Every Man Has To Die

Last week I saw a brave, courageous and all-male performance of Wuthering Heights. In one image, two men appear naked, one dragging the other across the floor. Witnessing this ‘death’, or the naked struggle of facing one – a essential fear at the core of a man perhaps –  really moved me. There was a simple power in these two men, completely vulnerable, still and bare.

Initiation rites taught a young man to walk through his fear of death. People often report encounters of near death as encounters with the sacred. Years ago, a rite of passage would teach men that death was the primary way to build or rebuild a real life.

Ancient rites of passage, perfected over thousands of years, were exquisitely designed to get the attention of young males and help them shape their mature masculine identity. Sadly, positive passage experiences for males are hard to come by today, and too many males are left to wander in that never-never land between boyhood and manhood. (Ancient Male Rites of Passage – Earl Hipp)

Men no longer have an experience of initiation from boyhood into manhood. Plainly put, boys will be boys and men will be boys — because no one is there to teach boys to be men. (Male Initiation in Post Modern Culture – Michael J. Formica)

The conversation about being a man is landing for me. Feminism and gender socialisation has confused us men. Women have rites of passage tied unavoidably to their biology and a clear path of womanhood is broadly laid out for you by how this is socialised and accepted in our culture. Not so for us, post-industrialisation we flounder amid an unfathered void.

‘men find themselves not only not knowing where they belong, but also not knowing who they are or even whom they are supposed to be.’

And so we run, uncertain and fearful of the force that draws or pulls us. We run in wanderlust across the planet. We run to compete and keep up within our cultural masks of masculinity.

We run to stand still.

2007. I was reeling and on my knees. My ‘story’ – achieving this, meeting her – this story I had told myself, it just wasn’t happening. After years of running I hit the ground burnt out.

I had been living in fear; living with my enemy.

I thought I needed to work. It was my identity. Men identify very strongly with purpose. I am a… profession or job title. It’s a measure of my social masculinity. I was the things I’d built, that I’d put all of myself into. Yet my social identity, the ego identification so ingrained in me, slowly became my prison. This happens to many men. Creating a first half of life ‘container’ is important, but I just kept on and on building it, and waiting for something, anything, that was not happening to happen. And a gnawing, painful emptiness in my gut followed me, yakking at my heels each morning. Life was shit. No doctor or medication can treat human pain. It’s a spiritual struggle. A hole in the soul.

The alternative was to face myself.

Year after year I’d tried to keep control but the signs piled up: collapses, hospitalisations, depression and so on, and an aching loneliness in my heart. But I couldn’t hear. I’d fallen away from my soul’s path and I couldn’t see it.

Soon after, I experienced debilitating, mental illness. Spiritually, I now understand this as a time in the desert. And only when in the darkness of that desperate, empty desert did it became a spiritual experience. During the fall, it was a petrifying “Oh my god what is happening to me? I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

And everything breaks down, physically, mentally and then, crushingly – emotionally. It affects the people closest to me. Men are not taught to fall. Perhaps only a man who has experience of falling can initiate another.

Something was going down big time, and to survive, to maintain my identify, my ‘self’, I used all my strength to hold on. And I was strongly attached to that ship. Clinging to a sinking ship while knowing it was going down was the extremity of my anxiety. Literally madness.

Sometimes I was conscious of my emotional ‘descent’, this katabasis, but yet so, so frightened of what would happen to me. During the struggle, I left the safety of my ‘career’ (who tells us we need these things?) and let go. It felt like being torn from the womb.

Robert Bly goes on to say that in the nineteenth century, men characteristically failed to notice the female suffering, and in the 20th Century, men added another inattention: they characteristically failed to notice their own suffering. Men endeavour to stay above it, away from it rather than dealing with it by going down and into it, to learn from it. He encourages men to take the downward path as an elective to avoid the crisis or potential disaster that can arise from katabasis. Depression is a form of katabasis. The epidemic of anxiety is wreaking havoc in the lives of millions of men. Exploring one’s grievances and getting in touch with one’s grief can be the antidote. (‘A Time of Ashes’ – Initiation into mindful manhood: Men’s Centre Los Angeles)

I had a long portfolio of achievement to shake off: a masters degree, ‘success’ as a drama teacher, ‘practiced’ as a director, gifted with students; I’d led numerous exciting theatre projects and undertaken a substantial body of ‘outstanding practice’. ‘A’ fucking star*. I’d recorded albums, managed sports teams and triumphed at various other projects. Done this, achieved that.

I was all these things.

Yet on my soul path, I was nothing.

“What do you do?” (What a ridiculous thing to ask anyone.)

“I’m a drama teacher..”

So who was I?

Back in August 2008 I met a man on a ‘self-development’ activity holiday in Skyros, Greece. It was a pivotal moment, and it was then I had my first experience of being deeply ‘real’ and open with another man, a place I’d previously held for women.  The experience marked a turning point. I was inspired to inquire more deeply and learn to listen within. Gradually I began to hear what I now understand as the ‘cries’ and the ‘calls’.

Gradually, during the next few years, I accepted, surrendered, and finally just chaotically nose-dived into a relationship with the God-self I’d resisted. A lifetime of emotions and experiences compressed themselves into a few months. It was a battleground. And then again. And again. It was an on-and-off living-in-hell, Hell. I didn’t try to take my own life. But I didn’t want to live. At times the fear was so great and it just covered me; feeling death and still breathing.

This ship’s finally going down.

I surfaced twice, clinging to the last debris of the old ship, those old ways and patterns that bound me, the chains of my former self. I was learning the hard way. There was years of resistance to break down. And I was strong. I resisted very strongly. I knew I would die if I went down.

No-one had taught me that dying was what living was all about.

Throughout the struggle, I was learning a simple, spiritual truth: a truth of initiation into manhood.

Death and rebirth are part of every living cycle on our planet. Inside and outside. Death and resurrection; nature’s promise of renewal, Yin and Yang, the Cycle of Life. The evidence is overwhelmingly everywhere. Something must die! Who was I to even question that? It’s a daily experience with my eyes open. It must be within me then, too.

I’ll cut short the story, but, the relief. The truth was that my life was not about me.  And it had been about me for too long. That me needed to die.

For the man who has descended into the drowning waters and come up on the other side, for the initiate who has been in the belly of the whale and spit up on the shore, there is an ultimate new shape to the universe. It is re-enchanted, it now works in a way other than he expected, someone else is on his side, he is not alone, and the young man knows in his very bones that “my life is not about me.” The initiate henceforth knows that something always has to die, and until you have lived through that dying, there is something essential that you do not know. It is always the false self that has to die, so that the Godself can be born. This is major surgery for the private and imperial ego, a surgery we all avoid if we can. (Richard Rohr – Sojourners ‘Boys to Men’ Initiation Article)

So I am reborn, though not without many of the old attachments. They don’t just disappear. I have to work with my shadows and learn how to dance and play with them. But there is a new spirit within me now, The Holy Spirit, empowering me with the courage and strength to live in a different way. And I asked this spirit in. And like the courageous men in Wuthering Heights last week, I was also dragged, struggling naked into mystery.

The truth has changed. And it’s all about The Truth, actually, it is really not about my truth. It is a paradox, but this is a really important thing not to be confused about.

So my offering is now my experience of becoming this real man.

I’m moving together with men into communities in service and men are stepping forward to ‘be’ together in LAB processes and workshops. We are exploring. I want to explore reclaiming these lost rites of passage. What does this mean today?

Don’t we all want to know: Where Are We Going?

At times it feels too much for me – in purpose for the first time. Rainbows of feelings radiate through me most days. I chose the narrow gate. It was a conscious decision.

What is Faith? My faith is the Grace and courage I’m granted each day for every next unknown step. It’s my flow and my stillness. It’s humbling and exciting. It’s not my story any more, I don’t need control, and I don’t know what’s next – thank God 😉

I fled him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled him down the arches of the years;

I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

I hid from him.

(Francis Thompson – ‘The Hound of Heaven’)

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Deep Diving Men LAB: Where Are We Going? (film teaser)

I am so very, very proud of the trusting, authentic, willing to be vulnerable, beautiful men involved with this LAB work. It’s both humbling and exciting for me to see this film now, and reflect on our research. I feel so very honoured to work with you and celebrate this unique achievement together with this opening ‘dive’.

8min version to follow!

 

 

 

Landscapes of Tears Men Cannot Cry

Have you ever seen a man cry? How often?

I’ve never seen a man break down in tears. It’s a rare event. I’ve seen young boys crying, but the ability to do this seems to get bashed out of us early on. By the age of twelve or thirteen I’d learnt that crying wasn’t on. It wasn’t what the men around me or the men in films did, what my father did, or what my sporting heroes did.

I saw crying as part of a feminine world. It was something you did. Woman. I grew to believe that women were more emotional than men. Well they must be – they cry more often. Right?

On reflection I think I learnt not to be interested in the real lives of women and that somehow, in the man’s world I saw, there seemed a kind of code emerging. If I identified with women, or with my feelings too much, that I would pay a kind of societal price for this. I wouldn’t be valued or ‘succeed’ in this man’s world if I empathised with woman’s emotional life.

I’d wanted to come across as tough and manly, so my primary concern was to protect you. This was part of the ‘mask of masculinity’ I adopted and is still my instinct now. I feel a duty to take care of you physically, to ensure you come to no harm, to defend the territory around you. Lauren Jacob’s interesting blog Why Strong, Independent Women Just Want to Be Taken Care of (Sometimes) highlights this. I want to show you I’m steadfast, in for the long haul, will support you if you fall pregnant, and ride with your emotional storms. I am the first line of defence as far as your protection is concerned. I want you to feel safe and secure. You lie in my arms.

And yet…

We are, of course, expected to not just carry the heavy loads, but we’re expected to be the last off the sinking ship. We’re expected to go to war purely because we have a penis. Someone invades your home? The man is the one who’s expected to fight any attackers. The man is always expected to be the first line of defence. We might be the most sensitive beings in existence, but when the chips are down, we’re still expected to “man up”.  DorianHawksmoon – Guardian Blog

I’d learnt about being emotionally strong, stoic even; I’d learnt though, that to risk vulnerability by revealing feelings was ‘weak’. Yes, I do want to feel like a man in that ‘first line of defence’, avoiding the dark alley when walking you home, and also within a traditional masculine protocol – opening doors, buying flowers. These are ways I can show I want to take care of you. But asking for help? Just another weakness. That wasn’t part of the deal I struck with the masculinity I knew.

The first ‘cracks’ appeared after a relationship break up in my early forties. Until then I’d “manned up” surviving disappointment and loss beneath a mask of masculinity I’d been taught and had adopted to protect myself. After the split I was curled on the floor, wrapped in a raw, gut-wrenching struggle of being with feelings that I could no longer suppress – it was animal pain that overtook my body and it wasn’t going away.

The beginnings of tears.

That year, 2007, I learnt to cry myself to sleep. The first real tears since boyhood. They only came occasionally, but they were as old, unnamed stones being turned at last. It began a journey to a new landscape of the soul; my exterior was beginning to crack, something painfully new began to unfold.

The pain grew.

I was unable to mourn the collapse of ‘my story’. The rules binding the masculinity code I’d grown up with didn’t allow me to. I’d learned that it was weak to ask for help, that exposing my feelings risked ridicule and I’d learned that the rules of engagement in attracting the opposite sex were to be confident, strong and in control of my emotions. Like many boys, I’d learned to become disassociated from many of my feelings from a young age, and now I didn’t know how to express them.

Crying is emotional release, words the heart can’t say.. So when I had a breakdown, after patches of depression, the emotional avalanche that stormed through my body after years of keeping the lid on deeper feelings was a real roller-coaster – yet looking back now seems no surprise. As well as burn-out, it was an explosion of years of pent-up pain, and marked the beginning of a deeper journey for me into katabasis or descent, to the underworld of my hitherto unexpressed grief, loss and longing. A dying to the old self. A re-birth of the soul-path.

Grief is the first sign that we are becoming alive (Steve Biddolph)

Rose-Lynn Fisher’s beautiful personal research into the landscape of her tears struck me recently as I reflect now on the struggle with the kaleidoscope of feelings I began to bring to the surface.

“It’s amazing to me how the patterns of nature seem so similar, regardless of scale,” she says. “You can look at patterns of erosion that are etched into earth over thousands of years, and somehow they look very similar to the branched crystalline patterns of a dried tear that took less than a moment to form.”

Gradually, excruciatingly, tears squeezed from my body. These hidden branches of my emotional core, these storage boxes of feelings spanning twenty years. Fisher’s images uncover some of the strange beauty of suffering for me; reminding me of the complexity of the maps of the heart, the loneliness of faithless life and of ongoing matrices which, lying unexpressed, map out an infinite hell on earth, an ongoing misery of being less than fully human.

I revisited what I now understand as ‘major relapses’ twice again within the following two years. Two more journeys to recover Eurydice. Two more visits back to the sleepless, anxiety-ridden, ruminating madness; a completely overpowering blanket where the first few seconds of consciousness after waking are only a prelude to endless days and nights of insanity. Two more dives into the ashes.  Two further opportunities to shed the grief I’d been carrying, the trapped feelings, hurts and disappointments I’d bottled up.

Although the empirical nature of tears is a chemistry of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, antibodies and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream. This series (of tears) is like an ephemeral atlas.

How many of these delicate tapestries lie unshed in us? These atlases of the soul, these deep, unspoken landscapes of the heart.

Now it is easier. Sometimes tears are daily. There is an inexpressable joy in the aliveness of it all. Most of the compressed pain I stored has moved through my body, each tear a transforming landmark in an opening to a new life.

A few weeks ago I was sitting at my desk planning a rehearsal for a Deep Diving Men Lab theatre project and just feeling the freedom of wetness on my cheeks is enough; tears of love and joy, tears of the impossible made possible, tears of faith, tears of gratitude.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields.

And thinking of the days that are no more.

(The Princess: Tears, Idle Tears  – Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

 

Days with the Deep Diving Men

 

I’m in a circle lying on my back, our heads together, almost touching – then a silence for some time. As each man speaks there is a feeling of calm, an unshakable togetherness, a deeper and deepening trust holding us. It’s very rare, this time for men alone and together, this time for dropping down, time for removing the survival masks we wear each day just to get through as a man. Our words fall vulnerable and uncensored.

Brushing up against the edges, that’s where I am. I find myself standing on familiar yet untrodden ground and recalling these ridges, these places of creative discovery that once identified me; now they are portholes into a different movement and rhythm, not one completely unknown to me, but one with purpose; destination unknown, yet mapping secure.

So when Simon shows up with his inspiring fish-eye lens, Cedric with his grounded steadiness and Samson with his camera, there are suddenly more of us – an expanding circle of brothers. It’s an intense day, funny, and somehow inherently masculine as we explore the male journey in movement and words, tracking back through mythology and poetry.

Simon then very quickly put this brief work-in-progress film together before flying to Peru yesterday to film in an orphanage. It’s a small window as to what we’re up to; marking the time.

Join us in community to share the work, and for poetry and discussion at:

The DRAYTON ARMS THEATRE Sunday April 13th 7.30pm (South Ken) TICKETS here

The WHITE BEAR Monday April 14th 8pm (Oval) TICKETS here

The COCKPIT THEATRE April 21st 7.30pm (Bank Hol) Entry on the door.  @TheatrePound

Getting Naked with Woman

Dating, mating…

I think I want to go ‘courting’.

I’ve been seeking a partner, not merely a connection. I’m longing for someone who I want to spend time with, who I can laugh and play with; someone whose values align with those of service and truth; a woman who wants to love me unconditionally. In fact, all the values I’m trying to hold.

I want to be with someone who doesn’t live 6000 miles away.

I’d like to be married. I want to explore us within this unique spiritual container, boundaried, committed, safe. Of course if it ever happens, I’ll be terrified. I’ll want to run.

I want to take it slow. I want to get to know who she really is. I’m ready to risk losing her love to find that out.

So where does my innate, longing for intimacy come from? Can it be that within an atom of chance I’m designed for intimate relationship? What mirroring took place at the dawn of humanity? Where does this yearning come from?

I believe I’m molded by skillful hand, by eternal love, by God. I’ve been uniquely created for this union; and I’ve been shaped in the image of One that longs to be in relationship with me too.

I’m watching the ducks. Down in the water, an extraordinarily violent ritual of the type only the wild man in nature can stage unfolds. A huge group of male ducks are beating the shit out of a female. We would call this rape. We judge it. A mallard duck won’t. He doesn’t have our special capacity for moral reasoning; no sense of right and wrong. Battered, she survives; a low, vocal, repetitive gurgle  indicates she is through. Warming her eggs and nurturing her young is her new purpose; she’ll now drive away the males to protect her children.

Men chase women. Watch the ducks. Just watch nature’s cycle. Male bottle-nose dolphins will also coerce the female into mating, so do chimpanzees, orang-utans, and there are many other examples. I want to mate with you, or I don’t. That’s not objectification, that’s how I’m wired. On some level you’ll mate with me to make yourself safe from other men. Even then, I am subconsciously drawn to the most child-bearing hips in every moment with a woman; it’s the dance of procreation, a wild hymn to creation.

You can have a go at chasing us, but I haven’t met a woman who prefers it. You operate through a complex intuitive feel unknown to me, yes you’re attracted to me, but I hear many women say they haven’t really got a ‘type’. Men are more visually wired.

To begin with, it’s essential to note that the literature specifically studying men’s arousal patterns (gay as well as straight) has repeatedly emphasized their sensitivity to visual cues. As soon as the lust-inspiring image registers in their brain, they become turned-on—not only physically but psychologically, too. Exposure to such erotic stimuli immediately activates the parts of their brain related to getting an erection. (Leon F. Seltzer, Psychology Today)

So you want to attract me, and in you is a parallel genetic wiring, to attract the strongest man for your children, one who will protect and provide for your family. This is what your body yearns to do. You want to show me your body. You have to, to procreate.

This makes what you do with your body incredibly powerful.

So if I am saying “no” to you – I’m doing quite well right?

How do I choose to encounter you?

“Would you like to come back to mine for a few hours?”

Uh oh. Did I say that?

What is my intention? Once I start to nibble at the fruit, there’s a whole paradigm shift in me taking place that I will willingly buy into.

I am drawn inexplicably to the curve of her mouth, the little scar on her lips, the sweetness between her legs; I fuel her desire, and want to light the torch of this wounded, fiery princess. As we fold into each other, her eyes light up of with the truth of eternal possibility. I gaze into her soul; in her and through her is our divine gift, the sacred union at the mystery of our existence.

I’m longing for the one and to be one. I am longing for the one relationship that fulfills my need for intimate connection.

It’s difficult to say no. I’m no mallard, but I see men around me behaving with blinkers on. I’m gifted with reason, the ability to choose, to make a choice for what is right or what is wrong. I have the intelligence to see a moral law governing the Universe. A mallard duck is not blessed with this capacity.

Instant Gratification

Everything around me indicates that I can have what I want now. And we can most of the time; even sex. This is where I’ve found it starts to go badly wrong.

Getting naked is not really getting ‘naked’ is it? I want getting naked to be opening my soul and spirit and letting someone in, in to my hopes, fears, thoughts and dreams. Getting naked is about letting in the Holy Spirit. It’s a step of ultimate surrender. It’s a step I’ve tried to make with women before making it with my Creator. It really isn’t the same thing; this choice to be in relationship. Choice: a capacity putting us way above the level of the animal in us: choosing to love. It’s a risky step. It’s a big decision. It’s a step of faith: a step into the unknown.

CS Lewis captures this ‘law of nature’ in Mere Christianity

First, that human beings all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way…

I freely break this ‘law’ each day, this higher law that sets me apart from the raping mallards; the law that offers me choice. When I break this law I fall from the garden. So we struggle altogether on paradise burned; a fragmented metal of unsanctified sexual union.

If the goddess of my dreams walks up to me in the street or appears to me in a dance, I have a choice. The strong, unwavering, trustworthy man she really wants, will feel the “yes”, but say “no”. Very few women will offer themselves unless I appear to make myself emotionally available. It is the needy me who says yes; the man who wants to buy into her morality, her story; the man who is fulfilling an unhealed need in his own heart. The man who has yet to come to terms with his own pain.

Really, do I believe that having sex with someone with whom I have had no time to create a deep, spiritual, loving relationship with is going to serve her? These actions are lost. I’ve heard mature men in my men’s group advocate this because it’s their ‘truth’. Come on. It was Hitler’s truth to invade Poland.

It’s just very unwise.

I can avoid having to say “no” by not instigating a “yes”.

So.

Don’t ask her home. If we like each other then I know she wants to feel desired, but she doesn’t need to have sex with me. She just needs to know I want her. She can feel desired walking in the park, being taken out, feeling wanted. I can choose to give her that signal. Ultimately she longs to surrender to the source of my energy, my inner wild man, yet I’m so programmed into the lustful ‘now’. Feeling that is fine, it’s how I choose to act that defines me as a man. If I choose to put myself in a vulnerable situation – why would I resist? I’m wired to mate with her; temporarily she embodies all my longing.

She becomes ‘the one’.

”Would you like to come back to mine for a few hours…”

How is this ever going to work? I’m lonely, yes. I’m seeking comfort because I hurt, yes. I want to feel needed, yes. It’s not really the moment to fast-track to divine sexual union is it?

I think I’m going to take up courting. It sounds wonderful. There are boundaries, a safe container to play out the dance and sex is out of the question.

Becoming genuinely naked, gradually, is the path I choose to walk.

Does my Black Dog really answer to the name “Depression”?

The lake sat beautifully in the afternoon sun; it was late autumn, my favourite time of the year.

I first fell in love in September, when I was sixteen, and if you’ve been fortunate enough to ever feel that and then claim her, you’ll know it’s an unforgettable, indescribable, heart-pounding, rushing joy…

But that was twenty years ago. I’m now thirty-six, and I’m sitting by this beautiful lake with my girlfriend and a pulsating rot in my gut. There must be a medical reason I thought. It must be because I’m with her, I thought. It must be because… And so the whirring began. Creeping up as an oncoming darkness. The last time I’d had a hernia I was making a diving catch in the covers – but this is different. It’s not a hernia. It’s a unique sort of ‘pain’. It languishes in the spreading of its energy; a lost voice, nagging, clouding my thoughts, inducing its unique brand of anxiety.

What was this deep gnawing in my gut? What are these cries? These feelings that everything’s ‘not right’? They are so very deep, deep within me.

Perhaps that moment marked the beginning of the journey to meet my dog.

The black dog scratches at my door, he’s persistent. I let him in from the cold. He cuddles up to me in the darkness. He delights in the loneliness of my soul. His howls are the calls of my heart. Beyond his whining I feel the gaze and lazy smile of my tormentor.

Eight years ago and it was my fortieth birthday. I invited all my friends and I told them all to “fuck off” during a drunken speech. I hired a sports club; nice feel, wooden (it burnt down a few years later) and a bit rough. The usual getting drunk ritual took place. Some friends turned up whom I’d invited but weren’t really friends at all. My girlfriend took me home. I have a vague memory of being in a car and collapsing at my house. I crawled upstairs and Nathan my lodger had to drag me into the bathroom. I didn’t make it and was sick all over the landing. I just lay in it all. Happy Birthday. What a good night etc…

 Something had been wrong for a while.

“Here Dep! Good Boy… Where’s your bone?” He walks in and skulks in the corner, frightened and frightening, saliva dripping, seething dirty energy. He’s old, aged from his tormenting, yet his inner vitality rots at my core. He makes his bed next to mine.

Six years ago, I’m 42 and on West Hampstead station. The train taking me back to Richmond is an arrow firing me into the void. The later email confirming she doesn’t want to be with me is a message from the lips of Medusa. I curl up in a rack of pain, howling like the dog who’s licking his lips just around the corner. I try to cry but I don’t know how, I’m a man without the emotional armory, I’ve no language for this. My guts are razor-like and scooping, churning. Everything inside me is burning. For the next nine months I wake like this, frightened and alone. Crying myself to sleep with unhappiness, I take a lover, who comforts me. I plunge blindly through work; how, I don’t know. Everything is loss, all is lost. I can’t get her out of my mind. I can’t go into town because she’s there.

What was happening?

During those nine distressing but important months, deep losses collided within me. I’d been triggered. She was the object, yet I was trying to mourn something untouched inside me.

Stitched to my feet he’s my shadow; he’s my longing, my Peter Pan; he pads silently beside me, manifesting himself in my collected pain. He is part of me. He’s my dog. His eyes are my deepest losses; like those red stockings clinging tightly to her brown legs his saliva dribbles seductively down from his chin.

‘Depression.. a set of symptoms that derive from complex and always different human stories. These stories will involve the experiences of separation and loss, even if sometimes we are unaware of them.’ (The New Black – Darian Leader)

I’m now 49 and the last ten years are beginning to make some sense. This does not mean I’ve cracked it, it means that having unpacked some of this stuff with my therapist, I can begin to gently fold up my clothes again, re-sequencing them in a wiser order. I can see some of my luggage labelled now, laid out on the floor. All the stuff I’d been carrying on my journey. A heavy load.

For years I’d been longing for the relationship in which I could emotionally unpack. Of course that relationship isn’t about finding the special one; I’m not the first man to lose himself in the seductive, physical offer of The Goddess and I won’t be the last for which she’s the Achilles heel on this hero’s journey. Yet my longing is a divine call to return home. To meet my Maker. I am crying because I am separated from God. They are cries outward and upward, not in.

My soul was weeping.

I want to propose that we are both sent and drawn by the same force.. We are driven and called forward by a kind of deep homesickness, it seems. There is an inherent and desirous dissatisfaction that both sends and draws us forward, and it comes from our original and radical union with God. (Richard Rohr – Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life)

What is Depression?

So what is Depression? Is it simply part of a pharmaceutical circus that prescribes us pills to feed our own capitalist economies? Or to show the NHS that it’s meeting its government-set targets? Isn’t it all a bit of a medical wind-up that we invented for ourselves forty years ago – to make the drug companies millions as part of some big consumerist cover-up? Are any drugs making any of us feel better? Don’t we need to call it an illness to retain this facade? Isn’t it all nonsense?

But it really wasn’t nonsense when I was finally reduced to a shuddering pool of twenty-four hour anxiety, fearful of the next moment, unable to care for myself and struggling to understand the complete despair I felt. What was happening to me? And it absolutely wasn’t nonsense having to return to this state of living hell three times. Perhaps Prozac assisted me in getting through the very worst, the ‘survival’ hours, the bottom of the pit, to help the hellishly, derailed sleeping pattern, to help me feel I was taking some action against the endless despondency, fear and torment. But they’ll never treat the cause. They won’t remove the pain. Yes, serotonin is a factor, but the experience of loss doesn’t lie in my brain, despite what some Government literature might tell me. The NHS can prescribe me a CBT quick-fix course, but it won’t help me in getting to the bottom of me. Drugs are not transformative. They are not the real work.

They can’t tell me that the cause is spiritual. They want to tell me it’s an illness and that it can be treated. And at the time that’s what I wanted to hear. I’m so desperate and it’s an answer! Thank God they can make medical sense of this. But.. What an arrogance! They don’t want to tell me that the only way is through, and not out. They don’t want to tell me there may more suffering on the journey. They don’t want to suggest I need to learn about courage and hope. But of course, don’t ask us to live in this paradox!! We expect to be ‘fixed’ in this postmodern, scientific world…

Leader employs a brutal analogy: quick-fix remedies work in the same way as a missile strike works on a terrorist base. In the short-term it looks successful, but it does nothing to alter the terrorist mindset. When loss and misery enter our lives, we are impatient to condense a process that, by nature or through talking therapies, can only be worked out over years. We want a name for our condition, and we want a timetable. (‘Anatomy of melancholy’ – Hilary Mantel, Guardian)

After my first nervous breakdown I realised I had made a huge descent, a road to my ashes of the type Robert Bly describes in Iron John.

I had finally started to hear my weeping soul.

Darian Leader frames the term ‘Depression’ well for me in his timely new book The New Black.

It is used so widely and with such little care that it acts as a barrier to exploring the detail of our responses to loss.

Overcoming loss will always be painful. My loss is part of me. My suffering is the roots of real transformation. The question I am asking now is – how do I integrate it into my life? Poor choices may mean my dog whines at the foot of my bed for years; wise choices that he’s free to go. Part of the paradox of being alive is that the human condition needs to endure necessary suffering and not suppress it. I see this clearly and complexly in the supreme gift we are offered; Jesus is the moment in time where God steps towards us and shows his human face. I’m beginning to understand this.. and integrate it into how I want to live. Being is about compassion, community and loving the other. Leaving the old behind is tough. I realise I don’t want a comfortable life, I want to live the adventure of life. Jesus asks me to follow – so God asks me to walk on my edge each day.

Yet it’s not all about psychotherapy and religion, it’s about the integration of a real truth into my life. Richard Rohr speaks of the truth as always being the truth, it can’t be questioned once established. Much of this truth can be found in the myths and legends of ancient cultures and civilizations. Jesus’ image in Matthew’s Gospel of a winnowing fork is used 700 years before by Homer in the Odyssey, yet might the image be at home in a modern trainee therapist’s thesis?

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. (Matthew 3:12   New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition)

I don’t think my dog wants to answer to the name ‘Dep’. He’s Smudge or Joe or Monty. And he doesn’t need to be black. I think my ‘depression’ belonged to an old identity that has died. An identity that bled to death in his own ashes – no longer the big ‘I am’ – and then knelt quietly, and surrendered his soul to his Lord.

So as I begin to sort out the wheat from the chaff, it’s time to stand by what is real, and leave what is unreal, to stand by what lasts, and leave what doesn’t last behind me.

 

Man – You’re not Alone, You’re with the Men

“What’s the point of a men’s group?”

I was asked this question recently in the pub. I used to pour beer down my throat by the way, now I enjoy a pint and it’s enough. It’s much better.

Ten years ago I never would have dreamed I’d be holding a fortnightly group for men in my home. That would have been too weird. I’d have been one of those weird guys. Back then, I used to seek intimate male company only when I was drunk or getting drunk. That was normal. Yet of course, drunk people really can’t listen or talk very well. It was all deeply, deeply dissatisfying.

Have you thought about how other men could be a mirror for you? How another man could teach you about yourself? What would it be like to be clear in your direction and purpose, to strengthen your integrity, become more trustworthy, strong, consistent, clear and grounded? Wouldn’t you like to know how it feels to be at your edge and be held accountable?

How are you spending your time these days..? Are you living your life? Or is it just passing?

How do you really feel?

Father meets Son

Last week I was privileged to witness one of our group re-connect with his 17-year-old son, who he had invited to come to our meeting, after a period of separateness and difficult communication for them both. It was a beautiful evening. As I sat listening, the gravity and depth of the ‘father wound’ in our society became clearer to me.

We are all wounded by our fathers somehow, all of us.

Many young men growing up within an un-fathered culture reject authority from an early age. The 2012 riots in London are only one example of the dive-bomber culture of violence and unfocused aggression many young men are involved with. Statistics from schools regarding the low achievement of boys compared to girls are undeniable. Some suggest teachers have lower expectations of boys than girls. Our young men are largely schooled and brought up by women (only 15% of primary staff are men) and the older men in their lives appear distant and unreliable.

My experience is that we can help our own sons and young men by sharing our inner lives with them. Young men need to grow up in immediate contact with a reliable and secure man. One who models a healthy sexuality, a sense of inner compass and a grasp on his soul. Perhaps one step towards this for us as men is learning how to be real with other men. It took me a while in my life to feel that being vulnerable with other men was okay. The men in our group challenge me to step up to the mark when I flounder and are transparent with me. They hear me as I am, and I hear them.

Honouring the Child in Me

Deep in the heart of me, my inner child, is the man waiting to be honoured. If this honouring is absent before any man brings himself to woman it is likely he will remain a ‘boy’ in that relationship. I have found this to be painfully true. Perhaps this thought underpins much of the malaise in our society. Many of us are not meeting our women where they need us.

I am learning that this honouring can only take place among a group of men. It used to take place in the tribal rituals of our ancestors, in the fields and communities of farmers who worked on the land, where skills and trades were passed down from father to son. Boys understood how their fathers actually worked. Where does this take place today? Does it take place at all?

In the tragic and moving story of Eddie the shipyard docker, Arthur Miller identifies in his play Death of a Salesman that all most men require is respect.

‘I want my respect. Didn’t you ever hear of that?’

Yet Eddie tried to do it alone. He didn’t speak his truth until it was too late. He couldn’t escape being his own island. He got stuck deeper and deeper into his own shed. The ‘respect’ he longed for was an illusion; all his pain and anger welled up over the years. He was looking for his soul.

And he lost it.

Being part of a group of men has taught me that we need each other for real right now; in a space where we can challenge each other safely, be together, and identify with some of the challenges, joys and longings of being a man in today’s world.

No woman can teach us that.

So, it’s not weird touchy-feely stuff. It’s making a commitment to other men to be the strong, authentic and loving man you are. It’s making a commitment to the people around you too, in your life, to ‘man up’ and be one of the men that we all need around us today. It’s standing shoulder to shoulder.

“there is a real sense of aliveness and clarity when men sit together and share”

Make a change. Stop taking it to the women in your life. They don’t need your stuff. Yet don’t keep it festering and rotting within you, like Eddie.

In the conversations I have with men, I frequently hear “I’ve never been this open with another man before.” It’s tough out there. Other men are waiting to shoot us down, waiting for any sign of perceived weakness so they can get one over on us. But my vulnerability is my strength, and now it can be heard. What would it be like to have the real support of other men in your life?

You’re not alone man, you’re with the men.

Is Your Man Redundant or Abundant?

Men need to work

‘Life is difficult’. The famous opening to Scott M Peck’s landmark book The Less Travelled Road. And I’m not the first for which this was a landmark wake-up call. Life is difficult when we don’t work. We need to work.

In relationship with my woman, if I am not focused on my purpose, if I am not passionate about my work, whatever that is, then… How do I lead? Take away my purpose, and I remain a shadow to her. The man she needs and dreamed of; the passionate man in line with his purpose..? No. She’ll have to prop up her life for years if I cannot meet her feminine edge with my masculine essence. She will never flower. She’ll never laugh with the freedom and abundance her spirit longs for.

I started my ‘career’ as a Drama teacher. I worked for years, very, very hard. Socially, I was always pleased to hear the enslaving social nicety “What do you do?” When replying “I’m a drama teacher” a secret code was somehow passed. “Ooh, how interesting…” they’d say. So the ensuing conversation inflated that sense of self.

I am a..

That makes me feel so good.

The ‘fragile’ male ego

This ego spent a number of years dilating into a huge, masked balloon of false self. At the beginning I talked with passion about my work, but gradually, very gradually, after I’d pushed all the education boundaries, taken a feast of artistic risks and ‘achieved’ A grade after A grade, I gradually became disconnected; a yearning hole began slowly to open and depression began to growl within. Burnout had also begun. I masked this; more hard work and creative activity, this was all I knew and seemed my only option, but the slide had started. Relationships came and went and I threw myself even more into my ‘work’. I became my work, or my work became me. Striving for perfectionism, the workaholic in me manifested itself in a need for control that dogged me in my search for contentment and in my relationships with women.

And if I’m not in control I’m less of a ‘man’.

A deep yearning opened.

Who was I?

Redundant or abundant?

He’s ever so slightly uneasy in his seat, the faceless hotel foyer the stage for a scene he doesn’t want to play. His face is lined and tired. But he gives a good performance. This man’s been running his own business for the last few years. He’s working very hard to build his ‘empire’, his outer container, the groundwork that frames the adventurer, the warrior; the man in the first half of his life.

I don’t trust him. He has that kind of face, it triggers something in me. He’s had to be hard-nosed, make some tough calls, and mold himself into the ‘businessman’. It’s changed him, he’s had to harden his heart. But as the scene quickly plays out, and he tells me “I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go” he softens ever so slightly. In me, I feel tears welling up suddenly. It’s a big shock; the impact as sudden as a car crash. I cry openly in the hotel; my tears as pearls precious in their deep waters.

Soon after, a friend reminded me on the phone that I had been made Abundant. I laugh loudly. “It’s a cause for celebration” she told me. Now I could follow my passion again, I could begin to co-create my soul path, re-realise my spiritual gifts.

A day later, I was so relieved. I hadn’t fully realised how unhappy the job was making me.

Who are we when we don’t work?

Handling the ‘What are you doing now?’ question was tricky at first. How did that make me feel? Devalued? Redundant? How was I ‘contributing’. But I’d already started this journey a few years before. In a few days I was happier than I’d ever been, and so relieved.

We are essentially lazy creatures, us men. Given half the chance we’ll do anything to opt for an easy life, the least hassle possible, the ‘no worries mate’ route. But is this really our blueprint, or do we yearn for purpose, to lead, to adventure and mark out our boundaries? When teaching, every time I saw boys being told off for ‘mucking around’ by a woman teacher, I cringed. “Right, line up! Girls here, boys here.” No prizes for who always wins that one! As boys we battle against this unconsciously from an early age. Had the teacher had asked them to run around and create chaos, I wonder who’d ‘win’? The good teachers do. Boys and girls need to stand in the same line.

So Ms teacher, maybe they are pushing boundaries, pushing your buttons and causing you discomfort, but that’s what boys need to do. And they really need a man to set their boundaries, not a woman with her wounds. This learning dynamic is a time-bomb for developing a strong masculine polarity in boys, especially those who go home to a single mother. 26% of families in the UK are headed by single parents (this doesn’t account for couples for whom the man is physically or emotionally absent, or both.)

What is my work?

That is the question…

How many of us are really inspired by what we do? At a party recently none of the men I met, including myself (at that time), talked passionately about what we did with our lives. I doubt many of us could face having a conversation about being. We talked dryly and pessimistically, we all know the loose kind of men’s talk. How you doing?  “Surviving…” “Not too bad…” Jokes, conquests, football…  I felt the sadness and anger behind these men’s eyes; the silent unspoken hopes of youth. Somehow, it should have all worked out better than this.

Knowing that no-one will really understand us, we avoid talking about what fills the majority of our lives; the deep pain of the man who has to sidestep the horrendous ‘what do you do’ question because he’s ashamed; he can’t bear spending any more time being with something he hates; deep wells of anger rage inside us. There’s a coal-mine of repressed masculine energy stored here. Why would a man be interested in a dreary common ground of middle-class woes – houses, mortgages, holidays..?

If I can’t talk with passion about my work, then who am I?

Men often define themselves in some way or feel connected to this world by their skills, their dexterity, the way they can make and do things. They’re becoming more useless it seems, more enslaved, more trapped. They sit at desks, and they’ve got to look so good – they’ve got to look so damned good now, and so neat and pressed, and the hair’s got to be just right, and they’ve got to smell nice and stare at a screen all day. The regimentation is appalling, and what does this do to the human spirit? What is it doing to the spirit of man? (Blogpost from: Fraser Nelson: Boris Johnson wasn’t joking – work is becoming a woman’s world)

Standing shoulder to shoulder

Men stand shoulder to shoulder; women face to face. We need to face challenge together, and you need to communicate. We’re different here. Our brains, our bodies. We have different purposes somewhere in our genes, we’re designed differently. At the core, men crave physical challenge. We need physical activity to knit together as a team, and as brothers. Today we’ve lost many of the physical skills that our fathers knew. Recently a news round poll showed that 25% of boys in the UK aged 8-12 answered ‘footballer’ when asked the question what do you want to be when you’re older.

Does our mid-life crisis mark the end of boyhood? A friend of mine last night said he probably didn’t ‘grow up’ until he was 51, but maybe many of us never make it at all. I think I ‘became a man’ when I first really suffered – so my previous girlfriends were in relationship with a boy! Absent fathers, female teachers and an education system geared around continual assessment where girls succeed more than boys, means our young men are growing up emasculated and dis-empowered. Men are often emotionally distant and absent from the upbringing of their sons.

To be a young man in Britain today is to be cajoled and winked at and even pressured into becoming a foul-mouthed aimless cynical and lazy drunkard: “it’s cool, dude!” (Blogpost from: Fraser Nelson: Boris Johnson wasn’t joking – work is becoming a woman’s world)

We need to succeed. We need to be seen to be doing good.

Last month I went to see some performance poetry as part of the Kingston International Youth Arts Festival. A young female comic stood up and asked “Is anyone here a feminist?”  A few young women raised their hands and my good friend next to me half-raised hers saying “depends what you mean.” Closing the evening, another young artist offered us a passionately delivered piece intimately revealing the negative role of men in her life so far. It’s true. We knights in shining armour have become a side-lined minority voice. I haven’t seen a male comic live for a while, they all seem to do us a disservice; I liked Billy Connolly, but more funny guys being clever? Isn’t there another stereotype for us? Oh yes, there’s the mumbling, I desperately need some vocabulary lessons, football-summariser appraising the ‘complex psychology’ of this national game.. er.. disease. Uh oh.

Opening my heart

But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. (Galations 6:4  New English Bible)

I’ve often wanted to appear wiser and better than other men. I don’t like the feeling, it’s something like envy, but I experience it still. I’m still seeking my own heart and learning to envy others less. I’m looking to open my heart wide to the Holy Spirit and to ask for God’s gifts. So who am I proving myself to now? What presence am I honouring with my life and work?

A man in his purpose is a man in his abundance, a man who knows his spiritual gifts and stands strongly yet humbly in them. He’s a good man. And let’s hope the teenage boy won’t have to decorate his coursework in gold pen to qualify for this university course.

 

Relationship Intensive in the Middle East

I look deeply into your eyes. They change, into a beautiful, emerald blue when you’re with me. Swimming and deepening; through them I feel all your love, vulnerability and longing.

I murmur, “You make me feel like a man”.

STARTING A RELATIONSHIP

I’m in Dubai on an education: a relationship ‘intensive’ course. My woman doesn’t live in the UK; she’s Brazilian, we’ve known each other for a while and we know some of what’s on the other’s heart – Skype, email – it’s amazing what’s possible nowadays. But until last week we’d spent just two and a half weeks together in 18 months, and only 3 days of that with each other. I’d never seen her place, and now I’m living in it. I’d never seen her wash up, make the bed, do the washing. Hoover. So we are on this sudden two-week ‘relationship intensive’. We’ll both get certificates at the end, no doubt.

MAN AND WOMAN

How did relationships get complicated? Industrialisation didn’t help for us men. We lost touch with what our fathers ‘did’; functional, practical, provider-type work became ‘business’ and communities were destroyed as we moved away from the land after thousands of years of working it. We men no longer look at nature’s face. God’s creation got high-rise. A drastic change. Defining ourselves as men very quickly became how ‘successful’ we could be, signified by how much money we made. Thus began the material ladder to a modern UK of spiritual desolation.

On day 2 of the intensive I was reminded, more than ever, that

IT’S ABOUT POLARITIES

“Come to bed honey”. Shifting in the bed, you open in all your longing, and I give you my energy, strong, holding you, opening us both.

I need a clearly defined role. In fact, in the home, I need my woman to create a clear masculine pathway for me. I don’t want her to take out the rubbish, lift the boxes, fix the electrics. I’m a man. We’re practical creatures and can quickly get things done in an uncomplicated way. Sure, there are places to overlap, but unless our experience clearly defines our roles, it’ll get blurry. Despite all her circling and complications, she wants a man to step in, firmly, and sort out the problem. She may not say she does, but she does. She may resist if I move to penetrate her bubble, but my presence can only blossom her into deeper love if she can yield to my gentle yet forcing energy.

His entrance into your body is deep, persistent, creative, unyielding. His strong hands hold your wrists, his belly presses down into yours, his gentle force enters you again and again, opening places you have never felt to open. (David Deida)

It doesn’t matter what our roles are…  as long as the polemic between is clear. And if our polemic is clear, we’ll have an active dynamic, and it’ll be fun and creative in the bedroom. It’s a dance. And this is our foundation.

LEARNING HOW TO FEEL AGAIN

Intensive Day 3. Bright sunshine. You leave for work, dressed in a smart black dress, high heels. Sexy and professional. “See you later baby”. Getting home later you’re tired, you’ve been in your masculine energy, working with us guys all day. And I’m here.. moving things around.. in your place…

You are now successful in the workplace and manage the home. This makes it difficult for us men. And, we are less able to communicate emotionally about these changes to our role. We didn’t have an equivalent of your intimate mother-daughter dynamic when we were young. We are nearly always alone with our sex, misunderstood, then channeled into unfulfilling work or left behind in the education rat-race. This builds up over the years; various addictions, depression and pornography all raise ugly heads, closing our hearts and resigning us to live less fully than we were designed for. Jesus knew a lot about living fully, a man on the edge of his purpose

I come to give life—not just ordinary existence, but life in fullness, abundance, and prosperity. (3 John 2)

Many of us are not ready to receive and surrender to deep spiritual transformation, we walk around with our heads full of baggage and hearts closed, hoping one day to meet you guys. We seek an illusion of physical relationship before we are even aware that we are longing to begin our spiritual journey. We forget, or are simply not taught, that intimacy is a divine gift and love an eternal presence. My experience was, before asking that spirit of abundance to be in relationship with me, that I had to learn how to really feel and open my heart. This allowed me, for the first time, to kneel before God in humility. My Creator longs to be intimate with me. That’s why Jesus is it. What greater love is there? What greater gift?

AN UNSPOKEN MASCULINE CODE

Most of us that grow up with fathers have little idea how he feels.

He never tells us, so we learn an unspoken code of masculinity. The way we’re supposed to do things. So it’s ‘cool’ to hide feelings. And growing up with Mum creates a negative view of men from the word go – why isn’t he here? Why are men so absent?

So. We don’t ‘do’ feelings very well, we’re doing much worse at school than you and those beautiful mothers among you are bringing us up, largely alone. So in your eyes, dear woman, I become the shady hunter, the hunter-outsider, not guarding his territory and protecting you, but outcast, someone to be feared. And if I’ve proved unreliable before and there’s a fence around your heart, why would you trust me?

WHY MASTURBATE WITHOUT A WOMAN?

 “Jesus didn’t masterbate” proclaims the home-grown Christian Theology lecturer. He’s playing to a home crowd, fully in his flow. It’s a conference a few months ago, and I’m questioning. “I bet he did when he was 14” I retort. His jaw dropped.

I’m politely warned at the tea-break for ‘interrupting’.

But something still shifted in me. How did we manage before computers and magazines? We went to whorehouses. Is that it? Is it because we are alone; outside of community, outside of relationship? What kind of man wanks with porn when he has a girlfriend?

And you’re urging me, 6000 miles away, to wait for you, lying in your knickers all Skyped-up on your bed. Something had changed. I wanted to give something different, I wanted to finally shed my adolescent wanking hangover. Finally.

Back in Dubai on intensive day 4 and I watch us guys walking along the beach; many are simply lazy predators with the awareness of a reversing, school-ferrying four by four. Such is the overriding pulling power of our perverted media machine. I imagine many have never really ‘been’ with a woman. Not really. We’re at home wanking in front of porn. This can be quite healthy for adolescents (er.. without the porn right?) But for us men..?

Why waste the power you could use with a woman on a computer screen? …What do you think you’ll want when you go to bed with a woman? If we get addicted to self-pleasure, just focusing on our sensations, that is what we will continue doing in front of a naked woman. (Gustavo Gitti – The New Generation of Spoiled Men)

Porn distorted my sex-life for years. Badly. It was so easy to find an excuse. Erotic love? Yes, but it’s almost impossible not to slip. If my first intimate experience of sex is gazing at the navel of a naked 19 year old girl? What are we doing? And you girls that have a choice – what are you doing here?

There’s such a lot to live up to, this idea of being a man. Our flimsy egos massaged by our bulging pectorals, it’s all about exteriors; it’s ‘looking after yourself’ on a nose dive to a relationship hell.

ARE WOMEN BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE?

We want equality in the workplace as much as you, but are some of you barking up the right tree? How are you measuring your new success – isn’t this just the same material trap that we’ve been squeezed into? Why would you want that? And how can you expect your man to be this dream guy, if you are treading on all his societal toes with no awareness… ‘But he’s a bastard’ – I hear you say. But you women with the awareness, you’re ahead in this, we’re just trying to catch up. But please, don’t let your son hear you. Don’t turn him against me. Don’t contribute to the cycle.

WOULD ANY MAN CHOOSE TO BE A HOUSE HUSBAND?

Day 5, still the relentless desert sun, and I’m at home, in your place. Not a husband, a boyfriend now, yet I’m getting a taste of ‘being at home’ while you ‘go to work’. Why would any man choose this? Isn’t it just the result of a distorted masculine/feminine pathway? We are being squeezed, inwards, into our own fear, and cannot offer you a clear masculine presence. What man would choose willingly to take the female role here? He’ll only choose it if there is no other choice – is there any evidence to show the father is the most important parent during the first five years? It’s kicking Mother Nature in the metaphysical balls. No man’s purpose is to stay at home.

I’m on the intensive because I want to create something long-term. To make a home together, maybe a family. We want to commit, yet we’re in different countries. My good Latino friend told me that Latin women make great life partners. Well, the jury is out! But what does this really mean?

‘If you want a relationship with a Brazilian girl, you must be aware of the fact that she will love and care for you unconditionally – as long as you remain masculine.’ (Colt Williams – How to Have Sex with Brazilian Women)

I’m sure this is not specific only to you ‘Latinas’, but, we’re cultural creatures. I want to remain in my masculine and we both have our cultural baggage. You are different to the European women I know. There are different expectations of me, of us, in your culture. So where are we going to meet? Can we both move in this dance?

I NEED TO FEEL LIKE A MAN

You need me to feel like a man, so you can feel like a woman. You want me to take you, to claim you. You desire it in your deepest core.

And if we keep failing to show up as men, will we fall into a soon-to-be-dominated female society, unclear about who is who, creating more girl-friendly examination systems, while passing laws allowing all types of mixed partner and sex coupling scenarios to sit alongside this gender confusion? We are trying to take responsibility, some of us, but it’s tough out here.

You are still an underclass in most of the world; cycles of historical and contemporary societal abuse weigh heavily

Close to 60 million school-age girls are still not enrolled in schools, yet sexism seems overdramatised in some western nations and societies, given the opportunities created for women by anti-sexism legislation in the West. (Blogpost from: Fraser Nelson: Boris Johnson wasn’t joking – work is becoming a woman’s world)

yet let’s forget immigration laws, minimum wage, NHS, recessions and even the environment for a bit. We, the British man, are a forgotten underclass, right here, now. And if we’re all not careful, we can forget 5-1 man/woman ratios on singles holidays, they’ll be so very few of us ready, to really meet you.

.. a male underclass of feckless, unqualified and unemployable men who will resort to criminality, drugs and mental illness by their thousand. The dominant female gender will dispense with traditional coupling and resort to AI for procreation as there won’t be enough respectable, employed and reliable male partners out there for even 10% of women. (Devondickie from: Fraser Nelson: Boris Johnson wasn’t joking – work is becoming a woman’s world)

If the world is still (sadly) full of us making the decisions, then both of us, more than ever, need to work to effect change with them. The world desperately needs a Madonna; a new breed of accountable and reliable male role model to guide our leaders and young men through.

Yet with education systems designed for girls to succeed more than boys, a serious lack of male teacher modelling, and mothers hoping their sons grow up as men, are we blindly falling into a tunnel of societal feminisation?

So, it’s now day 8 and yes, we’re still joking about this crazy crash course. It’s a beautiful day, the Dubai racetrack hums outside, and you’re making me feel like a man. It must be going OK. Every day now I feel you slowly open, and in my heart I feel God’s gift of your love-offering to the world start to dance. And we smile.

Now, where’s that hoover?

_________________________________________________________________________

Deida, David: Dear Lover: A woman’s guide to men, sex, and  love’s deepest bliss

A Man in the Presence of Men

I’m heading down a darkening, wintry M3, returning home from an intense weekend in a Wiltshire forest. I’m sleepless, tender, and inspired by the healing power of a group of men. During the past few weekends I’ve attended various events and workshops with men: in Brighton, in London and here, near Salisbury. I want to write about how it feels being in the presence of men.

Men Together

There’s nothing more grounding for me than being in the company of my own sex: no distractions, straight talking, the sense of humour, men together getting things done. I feel at home, as if I’ve come home, and even though I’m meeting many of these men for the first time, everyone here understands me in a way no woman ever can.

Do I allow this to happen enough in my life?

I look deeply into his eyes, beyond the mysteries of his childhood, and held within a deep, beautiful vulnerability, lies the heart of this man. I feel his tenderness, longing and pain. I see myself reflected as his father, his brother, his son, and sense his spirit, lightly, flickering, slowly meeting mine. I am beyond my body now, in the places where God moves, and something holy here dances between us.

When I strip away the societal conditioning of how I am expected to be as a man – me against the world, just surviving, defined by my work and in a world where I’m taught that repressing my feelings is the only way to get on – and then step into a held space with other men, it’s as if the whole world tilts. I find I can speak what’s on my heart without fear of judgement, I feel I am not alone and that other men are similar to me – they too have been hounded by addictions: pornography, computer games, sex, alcohol and drugs, they too are wounded by the world, they too know what it’s like to be truly alone.

Shared Suffering

As I grew up I was conditioned into thinking that being ‘emotional’ was weak and that it was something best avoided or overridden rather than experienced. Vulnerability was what women ‘did’ and so for me to really feel was something to be ashamed of and therefore something that I learned to hold back. It’s okay for a girl to cry at school, in fact she’s not a girl unless she can do this, but it’s absolutely not okay for a boy. So, like many of us, I spent years and years storing up my pain.

A circle of 30 men define a woodland space. ‘Any man who has lost a loved one or partner – step forward. Men, you share a special bond.’ Damp leaves carpet the wet earth. As men step forward I feel time expand and the space around me ripe with the fruit of our shared past, our history; the circles of men that have stood for thousands of years.

As the circle shifts, I feel one man’s pain, then another. As if we are one body we stand; and as the inner circle of men sharing their grief shifts, I feel the presence of an ancestry only rarely recalled. I feel an overbearing sense of grief; and as the men’s tears moisten their cheeks and fall, we are lifted up into a unity and togetherness that I yearn for all men to share.

I’m crying again. A deep, deep sense of grief. I cry. I cry for us all, for those men before me, and those to come; for everything I’ve ever lost: my childhood, my friends, the women I’ve met and will never meet, for love undiscovered; for her, for you, for life, for God.

For me, they are the tears of deep healing, the years of stored male grief; all of our shared tears. And they are the same tears that invite me to fully live the next beautiful, sunlit morning.

After I cried I felt relieved… and happy and grateful, and maybe not fully healed, but helped in a huge way by expressing my feelings… (Thomas G Fiffer – Boys Do Cry, and Men Do, Too)

Taking It To The Men

No woman wants to be her man’s mother. It’s the last thing she desires or needs. It’s a complete turn off. It’s just a big NO.

So why is it I so often fall back into doing it?

How many times have I taken my needs to my women? Just how many? I don’t know about you but it makes me squirm. Let’s just say too many.

I’ll only set her free by taking it to the men.

I feel the circle around me, the men’s faces, their presence. I move them both around the space, the two women in my life. And as I stand apart from them both, fully seen in my need, I know that I am a man, my father’s son. I leave them both to their paths and step back into the circle, more determined and resolved – to keep on taking it to the men.

Validation

Is there anything more powerful than being validated by another man – where a man actually comes to you, meets you fully in the eyes and gives you positive affirmation? I don’t mean being told I’m a clever guy who’s funny, but have you ever heard a man speak fully of his experience of you? Until my early 40s the nearest I’d got to this was a few drunk ‘I love yous’ in a pub, or some throw away comments that never landed and fit only for the wind. I was too scared to make myself vulnerable. It’s my conditioning. Maybe I still wanted to be one up; I loved him, but I wouldn’t trust him with my heart.

As men, we need each other’s validation. The validation we maybe didn’t get from our fathers. The validation that, over the years, has been replaced by individualism, narcissism and competition. My father gave me strong positive affirmation many times, but if he were unable to meet me in this way, it’s possible that I’d never get this validation anywhere else.

As the men’s words sink in I feel my heartbeat, the visceral pumping blood of history, the man inside me preparing to rule, a benevolent king ready to serve. I feel an inner strength within me, shining, and I feel something of the boy in me die. My spirit quickens, I sense God’s gentle power and feel ready to stand in the world.