Today is part 7 in our year-long exploration of love. As we have done six other times before, with the inspiring bell hooks as our guide, we’re going to “pause to create a place to do the work of Love in our lives” with Love defined as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Among other things, this definition suggests that love doesn’t just happen magically; that it’s the opposite of apathy and complacency; that it makes a person vulnerable to risk; that it’s not martyrdom–self-love is of equal value to love of another; and that the goal is holistic–it is growth of the highest and best in yourself and in others.

This is the love definition bell hooks offers us, and note how different it is from the usual idea that culture puts out there, that love is “a place where we will feel no pain, where we will be in a state of constant bliss.” It’s just not true. The real work of extending yourself and staying extended can indeed bring pain. The real work of supporting another’s spiritual growth, and one’s own, can bring significant discomfort. 

We are pausing today to do the work of love–but with a specific approach. This specific approach reflects one of bell hook’s abiding concerns: how patriarchy distorts the ability of men and male-identified folks to love–truly love. Patriarchy likes its men to have power-over others at all costs. Patriarchy likes its men to be tough and hard and completely invulnerable. Patriarchy distorts femininity as well, absolutely. But when patriarchy says to a boy, Be tough, be hard, never be seen as a loser, it creates conditions in which half of the human species is destroyed by lovelessness. Bell hooks quotes writer Guy Comeau, who says, “A good number of men simply decide not to commit themselves because they cannot face dealing with the emotional pain of love and the conflict it engenders.” bell hooks then says, “Women are often belittled for trying to resurrect these men and bring them back to life and to love. [These men] are, in fact, the real sleeping beauties.”

That’s right. The real sleeping beauties are men. The sleep many men are in is the curse of lovelessness, which is the curse of patriarchy. We pause today to create a place where we can do the work of Love for the men and male-identified in our lives.

A big part of it is building in men an accurate understanding of the pain that love can bring them, together with effective skills for coping. Patriarchy thunders that whenever a man feels pain, something is wrong, he is weak, he has failed, he must hide it, he must double-down on hardness, he must put armor on. 

But that is the worst thing a man can do. It’s a fast track to lovelessness.   

Start with an interesting statistic, relating to disagreements between intimate heterosexual partners. I will ask same-sex partners in the room to decide for themselves how this might speak to you. The statistic comes from the work of John Gottman, Ph.D., who has revolutionized the study of marriage by observing the habits of couples in rigorous scientific fashion. Through careful observation over many years, he has determined that when a couple disagrees with each other—doesn’t matter whether the marriage is happy or unhappy—a whopping 85% of the time it’s the wife who brings up the touchy issue and pushes to resolve it. 

Does this ring any bells? 

The wife brings up the touchy issue, and, 85% of the time, what is the husband likely to say out loud? I don’t want to talk about it. 

If she is successful in engaging him, and he’s in the conversation whether he likes it or not, what’s your best bet about what he’s thinking? 

I’ll do anything to make her shut up. 

The man sounds like he’s feeling trapped. The discomfort of it is nails on a chalkboard. He might think it’s because of her, but it’s not. Listen to what Gottman says: 

In 85% of marriages, the stonewaller is the husband. This is not because of some lack on the man’s part. The reason lies in our evolutionary heritage. Anthropological evidence suggests that we evolved from hominids whose lives were circumscribed by very rigid gender roles, since those were advantageous to survival in a harsh environment. The females specialized in nurturing children while the males specialized in cooperative hunting. 

As any nursing mother can tell you, the amount of milk you produce is affected by how relaxed you feel, which is related to the release of the hormone oxytocin in the brain. So natural selection would favor a female who could quickly soothe herself and calm down after feeling stressed. Her ability to remain composed could enhance her children’s chances of survival by optimizing the amount of nutrition they received. But in the male, natural selection would reward the opposite response. For these early cooperative hunters, maintaining vigilance was a key survival skill. So males whose adrenaline kicked in quite readily and who did not calm down so easily were more likely to survive and to procreate.

Gottman goes on to say, To this day, the male cardiovascular system remains more reactive than the female and slower to recover from stress. For example, if a man and woman suddenly hear a very loud, brief sound, like a blowout, most likely his heart will beat faster than hers and stay accelerated for longer. The same goes for their blood pressure — his will become more elevated and stay higher longer.

That’s Dr. Gottman. And so: the husband may feel trapped when the wife brings up the touchy issue, but both he and she need to know that she is not the bad guy. There is no bad guy. It’s evolution. It’s biology. Male bodies experience emotional overload more quickly and more intensely than female bodies do. 

Men’s bodies are softer and way more vulnerable than they know. 

And when men don’t know this, or when they don’t consciously work with it, they compensate by doubling down in their efforts to reclaim their hardness, their remoteness, their power over. One’s intimate partner wants to discuss a touchy subject, but that makes the man feel vulnerable, and he reacts by armoring up. She can’t feel him anymore. He can’t feel himself anymore. 

But at least patriarchy is satisfied. 

It would be far better if he simply acknowledged that he, by virtue of having a male body, experiences emotional overload more quickly, more intensely, and for a longer period of time than his partner. Maturity would then dictate that he’s going to proactively learn techniques for tolerating the fire of his emotions. 

Genuine male maturity is just that. To be able to stand in the fire of your emotions and be calm. 

But one of the lies that men are told, over and over again, by patriarchal men and women both, is that masculinity is about something external. Muscles. Paycheck. Sportscar. Never let them see you sweat.  

It’s a lie. The sleeping beauties need to wake up! Lifegiving masculinity—mature masculinity—is fundamentally interior. When a man’s interior life remains unknown by him, he can never be mature. That’s when it turns toxic. He reflexively reaches for the armor, and what he does is not necessarily something big and egregious. He can do small, everyday things too. Pouting. Being sarcastic. Being critical. Being passive-aggressive. Being over-controlling. 

But the underlying reason is that the man has not learned that pain in love relationships is par for the course and nothing out of the ordinary. The man hasn’t learned this. The man doesn’t know how to cope. 

Let’s go a little deeper. 

Consider a story from David Wexler, Ph.D., which he tells in his book When Good Men Behave Badly. Listen to that book title again: When Good Men Behave Badly. Here’s the story: On a leisurely Saturday afternoon, I returned home from food shopping, put the groceries on the kitchen counter, and headed off to my daughter’s room to say hello. She was sitting and reading a magazine. She looked up at me with one of her beaming smiles. This is a terrific mirror.

Then I looked around her room. World War III had descended: clothes everywhere, books and papers strewn—all parents know this story. I shook my head and smiled and said, “So when’s the maid coming?” I knew better. My wife and I had made a firm pact to leave the issue of the darn room alone and, like all intelligent parents, keep our battles to the big ones. But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. 

My daughter’s smile turned to ice. She glazed over and gave me a dismissive wave. I left, feeling stupid. And injured. Her glazed and scornful look was like the broken mirror, and it reflected back a picture of myself I didn’t like. 

So I walked into the kitchen, where my wife was putting away some of the groceries. She said casually, “Oh, I wanted those little yogurts. The ones you bought are too big.” On the scale of nasty and critical comments, with 100 being horribly insulting, this was about an 11. But I exploded nevertheless. “Fine! You don’t like the way I shop, I’ll just do it all over again. Give me those yogurts! Give me the receipt! I’m going right back there and getting them exactly the way you want them!” My wife looked at me and said, “What the heck’s wrong with you?”

I stormed out to the store. I came back in a huff, slamming the door, new yogurt in hand. My wife was sitting on the couch. She calmly repeated, “What the heck’s wrong with you?” We talked for a while, and it all fell into place. 

And that’s David Wexler Ph.D.’s story. 

Did you see how he put on the armor? “Fine! You don’t like the way I shop, I’ll just do it all over again.” This is a good man behaving badly. 

But why? Something about broken mirrors, something about feeling injured. 

Wexler is using language from a theory called “self-psychology.” The theory paints a picture of where a person’s sense of self comes from. It’s never self-created. It’s never do-it-yourself. It’s always created through interactions between people. As in: The young child says to his mother or father, “Look at me! Look at me!” and he’s doing this because he feels a deep internal need to look into the faces of his parents and see himself reflected back. He needs to see their eyes bright, which say to him You are wonderful. He needs to see their smiles, which say to him You make me happy. He needs this to happen over and over again, until a positive contagion has taken place, and he is able to create these feelings for himself: I am wonderful. I am happy. 

Most people probably know what it takes to learn how to ride a bike. But few people really know what it takes to learn how to have a functioning self. 

Self-psychology tells the story. 

It also helps us understand why there are so many selves out there and in here that sometimes—even most times—don’t feel vital and worthy. Selves that are like leaky cups. Joy is poured in, and it isn’t held, it drains out, the cup has cracks. The mirrors that were supposed to mirror vitality and worth back to us were unreliable. Sometimes whole, sometimes broken. Even in the best of situations, the mirroring we received while growing up could have been incomplete. “The child thus develops,” says Wexler, “gaps in his sense of self: he mistrusts and disrespects his own internal signals and states; he doubts his own self-worth and competence. He desperately turns elsewhere for validation and he becomes excessively sensitized to signals that might suggest that he is unappreciated, unneeded, or unsuccessful.” 

Wexler is a good guy. And like all good guys, he’s got gaps in his sense of self. The mirror of his daughter, when she beams that beautiful smile at him, feels so good. But when her smile turns to ice, it gets through a gap in his self and it stabs at his very heart, and he feels crushed by shame. Which is intolerable. The shame feeling is like being choked to death. So you fight back against this death threat, ferociously.

All this is as true for women as it is for men. It’s just that men are far less likely to be aware of these dynamics and they are far more likely to withdraw or act out when their needs are not being met. 

Again, they are the sleeping beauties that need to awaken. 

There’s a third thing, too. It has to do with the uniquely powerful role of intimate partners in a man’s life. Wexler’s daughter just set the stage. It was Wexler’s wife, when she made the comment about the yogurt, that made him explode. Because of the look of love, and what happens when it goes away. 

Remember that song? “The Look of Love”?

The look of love

Is in your eyes

A look your smile can’t disguise

Well it takes my breath away

[…] 

Now that I have found you

You’ve got the look of love

It’s on your face

A look that time can’t erase

Wexler says that this look is one of the most potent forces in the psychology of the male. Men crave to be seen like this by their intimate partner. To be seen like this is to look into a mirror that reflects back an image of a man who is sexy, smart, competent, important, wanted. Men give so much power to this look, that when it does go away–when the honeymoon is over, when the mirror is broken, when your wife/husband tells you that you got the wrong thing of yogurt–well, it’s shattering. 

So you put the armor on, to defend against the shame.

I really want us to hear this part: how men (whether straight or gay) invest incredible power in their significant others, so much so that the significant other can feel oppressively burdened by the responsibility of this and the stress of always trying to be affirming of their partner. For his part, the man feeling his dependency can feel humiliated that he is so dependent, for dependency is supposed to be unmanly….  

It is a twisted-up dynamic. 

But understandable. Women, for straight men, are often the definers of manhood. You know you’re a man if your woman says so. “All my life,” says one of Wexler’s clients, “I have been sure that I was weak, a coward. Because I never stood up to my abusive old man…. But when I start to tell Jeanette about these feelings, and she looks into my eyes and starts tearing up, and she tells me how much closer she feels to me, it’s like she believes in me. If she sees me as being okay as a man, then maybe I am.” 

It’s understandable, that a straight man would give so much of his power to his woman. 

The problem, again and again, is the toxic masculine armor, and what causes a man to put it on. 

Wexler’s wife tells Wexler that he didn’t get the right yogurt, and he explodes because she does not look at him with the look of love, but he needs that look desperately, to feel validated as a man. 

It’s not just yogurt we’re talking about here. It’s his manhood at stake! The patriarchy in him is telling him that he’s just lost his one-up, power-over status, and he’d better do something!

As for Wexler’s wife, afterwards, she’s just sitting on the couch, going “What the heck just happened?” She’s missing her partner. She never signed up to be where the buck of her husband’s masculinity and general self-worth stops. She just wants someone to be her comrade in a challenging world. She just wants someone on her team, to face a world in which messy daughters can make you want to pull out your hair, and where much, much worse can happen. 

That’s what she wants, and that’s what the partners of all men want, gay or straight. 

Here is what men need to do, to counter the falsehoods of patriarchy, and to create more genuine love in their lives. 

Number one: know that lifegiving masculinity is about what’s internal, not what’s external. Don’t show me your paycheck, don’t show me your pecs; show me how you soothe your vulnerable male body when you’re feeling stressed out. Show me, when you are in an argument with someone and the wheels of your composure are coming off, that you know how to take care of yourself, and the way you do that is to ask for a 20 minute time-out. To ask for what you need. 

Show me that you are savvy when you are facing the pain that love inevitably brings. 

Number two: take back some of your power from your intimate partner. The look of love will always be a tremendous influence, but we need to get real. Our partners have complex lives of their own, worries and fears and flaws of their own, and sometimes they don’t mirror positive things to us. But it’s usually not personal. Yet isn’t the temptation to make it personal? Is’t that the self-talk we often indulge in, to explain why we’re hurting? She said the thing about the yogurt because she wanted to make me feel bad! Don’t go down that path though. Don’t do it. It really wasn’t personal. Furthermore, if you need the glass of your relationship to be 100% all the time full of positivity and warm fuzzies, that’s a sign that you need to do some significant personal work. That’s on you. That’s not on your partner. 

Finally, the third thing men need to do, to achieve a more lifegiving masculinity: cultivate a “we’re in this thing together” attitude with your intimate partner. I’m not sure it’s possible to cease from desiring the look of love from one’s intimate partner. I’m not sure it’s possible to be unaffected by its absence. But what is possible is to intentionally bring yourself back to the image of you and your partner as comrades in a world full of challenges, and if she’s not looking at you right now with the look of love, don’t allow your hurt to make you think she’s the enemy, and therefore you put the armor on, and you criticize, you say sarcastic things, you pout, you go all passive-aggressive, and in other ways you try to restore your power-over and your hardness. What you do instead is you take a deep breath, and you say to yourself, “We’re in this thing together. She’s in a foul mood and has been under a lot of stress lately. But she won’t be like that forever. It’s just temporary. She’ll bounce back. We’re partners. We’re in this thing together.”

One, two, three. Do these things, and the sleeping beauties are well on their way to waking up. You have just taken the armor off, because you don’t need it. 

The fact is, love is going to bring pain. 

The work of extending one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth is going to bring pain.

And lifegiving masculinity gets that. Prepares for that. Learns how to address that. 

It’s time to wake up, sleeping beauties. 

Take off the armor. 

You don’t need it.