men’s issues

The Independent Personality and Relationships

Ron Johnson communication, Connection, happiness, love, marital, men's issues, Personality, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

I see a lot of men in my office who are independent by nature, and I know a few more in my acquaintances and friendships. Independence is a truly remarkable personality trait that I admire and respect. Usually, independent men (and women, of course) cut their own lines in the earth, live by their own drummers, so to say, and are responsible. More often than not, these men work for themselves often creating some business from nothing and find success in the world of work if not without challenges, setbacks, and mistakes. In fact, one of the distinct characteristics of independent people is that they are not heartbroken by such twists in the road and find ways to pick up the pieces and start again. In this blog I want to unpack these characteristics and other traits that independent people have, compare independence to dependence that is a hallmark of many other people, examine some of the challenges that they face I life, and then focus on the particular challenges that they have in maintaining relationships.

Characteristics of independent people

  • Hard-working. These folks often work way beyond the standard 40-hour week. Companies love these them because they work late, take work home, and work efficiently. I know of few who work anything less than 60 hours a week and I know of one CPA who worked 80 to 90 hours during tax season.
  • Driven. Since most of them have their own businesses, they work even harder than other folks do. They don’t need someone pushing them; they push themselves.
  • Successful. While success may come late to some of these men, usually they find it early in life and continue finding new challenges, new failures, and new successes
  • Self–critical. They tend to be hard on themselves for not doing the right thing all the time, having wasted time on a failed project, or just not meeting their own expectations.
  • Quality or quantity. Most independent people are quality-based while some are quantity-based. These are different ways some men go about life. Usually, they work to perfect their product, whatever that might be. The quantity-based guys are better at accepting less-than-perfect for their value of getting lots of things done, perhaps not all with quality.
  • Outspoken. They speak their minds and are not deterred by rejection, or so it seems. They have opinions and are not afraid to share them. Indeed, there are introverted independent guys but even these guys tend to speak their minds more than the introverted who is caught by fear of disapproval.
  • Work alone. They prefer to go about their lives, work, play, and relationships on their own for the most part. Indeed, some independent fellows have one or two people working for them, or even a score or more, but even in these situations, they prefer to work alone, whether on the jobsite or in their office
  • Interested. These guys are usually looking ahead at something that they can do. They can get bored easily and avoid boredom by thinking of new and different things that they can do. Again, this could be with work, play, or relationships.

Examples of independent men

  • N.B.: identifying characteristics of these guys have been altered while trying to stay true to the essence of what they do in their lives.
  • Sam. Sam is now retired after a very successful position in the field of recreation training. Previously, he had been in a helping profession, and now he has a developing profession that is only marginally related to what he did before. He has never been married but has had several unsuccessful relationships including one early in his life that may have been the love of his life.
  • Ben. Ben is an independent businessman in the trades although he is also a general contractor, buys and sells property, and is always on the lookout for a new deal. I see him with his wife of some years with all the challenges of relational life (see below).
  • Peter. Like Ben, Peter has been unsuccessful in his relationships but is still working on it. He worked hard to get through college and immediately started his own business, which now is quite successful, something few men achieve by age 35.
  • Bill. Bill was actually brilliant but brilliance didn’t lend itself to doing the necessary in school because he was interested in learning, not producing. He tried sales, working for his father, and drove a cab until he found a way to develop a counseling business despite that fact that he only had a B.A. and certainly not licensed. Bill also had several failed relationships and finally ended up married to a pretty psychologically impaired woman.
  • Butler. Early in life Butler decided that he wasn’t going to take any crap from anyone having taken a lot of it from his alcoholic father. He never worked for himself but found a way into a profession for the paycheck. He came into my office with the proverbial female hand in his back and seemed to profit from coming here, but eventually his wife could no longer tolerate his tendency to get angry so easily.
  • Pat. You wouldn’t know that Pat is independent because he has learned to accommodate to everyone around him. Yet at his deepest heart Pat is a person who would really want to do what he does without any interference. Now a doctoral student in a challenging field and at a challenging university, he is finding his way to be truer to himself, which means learning and ultimately writing in his profession.
  • Craig. Craig is a Buddhist chaplain after having been a successful musician and previously an enlisted man in the military. He came to me because of some questions in his marriage, which ultimately blew up in his face a few months later. While brilliant and certainly independent, he is finding his way in a new relationship but with trepidation because of previous failures.
  • Perry. Perry is an engineer whom I first met when he lost his best friend, mentor, and boss at the company he worked for. This led to a couple of other failed work relationships, not because of his lack of skill and work but he couldn’t seem to fit in. He has been unsuccessfully married for many years, a marriage that was not well-conceived and hence not well-developed.
  • Kelsy. He is a young man who just barely passed high school despite his evident brilliance. He just stopped doing what everyone wanted him to do, mostly in school, but found that he didn’t know what he wanted to do because he was so good at pleasing. He will be taking a year off to find himself.
  • Jacob. Jacob in a physician now but started out as an engineer. His private practice is barely making it despite his intelligence, drive, integrity, and general capability in his profession. He is in the process of getting divorced, perhaps largely because his investments were made without consent of his wife, and often without her knowledge.
  • Paul. Paul has actually never worked for himself but he might have done better had he do so because he has worked in many settings, all in his profession, and none of them has ever worked out for him. He is perhaps one of the most intelligent people I have ever met and is also very likable because of his connection-based nature. Yet, he has also failed to develop and sustain a female relationship

Challenges for independent men

  • Going it alone to a fault. While it is in the nature of independent people to do their own thing, work alone, and work hard, it is not in their nature to cooperative, compromise, and collaborate. Usually, they have been so successful in their work lives (although not all as noted above), they do not have the ability to truly listen to others and find a path forward that is good for all.
  • Failed relationships. This is almost a given with every independent man I have ever known. The love, often deeply, but their love is quite personal, not so much interpersonal. They can give but usually find themselves giving in because the wheels of giving and taking are not well oiled. Some get angry, some become addicted, some just avoid, but few of these men really know how to do the stuff that it takes to live with someone who doesn’t have the same perspective that they do.
  • Anger and its cognates. This could be “frustration,” irritability, complaining about people, or just plain unhappiness.
  • Lost opportunities. Several of the men I identified above have failed to go with the right job, the right school, or the right woman, and paid a dear price for that failure. Often, they were looking for the perfect school, job, or woman; otherwise, they just couldn’t pull the lever because they weren’t sure of the choice. They were looking for perfection
  • Not trusting their intuition. The jobs, school, and relationships that men got into that weren’t good for them is because they didn’t trust that this thing was not good for them even though I hear years later that they “really knew” that this job, woman, or school was wrong.

Not everyone is independent

While not the purpose of this blog, there are people who are very good at depending on others, cooperating, compromising, and giving in. As you might expect, however, these people tend to give in more than they give and up in some kind of job, relationship, or elsewhere not wanting to be there but not knowing how to get out. A lot has been written about the so-called “codependent” person, a term that is not in my vocabulary, because the individual who is allegedly codependent is usually dependent on a person who is addicted to something, and so the both of them are dependent on different things.

Suggestions for independent people

  • Affirm your independence, realizing that this is a wholly good thing, a godly thing, and a gift that you have been given and/or developed on your own. Most people don’t have what you have. You are not afraid of disapproval, at least on the surface, which gives you a leg up on most people.
  • Look to develop appropriate dependence. This means finding what I call the “N word”, not the one you’re thinking of, but “need.” You don’t “need” people, which is good, but you really do need people, just not the way you think of it. You need people to add to your nature, with whom to cooperate and compromise. This is not easy for you to do, and it does not mean giving in.
  • Avoid the tendency to give in. Because you can do almost anything, you can too easily do what you shouldn’t dl: give in. Give all you want, all you have, your left arm, or your life. But don’t give in. Giving is godly; giving in is not. You will pay a heavy price.
  • You will not find an independent person just like you. You will find independent people who are like you in wanting to do their own thing, but you won’t find someone, whether lover, friend, or coworker, who sees the world the way you see it. Give up on finding this perfect person. You might be lucky enough to find a woman who is independent, but likely she is just as stubborn as you are in the way she sees things.
  • Ultimately, you have to add to your independent nature, but you aren’t good at this. You might just muse about how you are lonely, unhappy, or looking for the perfect person (job, play), and give up on that idea and look for a good person, a good job, or a good place to live. Then you can make it better…and great

Overcoming Shame

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, love, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Almost everyone I see in my office suffers from shame. I wrote a blog a few years back differentiating shame and guilt, which remains an important element in understanding and conquering the phenomenon of shame in one’s life. In this blog, I will give some examples of shame that people feel in their lives, then define shame, consider the causes of shame, examine the consequences of shame, differentiate shame from guilt, and make recommendations for conquering shame in one’s life. Let’s start with real people understanding that the names and other identifying information of these people have been changed…”to protect the guilty,” but not the shame.

Real people who feel shame:

  • Bud, who is a physician, feels shame because he has been unable to overcome his tendency to get angry very quickly, something that has damaged his life in many ways, not the least of which is the relationship with his wife
  • Sam, who is a very bright person as well as a person of very good character, feels ashamed of the fact that he is gay, largely because of his evangelical Christian roots and harsh father
  • Jason, who is also bright and successful, but feels shame because he is overweight, something for which he was bullied and teased as a child 25 years ago
  • Jack, also very bright and a deeply intuitive person but also unable to sustain a job in his profession or sustain a lasting female relationship because he hasn’t found a way to successfully relate to people
  • Rick, another very bright person, who took several years to get the last class he needed to graduate from the university, finally found a lasting relationship, but has not been able to engage faithfully in a job
  • Peter, another very bright person as well as person of impeccable character, a pastor for many years but quite unsuccessful in his marriage because he tried too hard to please and give to his wife to such an extent that now he is woefully in debt with little option to get out of it. He also feels more shame for even considering bankruptcy.
  • Cannon, a very capable musician and a person of good character as well as being in a lasting female relationship, feels shame because he is suffering and has suffered from anxiety since he was at least four years old.
  • Freddie, a young man of nine, who feels shame for not being able to do compositions in school and otherwise write despite the facts that his parents are really good people. I tested him with a 120 IQ and a possible learning disability (dysgraphia)
  • Dwight, a very successful businessman as well as a person of deep spiritual development, feels shame every time he has made even the smallest mistake. He also feels shame because his wife, also a successful professional and kind person, has a tendency to tell him what is wrong with him
  • Jose’, an 18-yearold man who recently won a state championship in his chosen sport and generally does well with his friends. He is reading at the fourth grade level and about to enter college. I told him that he was a “genius” in his sport, but he feels ashamed of his difficulty reading and writing
  • Jim, another physician, bright, and deeply spiritual, feels ashamed that he spent an undue amount of money having been convinced that the world would be deteriorating soon. He also feels ashamed because he gave $100K to a “false prophet” who has evidently taken advantage of many other people.
  • Greg, a very capable person and a person of very good character, feels ashamed of his sexual proclivity even though he has never been unfaithful to his wife or engaged in this unique form of sex.
  • Gavin, another person of very good character and a very likable person, feels ashamed because he frequently lies to his female partner, often regarding trivial matters.
  • Justin, a very bright person working diligently on his PhD in history having successfully completed two master’s degrees, feels shame at every drop of the hat and ends up getting angry or avoiding life in some way or another.

There is much that differentiates these men: age, religious persuasion, gender orientation, characterological development, marital/spousal status and other factors, but they have many things in common, namely the feeling of shame, the results of shame, and the challenges that are necessary to get out of shame.

What is shame?

Shame is the feeling that there is something wrong with me, a feeling that immediately leads to the tendency to hide in some way and thereby feel some assuaging of the feeling of shame. The feeling that “something is wrong with me” can take relate to many things that could be wrong: physical, emotional, legal, cognitive, financial, sexual, relational, professional, and others.

This feeling that something is wrong with me might seem to be normal. You might think, “We all have something wrong with us because no one’s perfect, right?” However, reasonable that seems, the matter of shame is much deeper and darker than simply admitting that you’re not perfect. Indeed, no one is perfect, and we might make a case for saying that nothing is perfect; perhaps just good, valuable, helpful on the one side of the spectrum and bad, not valuable, and harmful on the other side. Shame is not about being perfect and it is not about thinking that I should be perfect. It is a phenomenon that has deep roots in childhood as well as deep roots in daily life, and deep roots in causing an immense amount of difficulty in life.

In a way, shame is like so many other psychological, philosophical, and theological phenomena: it is not entirely definable. As I have previously written (and it is written many other places), the most important elements of life are undefinable: in physics time, distance, and mass are undefinable; life itself is undefinable; love is undefinable; God is undefinable. We know things like time, love, and life because of experience, not because of definition. We use these terms every day, or at least organize ourselves around these things, like time and love. So, we must grant that we can define shame to some degree but not with absolute definition, and certainly not without using other terms, like life and feelings that are undefinable. Shame is a feeling (there we go with another undefinable word) that occurs when I feel this “something is wrong with me” feeling and usually has deep roots in childhood experiences. Before we examine these causes of shame, let’s differentiate shame from other feelings that are second cousins: humiliation, guilt, and embarrassment.

Shame, humiliation, guilt, and embarrassment

These concepts are intrinsically related because they all have certain things in common. When I feel any of these feelings, I tend to hide in some way. I drop my head when I feel, guilt, for instance, cover my face with a piece of paper when I feel embarrassment, hide myself in my room if I feel shame, or run away if I feel humiliation.

Note that it seems that the source of these feelings is always external although that is not actually the case. In fact, however, these four experiences are profoundly different. Simply noted, the differences are in the emotions associated with the experience, the result of the experience, and the value or disvalue of the experience

  • Shame is fear-based. It is the feeling there is something wrong with me, not with what I have done. Secondly, shame is external in its origin, namely another person. This “other person” is usually an imagined other person. I imagine that someone will think ill of me for some reason. The first result of shame is that I hide from this person, or perhaps I might hide from everyone. The second more important result of shame is that in my hiding, I do not improve as a person and may actually deteriorate.
  • Guilt is quite different. It is sadness-based. I feel guilty when I have done something wrong. Note the difference between thinking there is something wrong with me and what I have done that might have been wrong. Note also, that guilt originates from me, perhaps my own ethical or moral stance, or what I expect of myself. It does not originate from an external source like another person. Most importantly, guilt makes me a better person because I can see what I did that was wrong and make personal improvements and perhaps make amends.
  • Humiliation is anger-based. It is similar to shame in that it is externally based, i.e. from another person, but distinct from shame, which is imaginary (“What will she think of me about this?”), it comes from a real person who intends to humiliate you. While shame occurs mostly in adulthood, humiliation occurs most often in childhood, very often by siblings, parents, or ex-friends. Most importantly, like shame, humiliation makes me hide and prevents me from maturing and becoming a different person.
  • Embarrassment is joy-based. I feel embarrassed when I eat that second piece of pie in front of a friend knowing that it is not good for me. I laugh at myself. Hence, embarrassment, like guilt, is self-based. It is not based on the anger I feel for what someone has done to me (humiliation) or the fear of what someone might think of me (shame). I simply laugh at myself, and as a result, I become a better person. Perhaps I determine to never have a second piece of pie.

In general, guilt and embarrassment are good for me because I admit what I have done wrong, while shame and humiliation are not good for me because I hide. So, how do these experiences, particularly shame, originate develop in life?

The origins of shame

Briefly stated, the origins of the other experiences are as follows:

  • Guilt: I am able to see mistakes and rectify them in some way
  • Embarrassment: I am able to laugh at myself
  • Humiliation: I cannot prevent being humiliated, but this occurs mostly in childhood, and is actually the origin of much shame.

The origin of shame is almost always rooted in a childhood experience of humiliation, e.g.:

  • A playmate on the soccer field pulls my pants down in front of everyone
  • A teacher berates me because I don’t understand what she has said
  • My brother teases me about being fat
  • My parent frequently ask rhetorically, “What’s wrong with you?”
  • And many others

These are real experiences that set the stage for thinking, feeling, or fearing that there is something wrong with me. How can I answer the rhetorical question, “What’s wrong with you?’ but to come to believe that there is something wrong with me…not just wrong with what I said or did? Shame in adult life is based on these early experiences when I couldn’t get away from my attacker and the feeling was awful. All I could do was to be quiet, hide, or find some kind of escape.

For the most part shame occurs in my mind, not in reality. I fear that someone might think ill of me in some way, and this ill feeling is too close to the awful feeling I had as a child that I become afraid to be myself, admit what I said or did, or just see if my fear of rejection actually occurs.

Shame in adult life comes in forms not dissimilar from those in childhood when I was humiliated, but when I was a child, I was angry at being humiliated, but not in a position to be angry in fact. I had to hide my anger. So, when I feel shame, my basic emotion is fear, and I hide myself from being potentially humiliated. I feel shame when I fear that he or she might say, think, or feel that:

  • I am a bad person
  • I am stupid
  • I am not honest
  • I will be rejected

I feel shame that people might see these things in me even if none of them is true. I can also feel humiliated when he or she actually does these things. Most specifically, at least for men, they feel fear of judgment or some kind of criticism when their partners might criticize them. Unfortunately, women are too inclined to “help” the men in their lives by finding fault with them, but this is beyond the score of this blog (Wait for my forthcoming book, Balls, where I unpack this undue fear that men have of female rejection.) Whatever the origin, whoever the individual feared, whatever the situation, shame has dire consequences.

The consequences of shame

The consequences of shame are dire. They are dire because shame inhibits much of what is good about life: truth, intimacy, openness, love, caring, enjoyment, and contentment. Most importantly, shame creates a sense of danger, which then creates fear and anxiety, which itself creates a life that is worrying about the future, not a life where you are enjoying the present or working on enjoying the present. The essence of these dire results of shame are that we live in the future, namely what someone might say to me, where someone might criticize me, or where someone might humiliate me. Shame leads to a basic fear orientation to life rather than life itself, which is composed of joy and sorrow, not of fear that is at the heart of shame based on the feeling of anger that occurred early in life.

The practical result of shame is some kind of hiding, whether that is hiding in your room with a blanket over your head, keeping quiet about what you think or feel, hiding in some addiction, or hiding that occurs with some kind of dishonesty. I don’t know of a single man who is not afraid of his wife’s or partner’s potential rejection. I wrote a blog some time ago entitled, Why Do Good Men Lie, and proposed that it is the fear men have of female rejection, which always is built on a basis shame that so many men feel, particularly with the women in their lives. This fear and the result of some kind of dishonesty with women is devastating to men’s female relationships and often leads to women saying, “I can’t trust anything you say.”

While hiding of some kind and the dishonesty that goes along with it is bad for men in their relationships, even worse is the feeling of low self-esteem that is the result of feeling shame. If I think there is “something wrong with me,” I most certainly do not want anyone to know about it, so I naturally will not talk about it. The result of this fear, I never come to grips with the reality of something that I did wrong or the falsity of there being something wrong with me.

When these two things, hiding and low self-esteem, begin to operate in life with a man, everything else suffers: vocation, money, property, relationships, and even play. Nothing is ever good enough because I am not good enough, or so I feel when I feel shame. I can’t really enjoy my successes because I feel this “something is wrong with me,” I have great trouble accepting the small mistakes I make for the same reason, and I certainly can’t accept criticism, whether accurate or inaccurate if I feel shame. My life is dominated by fear.

So what can be done about shame and how can I get rid of it? Possible. Necessary. Hard.

Getting over shame

There are essentially two elements involved in overcoming shame: honesty and sadness.

Honesty: the key here is to first be honest with yourself and then be honest (carefully and selectively) with someone else. I put being honest with God in between those two but your understanding of the universe may not include such an entity. The key is honest. Honest to yourself is admitting all that you can admit to that scares you, particularly the inner feeling that you are not good enough for some reason, however irrational the “reason” may be. When you first admit to what you feel, the words you use may be quite irrational, or even downright wrong, like:

  • I wish I weren’t alive (By the way, this statement doesn’t mean you want to die, much less suicide.)
  • I am a complete loser
  • There is something terribly wrong with me
  • I can never admit to anyone what I feel (or what I did or what I said)
  • I can’t trust that anyone really likes me or loves me
  • I have to leave the country; maybe I should just to go Lover Slovovia
  • I can’t do this job
  • I want to have an affair

Once you admit to yourself, however wrong or irrational the words are, you might be able to admit to someone else what your feelings are. But be very careful doing this because most people have their own shame, their own craziness, and their own feelings. You don’t need someone telling you that you’re crazy, or wrong, or selfish, or wonderful, or perfect. You need someone who can listen silently and govern their own feelings.

This being honest, especially if you have been dishonest for a long time, is very very hard, and you most certainly don’t want to do it. Of course you don’t want to do it. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t want to work out either but I do it because it is good for me. I’d much rather watch a movie or read a book. Honesty is central, but it might take some time to become honest: first with yourself, (possibly with God), and then with just one or two other people selectively chosen. If you’re working on being honest, be prepared to be sad. Sadness cures shame.

Sadness: Sadness is without a doubt the most important emotion we have. Read what I’ve said about sadness in previous blogs or in our book on sadness. You will learn that sadness is always the result of loving something. If you love something, some person, some thing, some idea, or anything, you will most certainly lose this thing. Perhaps in an hour, perhaps in 50 years. But you will lose everything you love, so you need to have the God-given mechanism of feeling sad when you lose something. (Read more on sadness elsewhere in blogs or the book.)

When you really feel shame, you will feel awful at first, but the more you admit to the feeling, the sadder you will feel. You will feel sad about all the dishonesty you have engaged in, like with yourself and with others. You will feel sad about all the humiliation you suffered when you were a child. You will feel sad about all the shaming you get from the people in your current life. Most important of all, you will feel sad about all the hours and years you have wasted feeling ashamed of yourself. These are hours and years that can never be recovered because they are in the past forever, but you can feel sad about the losses. The beauty of sadness is that it ends. Shame and its origin, fear, and its result, anger, do not end. They go on forever. But when you become familiar with feeling sad, you will begin to be freed of your shame. Shame is never helpful. Guilt, which is feeling sad about what you said or did, is valuable. Shame leads to hiding. Guilt and sadness lead to love.

Are All Men Selfish?

Ron Johnson appreciation, Children, communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, men's issues, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

What an outrageous question, right? This is just as outrageous as my previous blog about “women never admit that they’re wrong.” This equally outrageous statement about men is not made in jest because men are frequently accused of being selfish, particularly by the women in their lives. I think there is something very important in this question because there is a certain truth to the statement that all men are selfish, or at least look selfish. We will examine several things in this blog, not the least of which are related to my last blog about women seemingly having a difficult time admitting that they’re wrong. Let’s examine what “selfish” means, especially as it compares to narcissism. We will look at the positive aspect of selfishness, the negative aspect of it, and the very opposite of selfishness, selflessness, which can be good and not so good. Then let’s look at how men operate, at least for the most part, that makes them look selfish and act selfish.

What is selfishness?

This is an unfortunate word that has creeped into the English vocabulary over the recent decades, perhaps centuries. On the surface selfish means one is oriented towards oneself. So, at least at this level, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with being selfish if it means that he (or she; but let’s stay with “he” for now) is aware of himself and looks at the world as a person who is independent from everyone else. John Donne said, “Every man is an island to himself” 400 years ago, but Donne’s intent was to deal with the isolation that so many people feel. So, we could say that there is at least some value in being selfish while there is a danger. This will be the main point I wish to convey in this essay. In other words, you need to know who you are in order to do anything in the world.

This “knowing who you are” ideally coms early in life, starting about age two but blossoming during the years 2-5 or 6. These toddler and early childhood years when ideally the person has received the security, nurturance, and comfort one needs during the first year or two of life, and is now ready to engage in the social world. The heart of “self” as we discuss it in psychology is having a sense of security that can only come from a secure environment. So, if the infant has received these basic three elements (security, nurturance, and comfort), s/he will be able to then bridge safely and confidently into the world. And this is very important because the rest of the world will not provide these three basic elements. The individual needs to find a way to find his or her (now let’s just go with “his”) way in life by his own wits. This is the positive aspect of “selfishness,” i.e. knowing who you are and going through the rigors of the toddler/early childhood years when you still think that you should have everything you want. You don’t know that at age, say, four, your wants have accelerated 100-fold while your needs have stayed the same: security, nurturance, and comfort. During infancy your wants were quite simple as they were essentially needs, i.e. food and safety. So the positive essence of selfishness is having sense of self, where I provide most of my security, nurturance, and comfort. I look out to not fall off a cliff or run in front of a car, I feed myself, and I take care of myself for the most part. I should not need the same amount of comfort as a 4-year old that I needed as a one-year old. But what happens when I don’t get my infantile needs met? I remain “self-less.”

The two aspects of selflessness

Unfortunately, many people do not adequately receive these three basic elements in infancy and are not prepared to engage the world that does not care for them as their parents did…or should have done. When this happens, the individual (we’re talking mostly about men, so let’s use the masculine pronoun from here on) does not have the groundwork to enter the years 2-6 where he needs to find himself, be himself, and exert himself in order to make it in the world. If the person does not get a foundation in infancy, particularly of safety, nurturance, and comfort, he will not be ready for the journey that begins in these early childhood years and never ends. Such a person will then be seeking these basic infantile needs from other people, or perhaps by some kind of addictive substance or behavior to give him a sense of self. Chemical addictions give the man an artificial sense of self as he finds a chemical way to feel safe and productive. Behavioral addictions do the same thing because they give the man a sense of purpose: gamble (and hopefully make a million dollars) or work all the time, and hence give the man a sense of safety, eat excessively (and serve the need for nurturance), or engage in some form of sexual addiction (and give the man a sense of comfort). All of these addictions are attempts to find a sense of self because the man didn’t have an adequate sense of self when he was four.

The other aspect of selflessness is what we normally think of with the term: a tendency to take care of others and serve the world. People who do, indeed, focus their lives on service can be people who have a good sense of self, so good, in fact that they forget about themselves in their charitable work. People who are truly generous are people who have a good sense of self, so good that they are able to spend hours or dollars without needing or seeking any kind of reward beyond the satisfaction and pleasure of taking care of people or the world in some way. My first therapist and life’s mentor, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was such a person. He had a very solid sense of self, so solid that he didn’t have to prove himself to anyone and could spend 18 hours a day caring for people like me and other students and faculty in the seminary where he was president and professor.

These are two distinct kinds of selflessness but they can seem to appear together, which actually never happens. Many people who are apparently quite generous and positively selfless are seeking approval and attention. They have not found the intrinsic value of giving and the satisfaction of improving the world in some way. Many good men work too much and give too much because they are unable to say “no” to the needs of the world, often the seeming needs of people in their lives. True positive selflessness is demonstrated by the man who “let his nay be nay and his aye be aye.” In other words, the man who can say no just as easily as he can say yes. Many men struggle with this.

Selfishness and narcissism

Deb and I wrote a chapter in a book a few years back where we unpacked the word narcissism. Unfortunately, in contemporary society, this term has been used to a fault and without a real understanding of what the word narcissism means and what narcissism comes from. In our paper we proposed that there is a natural narcissism and an extensive of natural narcissism into adult life. On the surface narcissism seems to suggest that the individual is selfish, i.e. cares only about himself and thinks only about his own needs and wants. There is some truth to this with people who we might dare to call narcissistic, but there is great danger in using this word without knowing what natural narcissism is.

Natural narcissism, or childhood narcissism is what we have been discussing in the 2-6 year old time of life where I have the opportunity to develop a sense of self so that I can effectively engage the world. So, the 4-year old is “narcissistic” because he is looking to get his needs and wants met (even though he doesn’t really distinguish wants and needs). Then he meets some kind of resistance or limitation, puts up a fuss, and finds a way to get around the limitation, or hopefully adjust to the limits of life. This finding and fighting limits during these early childhood years is where most people fail in personal development. They either continue to fight so much that the world around them (usually parents) give into him, go their own way and trust no one, or they give up trying and find ways to accommodate to what everyone wants of them. Ideally, the boy finds a way to accept some limits and challenge others in such a way that he learns that he can have want he needs but not necessarily what he wants. What generates out of this crucial time of life is that the individual develops a sense of self from which he can engage the world successfully. When the boy has been indulged with getting too much of what he wants, he will continue to retain the natural narcissism of childhood into adulthood. If he has not been given enough freedom and encouragement together with appropriate limitations, he will also retain a narcissistic view of life but hold onto the belief that he needs to find the right place, people, and parental substitutes to give him what he wants. These are two different forms of narcissism in adult life, one “selfish” (I get what I want by demand), and one “selfless” (I’ll never get what I want so I have to depend on others to give it to me).

The bottom line is that adult narcissism is not selfishness so much as it is a lack of self, namely a self that knows that he can get what he needs, mostly by his own hands, but he can’t get most of what he wants because we all, quite simply, want more than we can have. These are the two holes that so many people fall into: I have a right to get what I want all the time or I have to find people to give me what I want. Most men tend to fall into the former group. Most women tend to fall into the second group. Both forms of narcissism are dead ends in life. But before we end this diatribe on selfishness, let’s look at another aspect of men’s apparent selfishness that has more to do with their independent nature…to a fault.

Independence to a fault

There is an interesting passage in Genesis, chapter 3 where God speaks to the metaphorical characters Adam and Eve after they have discovered the difference between good and evil when they ate the forbidden fruit from one tree. God said that the man would “work by the sweat of his brow,” in other words working hard. God said to the woman that she “would look to the man.” We dealt a bit with the “looking to the man” with women in our last blog. Notably, in this same chapter God said that he kept them from eating from the Tree of Life. We might conjecture that had Adam and Eve been more obedient to the limits (of childhood?), that they would have matured into Life more successfully. Regardless as to whether you believe this story as fact or myth, or disbelieve its value altogether, it does provide an interesting view of what a male needs to do in life: work. Carol Gilligan in a marvelous piece of psychological literature suggested that women are more naturally “communal” while men are more naturally “agenic.” This means that men might be more inclined to do their own thing while women being more inclined to do something with someone else, often with the man. Some biblical theologians have suggested that in Genesis 1, where Adam and Eve are created together, both worked side by side and both were communal, but in Chapter 3 these dimensions of humankind were separated. Let’s leave the Bible and go into how men actually operate with this work thing.

I propose that it is more natural for men to be independent and women to be more communal. Note that I do not suggest that women are the opposite of independent, i.e. dependent, but rather that they are more communal. We discussed the value and angers of communality in the previous blog, namely women tending to tell men what to do in an attempt to find communality. But the men’s side of the phenomenon here is their tendency to be independent to a fault, i.e. do what they want without regard for the other people in their lives, especially the women in their lives. Let me give you some examples.

Jack is an independent guy. He, like most of the men who come to my office, came with the figurative “female handprint in his back,” namely because his wife thought that he had some kind of problem. I talked about Jack’s wife in my last blog, but here I want to talk about Jack. He has been a successful tradesman and businessman for many years and has been in various businesses over time largely because he works hard and he works smart. Unfortunately for Julia, his wife, she has not always been a part of his business decisions and directions. He has, simply stated, gone on his merry way doing what he has thought is the right thing to do. And he has done quite well as he has looked at the business landscape. The difficulty with Jack, as he relates to Junie, is not his work or his decisions, but he going on with it on his own. Nothing wrong with doing things that seem right to you, but if you’re in a marriage where your wife wants to be a part of your life, you might want to converse with her about what you’re planning to do. This just doesn’t occur to Jack. Hence, his wife sees him as “selfish,” or worse yet narcissistic. There is a lot of truth her allegation but I have to be very careful with dealing with Jack’s independence because he has taken care of himself all of his life and has never really trusted anyone.

Sam is quite like Jack, i.e. independent to a fault. A physician, he has also chosen many directions in life, some having to do with his profession, some having to do with his philosophical and theological orientation to the world. He has spent thousands of dollars, much of it unwisely, investing in one thing or another but hasn’t consulted with his wife about these decisions. She sees him as selfish and narcissistic. Like Jack, he does not have a good sense of self and has, indeed, been independent because he needed to be that way to survive the shaming father in his life. Unfortunately, now he has also suffered the shaming of his wife who doesn’t know any way of dealing with the fact that he doesn’t consult her on his decisions.

Jack and Sam are representations of many men who have this biblical directive, “work by the sweat of your brow” without knowing that they are doing it. It just doesn’t occur to men who are exceedingly independent that there is a danger of going it alone. There is nothing wrong with independence, just as there is nothing wrong with communality, but there are dangers in both.

Dealing with men’s selfishness

  • Point one: value your orientation to life as an independent entity. You are good at doing your own thing and good at taking responsibility for your successes and failure
  • Realize that independence to a fault is selfishness, built on a lack of a clear sense of self. If you re in this category, you must find a way to get a better foundation of your self that is not only what you do and not only doing something on your own.
  • Admit to your significant other, or if you don’t have one, to a trusted friend, what you think, what you feel, and how you look at what you do in life. You will find that you don’t so much need advice as communality, i.e. a feeling of togetherness.
  • If you’re a person, say, a woman in this independent man’s life, tell him how you feel. Don’t tell how you feel about him. Tell him you miss him, enjoy his company, and enjoy hearing about what he does and where he’s going in life. He doesn’t know that he needs you, that he needs someone in life. Be careful to avoid telling him what he should do. Instead, tell him that you love him and want to be more a part of his thinking, feeling, and doing.  By the way, you got together with him in the first place because you liked his independence.

References

Gilligan, Carol. In a different voice.

Johnson and Brock, I want to tell you how I feel

Johnson, blog: “Why Good Men Lie”