When
asked about what they desire from their friendships, men are just as likely
as women to say that they want intimacy. And, just like women, their
satisfaction with their friendships is strongly correlated with the level of
self-disclosure. Moreover, when asked to describe what they mean
by intimacy, men say the same thing as women: emotional support,
disclosure and having someone to take care of them.
Men
desire the same level and type of intimacy in their friendships as women, but
they aren’t getting it.
In an
effort to understand why men’s friendships are less intimate than women’s,
psychologist Niobe Way interviewed
boys about their friendships in each year of high school. She found that
younger boys spoke eloquently about their love for and dependence on their male
friends. In fact, research shows that boys are just as likely as girls to
disclose personal feelings to their same-sex friends and they are just as
talented at being able to sense their friends’ emotional states.
But, at
about age 15 to 16 — right at the same age that the suicide rate of boys
increases to four times the rate of girls — boys start reporting that they
don’t have friends and don’t need them. Because Way interviewed young men
across each year of high school, she was able to document this shift. One boy,
Justin, said this in his first year, when he was 15:
[My best friend and I] love each other… that’s it… you have this
thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it. It’s just a
thing that you know that person is that person… I guess in life, sometimes two
people can really, really understand each other and really have a trust,
respect and love for each other.
By his
senior year, however, this is what he had to say about friendship:
[My friend and I] we mostly joke around. It’s not like really
anything serious or whatever… I don’t talk to nobody about serious stuff… I
don’t talk to nobody. I don’t share my feelings really. Not that kind of person
or whatever… It’s just something that I don’t do.
What
happens?
During
these years, young men are learning what it means to be a “real man.” The #1
rule: avoid everything feminine. Notice that a surprising number of insults
that we fling at men are actually synonyms for or references to femininity.
Calling male athletes “girls,” “women” and “ladies” is a central part of
motivation in sports. Consider also slurs like “bitch” and “pussy,” which
obviously reference women, but also “fag” (which on the face of it is about
sexual orientation, but can also be a derogatory term for men who act feminine)
and “cocksucker” (literally a term for people who sexually service men). This,
by the way, is where the ubiquitous slur “you suck” comes from; it’s an insult
that means you give men blow jobs. (American
men’s hidden crisis: they need more friends, Lisa Wade, Salon.com)
- - - - -
Why, though, is there such a pervasive fear of
being feminine? There's no logic to it all, even as the sad thing,
schizophrenia, is actually a "solution," given impossible double-bind
parental requirements, a la R.D. Laing?
Guys are afraid of being rendered feminine because in their pasts their
lonely, depressed, patriarchy-abused mothers, overwhelmed them in their needs
and made them feel female-poisoned (sucking cocks is actually considered an
antidote to female poisons in some New Guinea tribes). Thereafter they both
cherish anything that allows them to be close without being publicly accused of
being girly, like staying home sick, and otherwise go nowhere near
"intimacy," which reminds them too much of the other stuff that went
along with it — being a plaything, incest.
There can be a dramatic change at the onset of puberty because many
mothers more overtly abandon them then. They don’t talk about feelings and
emotions, as a kind of autism-defense. They become all shell, so their
loneliness infiltrates them, affects them, less.
- - - - -
halb
An interesting sidelight not mentioned
in the article is the influence of stress and fear upon male bonding.
Most veterans of war will state that male friendships formed during the
times when mortality is threatened, are strong, intimate, and lasting.
The same goes for jobs that expose males to inherent danger.
Perhaps we males need such outside forces to focus our attention on how
much we depend on others, rather than the constant call for independence and
competition.
Emporium@halb Men at war are part of some
righteous cause and are getting prepared to die heroically for their nation, or
kill people less worthy than they are (which historically includes an awful lot
of innocents). It may not be fear and stress that does it — or only — but
rather a union born out of being similarly enfranchised.
halb@Emporium @halb Quite
true. I have personally met two soldiers who loved war. One was
Special Forces, and the other refused to return to Vietnam as a helicopter
gunner when he realized he enjoyed gunning down people. I met him on the
Neuropsychiatric ward on Guam where he had been sent; obviously, he was
mentally ill if he did not want to kill people.
- - - - -
GeekMommaRants
This culture does not allow men and boys
to be close to anyone. The strong silent type is still the
standard.
In other parts of the world, men are
very intimate with each other. Male affection is kissing, hugging and
holding hands this is the course completely non-sexual. In these places
men and women are very close as they are emotionally, to a point, the same.
No one would call these men feminine. They are not.
Emporium
Anyone who
wants to criticize British chilliness always looks to some place like rural
Greece or Italy to show what men ought to be like. They say all their touching
just shows how much more open and honest they are.
The rest of the chilly world kind of
just nods at this, because it seems like you're just nodding acknowledgment at
people who haven't realized the world leader status that comes out of stoic
Northern distance and restraint — the
self-compliment it provides, the reminder of their own ostensible strength,
is the only reason they temporarily accede to the argument that some other
people in the world don't just possess a different culture but an ideal one.
But if you mention further that this intimacy extends to
children in their parents' bed, that the children will sleep with their parents
near into adulthood, and that this too is of course not sexual but a wonderful
thing, they're going to retreat before they risk hearing any further—they’re
invested in thinking of the South in a certain kind of way, and this would have
them calling “crock!” on the whole thing and leave them fishing for some other
kind of support.
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