MY OWN WALKING - June Journal 2023

Have you ever been with a group of men, who are having an absolutely uproarious time, lots of jokes and raucous banter flying around, multiple conversations loudly overlapping each other? However, you are in the middle of it, and you are trying to talk to them about your week and how you've been. Finding it hard to hear yourself speak, let alone be heard. You get the feeling that no one is really wanting to listen. 

Though all this male bonding over the sharing of ribaldry, well, it might have the appearance of friendship, but is it largely hollow, a bogus bonhomie? One has the sense that there is always an unspoken fear in any gathering of men - the fear of being publicly ridiculed were you to go deeper in the revealing of yourself. So, let's keep this light shall we?

This is not the first time I've experienced a feeling of being ignored or isolated in the presence of other men, unable to join in, stuck on the periphery, as though I were a bystander on the outside looking in. Left to watch this whole masculine performance going on before me like some bizzare charade. I find these sort of situations disheartening for myself, and for those men too.

It's a bit of a cliche these days to talk of masculine friendships being formed through the sharing of an experience or enthusiasm, of working alongside on a practical task with other men. And though I can see that this can be the case, it is, as a friendship strategy, a weak one to put too much reliance on. The likelihood of finding such a situation, and it working, well that is rare. The possibilities are limited. The lack of these circumstances maybe one reason why there is a decline in male friendship more generally. Are men becoming more isolated from other men? Do they find it more difficult to find and be within collective or communal activities? Or is that just me? Perhaps the more 'friendships' exist via social media the less easy it becomes to deal with real relationships in real time.

I've heard some men say they've found relationships with women were becoming too difficult, so they'd simply decided to just not go there. To give up on it. My experience of many heterosexual men is that when they talk about their relationships they often sound emotionally under resourced. Women, on an emotional level, are able to run rings around them. Men then find themselves in situations they either don't understand, don't know how to handle, how to defend their own corner, how to get themselves out of, or feel they're being manipulated by. The more complicated their emotional landscape becomes the more lost they are. 

I can understand why the message of those dodgy 'men's liberator' gurus like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson appeal. Because they give the appearance of 'offering' a clear way of responding from strength, not weakness  - with masculine over assertion, aggression, belittling ,denigration, dismissal and domination towards women. In truth what they are 'offering' is absolutely nothing new. Just proffering a sly slippery deceit to the young, naive or bewildered man. It reaffirms existing, albeit limited, masculine skill sets - that a man who feels powerless in a relationship can in the end always resort to - Coercive Anger. This being the one emotion men are well versed in the use of. There is little or no emotional, let alone relational, intelligence here. This too is quite sad to say.

Myself? Well, I can find anger a difficult emotion to be with, whether within myself or in others. With myself I try to contain it,whilst I try to calm myself down a bit. But containing, I find, can quickly and deceptively degrade into avoidance or denial of it. The failure to acknowledge, respond or give voice to any emotion becomes an act of self harm, a form of self betrayal. 

If I am with, or near, someone who feels threatening, or is angry with me, I become emotionally paralysed. I don't know quite what to do, fearful of saying the wrong thing and hence making the anger worse, or even responding from my own rising anger. No longer in contact with how I feel. I take emotional retreat into a befuddled silence, with the consequent loss of initiative and self assertion. A position from which I can find it difficult to extricate myself, particularly whilst the sense or threat of the anger is still present. 

At that point I'm a bit like an armadillo curled up in an automatic defensive position. All my emotional resourcefulness, is trapped like wind or deserts me until I can feel safe, unwind and fart. Whilst I understand where this response may come from ( Being bullied as a young man ) I do wish I could move on from protective over reaction and find a space I can be more open and creative within. 'Locked Out' from a group or 'Locked In' with myself, seem linked, to me, as responses. Both deny full presence in a specific moment or situation, and, paradoxically, the opportunity for deepening relationships.