Stunted feeling life. Since much of his feeling life has been shut down, it has not had a chance to develop and mature. No one ever showed him what a mature male feeling life looks like, so he has no model to help him figure it out. He tends to distrust and devalue his own inner experience and substitute thinking for feeling. This causes his behavior to be overly rational and controlled, but punctuated by eruptions of raw, undigested emotion.

The energy of the prohibited emotions (usually fear, hurt, shame, need, love, and joy) gets shunted into the allowed emotions (usually anger, competitiveness, and sexual arousal). For instance, he may not recognize that he feels hurt when his lover disappoints him ("Big boys don't cry"), but only feel the anger that covers the hurt. Or his fear of approaching someone he finds attractive may be expressed as sexual bravado.

Sex and conflict become the main avenues to feel alive and engaged with others. He may engage in them passionately, but he will try to keep them from becoming too personal. He will more easily commit himself to an abstraction, such as a team or an idea, than to a personal relationship.

SOLUTIONS

So we see that the main root of all this trouble is the separation of fathers from their children, especially their sons. From that comes the disappearance of the male feeling life and generations of men who are increasingly shut down and isolated. What can we do to heal these wounds and resurrect male feeling life? The main thing we can do is to help men re-connect with their own inner experience and with other men.

Any situation that puts a man in the company of other men and supports his emotional openness can be helpful. But, for most men, the internal walls are high and hard to breach. Often the unconscious prohibitions on vulnerability will sabotage his attempts to open up. To overcome this, he needs the support of a sustained, conscious attention from outside.

For many men, the most effective approach is to join a men's group or work one-on-one with a male therapist. Here, there is an explicit intention to tell yourself the truth, and the support required to do so.

In a men's group, a man gets to watch as other men work with their own feeling life. He gets to see how they do it, what works and what doesn't. He can try on new behaviors and see what fits. He can ask for feedback on how he comes across or on how to handle a particular situation. He can discover that he is not bad or broken.

In the context of a male community, he can discover that closeness and connection actually reinforce his masculinity, rather than diminish it. He can explore his feelings and learn to work with them skillfully. But most of all, he can experience being held and supported by a masculine love. This is the blessing that boys need as they develop into men.

I have seen again and again in my groups that as a man receives this blessing and his wounds heal, his feeling life blossoms. He experiences himself as more full and alive. He becomes generous and begins to nurture those around him, both inside and outside of the group. He becomes a more active and involved father and often a coach, mentor, scoutmaster, or the like. His intimate relationships become deeper and stronger as he begins to relish intimacy rather than retreat from it.

As more and more men develop this way, we will see fathering come back into vogue. Indeed, we have already seen good-father images reappearing in movies and advertising, and recently also in social and political debate.

The women's movement has made great strides in reclaiming power as a feminine attribute. I applaud them for it. Now it is time for the men to reclaim feeling as a masculine attribute. We will know we have succeeded when sons everywhere see their fathers dancing for joy.

© 1996 Steven Kessler. The fairy tale mentioned is called "Mogarzea and his Son" and can be found in Andrew Lang's Violet Fairy Book. Steven Kessler is a psychotherapist in Oakland, CA who has been leading men's groups since 1984. He can be reached at (510) 834-5399.

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