emotional maturity

Looking to the Man

Ron Johnson communication, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, love, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

Readers of my blogs hopefully understand that my prime interest in psychotherapy is with men. I just see men in my practice with just a couple of women whom I have known for years or decades who saw me a long time ago and consult with me on occasion. Importantly, I have had an interest in understanding men, and to some degree helping men, for at least 50 years of my 55 years of practice. I have written blogs and statements about men and Deb and I are now in the final process of publishing a book with the outlandish title of Balls although the subtitle Men Finding Courage with Words, Women, Work, and Wine (“Wine” meaning addictions). I think I can speak with some clarity about men and perhaps with a bit of authority. I can speak with no clarity or authority, however, about women. That having been said, I thought it would be valuable for me to share some thoughts, experiences, and feelings that I have had recently, but more accurately, for years, about women. What does “look to the man” mean, what does it come from, and what is the value of this clause?

Looking to the man: what does this come from?

It comes from the Bible, namely the third chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. You might remember Adam and Eve were created in Genesis 1 and 2 and lived in the “Garden” on earth where, it seems, everything was perfect. They were just asked to take care of the garden, and eat anything available to them except from two trees: one was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the other tree was the tree of life. Then in Chapter 3, Eve was tempted by “the serpent,” understood to be Satan in snake form. He convinced Eve that she should eat of the first tree, which she did, and then gave some of the fruit to Adam. Then we see God appearing in some way and being disappointed in the couple, he told Adam that he would “work by the sweat of his brow.” To Eve, he said that she “would look to the man,”…whatever that means. I don’t really know why God said that Eve was to “look to the man,” but it has stirred many thoughts about how women see us men, understand us and perhaps fail to understand us. I think there is likely something very beautiful about this command and perhaps something of a conundrum for women and for men. I’d like to think that we could all do well to understand this “looking to the man” and see what we can make of it. You don’t have to believe in the Genesis account, and you don’t have to believe in God in order to profit from what sacred texts, like the Bible might have to say.

So, this is the origin of the “look to the man” clause, but what does it have to do with real life? Here is where I am treading on unfamiliar ground, or at least ground that makes sense to me. I can say this, however, that I have seen many women “look to the man” to such a degree that it is bad for the man, bad for the woman, and probably bad for any family members. Let me explain.

Examples of women who “look to the man.”

At this point I want to give some examples of how this “looking to the man” does not work and the problems it generates:

  • I recently had an encounter with the wife of a patient I saw many years ago, who unbeknownst to me, had had had several affairs over their marital years. I did my best to patch things up, but I failed in that endeavor, and they had quite a nasty divorce, almost entirely about money and property because the kids were adults. Now, years later, this woman, bright, attractive, and a person of good character, to say nothing about her evangelical Christian faith. However, in this spontaneous encounter, she told us an elaborate story of how she was taking her ex-husband to court to seek several hundred dollars in alleged back alimony. We listened patiently, but some time afterward, we mused about why this woman would want to tell us this story, especially to such extent, to some degree making comments on one or more of their children who were allegedly estranged from their dad.
  • I no longer see a couple whom I saw for two or three years, seemingly with great success because I said that I could no longer see them given the circumstances. The “circumstances were that the woman was “looking to the man” 95% of the time. Interestingly, she is the only person, and certainly the only woman, I allowed to have an extra hour of an Intake assessment because she so desperately felt the need to tell me about what “was wrong with” her husband. Over the many sessions we had, I never succeeded in helping Val find a way to talk about herself because she always had so much baggage of what Mal had done to her over the previous week. Val, too, was very bright and attractive and a successful professional woman.
  • I had a brief encounter with a woman I saw at an auction many years ago. I had briefly, but again unsuccessfully, treated her husband for his alcoholism and the underlying factors, from which he had found sobriety in AA. At this brief encounter, Sally insisted on telling me about her ex-husband, what he had done, what he hadn’t done, and what I could possibly do for him. I never saw this woman in my office and we had never done any kind of couple’s therapy, but she felt it necessary to tell me “about the man.”
  • I continue to see another couple whom I have seen for many years, more than 25 years from the start with years’ of hiatus in between. He is a very successful professional whom has made some significant errors financially in his life together with some other irresponsible behavior, like failing to adequate execute his profession leaving him a lot of free hours to do what he wanted rather than what he needed. In these 25 years, off and on, I have never heard anything from the woman about herself but rather have heard countless statements about what is wrong with her husband of more than 50 years.
  • One of the two woman I see on occasion in my office has a similar focus on her husband, now separated but not divorced. This may be about his physical health, his mental health, his work, or his (former?) girlfriend. It seems almost impossible for Janet to talk about herself.
  • I see and have seen many men whom have or have had serious medical conditions. This phenomenon seems ripe for women focusing entirely on the medical/physical conditions of their spouses, usually with almost total disregard for their own psychological conditions. While not inclined to complain, as such, their focus is, indeed, “how can I deal with this man?”
  • One couple if have been seeing for a few months seems to be improving, but recently, the man asked rhetorically, “Why is it when I talk about my feelings, I talk about myself, but when she talks about her feelings, she talks about me?”

There are many more women I have seen over the years, and many more such stories, some simpler, some more complex. I will not indulge myself with these stories, but I suggest that you examine yourself, if you are a woman in a male relationship, or look at yourself, if you are a man, in a situation when the woman in your life seems to be “looking to” you more than herself. Is there some positive aspect in this “looking to the man” that we have all missed? Do women know something important about us that we need to hear? And, importantly, do they actually profit in some way with this “looking to the man” if they don’t simultaneously look at themselves?

Possible positive aspects of “looking to the man”

Again, I’m out of my league, and out of my comfort zone with trying to understand this phenomenon. I’m much better at seeing the silver lining under men’s problems, which are many, namely anger, avoidance, addictions, and a deep anxiety under those first three. I’m sure it is much more difficult for women to see beyond a man’s anger and such and see the anxiety, and ultimately the love that always underlies such things. But that is another study, another blog (that I have already written) or a book (that I have already written). I will trudge forward with trepidation. I expect female psychologists could do much better, and probably many nonprofessional women could do well at this discussion.

What, might we conjecture, be the positive aspect of “looking to the man”? I think the “work by the sweat of your brow” command that God gave Adam is very important. At least, I think it is very important, namely that a man find meaning and value in his work. I don’t take this as a negative thing that God is saying to Adam. He is just saying, “You will have to work, work will be hard,” and possibly, “You won’t like everything you do for work.” I work diligently with man to find value and meaning in their work, not just work. Again, I’m not suggesting you have to trust the Bible, believe in God, or anything of the like, but rather consider that these statements might have some philosophical and ultimately psychological value in them

Let us muse about what might be the positive aspect of “looking to the woman.” I can say this at a very personal level: Deb has been of immense help in my understanding myself and become a better man over our nearly 50 years. I didn’t listen as much to her observations and suggestions when I was younger, but now that we have both matured, I find it rare that she is actually wrong in what she sees, says, or suggests. Could it be that women are particularly gifted in seeing things about us that we can’t see, or perhaps won’t see for some reason? I think so. So, let’s consider that there is something very positive about a woman “looking to the man.” Maybe we could even consider this a gender-based gift (apologies to the LGBTQ gang). Could it be that, truly, women see things about us that we don’t see, perhaps cannot see? If that is the case, we just might have a real pearl of wisdom that men and women could use in their relationships. Simply put (possibly), the woman sees what the man can’t see. She has a special gift in this “seeing” that he does not have. (We won’t consider the opposite, that the man sees something in the woman.) How might she use this gift? For people interested, there are several passages in the Bible, both in the Christian Scriptures and in the Hebrew Scriptures that suggest such a thing. The Syro-Phoenician woman in the New Testament, and Ruth and several others in the Old Testament. But this is for another study because there are many rich things in sacred Scriptures and a bit of garbage.

How to “look to the man” for women and how “to be seen” for men

For the woman:

  1. Look first at his strengths, his abilities, and his successes. It is too easy for all of us, men and women, to fall into seeing what is wrong rather than what is right.
  2. Dare to comment on these things, even the simple things, like if he washes the dishes, cares for the lawn, plays with the kids, or goes to work.
  3. Carefully listen to what he says about work, friends, work, recreation, relationships, and moist of his felt responsibilities. Do you your best to not offer suggestions or interpretations.
  4. Wisely, examine what ails him, from your perspective, from his, and very carefully from other people.
  5. Avoid the danger of complaining about him to any other person, especially women.
  6. Ask him if you can say something about what you feel. If he declines, let it be for another day and hope that he might bring it up. Never say anything twice.
  7. Tell him how you feel seeing strengths and such. Tell him how you feel seeing limitations and difficulties. When you “tell him how you feel,” speak about yourself, your love, your joy, your disappointment, and your hope

For the man:

  1. Carefully listen to what she says about you. She’s probably right. She may not be graceful in her presentation and she may sound critical, but she is doing her best. No one taught her how to talk to a man, especially about feelings and thoughts.
  2. When you are hurt by what she says, note it, speak it if you can, or perhaps speak about it at another time.
  3. Avoid at all costs anger. This sounds impossible but it is possible…and necessary. Women don’t understand that we have been hurt when we express anger.
  4. Begin to tell her how you feel. You won’t be good at this.
  5. Ask of her some restraint in interpreting, challenging, and disagreeing with your feelings. Know that your feelings are never wrong. The words are often so.
  6. Sometimes, just listen, and say nothing. Then, maybe, say something later.
  7. You can both get better at this.

I Need to Feel Shame

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, Self-Awareness

Many people seem to need to feel shame, however crazy that sounds. Allow me to make sense of this seemingly nonsensical statement. Common sense seems to suggest that shame is a terrible feeling to have and most people avoid it like the plague. But sometimes the feeling of shame is better than the alternative.

Guilt, shame, humiliation and embarrassment

First, I need to define shame and other elements that are cousins to shame: guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation. I have previously written about shame and its feeling-based cousins. These four concepts are related to some degree but drastically different in their cause, operation, and ultimately in their elimination. These four concepts, which we should call “feelings” have different emotions associated with them:

  • Guilt: sadness
  • Shame: fear
  • Humiliation: anger
  • Embarrassment: joy

All of these feelings have to do with the individual but they also have social implications and social history:

  • I feel guilty, which is sadness, when I realize that I have done or said something that has been harmful or hurtful to someone or to some piece of property.
  • I feel shame, which is anger, when I believe that I have done something that is wrong in someone else’s eyes. Shame leads to hiding because it seems to the individual that some unknown person thinks that there is something wrong with him.
  • Humiliation, which is fear, is a purposeful act of denigration that the individual has received, always in a social situation. Humiliation has at its root that there is something wrong with the person.
  • Embarrassment, which is joy, because one can laugh at him/herself for something that they have said or done.

An important fact is that there is some kind of restraint in the expression of the four basic emotions associated with these feeling. In other words, in all of these experiences the individual feels called upon to keep the underlying emotions to him/herself. Sometimes, this keeping these feelings private is for protection because the environment is not conducive to expressing the underlying emotion. Humiliation, which occurs mostly in childhood social situations always produces anger in the individual being humiliated because the social situation surrounding humiliation does not allow for anger. It may be even danger to express anger. Thus, the humiliated person will keep this anger private, which may be to his benefit and safety in the moment but detrimental to him in the rest of his life.

The relationship of shame to humiliation

Shame, i.e. the feeling that something is wrong with me, is not a natural feeling. It comes most directly from having been humiliated in childhood (and to some degree later in life; but primarily in childhood and somewhat in adolescence). Importantly, humiliation is a conscious, purposeful attack from another person who demeans you in some way. This is why humiliation is about a real event, a real person, a real situation. The person who humiliates me usually (but not always) is purposely seeking to demean me in some way, perhaps the way I speak, walk, or my family of origin. I remember feeling humiliated when I was doing a show-and-tell presentation, perhaps in about fourth grade. While I was speaking, someone said that my zipper was down. I immediately zipped my pants up only to be greeted with a classroom laughing at my situation. In this case, the kids did not intentionally humiliate me, but I “felt” humiliated because I could do nothing to prevent their laughter and my consequent thinking that “there is something wrong with me.” A later experience occurred to me in high school after football practice when we were all showing together. While I was showering, I heard a good deal of laughter from the other boys in the shower room, turned around and saw that someone was urinating on my leg. This individual happened to be the strong football tackle on the squad while I was the rather weak football end, and not particuallry good at football. In both of these experiences I felt humiliated, i.e. something is wrong with me” kind of feeling with one of them being unintentional and one clearly intentional.

I just spent some time with a patient about his lifelong feeling of shame, i.e. not being good enough. As we explored the history of his feeling shame, he recalled how his mother was the primary instigator of this feeling. Evidently, she had a distinct tendency to criticize all of her children, whether for being a bit overweight to how they spoke to the grades they got in school. My patient, Tom frequently felt inadequate in her presence. Unfortunately, this experience of being (unintentionally) humiliated by his mother led to a feeling that there was “something wrong with him leading him to a life where he was constantly on guard for potential criticism.

Humiliation in childhood leads to the experience of shame in later life because the person has remained fearful of being humiliated again, which is tantamount to feeling that there is something wrong with the person. While humiliation is real coming from a real person, shame in imaginative and is coming from an imagined person. A shame-inclined person has experienced the feeling of humiliation accompanied by the fear that something is intrinsically wrong with him/her. If I have not been humiliated in life (which almost never occurs), I will not be inclined to shame. With Tom, as we tried to unpack how he developed this shame-based life, it became obvious that his mother was “projecting” her own felt inadequacy (for some unknown reason) onto her children who she saw aa a reflection of herself.

There is no value to humiliation and there is no value to the shame that results from either of these experiences. However, when shame gets into one’s psyche, it is very hard to dislodge. Hard, but not impossible. We will deal with this momentarily. Before we examine the cure of shame, we need to look at the very different concept of guilt.

Guilt vs shame

Guilt, sometimes called “real guilt,” results in the feeling of sadness. Guilt looks like shame because of the restraint of emotion, but in fact, it is substantially different. Shame is fear-based, i.e. afraid of being shamed or humiliated, whereas guilt is sadness-based. We try to help people to decrease shame, hence decrease fear (usually fear of judgment) and become more guilt-based. That might sound crazy, i.e. “to help people feel more guilt. Feeling more guilt is simply feeling sad. Feeling shame and the accompanying fear is substantially different from feeling guilt, which is sadness-based. The process of feeling guilty is quite simply looking at what you said or done that was hurtful, harmful, or simply wrong. If that person allows him/herself to feel guilt, namely feeling sad, this sadness might remain silent or it might be expressed. If I am able to assess my behavior, seeing my successes and failures, as well as the value or disvalue of what I said or done, I will most certainly become a better person. My character improves, and quite possibly, I might simply learn to keep quiet, think before I speak, or speak carefully. I might govern what I do in the same way by looking at what I did and seeing small or large errors, thus learning to be a better person.

I have suggested that both guilt (real guilt) and embarrassment are valuable for a person to feel. The important thing about embarrassment is that I laugh at myself for something I said or did that did not hurt or harm anyone else. I just displayed my natural, human tendency to say or do things that look funny. If I can laugh at myself, I will not feel ashamed of what I did. Perhaps had I been able to laugh at my zipper being down and then zipped up, I would have laughed at my myself along with my classmates. I could do no such thing in the shower room when I was attacked by another boy. Embarrassment is like guilt in a way because the experience of guilt is about oneself, not about other people, or their real or imagined judgment of him/her. I laugh at myself at having done or said something that was odd or foolish without feeling odd or foolish. I can look at myself as a normal human being who said or did something that was odd in some way.

Simply put, guilt and embarrassment are about me, what I did, what I said, and the results of my behavior. In both cases, the emotions associated with these two feelings, sadness and joy, are a reflection of how I look at myself. If I feel guilt, I naturally feel sadness, which if allowed to run its course, ends. Likewise, if I feel embarrassment, I laugh at myself, see that I am a person inclined to accidents of all kinds as all of us are. I have written previously about how a good normal day is filled with about equal amounts of joy and sorrow because of the successes and failures I have in a typical day. Most of the time these are simple successes, like pouring coffee into my cup, while others are simple failures, by spilling that same coffee on the floor.

Shame and humiliation and their accompanying emotions of fear and anger, ideally occur seldom in a day’s time. Unfortunately, people with a good deal of shame or humiliation in their system are often unable to feel simple guilt (sadness) and simple embarrassment (joy) without finding themselves deteriorating into shame or humiliation. Both of these experiences have to do with what someone else has said or done to me or what they might say about me. Shame is entirely imaginary, whereas humiliation that caused my inclination to shame was quite real. In summary, guilt and embarrassment are good because they cause me to examine myself and improve. Shame and humiliation are bad for me because they cause me to hide myself for fear of judgment or danger. Importantly, all four of these feelings have to do with love.

Love that underlies guilt, shame, humiliation, and embarrassment

People who are familiar with my writing know that sadness, fear, anger, and joy are the four basic emotions all humans have and they serve different purposes. I suggest that we have pairs of emotions, namely:

  • Joy and sadness
  • Fear and anger

We call joy and sadness “love-based emotions” and fear and anger as “defense-based emotions. But the story is actually a bit simpler than that. Indeed, when we feel anger or fear, we are usually in some kind of defensive posture. It is a little harder to see how joy and sadness are related as “love-based.” Let me explain by suggesting that all of these basic emotions are actually based on love in some way:

  • Joy: I love something that I have in the present
  • Sadness: I love something that I have lost in the present
  • Fear: I love something that I might lose
  • Anger: I love something that I have lost in the past

We are interested in creasing love in our lives and the lives of the people we serve. Thus, we think it is important to see that love is at the center of all emotions, and if I can get a handle of the love part of emotions, I will be able to understand, value, communicate, and govern my emotions. Furthermore, I will be able to do the same for the people around me. It is easier to see that joy and sadness are love-based, but it is much harder to see how shame and humiliation are love-based. What was happening to me when I was humiliated in the classroom and in the shower room? I lost something in both cases. What did I lose? I lost a portion of myself. We might say that I lo lose a bit of self-esteem, but I want to be careful about saying that because self-esteem is really self-understanding that then migrates into self-acceptance. Humiliation interrupts this process by suggesting that there is something wrong with me. Was anything wrong with me in the classroom with my zipper down? Not really. Furthermore, was there anything wrong with me in the shower room with someone urinating on me? Not really. But these situations caused this almost immediate feeling that there was something wrong with me. In both of these circumstances I loved myself, but quickly when I was attacked (one intentionally, one unintentionally), I immediately didn’t love myself. Had I had the wisdom that I now had, I would have cried in both circumstances, but had I cried in these situation, it is likely that I might have been humiliated even more. I chose to feel shame, however odd that sounds. And then this “something is wrong with me” stayed with me to some degree, the classroom experience for an hour, the shower room experience for years. Feeling shame protected me, however odd that sounds. I thought I “needed “to feel shame.

The need to feel shame

Why in the world would anyone want to feel shame, much less the original humiliation that caused the person to feel afraid or angry? Simply put, it is easier to feel shame than to feel the underlying humiliation and accompanying “there is something wrong with me” feeling. Feeling that there is something wrong with me is devastating. When I feel this feeling, I would truly want to not live. It is, in fact, intolerable to feel this thing. So when I come into feeling this feeling some kind of inadequacy, I protect myself with feeling shame. It is like, “If I feel this shame thing, no one else will be able to shame me.” In other words, I do it before someone else doing it. In so doing, I am in control of the feeling of shame and not the other (imaginary) person.

This is why shame is so hard to root out. It served me when I was a child when I was humiliated in fact and it shields me now when I imagine that I might be humiliated. However visible this feeling shame might feel to me, in fact, it is a way of my hiding from someone else’s potential shaming or humiliating me.

In some cases this self-shaming comes out is some kind of masochistic thing, like self-harm., More often, however, it is simply an internal mechanism where I hide my feelings, go into myself, and try to soothe the attack that I suppose someone is ready to inflict on me. This is a self-protective mechanism that protects me from perceived harm. It comes due to one or more of the following reasons:

  • I would rather shame myself then feel someone else’s shame. In fact, what I am actually shielding is myself from the humiliation I suffered as a child. So, what can I do to get over shame? By the way, if I can get over feeling shame, I will more frequently feel guilt.
  • I feel shame to justify my behavior. A patient of mine admits to lifelong “self-esteem” issues” and readily admits to feeling a good deal of shame. But the shame he feels is not so much from childhood as it is from his irresponsible behavior over his life. Specifically, he has not managed money properly and has had a tendency to avoid being responsible in other practical and professional matters, this despite the fact that he is well liked and appreciated in his profession. Simply put, he would rather feel shame than be responsible.
  • I would rather feel shame than feel guilt. If I feel shame, I can wallow in “there is something wrong with me” rather than feeling appropriate guilt and accompanying sadness for what I have done.
  • I might actually feel shame as a kind of badge or diagnosis, something like feeling, or perhaps even saying, “I’m just a fuckup” rather than actually seeing one or two things that he could actu8ally do to improve his lot in life
  • I might feel shame because it is familiar and has served me for many years. This is a little like having a badge of shame but this operation is continuing to do what shielded me in early childhood.

Getting over shame

It might seem that I have painted a picture that suggests shame is unavoidable and unfixable. It is almost entirely unavoidable because we are living in such a shame-based society, but it is most certainly fixable, i.e. healable. The process is the same for any difficult feeling:

  • Admit to the feeling
  • Understand, best as you can, the origins of the feeling
  • Allow the feeling to be there. Call it what it is: shame, i.e. “there is something wrong with me.”
  • Note your tendency to hide from it because you feel ashamed of yourself in some way.
  • Unfortunately, you will look what you said, what you did, what you didn’t say or didn’t do, how you look together with how you want to look.
  • This is a very painful process, but it is the only way you can get through shame, get over it, and find that truly “nothing is wrong” with you.

Doing this all by yourself is the beginning but it is not enough. You need other people to understand your feeling of shame, ideally person or persons who can hear your feelings without judgment, encouragement, criticism, or suggestion. This is a very hard person to find. You probably need a competent therapist. Talk to this person as much as you can about what you think the origins of your feeling ashamed of yourself is. You might need also to talk to them about less than good ways you are coping with shame that I have outlined above.

Find guilt, real guilt, guilt that is specifically related to what you said or did, or perhaps didn’t say or do. Feel sad about your actions. The more you find, feel, and finish (real) guilt, the less you will feel shame. Real guilt pushes out false guilt, which is tantamount to shame. You might find it valuable to write your thoughts down in a kind of journal, but you will ultimately need to share these very private feelings with a competent therapist or wise friend.

As your life become freer and freer from shame, you will be able to tackle the mistakes you make in life by feeling guilt instead of shame. Eventually, the “something is wrong with me” will be replaced with the combination of, “I did the right thing and feel happy” and “I did the wrong thing and feel sad.”

Men and Responsibility

Ron Johnson addictions, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, work

“It is the best of times. It is the worst of times,” to quote Charles Dickens as he penned the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. The best and worst times for men have to do with responsibility, or we might say “their responsibilities,” namely how they face responsibility (or responsibilities), understand responsibility, and how they respond to it. Responsibilities give men a great sense of accomplishment, give them self-esteem, give them an opportunity to serve their families, communities, and the world. This is the best of times. Responsibilities can also be the worst of times as they can cause tremendous anxiety for men, and then this anxiety can migrate into the three challenges men have: avoidance, anger, and addiction. Note that my primary comments have to do with men, as the helping of men mature is the passion of my life. Allow me to start by identifying several men (identifying information adjusted for the purpose of maintaining privacy) who demonstrate various ways of facing their responsibilities in life.

  • Jack: Jack is in his mid-thirties, bright, a college graduate, and a man of good character. Sadly, however, Jack hasn’t done anything of significance if life to date and there seems to be no realistic path ahead for Jack. He has fallen into mild to moderate depression with interludes of mild excitement and hope. Perhaps, the most interesting thing about Jack is that he really wants to be President of the United States. He admits that he has no idea of what he would do as President, to say nothing of how he might get elected, but he feels a deep passion to do something great. He also talks about being some kind of hero, in the likes of a “superhero”, but again doesn’t know how he might become a hero. I attempted to help him with something practical, like maybe getting job flipping hamburgers, but I have abandoned any and all such suggestions because they fall on deaf ears.
  • Ben: Ben is over 80 and has been a pastor for nearly 60 years. He has been successfully married, raised three successful children, and served many churches over these years as well as being in a supervisory role for many years sometime back. He is well liked and well respected by all who know him, from what I can determine. Like, Jack, he is bright, a man of good character, and has several advanced degrees. Unfortunately, at 80-plus, he is in so much debt that he is not able to keep up, probably something well beyond $100K with little or no income aside from a meagre social security. How he got there has a lot to do with responsibility, or lack thereof, something that we talked about recently. His most visible lack of responsibility has to do with how he managed money, or lack thereof, but as I have come to know Ben, I have seen that he has avoided all kinds of responsibilities all his life, whether financial, practical, or interpersonal.
  • Peter: Peter wants to be a doctor, or so he told me the first time I saw him. More accurately, the second time I had seen him because I saw him some 15 years ago. He is also mid-30’s and not doing much. He barely finished high school and never went to college. Somehow, the idea of becoming a doctor came into his mind and so he decided to come into my office to help him with his (pipe) dream. He has been taken care of by his wife for many years and before that was subsidized by his mother for years. He never has held any kind of full-time job. I can’t ascribe to Peter high intelligence and good character but he is generally a good man.
  • Alex: Alex is a man in his early 50’s and is the opposite of what we see in the likes of Jack and Peter, although he shares intelligence and good character with them. He has always worked, raised his family, worked diligently in his local church, and generally served everyone…with the exception of himself. Some years ago, much against his wishes, he found that he was truly unable to work, perhaps largely due to severe apnea that has not allowed him to get a good night’s rest for five years or more. He would dearly like to return to work and made one futile attempt at it some time ago, which probably just set him back six months. He has always done what he deemed should be done in life starting from about the time he was 8 or 9 and culminating with taking over the role of the man in the house when his dad ran off with the babysitter.
  • Guido: Guido, as his name might suggest, comes from Italian heritage although he has not been particularly interested in his European heritage. He has been an ardent follower of sports, particularly the Green Back Packers and the Wisconsin Badgers, staying a committed fan for 55 of his 65 five years. He graduated from college as a financial manager and did reasonably well, for the most part, but never really successful. Over the past 30 years that I have known him, he has been hired, fired, quit, and worked occasionally, but never with any meaningful passion. His real passion? Feelings, ,particularly other people’s feelings, so much so that he has been both liked and despised by almost everyone he has known. He has not had a meaningful job for 5 or 10 years, which is my guess, but he also has wanted to do something “great” like Jack, never quite knowing what that might be. He encounters random people in his semi-retirement but seemingly has no intimate friends from what I can tell despite the fact that he is both intelligent and somewhat fluent with certain aspects of psychology. He has never been married, lost perhaps the one love of his life and hasn’t been able to sustain any kind of intimate relationship since that unfortunate event in his life. While he pays his bills and such, he is radically alcoholic depending on drinking nightly until he passes out, something that he has done for perhaps 30 years.
  • Bill: Bill shares the high intelligence and good character so often present with men who can’t seem to face the responsibilities of life or face them to a fault. Fiercely independent, Bill took 20 years to finish college because he refused to take English 2 because “it was beneath him” and because he had taken several advanced English classes. When the university changed its requirements, he was given a diploma having acquired 170 credit hours in a college that required only 120. Bill also was never successfully employed having tried to sell insurance, worked in his dad’s business for a year or two (unsuccessfully), and driving a cab (actually quite successfully) off and on. He was a voracious reader. When his father died and his mother became impaired with dementia, he took care of her for 5 or 6 years, but died when he was 59, a young age for most people, probably caused to some degree by his caretaking of his mother. He was married to a severely characterologically impaired woman whom he couldn’t divorce because his wedding vows included the statement, “I will not divorce you,” not unlike the vow he made to his mother that he “would never put you in a nursing home.” Bill acted so responsibility with his impaired wife and mother, that it killed him. On the other hand, he was not responsible to himself, somewhat like Guido, and had very little care for finances and property. He never owned a home, much less took care of it.

These seem like severe cases, but in fact, they are not so uncommon. The names, places, ages, and responsibilities vary but the theme is the same in all of these fine men: a failure to face, feel, and act responsibly. What went wrong with these men, especially in light of their intelligence and good character? No one taught them about responsibility. Bill’s father was truly brilliant but had been fired a couple of times over his life before he started his own business, but Bill and his father were substantially different, something that caused Bill to avoid doing the things that his dad wanted him to do. Ben talked about how farmer father would simply “go to the bank and ask for $1000 or more,” which the bank would gladly loan him because they trusted him, Ben didn’t learn the rudiments of being financially responsible, much being responsible in his work, much less in the care of property. He was so good at speaking and telling stories that he got away with the results of his lack of responsibility. A couple of the other men didn’t really have fathers, like Jack and Guido. In general, men are not taught about responsibilities. Rather, they are taught some responsibilities but not others. Very few men are taught, for instance, how to relate to women, when to give, when to restrain from giving, when to speak, when not to speak, and certainly when to do something and when to choose not to do it.  The results of this lack of responsivities are many.

The results of being irresponsible

Not all men suffer all of the results of a failure to be responsible, but all men have one or more of these consequences:

  • Ill health. All of the men I have mentioned above are in ill health of some kind. One man has cancer, another is underweight because of a poor diet and lack of exercise while three others are overweight for the same reason. One suffers from apnea as I noted. I currently have several men in my office who are in the neighborhood of 70 years old all suffering from ill health, all of which has to do with a failure to accept the responsibility of caring for one’s body
  • Financial. Not all of these men actually suffer from financial difficulties but none of them has been prudent with earning, saving, and spending. I know of two millionaires who have failed to adequately care for money, one of which works 80 hours a week “trying to earn his (deceased) father’s approval,” while another spends wildly on “toys.”
  • Unsatisfactory work. Jack can’t seem to accept that he needs to work at something…anything in order to make it in life, much less be President. Ben loved his work, which was largely speaking, preaching, and having coffee conversations with other pastors, but he didn’t do the important work of teaching, which requires study and planning. Alex never recovered from having too much mother (and mother figures) and not enough father. He turned out being a visible failure while Alex worked so hard that he neglected some important psychological and relational matters in life. Sadly, one of his sons is estranged from him, a phenomenon I have seen with many men who didn’t know how to be fully responsible.
  • Unsatisfactory intimate relationships. Female relationships are always adversely affected by men not knowing how to be responsible. Some men dominate while most men fail to know how to say “yes” and “no” responsibly. Most men fall into undue anger, while others go towards avoidance or addiction. Who taught us men how to be good partners to the women in our lives? No one.
  • Addictions. The obvious include the alcoholism that Guido displays. One of these men has been impotent for many years probably due to the sexual abuse he had as a child, while many men fall into sexual addictions like pornography together with undue masturbation. Some men fall into play, whether computer-based gaming or being in 4 baseball leagues in the summer. Some men fall into a work addiction. All addictions are due to a failure to understand one’s feelings, value them, and appropriately express them.

How can men be responsible and avoid such problems?

  • Admit to yourself that no one really taught you the breadth of responsibilities. Do this, and you will feel childlike and a bit helpless. This is a beginning, not an end. Don’t tell anyone although if you are lucky enough to have a good friend, partner, or therapist, you might be able to speak of feeling helpless and childlike.
  • Take a look at the myriad of responsibilities that you have in life: health, money, relationships, children, property, work, retirement, and friendships. Note that you have many things that you need to attend to. Note again, privately, that no one taught you about such things. It’s not your fault. It is your responsibility to do something about it.
  • See the breadth of responsibilities, not just one or two. If you are good with finances, good for you; most men aren’t. If you good with managing your sexuality, good for you also. You might be good at sports, reading, writing, playing, telling stories, or particularly good with children. Maybe you’re even good with the whole matter of feelings, as most are not, so good for you. Maybe you’re good with the care of property as many men are…and many men are not. Take stock of what you’re good at, what you do well and do in a timely fashion. You are probably good with some kind of responsibilities and less good at others. Join the crowd.
  • When you see a bit (or a lot) of irresponsibility in some arena of life, admit that you don’t want to do this thing that you seemingly should do. Certainly, you don’t have to do everything that you don’t want to do. Many men get caught thinking that they have to do something before they admit that they don’t want to do it. One of the guys noted above really doesn’t want to do his taxes… for the past three years. He needs to admit that he doesn’t want to do it, and then painfully do it.
  • Do not do what other people say you should do. They’re wrong for telling you so. Something that is easy for one man is not easy for another. But as Desiderata says, “listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, for they all have their stories.”
  • Realize that the things that you…no one else…knows…not “feels”…should be done, are your responsibilities and not anyone else’s. It’s hard enough to be your own task master, let alone tending to others’ opinions.
  • Do something that you don’t want to do admitting to yourself that you don’t want to do it. You may truly hate cutting the grass or doing reports. Don’t do these things out of obligation to someone else (your wife, your boss, or your friend), but obligation to yourself.
  • Note that when you actually do something you don’t particularly want to do, you don’t actually feel the “accomplishment” that other people might feel when they do this same thing that they might actually enjoy. Take this moment to yourself and realize that you have been “responsible” in doing something that you didn’t want to do, or perhaps that you didn’t know how to do, or perhaps that you did in a less than perfect way.
  • Then, having done this terrible thing, do something that you really want to do, whatever that might be. Give yourself a break.
  • Then, tomorrow, do this “terrible thing” again. And, maybe the next day.

Keep in touch.