Change Your Behavior, Change Your Relationship

The language that you use in talking to yourself about being a man in relationships must respect the cultural limitations – and the cultural strengths – of being male. As a guy, you are less likely than that other gender to be particularly comfortable expressing emotions that make you feel – or appear to be – weak, dependent, unsure, threatened, or emotionally needy. Our culture rewards men for being strong, independent, and confident. Emotions, vulnerability, and uncertainty are generally considered more acceptable in women.

The history of psychotherapy and couples counseling – and the mind-boggling industry of self-help books – have taught us that the whole field is more user-friendly to women than to men. Certainly, the language is more compatible with women’s way of thinking than it is with men’s.

What are we therapists usually asking you to do? We insist that you “share your feelings.” We insist that you “process.” We honor your “vulnerability.” We teach you to communicate openly, to work as a team, to honor interdependency, and to allow change to happen organically. We ask you to listen (sometimes for a long time) without taking action or problem solving.

There are certainly many men who share these values and are quite capable of doing these things. But perhaps you are one of the men who feel that this is “girl stuff.” Perhaps you are reading this book and working on your relationship problems only because some woman in your life is unhappy or has insisted you do so. In trying to master relationships and foster healthy communication, you may feel alienated, inept, and impatient.

I am going to try and explain why this is the case. And I am going to give you a lot of different ways to think about emotions, vulnerability, change, and communication so that they make more sense and seem more compatible with being male.

Emotional Unintelligence

Because of the gender training course you were enrolled in, you are likely to have some particular roadblocks as you try to deal with the complexities of your inner emotional life and relationships. Many men – despite being very successful in many different areas of life – still have holes in their emotional development and their ability to express key elements of their inner world through language. Some men function in a way that can only be described as emotionally unintelligent, desperately trying to manage relationships and trying to fend off the discomfort of male depression.

One roadblock is the one I discussed in chapter 5: normative male alexithymia, or the difficulty in identifying and talking about vulnerable and caring emotions. This is one of the primary contributors to emotional unintelligence. You can’t know much about who you are and you can’t figure out what is happening during relationship conflicts if you can’t identify your feelings in the first place.

And even among men who at least have the capacity for identifying and expressing internal states, many are reluctant to acknowledge that there is a problem. It connotes weakness and dependency and everything unmasculine. John Wayne and other stoic men are the cultural icons for this aversion.

Humorist Dave Barry captures this experience in the following conversation between male patient and doctor:

Doctor: So what seems to be the problem?

Patient: Well, the main thing is, I keep coughing up blood. Plus I have these open sores all over my body. Also I have really severe chest pains and double vision, and from time to time these little worms burrow out of my skin.

Doctor: It’s just a sprain.

Patient: That’s what I thought. (1995, 149)

This dialogue is a joke and a caricature, but it is funny because it contains an element of truth. And stoicism relates to another roadblock, which is difficulty in asking for help. Pollack (1995) refers to this trait as “defensive autonomy.” You may be determined to maintain your self-sufficiency and find it intolerable to be perceived (or to perceive yourself) as dependent on anyone. Perhaps you are like the stereotypical man who has a hard time asking for directions, resists the idea of going to a therapist to help straighten out his life, and even finds it hard to tell his partner that he is worried or doubting himself. This pattern strikes right at the core of masculine identity issues: I cannot afford to look like I am not in control of things in my life!

When I was in my thirties, I developed serious back pain and (as was in vogue at that time) was prescribed complete bed rest for weeks on end. My wife had to cook my meals, help me up to go to the bathroom, bring me whatever I had forgotten to ask her for the first time. I was in guy hell. The pain was the least of it; the dependency was the killer. I couldn’t stand needing her so much, and I was sure that it was only a matter of time before she became disgusted by my weakness and dependency. So, contrary to the principles of relational heroism, I never talked about this with her or anyone else – I just acted it out. Her helping me was like a broken mirror reminding me of my inadequate state, and I acted nastier and nastier to her. My friends noticed but didn’t have the heart to tell me until later. Not only was I unaware of how I was treating her, I was clueless even about how I was feeling.

Which brings us to the next roadblock: anxiety about revealing too much of your needs to someone else and placing yourself in a position of potential vulnerability. Perhaps you carry around fears about being known too well or getting too close to someone who could – and very well might, in your narratives – reject you, abandon you, judge you, or control you. So you keep your mouth – and often your heart – shut. Remember Will Hunting, who emotionally and physically exploded at Skylar because she wanted to advance the relationship further and know him even more intimately? It activated shame for him, or, more precisely, fear of shame, and he became a good man behaving badly.

Speaking the Language of Men

In order to become a good man behaving well, you need to frame your goals in language that does not challenge your fundamental definitions of male identity. In fact, you need to think about these changes in thinking, feeling, and acting in terms of what is best about masculinity.

Male Metaphors

If I tell you how important it is that you display more emotional vulnerability, you might roll your eyes and harden your defenses. You may reluctantly comply to keep your wife happy if she insists, but you won’t quite buy in.

However, if I tell you that it is time for you to live up to your responsibilities and become a relational hero, I am talking to you in language that allows you to embrace the new behavior and perceive it as being within the definition of masculinity. Terrence Real challenges men by telling them, when they act belittling or cold with their wife or kids, that they are choosing to comply with the training that they received from their own father. He tells them that they are, in effect, announcing the following: “I am giving myself license to act abusively just like my dad. I know this is going to really hurt you kids, but I don’t really care. Indulging my anger is more important to me, right now, than you are….Dad, this one’s for you!” (1997, 240)

There is nothing manipulative about reframing behavior this way. It just sets up the problem – and the challenge – in men’s language. You might respond to this kind of message about repeating your own father’s behavior with a wave of shame (I can’t believe I’m being just like him!) followed by a firm-jawed determination to be your own kind of man.

Carey told me about his thoughts after he would go off on his kids or his wife. That’s not the type of man I am! I’m a nurturing man and a caring man and I know what the right thing to do is! I hug my son and tell him I love him – a lot! It’s weird – in some ways I do things just the opposite from what my father did, and in other ways I end up exactly the same. I don’t understand that.

You may find it helpful to think in the language of power and control. If you’re familiar with the theory of abusive, male-dominated relationships, you will recognize these as the central evil in the most pathological stories. So who, writing a book on helping men in relationships, would want to encourage men to take power and control? Actually, it makes sense to recognize that you are attracted to feeling powerful and being in control – and know that you can use these impulses for relationship good rather than relationship evil. I call it power over yourself and control over yourself.

Do you want your girlfriend’s frustrating habits to control your temper?

Do you want some other driver on the road to have the power to determine how you act in front of your kids?

Do you want to give your teacher the satisfaction of knowing that she was right about you, that you have a really bad attitude?

When you think about your capacity to “take charge of your life” or “be the captain of your own ship,” you are engaging archetypal male metaphors. This paints the track or path ahead – fraught with anxiety and unpredictability – as a classical male journey. A journey not unlike that of Odysseus, who was not allowed by the gods to return home to Ithaca until he had spent his ten years on the open seas learning cleverness, compassion, and humility. The companion stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey represent two different and essential chapters of the male journey. The Iliad is the story of a man fighting the demons outside of himself, and the Odyssey is the story of a man fighting the demons within. If you can frame the skills of humility, compassion, self-awareness, and acknowledging the need for help as a classical male journey, you are more likely to embrace them. The tasks themselves become more male-friendly.

Real Men

Jackson Katz, one of the pioneers in the modern American men’s movement, challenges men to redefine their notions of what a real man is. He has developed training programs designed specifically for male bastions of society: the military, college fraternities, and high school and college sports teams. His programs are aimed at consciousness-raising regarding gender-based violence. But unlike most of these programs, his model targets not the perpetrators but the bystanders, the collective of reasonably good guys who determine the zeitgeist of male culture, attitudes, and behaviors. He challenges the bystanders and male leadership figures (such as quarterbacks on football teams) to not tolerate offensive and unacceptable behaviors in their peers. If they hear some guys bragging about screwing some girl who was hopelessly drunk at the frat party, he challenges them to imagine what this would be like if the girl were their sister, or cousin, or girlfriend, and to imagine how they would react to other men who knew about it and said or did nothing.

Katz’s programs are brilliant in their creative co-opting of male-friendly language. His MVP Playbook (1994) is full of gender relationship vignettes like “Illegal Use of Hands,” “Piling On,” and “Pass Interference.” Each “play” depicts an act of mild to severe offensive behavior committed by men against women, and challenges men to examine their own beliefs and to rise to the occasion.

Talking to Other Men

You can use male language not only to frame your own goals in a way that feels comfortable but also to connect with other men.

In a 1999 article in the American Psychological Association Monitor, Freiberg and Sleek tell the story of Texas psychologist Gary Brooks, who was conducting group counseling sessions with men. And, as is often the case in men’s discussions , football was the topic that came up. Of course, in Texas, football means the Dallas Cowboys. The men in this group were talking about star running back Emmitt Smith, who was being described at the time as washed-up (although he managed to go on and gain thousands and thousands more yards through his brilliant career). But the group members focused on their appreciation of Smith the man and his determination to stay on the playing field as long as possible.

Brooks recalls that the group members began talking about issues of physical strength and about the vulnerability of aging. They ended up getting to a crucial question and a crucial fear in the lives of most men: What happens when you’re no longer able to do what you could once do? Does that mean you’re a failure?

If you want to take a chance and talk to other men not only about blitz packages and screen passes but also about the vulnerability of aging, there are plenty of opportunities to do it. If those men turned Emmitt Smith’s rushing average into that kind of discussion, you can too. Take a chance. Some of the men in your life will probably be grateful.

Exercise: Reframing Your Goals in Male Language

You can talk about relationship issues in the language of numbers, engineering, business, sports, art, the military, or the Bible.

Pick at least three goals that you have developed for how you would like to handle or think about your relationships differently. On a separate sheet or in your notebook, write instructions to yourself about these goals in language that you can relate to as a guy. Here are some examples:

Nobody’s perfect. If your wife is not perfect, join the club. All of us can reasonably figure that our partner can be around 80 percent of what we are looking for. If it’s above that, count your blessings, and if it’s below, the match may not be the right one. Do the math.

It makes sense to diversify your portfolio by having multiple people you can turn to to talk about emotional stuff. You are in better shape if you can talk with friends, not just your wife. That way, if one market sector crashes, you still have assets elsewhere.

Remember the 1973 Oakland A’s, who never got along but still won the World Series? Keep this in mind when you are managing child custody and parenting decisions with your estranged or divorced wife.

It is normal and tolerable to make mistakes in your relationships with your loved ones: Tony Gwynn was the greatest pure hitter of our generation, and he made an out two out of every three times!

It makes sense to practice skills for handling your reactions in emotional situations. Why? Think of Jerry Rice running the same route hundreds of times, so that under game conditions, with a defensive back barreling down on him, he still knows exactly what he needs to do.

Developing Action Plans for Complex Tasks

Another male-friendly way of thinking about the complex tasks of deepening and improving your closest relationships is to take these tasks and break them down into recognizable and easily achievable components. Even the complex skill of empathy – one of the surest signs of emotional intelligence – can be learned, even by men who claim to be clueless in this department. How? By breaking the task down into small steps. Empathy, this rather mysterious skill that seems to rely on some inner intuitive sense, becomes something real, unmysterious, even fascinating. Each component becomes known, then reassembled. Thinking of a new skill as a simple engineering task increases your likelihood of taking it on and gaining success.

Exercise: A Man’s Guide to Empathy in Seven Easy Steps

While there is no substitute for the “natural” empathic skills that some people (men or women) are blessed with, you can do pretty well in developing this capacity by breaking it down into components and following these steps. Step 4, active listening, is a skill unto itself, so we’ll break that step down into even smaller steps.

1. Stop and pay attention. Mentally focus your attention on your partner.

2. Listen carefully to what she is trying to tell you. Pay attention to her story.

3. Shut up. Don’t try to defend yourself or problem-solve.

4. Use active listening.

Active listening is a communication technique that encourages the other person to continue speaking. It also enables you to be certain you understand what the other person is saying. It’s a way of checking it out. It’s called active listening because you not only listen but also actively let the other person know that you have really heard her.

Active listening involves paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is stating in your own words what you think the other person is feeling, based on what she says.

You sound really (feeling) about (situation) .

You must really feel (feeling) .

What I hear you saying is .

Active listening also involves clarifying.

Clarifying involves asking questions to get more information.

Clarifying helps you hear more specifics about the situation and feelings.

Clarifying also lets the other person know you are interested in what she is saying.

So, tell me what happened that got you so upset.

How did you feel when that happened?

Active listening often involves personalizing.

Personalizing involves offering a personal example of feeling the same thing or being in the same situation.

I think I know what you mean. I’ve been there too.

I felt the same way when I lost my job. I think everyone does.

Personalizing helps the other person feel less alone, and it implies that someone else has experienced this and recovered from it.

Personalizing can be harmful if you talk too much about yourself and steal the spotlight from the person who needs it.

You think that was bad? Listen to what happened to me!

5. Shut up again.

6. Listen some more.

7. Offer advice or problem solving only if invited.

Multimedia Approaches

Another way for you to develop the ability to identify, label, and express emotions is by watching and learning from movies. Many therapists and counselors assign men homework of watching certain movies to help them observe how other men feel and react in similar situations.

In my work with men, I often recommend Good Will Hunting for shame issues, The Great Santini or Life as a House for father-son relations, Affliction for men who mismanage relationships, Carnal Knowledge for men who shut themselves off emotionally, Parenthood for men who look to their kids to determine their own self-worth, and Ordinary People and Good Will Hunting for imaginary crimes issues. For additional suggestions, refer to Hesley and Hesley’s 2001 book Rent Two Films and Let’s Talk in the Morning: Using Popular Movies in Psychotherapy.

The Importance of Hope

For good men behaving badly, or good men who say That’s not the man I want to be, or simply good men who are feeling emotionally isolated or shut down, one of the key missing pieces is the experience of hope. Hope is the cornerstone of your healing process. If you are locked in emotional shutdown, you can become supremely discouraged, even despairing. Discouragement can lead to dark moods, which can generate escapist behavior, emotional withdrawal, or aggression and hostility directed at the perceived source of the discouragement – usually the people closest to you.

Encouraging Yourself

If you are discouraged, you need to experience hope. One way you can do this is by finding a way to identify with the good-man-behaving-badly narrative.

Chris was a young man who had been engaged in a pattern of escalating arguments with his wife after their child was born. He dearly loved his three-month-old son, but he could not handle the deterioration of his life as a new father. His wife, who had once offered him so much more attention, was now in a bad mood much of the time.

One time, as he turned on his wife again for some perceived crime (I think it was her excessive complaining), Chris became so angry that he started screaming at her and slamming doors until pictures crashed down off the wall. His wife (and, we can guess, his baby) was terrified. A neighbor called the police, and Child Protective Services eventually investigated and put him on probationary status so that Chris could not be alone with his child for several months. He had never exploded like this before or since.

As Chris was telling the details of this incident after a couple of months of group treatment – without passion, without a flicker of remorse – I interrupted him and said, slowly and meaningfully, “Chris, I know you, and I know you are not the type of person who wishes harm on your baby or on your wife. So you must have felt so desperate, like there was such an awful feeling inside of you that you just had to get rid of it somehow, to make you do something that goes so much against your basic values. I know that what you did is not the real you!”

He looked down and started crying. “It’s true,” he said. Chris’s ability to see himself as a good man behaving badly melted his defensiveness and allowed him to highlight the positive values he carried within. This did not take him off the hook. But thinking of himself in this way redoubled his commitment to change.

The Importance of Labels

In chapter 2, I related the story of Namir and his wife Ellen, who had separated after Namir went off verbally on her when she rejected his sexual overtures in the shower. He had insulted her body, told her that no one else would ever want her, and that she should feel lucky and grateful that he was so interested in her.

Namir had pulled stunts like this before, but this really went over the top. Ellen told him she couldn’t stand this abuse anymore and insisted that he move out.

After weeks of pleading from Namir, Ellen agreed to come in for a couples session with me to see if there was any hope for this relationship. They told their story. I talked to Namir about good men behaving badly. They both knew that he was both a good man and clearly behaving badly. He told me he would do anything it took to deal with his depression that led to his destructive behavior. I felt hopeful. I was encouraged that Namir was experiencing a healthy dose of shame that was motivating him to change.

I made an appointment to see Namir individually. He asked me if there was anything he could read that could help him get started on all these changes he needed to make. I wrote down the name of a book, The Verbally Abusive Relationship, on the back of his appointment card. As he was leaving and thanking me profusely for agreeing to see him and offering him some light at the end of the tunnel, he glanced at the card.

Verbally abusive! Verbally abusive! I’m not abusive! What do you take me for? I don’t abuse my wife! Is that what you think of me? Abusive! I love my wife! I am a good man! I’m not an abuser! This diatribe continued into the waiting room and out to the street. His wife gave me one more look that said, You see what it’s like?

I never saw Namir again. He never showed up for his appointment and never answered my calls or my letter.

Again, I learned a lesson. Although I certainly wanted Namir to take responsibility for his destructive behavior in his marriage, I especially wanted him to take a legitimate shot at changing it. Labels are important to people. The label I inadvertently pushed on him served as a broken mirror reflecting an unbearably shameful picture of himself, which paralyzed his potential for genuine change.

If you read this and think that I am advocating letting anyone (men, women, or children) off the hook for their destructive relationship behavior, you are wrong. It’s just that Namir couldn’t reconcile his self-image as a responsible and decent male with the label abusive, as would be true for most men. This was a violation of the principles of “guy talk.” Namir didn’t stick around long enough to embrace the good-men-behaving-badly narrative that would have allowed him to maintain some self-respect and helped loosen the noose of shame. Chris, in the previous example, did – and you can too.

Reframing Familiar Language

Another way to change the way you think and talk about relationships is to redefine old terms in new ways, focusing on the positive aspects.

Machismo: Invoking New Definitions of Manhood

The idea of machismo is a great candidate for this type of reframing. The common use of this term implies a caricature of masculine traits. Men characterized as dominated by machismo are controlling, threatening, aggressive, entitled, and defensive.

But, even in the machismo culture in Mexico, there exist definitions of manhood that also imply the very best of being a man: demonstrating personal integrity, displaying honorable behavior, providing a positive example. In other words, acting as a relational hero. A macho man is the head of the household, but also listens to, respects, and protects women. A recent study (Welland 1999) of Mexican men in relationship counseling programs found that interviewees unanimously declared the importance of their nuclear family. Most of them reported being concerned about their children’s education. Their main concern was to be responsible men, both by providing for the family economically and by protecting their partner and children from outside harm. These values constitute the core of the positive male gender role for Mexicans. This positive identity centers around the role of protector and provider and displaying stoic strength in the midst of adversity.

Many of the men in Welland’s study recognized that they had cheated themselves and their families by buying into the negative version of machismo, and many of them attributed the unraveling of their relationships to the blind worship of machismo more than any other factor. One man described his remorse at how he had treated his wife. “I thought that this was the way to show her that I was a man…. But…I didn’t realize, everything I did, everything was wrong. No one ever taught me, I never saw a good example of how to treat a woman. If I had seen it, I would have done it, but I never did” (189).

What does this mean for you? It just gives you another example of how powerful your language and self-talk can be. The men in these studies were driven to be “real men,” but by their own description, the qualities that they thought defined a “real man” were warped by their narrow cultural definition: in this case, machismo. The problem is not that you, or they, are committed to male values or to developing a male identity. There is so much to be celebrated about masculinity. The challenge is in learning how to frame acts of tenderness as relational heroism, controlling knee-jerk reactions as tasks worthy of Odysseus, or treating women with more sensitivity and respect as the highest evolution of masculinity.

In other words, if you are a man strongly identified with culture-specific values about masculinity, you are more likely to be open to new relationship behavior if it makes sense to you as just a new way of defining what you have always valued. Anyone who tries to tell you that all your values are wrong or sexist or immature is likely to run into a brick wall.

Courage: Invoking New Definitions of Heroism

Courage is another central idea about masculinity that can be framed differently. The word courage comes from the Latin root word cor, meaning heart or soul. So an act of courage does not necessarily mean some act of physical risk, but rather an act that is truly from the heart. Where the heart, or what truly is right, dictates the behavior.

We need to get away from the idea that courage is behavior reserved for Odysseus, Martin Luther King Jr., and firefighters in the World Trade Center. If these are the only definitions of courage, then few of us will ever be able to measure up and recognize the courageous or heroic traits within ourselves. The reality is that we are all performing – or have the potential to perform – courageous acts every day, in many situations, in ways that may only get noticed by a few people closest to us. Or perhaps not even noticed by anyone else at all. Every man – every day – has the chance to be relational hero.Accountability, Exceptions, and Disinhibitors

Another way in which personal narrative makes a difference – another way in which reframing your thoughts in “guy talk” can help you – lies in the way the way you explain the reasons you said or did something destructive. Here, I am making the assumption that we men who are not psychopaths embrace fundamentally similar social values: Don’t hit women. Do not say or do something abusive to children. Be honest. Take responsibility for what you do. Do not cheat. Be fair in how you handle things with other people. Be loyal to the people you care about. Try to model positive behavior for your kids. Add to this list other key commandments and basic social agreements.

However – and here is where personal narrative fits in – we all make exceptions to these values under certain circumstances. We tell ourselves that under these circumstances, in this situation, with this justification, it is all right to violate the values.

She kept nagging me and I had to do something!

I wasn’t gonna let that kid show me up in public!

It was finally my turn to let them all know how I felt!

I have had a really hard day, and I am entitled!

I can’t win with her, so I’ll just withdraw from her and see how she likes that!

Think carefully about these. It is crucial for you to identify how you have justified your exceptions. The point is not to generate excuses for self-indulgent or destructive behavior, nor is the point to nail you for being some sort of relationship criminal. Instead, you want to reinforce your identity as a good guy who takes responsibility for his behavior: I am a good guy with good values, and sometimes I convince myself that it is okay to act badly. I’ve got to watch out for those times when I justify my exceptions!

One man I worked with described it like this. Sometimes I just get so frustrated, I must tell myself that it’s okay to treat the people I love in a nasty way. Like I tell myself, “She just won’t listen to me!” or “She cares about the people at church more than she does about me!” So then it’s okay – in my own head – to yell at her or embarrass her in front of our kids. To force her to hear me. What bullshit!

If you know how you justify your exceptions, you will be in a better position to avoid the danger of destructive behavior – like Odysseus anticipating the Sirens.

Exercise: Justifications

Most likely, you, like all of us, have behaved in the following ways even with (perhaps especially with) the people you love the most:

• getting sarcastic
• emotionally withdrawing
• yelling and put-downs
• not following through on commitments
• betraying secrets
• breaking relationship ground rules
• demanding your own way

But it is unlikely that these behaviors reflect your values. How is this possible?

You found a way to justify it in your own mind at that particular moment. Even afterward, you may insist that it was okay rather than simply saying, I blew it. I behaved badly, and it’s nobody’s fault but my own.

Here are some typical justifications. On a separate sheet of paper or in your journal, note any that you have used and write in the specific self-talk that went with the justification. Then see if you can come up with a few more that aren’t on this list.

No big deal. I wasn’t really that mean; all I did was tell my son something he knows is true!

I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to yell at her and scare her – I just wanted her to understand!

I couldn’t help it. I was drunk – what can I say? or I just flipped out; I didn’t even know what I was doing.

I had to take care of myself. It was my turn to let her know what I’ve been going through!

It’s her fault. If she hadn’t nagged me, or If she hadn’t spent too much money, or If she just was more interested sexually…

I had to teach her a lesson. Of course I went out and had an affair – it was the only way to get her to pay better attention to me!

It was for her own good. I had to embarrass her in front of her friends – she was acting so crazy, I had to get her to stop.

Disinhibitors

Remember the discussion in chapter 5 about brain disinhibitors? Justifications – and the self-talk that goes with them – serve as disinhibitors of judgment and behavior. Alcohol and drugs likewise function as disinhibitors. So does peer pressure. So do fatigue and stress. So does relentless nagging. So, certainly, can sexual arousal. A real man is able to identify his personal disinhibitors and try to anticipate and prepare for them – like Odysseus and the Sirens. Odysseus didn’t say, Oh, well, these Sirens are just too much for me and my men to handle. We can’t stop ourselves. Instead, he knew of his own human vulnerability. He knew that even though he had many heroic and mature qualities, he was just as vulnerable as all the rest of us. His true heroism lay in recognizing this and taking responsibility, doing what he could to avert acting badly or stupidly.

And you may find it helpful to identify yourself as a good man who, when affected by certain disinhibitors, sometimes acts badly in relationships.

We’re All in This Together: Twinship and Self-Disclosure

Last but not least, “guy talk” is about men talking to men. This is a key step in the process of developing your resources and feeling more hope.

Guys Talking to Guys

The problem is not only that many men rely excessively on the woman in their life for emotional support or as a catalyst for emotional access. It is also that so many men have never developed any kind of diversified portfolio for alternative sources of support, which can offer you the opportunity to be a more full-fledged and emotionally mature adult man.

Here’s an illustration of what is missing. A subtle but powerful moment in Good Will Hunting (1997) takes place in a conversation between Will and his best buddy, Chuckie. A week previously, Will has gone through a traumatic breakup with the love of his life, Skylar.

In casual conversation, Chuckie asks Will how things are going with “your lady.” Will tells him flatly that she’s gone. Neither man shows any emotion. After a few grunts and monosyllabic responses from Will, Chuckie uncovers the information that Skylar has taken off to medical school in California – a week ago!

Chuckie sips from his can of beer, raises his eyebrows a little, and responds: “That sucks.”

The shock in this dialogue comes from what is not there. How is it possible that this young man could be going though so much emotional turmoil without his best friend – a friend who actually cares – even having a clue? Will loves Chuckie, and they would do anything for each other. Although Will has been experimenting recently with letting his emotional guard down with a woman (with mixed success, as we know!) and with a male therapist, he has not yet learned to turn to one of his peers. This is an opportunity lost.

An important aspect of guy talk is what Brooks (1998) refers to as “participative self-disclosure,” which generates self-cohesion based on the twinship experience. Participative self-disclosure is the fancy psychological term for talking about yourself with other people and exchanging meaningful information.

When you discover that you can get real with other people besides the woman in your life, you find hope. Especially when these other relationships include conversations with other men – conversations which take place at a deeper level than typical locker room banter.

Skills Development

When you talk to other men about how to deal with relationship issues, sometimes the most positive impact is simply that you pick up a few pointers. This is plain old skills development. Some men learn the most profound lessons about dealing with the unhappiness or anger of women by watching other men and listening to their stories. Hearing how other men respond to women can help you understand this rather delicate process of maintaining a relationship.

The danger, of course, is in listening to the wrong men. In many conversations among men, there is the tendency to sink to the lowest common denominator and enter a world where you trash women, where women are the adversary, and where you identify yourself as a member of the Male Victims Society. It is tempting to relate to other men by focusing on women’s relationship flaws at the expense of your own and at the expense of the strengths of the woman in your life. Don’t feel singled out here – women tend to do the same thing when talking about men, as any viewer of Sex and the City will attest to.

The Power of Twinship

Even more powerful than the exchange of pointers is the profound benefit of simple twinship. When you find that you can actually have a conversation with other men about your doubts, about your frustrations, about experiences growing up that have always been tinged with shame, you usually experience (after perhaps some initial panic) enormous relief: You mean I’m not the only one? The discovery of commonality inspires hope in ways that personal analysis or introspection can only begin to touch. There is nothing more likely to generate the hopefulness of the good-man-behaving-badly narrative than the discovery of this twinship experience.

One of my clients was a highly respected and acclaimed university professor who had spent many therapy sessions in my office dealing with his intense frustration and despair about what he considered the failure of his academic department. He had always carried a passionate vision of what this department could offer, and he suffered every day with the gap between what he had envisioned and the reality of what was.

He often felt like a loser because he had been unable to fulfill his vision. In his own narrative, he had fallen short, and the ongoing dysfunctional politics served as a broken mirror for him.

So, one day, I went to get him in the waiting room of my office for his appointment. We were in the process of remodeling our office, and there were three different color samples painted on the wall. He made some jokes about which ones he liked and why he liked them; then, as we entered my office, he asked me which one I would be choosing.

I looked at him and paused dramatically. I told him that I was hardly the one who would be doing the choosing.

Don’t you get it? There are four of us here with equal power, all quite headstrong and opinionated. We’ve been working on these decisions for five months. You think I’m going to decide this? You know, it is so humbling to watch us and other groups of psychologists, with all our so-called communication skills and empathic abilities, squabble and jockey for power in group decisions. It’s like being a parent; I speak all across the country advising professionals and parents about dealing with difficult teenagers, and then I fumble so badly with my own. It is so humbling!

He looked at me for a moment and then said, It is such a relief to hear you say these things! And he told me later that he remembered this rather uneventful moment more than the hundreds of profound things I had tried to pass on to him.

Another client of mine described his terror at the prospect of calling off his imminent wedding to a woman who, he finally realized, was not right for him to marry. He reported his feelings of failure and shame, especially as he found himself acting colder and colder to her, hoping that she would break up with him.

I proceeded to tell him the story of my own called-off wedding. And I told him how meaningful it was to me that, months later, my father reshaped this event forever in my personal narrative by telling me that he didn’t think he would have had the courage to do what I did.

To my client, I offered no solution, only a twinship story about shame.

A big smile spread across his face. That’s why I keep coming to see you. You tell me about yourself, and you help me feel like we’re all in this together. That’s something I can really take home with me. I guess I’m not the only one!

That’s exactly the feeling that can mean so much. Moments like these can help you experience relief from your emotional isolation and develop a broader range of language for your internal experiences. And it makes it easier to believe in yourself and to make sense of your own – male – experience. If you carry a narrative that you are a good man sometimes behaving badly, then you are a member of a very large club. And you have a much better chance at coming through in relationships than the man who is paralyzed, defensive, and feeling hopeless because of his shame.

 
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