Chapter 10 - Part 1
Midlife Brothers
At
some point in a man's life he realizes that he is at a crossroads.
He may not know exactly what all the stakes are, but he knows he
must make some crucial decisions that will greatly affect the rest
of his life. This is a time in most men's lives toward the end of
the age of the father.
This
time, after the mid-30's, is often referred to as midlife. Most men
have been to this crossroads often in their earlier life but never
recognized it as such. Maybe they didn't recognize its urgency
because there was some instinctual knowledge that there was still
time left in the age of the father. This crossroads is really a
place near the boundary of the village. One road leads back towards
the boy's life in the village. The other road leads to initiation
and manhood.
As we
have seen, a man's outside age continues along a biological
continuum from year to year. However, a man's inside age can
fluctuate depending on the wounds and deficits of the boy inside,
and the outside stressful circumstances the man is experiencing.
Under stress, a wounded boy/man, wandering at the crossroads, will
run back to the village. The boy inside the man will panic. He will
either run toward the mother and her comfort or the father and his
directions. These are the boys we have talked about. These are the
two boys inside, both under 12.
There
is also an adolescent boy inside a man. This is the boy who can act
more like the man we all recognize in the street or in the executive
suite. He loves the games of adulthood. He loves the risks and
challenges. Yet inside he is still struggling with leaving boyhood
behind. He also struggles with what it really feels like being a man
from the inside out.
The
crossroads is the place of adolescence, at the outskirts of the
village. Adolescents like to be at the edge, hanging around the
village boundaries, yet keeping a respectable distance from the
wilderness. Part of him yearns for the freedom and adventure of the
wilderness. This is the adolescent part. The other, younger part is
afraid to think of unconsoled aloneness, without rules to follow and
a role to play.
In
helping a man to make the next steps toward manhood, a man must be
introduced to the adolescent within him and to the place where the
adolescent hangs out. A confused, unguided, angry or depressed
adolescent can be a significant obstacle to a man's growth, keeping
him in the village long after he needs to leave. This is the
adolescent Robert Bly talks about in his book, The Sibling
Society, Bly talks of how most men are stuck in adolescence, are
stuck at the crossroads. He talks of adolescents that never grow up,
because they have no elders to prepare them for the wilderness.
The
adolescent is the older boy inside. Men need to contact the young
adolescent within if they hope to find their manhood. This is, the
boy of 12-16 years, who is still in need of fathering energy. He has
many crucial tasks to perform before he is ready for initiation.
Preparation involves finding initiatory brothers, starting to
separate from father, finishing the separation from mother, and
preparing for the sudden presence of the elder.
The
Midlife Adolescent
Most
men are not ready to take up adolescent issues until long after they
are young teen-agers. In this culture there is precious little good
fathering and eldering energy to bring a man past adolescence to
initiation. This dearth of initiated men causes most men to top out
in a perpetual, unhealthy adolescence. Men are ill-prepared for what
will become painful mid-life issues because they have not had a
healthy adolescence. Actually, healthy adolescent struggles can
trigger the onset of a man's midlife crisis.
For
many men, an insidious dissatisfaction of life creeps up in their
late 30's and 40's. This is the time of the stereotypical midlife
crisis. Daniel Levinson talks of the time between 35 and 40 as the
normal mid-life transition from novice adulthood to full adulthood.
Levinson feels this normal transition need not be a crisis even
though there are big changes going on. I agree that this time need
not be one of crisis if healthy adolescence, Levinson's stage of
novice adulthood, has been dealt with. However we are a culture
where we are led to skip a whole stage of growth, the stage of
healthy adolescence.
Men are
unprepared for the adolescent transition because men are stuck in
the father's world. Where the adolescent is prepared to move on to
the wilderness, a patriarchal man is taught that the marketplace is
the end goal. The man caught in the father's world is unprepared for
the changes that life has for him. He is unprepared for the crises,
both inside and out, that will inevitably occur as he ages.
For
most men who have gotten to the crossroads, the crisis is not from
mother separation, though there are usually these residual issues to
be dealt with. The crisis is from the growing awareness of the
betrayal by the patriarchy. This is the time a man starts to realize
that his ladder of success is on the wrong wall. The satisfaction he
was promised is not there. He realizes he does not feel like a man
even though he looks like a man in the mirror.
He also
realizes that he is unprepared to answer the questions that are
starting to plague him. Questions such as what work do I really
enjoy doing that can also support my family? Is this the work I want
to do the rest of my active life? Have I wasted my talents and
energy? Is this the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with?
Is this the kind of father I want to be to my children? Is this the
reputation I want in the community?
Men
often tell me in counseling, in a defeated tone, that they are
horribly late in dealing with their issues, because they are in
their 30's or 40's. They feel ashamed. They feel depressed. It is
hard to convince them that they are really not too late
psychologically. Most men come to this crossroads at about this
time. They are at the crossroads, again, with time to take the right
turn this time.
Adolescent Unbidden
When we
first experience this adolescent inside, he is not ready for
initiation. A man in his 30's or 40's will encounter this unruly
adolescent in the form of his own "adolescent" behavior. To a
traditional, patriarchal man his adolescent behavior comes as a
great surprise, to others it is a shock. Often the unbidden
adolescent has just gotten a man into trouble through some
uncharacteristic, irresponsible behavior. This "misbehavior" could
be anything from reckless and aggressive driving, to having an
affair, to hanging out in bars, to spending into big debt. Sometimes
the adolescent shows up, unbidden, in the stereotype of the midlife
crazy who breaks his neck with gold jewelry, buys a red convertible,
dates women half his age, and generally acts half his age. Other
times he arrives quietly, staying hidden, but creating havoc.
John
was a successful consultant for retail stores. He would take over a
store in trouble and turn it around with remarkable finesse and
ease. He was respected by peers and subordinates. Another source of
respect was his intense dedication to his work. He spent untold
hours during the week and weekends doing what he could to get the
job done. If the truth be known, John was a very successful work
addict, trying to find his manhood in spite of an alcoholic father.
John
was married for 23 years and was faithful to his wife the whole
time. He was in a traditional marriage where his work addiction was
considered normal, even exemplary. He was frustrated with the lack
of companionship in his marriage, but chalked it up to the "reality"
of marriage. John accepted his lack of companionship, since he was
taught that the traditional marriage role had little place for that.
His wife, Cathy, was over-identified with the mother archetype and
seemed happy just being a mother and keeping a good house for John.
She had no need to be a companion to John. Women, who identify
totally with motherhood, have a hard time being intimate emotionally
or sexually. Women also suffer from the lack of mother separation.
John
spent his life energy at his work, rather than home, unconsciously
trying to find his fathering there. In many ways, work was more home
to John than his own house. On one job John found himself spending a
lot of time with an assistant manager, who was an attractive,
intelligent younger woman. John felt it appropriate to spend lunch
and some dinners with her on a regular basis since they talked
mostly of work.
This
woman, Patty, was obviously very interested in John's work, which
was something his wife was not interested in. John enjoyed Patty and
the conversation. As time went on John found himself thinking about
Patty more and more, outside of a work setting. He started to think
of their relationship as a friendship, though a part of him knew
that his feelings were deeper. His feelings were getting much
stronger for Patty, and friendship was not quite the right
description.
John's
adolescent was stirring, though John did not recognize him. He
arrived, though John never called him. John was a good man. He tried
to stop thinking of Patty. He did what most work addicted men do. He
tried to work harder to forget. Yet she was there every day, and she
was interesting and interested. And they worked together very well.
The
store was rapidly turning around. John was turning round and round.
His adolescent was alive and yearning and active. Like all
adolescents, he was bound to get caught eventually.
John's
wife found out about his relationship when she caught him in a lie
about where he was one evening. John confessed at the time that he
had some feelings for Patty even though their relationship had not
turned sexual. John's wife was furious, feeling betrayed after a
lifetime of loyalty and responsible motherhood.. John promised the
relationship would stop.
However, John continued to see Patty and lie to his wife. He
couldn't understand this compulsion since he had always been a
moral, honest man. He felt guilty. He couldn't stop seeing Patty
because his feelings were so strong. He didn't realize that his
strong feelings marked the emergence of his ignored, unguided
adolescent. His adolescent came unbidden and unwanted. His
adolescent was in love. His adolescent was also out of control. His
adolescent was experimenting at the crossroads.
Since
John had always been so responsible and traditional, he never had a
healthy adolescence. He didnŐt know how to handle such strong
adolescent feelings. His wife found out again about his dishonesty
and threatened to leave. This is where John came into counseling. He
was terribly torn. As we have seen in this story and will see in the
story of Alex in the next chapter, the adolescent comes out,
unbidden, because he is a part of us that wants to grow and be
initiated. He often does it in unhealthy ways because he hasn't been
fathered well. But his coming out is really a sign of our hardwired
need for taking those next steps to initiation. The road to
initiation must go through adolescence. There is no detour around
the crossroads.
In
John's case he was acting out his adolescent in looking for a
companion. He was looking to find a part of himself different from
his role as father and traditional husband. He was unconsciously
trying to separate from traditional family, and grow as an
individual. His dishonesty arose from the unguided adolescent who
was obsessed with Patty, another adolescent to share with. His
adolescent didn't want a mother. He wanted a companion.
John
didn't realize his midlife issues were triggering the adolescent in
him to grow. Without guidance he would probably regress into using
Patty as his next mother object, or return to the patriarchy,
unfulfilled and bitter. John didn't realize that his needs for
companionship sprang more from needing brothers and sisters, rather
than mothers and fathers. He didn't realize that Patty represented
his adolescent hunger for a life outside the village. He didn't
realize that his obsession for Patty was an adolescent urge to find
his own identity as a man
Healthy Adolescence
Adolescence is the time of significant relationships outside the
family. The adolescent has a need to separate from family, mother
and father. He needs to experiment with being a separate person,
though he still needs a good father as a safety net. This
experimental time is the time of transitional separation from
father. He separates partially, developing significant relationships
with peers, especially male peers.
Friendship is the new relationship that this time brings. Friendship
allows a man to significantly separate from family yet get the
support needed for the initiatory journey. Friendship with men gives
a man significant masculine energy, without a regressive pull toward
the patriarchy. Friendship with a woman allows for support, without
the regressive pull toward the mother object. In this chapter I will
talk about the necessary bonding in friendship that men need with
other men.
Adolescence is the time when a boy experiments with the edge of the
village, where all the other adolescent boys are also hanging out.
In some African societies, even today, the adolescent boys have
their own huts, still in the village, but away from family for most
of the day. They return at night, not ready for total separation,
yet much more attached to their brothers than their family. I
repeat. All men have a hardwired urge to bond with other men. The
urge is there because the need is there.
All men
have a deep need for brothers. The natural tendency for young
adolescents is to explore friendship and teamwork with other boys,
in preparation for many adult pursuits that benefit the community.
For example, in primitive societies men had to learn to work
together in intricate patterns of behavior and nonverbal
communication in order to be successful as hunters and feeders of
the community. Cooperation was vital for survival. Teamwork was born
way back then.
Today
the overpowering urge men and boys have for sports has a lot to do
with this hardwired need to team up. The hand and head signals in
football, baseball and basketball mimic the silent hunting signals
of our distant fathers. The high of winning as a team often brings
the deepest satisfaction that many men feel. The bonds of the team
often override the bonds of blood. Men often talk of team as family.
This
same sense of bonded togetherness for a purpose comes out in war.
Sometimes the closest many men have ever felt to another person
comes in war, the facing of death, with each covering his brother's
ass. The warrior yearns to fight with other warriors. Though men
don't miss the violence and destruction of war, they often miss
terribly their brothers in war. The sense of a warrior's loyalty to
each other is really the strongest motivation men have to endure the
violence of war. The military has always taken advantage of this
loyalty to make men fight in the first place. Forget about the
purpose of fighting, just don't let down your brother. Men are
hardwired to care about their brothers.
Aggressiveness and Selfhood
At 12
or 13, an adolescent is able to start looking at himself as a truly
separate psychological entity. Before this time a boy is not
neurologically or psychologically able to live out the reality of a
separate self. This emerging sense of self and the comfort of being
an individual is a precursor to full initiation. Experiencing other
men as brothers is one sign of the emerging independent self.
Another sign is the rise of focused, aggressive energy.
Hormonal changes probably trigger the neurological and psychological
changes that impel a boy to start acting as a separate being.
Malidoma Some' feels that the "hormonal invasion" of adolescence is
the start of the initiatory ordeal. Looked at this way, male
aggressiveness is the first sign of the urge of initiatory
individuality. Testosterone signals the readiness for testing.
In the
presence of elders masculine aggressiveness can be guided into
initiatory energy. Without elders the aggression becomes very
dangerous. Adolescence is the time of the height of warrior energy.
Intense energy is present that is suddenly able to be focused. The
adolescent starts using energy and aggressiveness for a purpose. He
is able to get things done without energy being inefficiently
dissipated. Adolescence is the start of working for a purpose in the
face of obstacle and pain.
However, there can be a problem in the purpose. At first, the
adolescent needs to borrow his father's goals to practice on.
Otherwise his warrior energy, like youth gangs of today, is often
used to perform courageous, but empty, warrior acts of mayhem and
crime. This is initiatory energy gone wrong. This is another facet
of the father wound.
A
healthy adolescent borrows his father's king energy, his father's
values, to facilitate his warrior energy. He doesn't yet have the
strength or the wisdom to find his own goals. That will come with
the ordeal. He also needs his father's energy to help him when his
focus falters. Without the father's values and guidance, the
adolescent is left with overwhelming energy, trying to prove a
manhood he knows nothing about.
As
Robert Bly points out, the sibling society does not look at any
traditions. precedents, religions beyond itself to find purpose.
Fathers are absent. Elders are unformed. Natural aggressiveness
becomes destructive, not because aggression is wrong, but because
unguided aggression is so erratic and valueless. This is when
aggression becomes violence.
Carl
Jung called the process of becoming a whole, mature person
individuation. Adolescence is the start of the individuation
process. As the adolescent becomes more confident in his warrior
energy, he will naturally start to wonder about the purpose of his
efforts. He starts to have the thinking ability to understand the
abstract goals that society is based on. He has the newfound ability
to dissect those goals in his own head and find out if his actions
really further those goals. He starts to use his aggressiveness to
find his own way by setting his own boundaries.
Adolescent aggressiveness gives a man the strength to set
boundaries. Boundaries allow separation to happen. Warrior energy is
boundary setting energy. Boundaries provide the space in which a man
experiments with other values, where he can live without being
pushed or questioned. The mini-separation of boundary setting starts
to give focus to his life. This is a precursor of full initiation
where he will find the fuller values that will guide the rest of his
life. It is within healthy boundaries that a man finds his
individual self.
Adolescents are often the genesis of healthy social movements as
exemplified in student movements from Berkeley to Tianeman Square to
our own civil rights movement. They traditionally form a healthy
balance with the elder, whose job it is to preserve the good social
values and norms. The adolescent is always the liberal and the elder
the conservative. Society needs the searching, questioning
adolescent, who is seeking individuation.
As we
will see, newly initiated adults, continuing the drive of the
adolescent, continually bring new spiritual values to a culture to
keep it from atrophying into empty habits and rituals. Adolescence
is the start of a community renewing itself. The warrior energy, as
it comes out in aggressiveness, is the natural energy of
individuation for a man. It is also the natural archetypal energy of
the new life of the community. Adolescent energy is the energy of
the emerging self, fighting through the rigid roles of the
patriarchy.
Aggressiveness and Violence
Some
anthropologists minimize initiation by looking at it primarily as a
way the community protects itself from the violence of its own men.
They maintain that initiation binds the natural male violence and
directs it outward. The community then uses the violence for the
tribe's purposes. This understanding assumes that men are
essentially violent and violence is minimally controllable. It also
assumes that aggressiveness is always destructive.
When
women talk about the men's movement they talk about the hope of
stemming male violence. Many feminists see male violence as the
scourge of modern civilization. To many people, modern men are not
noted for the positive qualities of male aggressiveness but the
negative qualities of male violence. Nobody can argue that human
history is not a history of violence, a history of uncontrolled
aggression and destruction. This history supports my psychological
assumption that uninitiated men are destructive men.
However, from an adolescent point of view, history can be looked on
as armies of uninitiated adolescents roaming the world just as
adolescent gangs roam our inner city streets today. The question is
do these adolescents have an innate violent side that comes out
eventually, or are they lost in a fatherless and elderless world
with no guidance for their warrior energy. Are all men closet gang
bangers or are men made for something better?
Indigenous people knew that unguided male aggressiveness can turn
into male violence. Yet their motivation for initiation was more
concerned with the sacred other side and the sacred mission of their
people. Indigenous people respected warrior energy, the phallic
energy of the initiated man. They relied on it for their survival in
the material world. Yet they knew, more importantly, that an
initiated man had found the values that would use masculine
aggressiveness for the higher purpose of their community. They knew
that guided aggressiveness provided the energy for future
generations.
They
did bind masculine aggressiveness, as the father should. But the
purpose was more sacred than self-protective. Moore and Gillete
provide a wise insight into the dynamic of violence when talking
about the warrior within. The healthy warrior is not after revenge
in setting boundaries and moving toward a goal. He is not about to
use aggressiveness as violent manipulation. He is not about
intimidation for profit or pleasure. He is there to protect the
integrity of the self and his individual initiatory journey. He
arrives to enable the adolescent within to have the tools and
motivation to separate from the village.
Violence results from the uncontrolled warrior energy of the
unguided adolescent. Violence is used to control others for a
selfish purpose. The dark warrior has little regard for any welfare
beyond his own. He has no values beyond survival or
self-aggrandizement. He hasn't been led to a place of higher values.
The
women's movement is most concerned with domestic violence, where men
harm the women in their lives, physically as well as emotionally.
They are right to be so concerned. Remember, an uninitiated man is a
dangerous man, always emotionally, and many times physically.
Domestic violence is a major symptom of the destructiveness of the
dark adolescent warrior. It is gang behavior behind closed doors.
Domestic violence is the most obvious sign of an uninitiated man
using his power to meet his regressive need for the mother object.
This violence is most often a desperate man's attempt to bind the
mother object to himself. Domestic violence is the result of a man
terrified by his abandonment issues and terrified for his safety.
Most often a man who is prone to domestic violence will do whatever
it takes to cut off wife or lover from all outside support. He
builds walls around her.
At
first an uninitiated woman is thrilled by the attention and sees
them as acts of love. Being uninitiated she feels important through
her man. Only later, when she tries to assert some independence,
does she realize his attention is a prison. The jailer is violence.
He needs to control her to feel safe. The threat of violence is
usually enough to keep her in the prison. Invariably the immature
man will try to explain that his violence is really a sign of love.
"I wouldn't hit you if I didn't love you so much," says the confused
adolescent.
Guided
masculine energy comes out in aggressiveness that protects values,
not a mother object. An emerging adolescent has already set some
boundaries, and is not terrified at being abandoned. The adolescent
needs his aggressiveness to survive initiation, though he needs the
father to help contain this aggressiveness until these values are
found. Giving up this aggressiveness would only cause a massive
regression, not create a peaceful member of society.
Competition
It is a
cruel paradox that the dark patriarchy uses healthy male
aggressiveness and turns it into the competitiveness of keeping men
apart. Where men are kept apart as brothers there will usually be
some kind of violence, disguised as unhealthy competition.
Adolescence has always been the time of the brother, except in our
modern society.
Friendship, to a person who is taught from an early age to be
independent and competitive, is confusing. Men are told of teamwork
in corporate America, and team players are supposed to be rewarded.
But my experience suggests that the teamwork really rewards the
topmost, dark fathers while the team players are often betrayed. Men
band together at the corporate level to get an edge on their
coworkers rather than to help each other.
Men in
our society see groups of other men as instant competition rather
than as avenues of initiatory cooperation and support. The negative
father voice, intent on sabotaging growth, tells men how many ways
other men will beat them out if they are not careful. As I have
said, the patriarchy is designed so that there are many losers and
very few winners. The system is designed for a man to be a great
competitor or a loser, pitting men against men for the patriarch's
gain.
Manhood
is defined in terms of a dark competition. The playing field is the
work world. Other men are obstacles to manhood, not brothers or
friends. There isnŐt much room for a lot of men in this world.
Competition supposedly weeds the men from the boys. In this
environment it is easy to see how men do violence to other men. Men
are taught to believe they are in it alone. Men are taught that
ultimately no other man will help. Men are taught to be selfish, and
not think past their own needs and the needs of their family.
Stuart
Miller writes in his book, Men And Friendship, that Ňmost of
modern life demands that we be ready to compete (thereby ever-honing
us to belittle, to criticize, to search for flaws).Ó In earlier
times competition did not mean what it does today. Even in Greek
antiquity the idea of competition was to use it to bring out the
best in each opponent. Michael Meade points out that the word
competition actually comes from the Latin words which mean to
petition together. In the Greek case, each man's petition was for
the gods to bring out the best in each other. Competition was a kind
of mini-initiation in which brothers helped each other find their
best selves.
Michael
Gurian, in his book The Good Son, believes that competition
can be a kind of nurturance between men, especially between a father
and a son. It can be a way of teaching in a language a growing boy
understands. As long as competition has the value of calling out
natural talents as its highest goal, it can enrich both a man and
his community. In this way it becomes an important preparation for
initiation, both as a way of receiving fathering and a way of
bonding with brothers.
Adolescent males are hardwired to seek brothers. Male friendship is
one of the most potent forms of triggering the initiatory archetype
and gaining a sense of strength to do the initiatory work.
Patriarchal competition is unnatural. Competitive violence is not
what men are made for. Men are made to bond for gaining strength and
courage. The dark patriarchy, however, is afraid of initiation. The
dark patriarchy only wants talents that serve its cause, only
strengthening the bond of father to son, not brother to brother.
Larry Pesavento ©2005
