clearly. Use “I want,” “I feel,” “I,” “I think.” Be in touch with your emotions and feelings and then you can understand your motivations.
He can ask why he wants to direct the conversation away from himself.
Men tend to be task oriented, bottom line, solve issues, so ask direct questions and present specific problems with specific solutions. Give him a specific problem to be solved instead of a general problem to be analyzed. Don’t talk about how things are and what you don’t like about them. Talk about how you would like things to be.
Ask a direct question about a difficult topic, e.g. what are your fondest memories of time spent with your father? What were your friends like when you were a child? How did you feel when you had sex for the first time? Men are not generally accustomed to responding to intimate questions. They’re used to being asked straight questions about impersonal topics and giving straight answers. A straight question about a personal topic may just give you an equally straight answer.
The token of intimacy that a man may be most willing to give is a secret. We all have secrets and they do much to close people off. What is the secret a man has carried around with him his whole life? If you can get someone to tell you their most important secrets, you’ve gone a long way toward creating an open relationship.
Has he always been ashamed of what his father did for a living? Has he always envied his brother or sister for getting more of his parents’ affection? Did he do something terrible as a child? Persuading him to get it off his chest can be very important. To relieve a secret burden like that can change a life, reconstitute a personality.
The way to get a man to think about telling you these things is to have the courage to tell him the secrets from your own past – and not the things you want him to know. The ones you don’t want him to know. The ones you’re embarrassed about. Only if you let a man know that you trust him with your complete past will he have the trust to give you his.
Really listening will help a man open up. Don’t formulate your response, listen. Pay attention and concentrate. Give the speaker in intimate conversations the confidence to continue. Remember and mention something a man said long ago or even earlier in the conversation. Psychologists do this all the time. The fact you didn’t forget, that it seemed worth remembering, is very flattering and comforting.
Be interested in wanting to know what he’s going to say. Look straight at them and don’t waver once. Make it clear there’s absolutely nothing in the world you’d rather do than listen to him talk. Even with famous people, that doesn’t happen very often and they respond with honesty. It happens to most men hardly ever.
If a man has never opened up his emotions before, his first emotional stirrings may surprise a woman more than they please her. Don’t jump down his throat. Reward him for being disclosive. Don’t attack him, get angry or scream and yell. You have to learn not to react with obvious anger if he says things you don’t like. You give up the benefit of not knowing what’s going on in his head.
Treat his revelations with the necessary care. Don’t abuse his confidences. Don’t blab! He may be sharing details of his life that it’s taken years to feel secure enough to share with you. This will make him uneasy with your friends because they know his entire history. (Also, you take the chance of losing his trust and he won’t confide in you ever again.)
Resist the temptation to misuse sensitive revelations, especially in moments of anger, even when you’re furious. Don’t bring up something from his past in the heat of the argument. Those admissions cost him a lot, and you can hurt him and set him back a long way.
Part of the good listener’s job is to look behind a person’s words and behavior and try to understand what they mean. Where is he coming from? What is he really trying to tell me? Behind the façade of sports jargon and blue humor, for example, men are communicating more than most women realize. Sports talk is really more about people and feelings than about statistics. Men tend to “adopt” certain teams, and their spirits sink and rise with the team’s. They single out certain players for special attention and follow their careers, like favored sons. A man gets the same feelings of belonging and caring when he watches football that some women get watching a soap opera. In talking with other men about the game, he can share and prolong those feelings.
The fondness of many men for sex jokes and banter is also both less and more than it seems. It has little to do with sex at all. Tales of sexual adventure, innuendos of inadequacy, paeans to the female anatomy, and off color jokes are usually filler – harmless banter to keep the conversation going. Sex talk is like women’s small talk – a form of caring.
Men use personal signals, verbal and nonverbal, to communicate. Learn and read his body language. It can convey feelings he can’t express in words.
Legs crossed at the ankles and arms crossed across his chest say he’s totally closed and he doesn’t like what you’re saying. Reach out and touch him. It’s hard to be nasty and horrible to someone or even just closed and cold if they’re hugging you or holding your hand.
Learn to read his patterns of behavior that communicate his feelings. Decode his actions. It means one thing when he comes home ranting and raving, kicking and yelling, and another when he’s quiet, unresponsive, ignoring you and half an hour later is friendly and charming. Sometimes he doesn’t want to ask you straight out or appear to be ordering you around.
For many men, the most intense nonverbal communication occurs during sex. For many men, sex is their emotional expression. There’s often an enormous focus of emotion in sex. Sex means different things to men and women. In Annie Hall, a psychiatrist asks Woody Allen how often do you have sex? He answers, “Hardly ever, three times a week.” Annie answers, “All the time, three times a week.”
Men tend to compress the meaning of intimacy into the sex act. Often emotions and sex are synonymous for men but not for women. Women have a wide range of ways to communicate and feel close. When men are deprived of that outlet (sex), they get frustrated and upset because they’re cut off form the only source of closeness that they know. A man does not just want to use a woman as a sexual object, they just have different ways of defining intimacy and closeness than women.
Help him open up with touch: stroke him, touch him, hold his hand, rub his neck, knead his feet. Men like to think of themselves as exclusively sexual creatures but they aren’t all that different from women. They really need touching for strength as well as for sex.
Men have a vocabulary of physical affection consisting primarily of exercise and sports related control. The vocabulary was not shared with women because any such contact generated sexual expectations. Women, too, have a physical vocabulary they are unwilling to share because such moves might be misinterpreted as an invitation to sex. If a man has trouble keeping sexual and nonsexual physical affection a separate, experts suggest gentle reminders. You may want to take a roaming hand and hold and stroke it, or return an exploratory gesture with a robust hug, kiss on the cheek, and announce you think it’s time to put the peas on.
Almost everybody responds to cuddling. Make some physical contact with him. Touching is more caring than “I love you” for many people.
Depending on his personality and the circumstances of his life, a man who fears intimacy may evolve in a variety of ways: macho, charmer, loner, company man, intellectual, sensitive artist, workaholic, or some variation. He keeps a safe emotional distance and keeps the world at arm’s length.
Some are silent, some are glib. Some submerge their need for intimacy in a frenzy of activity.
The Strong, Silent Type (The Cowboy): many women are excited by their overtones of smoldering sexuality. It’s easy to want him, to try to coax a smile out of him, but once you have one, it is frustrating. He represents the qualities of hard work, purposefulness, integrity, courage and perseverance which were essential to the pioneer culture of the earliest settlers. Self-reliance, social reserve and emotional terseness were the male attributes of choice when the western frontier was opened a century later. Whether they were homesteaders or railroad barons, the spoils of the era went to the strong silent men of the day.
The cowboy has conveyed the image of the rugged he-man, strong, resilient, resourceful, capable of coping with overwhelming odds. Independent (I’m startin’ my own herd.), goal-oriented (I’ll kill any cowhand not good enough to finish what they start.) and controlled (There’s nothing I hate worse than a man who’s soft.).
Emotional reserve; no apologies (it’s a sign of weakness). He doesn’t feel comfortable around women. He must choose the right time and place to like a woman. His escape is nearby (horse/car) to ride off to more important business.
He is not devoid of feelings; he just can’t express them. He shows no tenderness nor affection towards girls because it would be unmanly. However his heart was not entirely purged. Masculine virtue does permit a man occasional rude artifacts of feeling: a boyish look down at his boots; a self-conscious kick in the dust, or an “aw shucks, ma’am.” It’s emotional fluency, not emotion itself, that’s off limits.
He may have a lot of trouble stored up and you may want to entertain him rather than descover what they are.
He is very laid back. There is little room in his life for women or a woman. They’re just not comfortable around women, so with marriage and home in order, he’ll concentrate on work and leave her alone. He can’t show any anxieties directly or it would show unmanly weakness, so he bottles up his fears. Instead of sharing he withdraws. He may either complain constantly or be dead quiet, acting like a roommate instead of a spouse.
The first battle a woman must fight in trying to help a strong, silent man express his feelings is the battle for his attention. Adding a little talk could be unbelievably sexy. This man has a general reluctance to talk about problems at all or even acknowledge there are any. A woman must secure a man’s attention and ultimately his cooperation in the effort to establish emotional intimacy.
Confront him in a calculated direct approach. It works far better than you would imagine. Ask what’s going on. There’s an element of risk in all relationships; if rejection killed, we’d all be dead. Don’t be afraid to confront the problems. Sometimes a woman feels too proud to let a man know how much she needs his attention. A drawn-out series of oblique hints will only make a man feel manipulated and cause his defenses to go up.
If a woman isn’t getting the physical affection she needs, she must sit down and tell her partner that she has a strong need to be held and to be close. Men are traditionally supposed to take the lead but a woman has to teach a man what he doesn’t know. Present your needs for intimacy clearly and specifically and in a way that a specific solution is possible. Be up front about your expectations.
Develop a shared life. Tell him where you’re going and when you’ll be back. You need a sense of involvement in each other’s lives. Know where your partner is. Be consistent in setting an example of openness and intimacy. When he is able to open up and talk about his problems, don’t think it’s all complaining and turn him off. There’s no quick fix. Sacrifice, hang in there, and be patient.
The Charmer. He makes a show of emotions he doesn’t have. He masters the forms of openness and intimacy while avoiding the substance. In the manly struggle not to make a genuine emotional connection, his tactics are diversionary rather than defensive.
The Charmer, the lady’s man, the Don Juan, the lady-killer. He begins with well-spoken words of love falling on eager ears. At first crush, the charmer is a welcome relief to a woman, an oasis of compliments, consideration and caring in a desert of masculine indifference. As soon as his romantic campaign succeeds – in marriage, an affair, or just a night in bed – it abruptly ends. The great expectations of commitment and consideration, of sexual diversity and spiritual union become just another set of unheeded demands. The oasis was a mirage.
He is a narcissist, a man of unquestioned belief in his own greatness and uniqueness. His buoyancy and perennial youthfulness stem from this source. So does his often-fascinating charm. He may speak incessantly of his exploits or his wonderful qualities and needs endless confirmation of his estimate of himself in the form of admiration and devotion. His feeling of mastery lies in his conviction that there is nothing he cannot do and no one he cannot win.
He is often charming, indeed particularly when new people come into his orbit. He must impress them regardless of their factual importance. He gives the impression to himself and others that he “loves” women. He can be generous with a scintillating display of feeling, flattery, favors and help – in anticipation of admiration or in return for devotion received.
His surface charm doesn’t rest on a foundation of genuine emotions, so he’s most closed of all closed men. He is treacherous for women. The inner life of the strong silent man is hidden but active. The charmer has submerged his inner life in the “game” – the play act (roleplaying) world in which he tries to win people is everything. He repeatedly has a quest for approval.
Charmer, playboy, James Bond. He retains the “cowboy’s” emotional detachment and independence but his emotional problems are deeper. He is, in a sense, “dead” inside. He has no feelings toward women. The cowboy does have such feelings although unwilling and perhaps unable to express them. It’s psychologically less damaging to have feelings you can’t express than to express feelings you don’t have.
He sees both himself, others, and women as persons to be exploited and manipulated.
The woman is reduced to an object; ownership consists in conquest. He creates the romantic scene and beds her, but remains removed from it and avoids personal involvement or a shared relationship.
The many varieties of charmer include the boy who never grew up with his disarming smile and calculated naiveté; the “lethal” kind, who succeeds at totally involving a woman, a really great actor, a Don Juan, who can make you forget he’s acting. He makes himself forget, too. If he’s good enough, most women don’t even want to know he’s acting. They eagerly suspend their disbelief, their common sense, their better judgment. They’ll suspend anything. He’s that good.
He makes himself sensitive to her needs so he’s confusing to women. He notices what she likes and doesn’t like and he responds. Of course, he’s usually the good lover he’s reputed to be. He has a movie director’s sense of mood and timing. He can choreograph seductions with startling ingenuity and imagination. The mark of the real charmer is that the manipulativeness of such occasions is invisible. The appearance of sincerity, the impression that such moments are untainted fruits of love, often make him irresistible.
Periodic approval of women is crucial to his self-esteem. He’s popular wherever he performs: parties, office, gym, bar, bedroom. He has an impersonal social charm. That very popularity is often attractive to women and they revel in the spotlight that follows him around.
Despite the appearance of a manipulator’s self-confidence and security, he is insecure, doubts his own manliness and seeks constant additional evidence for it in his conquests. He can be devastated when his sexual potency begins to falter. He is exquisitely vulnerable to rejection. When his charm fails, his power to win people wanes and he becomes (on his own terms, at least) impotent. Years of manipulative success have drastically lowered his tolerance for failure. His ego is particularly fragile. (Most men’s egos are sensitive.)
They have an easy laugh and a smooth social manner that makes the most awkward encounter seem effortless. He gives women what they want. He has brief windswept affairs, consecutive or simultaneous. Nothing that lasts.
The woman with a chance of breaking his rhythm or pattern is the one who is not completely under his spell, aware of his reputation. However, she may fall for him. Be smitten by his looks, eyes, body; he can be a great lover, the best you’ve ever known, knowing just how to touch a woman. Innovative in romance as well as lovemaking. A master of the unexpected. Loves surprises and games and can be very playful.
Everything he does is directed at keeping the relationship fresh, like new. He is imaginative, always keeping you guessing about what he would do next. He’s always calling with something new to say or new plans.
He’s interested in you, not just making the surface things good. He cares how you feel, asks what you want to do, where you want to eat. Listens to you. Sits for hours and asks you questions. He makes you feel special, like you’re the only person in the world. A wonderful ability to focus all his attention and charm on one person. He makes you feel beautiful and special regardless of what the mirror says.
Just when you let down your guard and consider him as a serious lover and possible mate, the behavior changes. He gets distant. It’s a shock when you realize he’s leaving you just like you were warned. So leave him first. Tell him he’s really not the kind of man you’re looking for.
Months may pass and you’ll be miserable, but don’t call him. You’ll probably hear he’s seeing someone else. Then as you knew he would, he’ll call and say he’d like to see you again. Refuse. The more you refuse the more attention he will pay you. You may truly not be interested in him or his manipulations anymore.
Then he may do something so wonderfully calculated and delightful that you’ll crack, something mad, marvelous and absolutely diabolical.
If you begin seeing each other again, it’ll be different. Turn down his invitations to fancy restaurants and diplomatic receptions. Rebel at his smoothness, his familiar way of relating to women. Keep a little more of yourself in reserve. Don’t be so quick to be carried away on charm alone.
That hint of aloofness may keep him interested. His past may have been little more than a series of brief affairs, each lasting only as long as a woman held out against his seductive powers. Most charmers can’t resist a challenge. Women who surrender too soon or too easily hold no interest for him. He likes seducing women. Without the challenge of resistance, seduction was a joyless exercise. By stepping back to just beyond his grasp, you may suddenly become very interesting.
If you want a real relationship with a charmer, you need to maintain a balance of power. The notion of another independent person can be very exciting. You may recognize yourself in him.
The Loner. The best way to make a marriage work is to choose the right partner. Understand your own needs and your partner’s needs. The crucial question is can he open up? Or is he so captive to childhood conditioning and social pressures that he is unlikely ever to open up. Some men are fundamentally closed off to emotional intimacy. They are predestined to live alone. The loner doesn’t want to build a bridge to another person and end his isolation. He wants his indifference, his emotional self-sufficiency. He may have relationships but they are devoid of commitment.
Some women are drawn to the loner, attracted by his aloofness from the world, the allure of the unknown and what they mistakenly see as the needfulness of his isolation. He appeals to the mother in you. This poor lonely man needs someone to love him. But deep down he really doesn’t need someone. If his parents never really gave him any love, he won’t know what a loving relationship is.
The attractiveness and allure of the loner is very much like the attractiveness of the strong silent man. By being aloof and unflappable, he creates the illusion of strength. His inaccessibility is taken for substance and reliability, plus the romantic challenge of the unobtainable man. However, he may be truly beyond emotional reach and truly unobtainable.
A loner has serious psychological difficulties that probably require long term professional care. The charmer or workaholic is someone who probably can be helped in the context of a relationship without outside assistance.
The loner is detached in all his social contacts; careful at all times to keep his emotional distance from others. Be suspicious of a man who won’t, in a long-term relationship, make an emotional commitment to you. He enjoys distant or transitory relationships, does not become attached or emotionally involved, and doesn’t expect much – good or bad – if anything – from others.
He’s not affectionate, always distracted, doesn’t have any friends, never invites colleagues to the house for dinner. He can’t love anyone. He has trouble with emotional intimacy. He may maintain emotional distance from a sexual partner by excluding sex as being too intimate for a permanent relationship and instead satisfy his sexual needs with a stranger, or he may more or less restrict a relationship to merely sexual contacts and not share other experiences with the partner.
Some loners are so withdrawn, they avoid relationship altogether. It can be a sign of a withdrawn, schizoid personality. A man who can’t love himself is a man to worry about. He won’t venture out into the world of relationships because it is too threatening. He won’t risk exposing himself or risk learning about himself. These are some of the signposts that a person really needs to look at himself, that he really needs professional counseling and help.
A loner is indifferent to the people around him. Of course, many closed men make a pretense of not caring what others think because indifference is a part of the masculine role they play. The true loner, however, has learned not to care, not to be hurt by what others think. Sometimes a loner may share his problems, but react to the problems of others with thinly veiled disinterest. Or he may listen endlessly to others’ problems but never reveal his own. Without the reciprocity necessary for intimacy, his relationships remain shallow, one-sided and impersonal.
When he expresses his feelings, is he aware of how others are reaction? Is he concerned that his feelings have meaning in the other person’s life or is he just “letting off steam” to relieve inner pressure?
Some women for their own psychological reasons want a relationship in which they can feel protected by considerable emotional separation. Their need for independence is so strong they prefer a man who will give them the ample emotional space they require.
Other women have so much need to give emotional reassurance and so little need to receive it that they can survive reasonably well on the regimen of sustained unilateral devotion that life with a loner often becomes.
A woman may be willing to permanently play second fiddle to what is most important in his life. The loner may give the image of unspoiled intellect, space-out genius, and unselfconscious nonconformity. But his mind is elsewhere, irretrievably married to his own thoughts. Yet there is a challenge of his inaccessibility, indifference and self-absorption.
These men will shut you out of what’s going on inside them. He doesn’t believe in talking about feelings and shove everything under the rug. When people don’t reveal vulnerability, it’s hard to relate to them as human beings. There’s no sharing of experience. Although no man is beyond emotional reach, a few are so emotionally distant that a woman should think twice before making the effort to reach them.
For millions, work is the beginning and end of passion. Symptoms of workaholism include up at dawn, preoccupied breakfast, days out of reach, messages left with secretaries, missed suppers, late coming home, rare weekends home, unexpected cancellations and interrupted vacations and always, even in bed, that intractable preoccupation with work.
Perfectionists are bent on self-glorification, ambitious pursuits, with the mastery of life through intelligence and willpower as the means to actualize their idealized self. In their headlong pursuit of the idealized self, a man’s real self is often lost and so is the possibility of intimacy, which requires time the workaholic does not have. Women do not become colleagues but employees, requiring direction and paternal advice, not respect and intimacy.
The most successful men (workaholics) are unconnected to their personal lives. They’re more interested in their work than their wives. He leads a life of professional success and personal unhappiness. Their wives may be unhappy, bored and lonely. He gives his wife everything she could ever hope for except the one thing she really wants – him.
What can make him open up, stop his frantic race against himself long enough to look around and notice those near him? What can make him understand both the needs of those who love him and his own need for love? He’s often too successful for his own good. With such an impressive show of outward accomplishment, he often succeeds in suppressing feelings of a anxiety, melancholy and boredom. He erases all traces of self-doubt. He hides very well from his own feelings. He faces his problems only if something forces him to face them.
Crisis is the most common trigger for change -- some major disruption in his pounding, rhythmic routine that forces him to reexamine his life, himself, his role and his relationships. The crisis can take a number of forms: death of a loved one, career reversal, or major illness. The most common one is the collapse or potential collapse, of a relationship. The only way to make an extreme workaholic open up is to let him know that the relationship is on the line.
The energy of the workaholic is as protean as sexual libido; the forms it takes are usually accidental, not inevitable. He can be obsessed with any activity toward which circumstances direct him. He may have furious energies, and he’ll direct or redirect them to any form of work. His drive may be redoubled, and if he was determined, he may become positively obsessed. Blind devotion is looked upon by colleagues with considerable favor but with mixed feelings by his marriage partner, who may enjoy his success vicariously but resent having so little time with him.
She may hope he will let down, relax and take time to give her the attention she needs and the affection he may profess to feel. He probably worked hard to win her love, but now has no time for her. They have no life together.
Broaching the subject of their growing separation, he doesn’t seem to care. He thought it another tantrum and that it would pass, which it does except the hurt builds up until something has to give. She gets so she has to budge him or she has to leave because she can’t take it any more.
When you tell him you’re leaving (genuinely), he is devastated and faced with failure for perhaps the first time. All perfectionists suffer the same fate when tragedy strikes. When any misfortune befalls him (loss of a child, an accident, infidelity of his wife, loss of job) it may bring this seemingly well-balanced person to the verge of collapse. He resents ill fortune as unfair and is shaken to the bottom of his psychic existence.
It invalidates his whole accounting system and conjures up the ghastly prospect of helplessness. He doesn’t realize how much he depends upon his marriage partner. Behind his seeming indifference and real inattention, he needs her constant and unquestioning support to maintain the illusion of perfection and control. He needs her as much as, if not more than, she needs him; he could not live successfully without her. Her departure is at least partly the product of his imperfections, which is the hardest for the workaholic to admit.
He realizes he has to “accomplish” (work on) his relationship anew every day. Whether or not a man responds to a crisis by opening up depends primarily on the reaction of people around him to his new vulnerability. The admission of weakness is a breakthrough. He is reaching out the only way he knows how, by taking the blame and perhaps in a way knows his partner will respond.
This can send his partner into a tailspin of doubt and anxiety but also give her a cause for hope.
Workaholism is an addiction. They need to work hard, need to achieve. Deep inside there’s still a little boy fighting to please the world with home runs and teachers’ praise. This desire for achievement is part of what attracts women. It will always be an essential aspect of his personality.
Many women are so deeply upset by the problems they face in breaking through a man’s devotion to work, in dealing with the loneliness, the time apart, the sense of “second fiddle,” that they overlook the importance of his Workaholism both to his personality and to his attractiveness. A woman is often drawn to a workaholic man precisely because he is. At least he loves what he does. She loves his passion and intensity.
If a man is totally taken up in his working world, the best way to enter his world is through his work by working together. The most successful relationships are often built on the foundation of a joint career. Working together provides an inexhaustible source of nonemotional problems to analyze, issues to discuss, and possibilities to explore.
If you work apart, become as involved in each other’s careers as possible. Visit his workplace and get to know his colleagues. Join him on business trips. Talking about business can build a bridge between you.
A workaholic can sometimes be diverted from his obsession by extracurricular activity or play to which he’ll bring the same intensity he brings to work. Make yourself one of his projects that’s never finished.
A wife often finds that she has to have a life independent of her husband, a life as fulfilling that she no longer resents being left alone during the hours he spends and will always spend at work.
Anticipate spending a lot of time on your own. She needs her own obsessions. Workaholics will never become easygoing pipe and slippers men nor would their wives or lovers be satisfied if they did. But you can help him avoid the total obsessive oblivion into which he may sink out of intimacy’s reach.
It is the feeling of inferiority, inadequacy, insecurity, which determines the goal of an individual’s existence. The push to the limelight is to compel the attention of parents. Successes can only intensify feelings of inadequacy. (The “I don’t deserve it” syndrome.)
Arrogance can be a product of youthful insecurity, as can being pompous and condescending. This insecurity causes acting difficult and overbearing on the outside and feeling more fearful and needful on the inside.
He may look at the most elegant, graceful woman he’s ever known and think inside, “I don’t deserve her,” feeling inadequate. She may just want him to let her love him, not the man he thinks he has to be to deserve her love. She wants him to open up to her, to share his problems, his doubts, his insecurities, to tell her his problems form time to time, to let down the façade. He doesn’t need to pretend with her.
The fear of disclosure can be strong and stubborn, as can the fear of dependence. All couples need to air the problems in their relationship from time to time. Communicating is important. Usually there has to be a crisis for people to want to learn new ways, a driving force: a problem with the children, in trouble at school or with the police, or alcohol. Or an affair (either parent); is alcoholic. Something happens to disturb the balance of the relationship.
Two people are involved in a relationship, and for it to improve, both must help. To compensate for their lack of self-disclosure (emotional openness), men tend to depend in a stereotypical way on gainful employment, enviable status, and sexual potency to give meaning to their lives. Once these achievements are gone, men have no other resources, become dispirited and are subject to an early death.
No outlet for stress and anxiety inevitably cause accumulation inside, and produces internalized secrets, more tension, more expenditure of energy and more stress than among women. Men can never let off this tension; they bottle it up.
Tears are the closed man’s mark of shame. Crying relieves tension and reduces blood pressure. Tears of emotion shed during a time of grief or crisis contain toxins not found in ordinary cleansing tears. The body produces these toxins under stress and eliminates them through the tear ducts. By holding tears back during emotional or stressful periods, a man prevents his body from ridding itself of harmful chemicals. The rule that “men don’t cry” means they must slowly poison themselves.
A lifetime of unexpressed emotions and unshared feelings leaves a man emotionally impoverished. There are many lost opportunities. They become dull and without intensity. The closed man lives his life from a distance, never fully engaged in the world around him, cut off from meaningful emotional interaction. It’s as if he’s reading his life in a book instead of actually living through it himself.
Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more. Those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that takes the joy from life. Men and women who don’t know love often feel they’ve missed the essential experience of life.
The past controls your current relationships. He can lose tender moments to manhood (manliness). Something inside him wants to shout (I love you!) but is never heard. Real feelings are seldom expressed – the hurts, the happiness. He leaves thinking of all the things he should have said. He’s afraid of the effort, frustration and heartache of making a relationship work. Why be without a friend in times of emotional need or consolation? Why turn and run when relationships begin to make emotional demands?
Help him awaken and rediscover his real self. Help him learn how he feels. Lift the burden of shoulds: acknowledge that you feel uncertain and anxious when you should feel directed; admit you feel lonely and long for the support of friends when you should feel competitive; listen to the small boy inside who wants to cut up when you should be in control; confess the need for others when you should be independent. It’s a matter of being what you are instead of what you think you should be.
A professional, taut as a guy wire, can turn to recreation yet never really relax, an incurable overachiever. Nearing the end of his career, he feels financial pressure, still competitive pressure to “win,” emotional pressure at home from his wife or girlfriend to commit or open up.
Do you ever relax? Are you ever free of the anxiety coiled up inside of you? Yes, but only for those few brief minutes after orgasm. For those precious moments, I don’t feel the burdens. That feeling of release, of being relieved – even temporarily – of the burdens of manhood, that feeling not unlike the total reprieve of orgasm, is what the closed man feels when he finally makes contact with his real self. Release, relief, reprieve – this is a definition of openness that a man can understand.
First, he must recognize that we need other people. A man can’t be alone, able to face the world without support, without dependency, without love to lean on. Common sense says this is true. Loving and longing are natural. We were created to be able to feel the world.
The only real order or meaning possible in life is in the order and meaning of relationships. Only a rare few will cheat mortality by winning Nobel prizes, making scientific breakthroughs, writing great literature, creating great works of art, or setting records. Few will even achieve even modest materialistic fulfillment that can hedge emotional emptiness.
For the vast majority of us, the sum total of life will be the people we have known – the people we have loved. Not to be loved is tragic, but not to love is catastrophic. For anyone to miss the opportunity to love, to go through life confined by stereotypes, prevented from sharing genuine intimacy by inherited roles and nameless fears, is, ultimately, to miss life’s greatest joy and only enduring reward.