Part 2 - Patriarchy & Me
The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence towards women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.
Once I left home, I replaced seeking validation from my dad with seeking it from other places like school, work, and romantic relationships.
By this point, I had a very healthy dose of feeling like I was "not enough" in my life both from not measuring up in the eyes of my dad and not measuring up to the standards of what I saw as "a man" in society around me.
This fear caused me to create and wear multiple "masks" over who I was in order to appear acceptable. I believed that nobody could love me as I was, so I endeavoured to figure out who people wanted me to be and then wear the appropriate mask to be that person. I had internalized that a man was supposed to be strong, independent, and not feel emotions like sadness, fear, or confusion, so I put on the mask of a "masculine man" and hid the parts of me that felt weak, scared, or needed help. I had internalized that a man was supposed to be protective and in charge in relationships, so I put on the mask of a "masculine lover" and would try to appear like I always had a plan and was in control even when I didn't know what to do or my partner was better suited to lead. I had internalized that a man worked hard and could provide, so I put on the mask of a "masculine worker" and forced myself to work until I burned out and used money as a measure of my job satisfaction ignoring my body's energy levels and my dissatisfaction with the work I was doing.
In order to wear these masks I had to suppress emotions like sadness, fear, and confusion that I recognized as unacceptable in patriarchal culture. What I wasn't aware of was that by wearing these masks I was repressing all my emotions, including happiness; excitement; and empathy, until I became emotionally numb.
Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them.
The fear of "not enough" was particularly strong when it came to my romantic relationships and I felt if I didn't measure up as a man they would reject and abandon me. In some relationships, my partners subscribed to similar patriarchal ideals and were happy with who they thought I was. However, the pressure of trying to maintain these masks as a relationship deepened and partners got to know me better always became too much. Under that pressure, cracks formed in my masks showing parts of my true self and, in most cases, caused me to abandon the relationship before the mask shattered completely.
In other relationships, who I was under these masks would have been welcomed if I had been brave enough to remove them. In these relationships, my masks created emotional distance and eventually, partners would notice my words and actions did not align, and it left them confused about who I actually was and ultimately resulted in a painful end to the relationship for both of us.
... men come to sex hoping that it will provide them with all the emotional satisfaction that would come from love.
This pattern of searching for external validation in romantic relationships, which began with my very first relationship, continued throughout my 30's. In that time I had numerous short and long-term relationships. In all those relationships, I was confusing love with sex and often combining them into the same thing. While physical attraction was not what kept me in those long term relationships, it was the main indicator of how compatible I thought we were at the start and how healthy the relationship was long term.
Sex and physical touch were also the primary tools I had where I felt I could communicate my care to my partner. Words felt messy and often led to hard conversations which I feared, and I wore my patriarchal mask to hide emotions like fear, so I avoided words and stuck to simple "I love you" statements. If my relationship was struggling, improving our physical touch was the best way to fix it.
This avoidance of hard conversations, along with the patriarchal idea that women are complicated, confusing, and overly emotional meant I was avoiding understanding my partner's emotional landscape. The truth was that I was emotionally distant and afraid of being vulnerable and connecting to my partners at a deeper level which kept me from experiencing the deeper kind of love that comes from this kind of connection.
When a relationship ended, my pattern would start over again. I would feel rejected, abandoned, and generally like I was "not enough" then go find a partner who I was physically attracted to in an attempt to fill this void and feel "loved". My confusion between sex and love led me to take on another patriarchal value, objectifying women, in a sneaky way. If you had asked me, I would have told you I was looking for a loving connection and I would have genuinely believed that. However, since I was confusing love with sex and my gaze was conditioned with patriarchal beauty standards, I was really seeing women first as objects of desire before I could ever see them as something more.
I had no idea how to build a loving relationship without that strong sexual desire as the foundation. I did not understand that my notions of love and sex were so confused that I would never be able to find the emotional satisfaction I craved. I was looking for "care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust", which is bell hooks' definition of love, and I did not understand that the love I was looking for could not exist alongside the patriarchal values I held.
Women demand of men that they give more emotionally, but most men really could not understand what was being asked of them. Having cut away the parts of themselves that could feel a wide range of emotional response, they were too disconnected. They simply could not give more emotionally or even grasp the problem without first reconnecting, reuniting the severed parts.
My integration and perpetuation of patriarchal ideals kept me isolated from my partners, from love, and from myself. Masking the emotional parts of myself led to me ending another committed relationship at 37 years old and not having any idea of what I wanted or truly understanding why it had imploded. I had no idea who I was, under all these masks, and it made it impossible for me to have the kinds of honest conversations about what I wanted that were necessary to be in a loving relationship with someone else.
It was the lowest point for me in my life and it spurred me to find the support I needed in order to work on myself. Part of this was the work of becoming aware of who was under these masks and confronting the discomfort and fear that came with looking under them. I found that under all of them was the sensitive and scared boy from my childhood who felt deeply and was still trying to gain love and acceptance from others because he believed who he was was not good enough.
Seeing this was terrifying, painful, and beautiful all at the same time. It was terrifying to look at myself and see that a scared little boy wearing masks was making my life decisions. It was painful for me to realize how disconnected I had been for such a large part of my life and to recognize the hurt my being disconnected had caused in my relationships. It was also beautiful to reconnect to myself, to see this part of me without the masks and to feel the emotions that were under there and know that I wasn't emotionally numb, to know I wasn't as lost as I thought I was. Also to recognize that, while I had left him in charge of my life, I wasn't him anymore and I could take back control of my life and that he was an integral part of understanding where I needed to heal parts of myself to build the life I wanted.
The next step, of actually starting to heal and grow from this place came next and while I feel I have made a lot of progress, it is also something I am still actively working on.