Healing Male Codependency Part Three ~
by Jed Diamond
Reprinted from
MAN! September – November, 1990
Both of these feelings- control and contempt- are at the center
of men's sexual and romantic addiction.
As we become adults and become romantically involved with women,
we carry with us our anger and ambivalence. We love them and need
them and want to be close to them, but we are forced to leave them
and seek an illusive father elsewhere. y et this situation, though
widespread, is by no means universal or necessary. It would seem
a simple, yet profound solution to the "battle of the sexes"
to create opportunities for men to share equally in the nurturing
of small children.
The aggressiveness that is supposed to be inherent in men can be
better explained as a reaction to the early experience of having
to relinquish the fIrst person we had ever loved in favor of a father
who is often absent. The anger towards women can be seen here as
a response to that early loss and the sense of betrayal that went
with it. A man feels that it was the woman who abandoned him to
the shadowy and alien worldofmen. How then could she-or any woman
- ever be wholly trusted again? Add to that the numerous ways in
which little boys are treated roughly and the countless ways in
which aggression towards males is condoned in the society, and we
begin to have a more complete understanding of men's anger towards
women.
If the world of men, as represented by our fathers, is absent.
we feel a hole inside. If men are seen as dangerous or threatening,
there is fear inside. Either way men remember their earliest connections
to their mothers as a "paradise lost." They long for the
feeling of. security they felt in the mythical mists of early infancy.
Fathers, and men in general, are too distant to offer any hope of
getting love and nurturing. The addictive patterns are set in motion.
W e know we must have women in order to survive, but we don't trust
them and we carry a deeply-felt rage at being abandoned and betrayed.
Contempt and Control
Understanding male conditioning also helps us get a clearer picture
of the contempt men often feel forwomen and the ways men try and
control them. Both these feelings - control and contempt- are at
the center ofmen's sexual and romantic addiction. For the boy, his
fear is so great that he can live with it only by rigidly controlling
the woman and making her powerless. He can use her for his sexual
pleasure because she is weak and deserves to be hurt and humiliated.
In this way he can express his rage and anger, but protect himself
from the fear of "big" mother attacking him. This is why
in pornography the women always come to like being abused. They
ask to be hurt. Only in this kind of fantasy can the man protect
himself against abusing a woman who might retaliate.
So from the very beginning, men develop a pattern of relating to
women in which the men are dependent on women for their most basic
needs for safety and security. Since they don't have the support
of the father, they don't develop a strong sense of themselves.
Hence they need women, but don't have the inner identity which allows
them to feel like a whole person deserving of love. Men, then, must
develop a feeling of "entitlement" in order to ensure
that the woman will be there for them.
Learning to Love
Sexual and romantic addictions thrive on the belief that there
is something essential missing in us, that at our core we are damaged.
We beginto heat when we recognize that this is a false belief. The
truth is that we are each absolutely beautiful and lovable, just
the way we are. As long as we perpetuate the belief that men are
bad, that we are made of “snakes and snails and puppy-do tails,”
we will continue to look outside ourselves for our fulfillment.
We will always look for that magic "other" that we hope
will fill the black hole we think is at the core of our being.
There is a whole new kind of passion that is created when two people
come together who don’t need each other, but very much want each
other. It is a passion that derives its energy from the spirit.
It comes when we realize that we are compete human beings. We don’t
need another person to complete us. We give because we feel so full
of love it overflows onto another person, not because the other
person has something we desperately need. “I love you” doesn’t mean
“I’m so unworthy alone that only in your presence do I feel validated.”
Instead, “I love you” means I’m so full of love I want to share
it with you.”
Jed is Director of
the MenAlive, a health program that helps men live long and
well. Since its inception, Jed has been on the Board of Advisors
of the Men's Health Network. He is also a member of the International
Society for the Study of the Aging Male and serves as a member of
the International Scientific Board of the World Congress on Men's
Health.
Diamond has been a licensed psychotherapist for over 40 years and
is the author of seven books including the international best-selling
Male Menopause that has thus far been translated into over 24 languages,
including Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish,
Polish, Slovak, Greek, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Korean, Portuguese, Indonesian,
and Malaysian.
