Finding Balance In Relationships With Men

For many people, achieving balance means cutting back on extremes. In the fall of 1990, I took on a huge project in my career. To balance that out, I decided to run the 1991 Long Beach Marathon. These two extremes equaled balance and sanity and a fertile state of mind for me.

That winter I became fascinated by the possibility of balancing the masculine and the feminine in my own behavior and ways of being. That eventually grew into a desire to balance them everywhere: in relationships, parenting, organizations, systems, our society, even, our world.

Over the years, I've come to value masculine and feminine energies, expressions and points of view in both women and men. I wasn't always that way. Like many women, I was proud of my own masculinity, though I didn't call it that. And I would quickly deprive men of theirs, though I didn't call it that either. I called my own masculine ways of being and expression, "self-sufficiency" and "independence," "competency" and "wherewithal." If I ever thought about emasculating men, it was in terms of "keeping men in line" or "not letting them get too full of themselves." Like our culture, I celebrated masculinity in women, but denigrated most things male.

None of this was conscious of course. Until it was called to my attention by two conversations which changed my life forever. The first was an interaction between a friend of mine and an older man. My friend asked, basically, "Why do men change?" Referring to the common complaint that men are on their best behavior in the beginning of a relationship. The gentleman's response was to call my friend a "Frog Farmer." He went on to explain that some women turn frogs into princes; a Frog Farmer turns princes into frogs.

With a sudden vision of rows upon rows of frogs with tiny human heads, and my ex-husband and ex-boyfriends looking up at me from the front, I realized I was, indeed, a Frog Farmer. And a very successful one too. This moment set me upon a quest to study men and find out how I brought out the worst in them.

Six months into studying men, the second conversation happened. I received a phone call from Ellen Hurst. This was significant to begin with because I have a policy of only accepting advice from people who have what I want. And Ellen was the only woman I knew whose husband of almost twenty years clearly adored her and was still courting her.

Ellen began the conversation with, "Alison, we need to talk." She said, "Men are attracted to you like bees to honey. But when you're done with them, it's as if they've been with a vampire." You can imagine my surprise. Ellen lay out for me every way that she had seen me "castrate" men, or knew that I had by the result. As she explained each method, I could only agree. But I wondered what the problem was. It had always been my understanding that this behavior was encouraged by other women to protect ourselves from the effects of unchecked testosterone.

Then Ellen asked me to stop. Just like that. Cut it out.

Confronted with this request, I realized that everything I had learned about men in the previous six months had been absorbed in the contexts, "Know thy enemy," and "The best defense is a good offense." I had used all my discoveries about men wanting to be my hero and wanting to make me happy against them. I had become an even more effective emasculator.

I still wasn't sorry. It seemed necessary to emasculate men--to keep me safe. That was when I saw the sixteen year-old running my life. The saucy teen who had concluded that men "are bigger and stronger and they'll hurt you." In the instant that I saw that inexperienced, unknowledgeable, scared little girl, I knew that I would never experience the true power of a woman until I allowed men their own power.

I told Ellen, "Okay, I'll stop." Her response surprised me. She said, "I'm not asking this for you. I'm asking you to stop castrating men because I believe when women stop castrating men, men will give us everything we ever wanted. Including peace and the end of hunger."

Letting men be masculine was the beginning of balancing the yin and the yang for me. It was also the beginning of a fantastic journey that has spanned almost two decades. In the process I found out that men are both the prince and the frog. And that we have a lot to do with which one we get.

In the weeks that come, I hope to share the fruits of my adventures with you. Some are shocking revelations, some are hilarious observations, some are comforting tidbits; some insights explain the mundane, some assertions may illuminate the sacred. Whether you're committed to a better romantic relationship, or to better schools, to more success with your family or with your company, understanding the profound effect of femininity and masculinity can only help.

Comments

[googleholic]

success

[Trilby]

My husband turned into a frog the day after we got back from our honeymoon and it has taken 15 years of struggle for him to become someone I can enjoy living with again. I would be very glad to finally understand why that happened and where I went wrong (if it was indeed my fault).

[marcymont]

BTW - Years ago I was sitting in the Uffizi in Florence, reading some Ayn Rand book - likely the Fountainhead, and a woman sat down next to me and said "I read that book, it made me want to go out and marry an architect." And I replied "Well, it makes me want to go out and BE an architect."

Years later, this all came to mind again as a personal research topic after realizing how women often project - even exaggerate - their own animus qualities onto men they are drawn to, missing the chance to develop those same qualities in themselves. Or poorly treat men who don't have the characeristics they want in themselves. This is a great intellectual challenge to explore finding an inner yin/yang - anima/animus balance in one's own life, and it can lead to learning to see these new type of more balanced men and to really appreciate their qualities.

(And as a result of this personal contemplative journey, I have, with mututal bemusement , helped turn a frog back into a prince by supporting and celebrating a newly-found partner's embrace of both his feminine and masculine archetypal characteristics.)

While we can celebrate our inner journey as feminists, let's also celebrate the emergence of this New Man - he is our best chance to really change the world, side-by-side.

[marcymont]

You are on to something really valuable here. In the last year I've been trying to find articles on women embracing their animus from Jungian perspectives, and to my consternation, most articles are about women fending off men projecting their feminine anima onto the women. What about our feminist perspective, how we can embrace our own masculine qualities as a healthy counterpart to our more easily accessible feminine? And not need to crush men on our way to self discovery? Can we also learn to love and foster in men both of their counterpart aspects? (And perhaps also come to better understand why men with only their yang/animus operating are so tedious for feminists.)

I do think women can help breed a new type of man, as your friend suggested. But we have to give them a supportive, safe environment to bring their anima forwards and embrace her with in them selves, to achieve an inner balance that then becomes a world changing viewpoint. Robert Bly has tried to talk about this new man ... he is emerging as a positive response to feminism. I think this is probably, just like feminism, an evolution in gender that is going to have fruitful ramifications on a much bigger scale than we have yet imagined.


I look forwards to watching your story unfold – thanks for opening the door!

[mamacat]

There seems to be an underlying assumption that to behave in a masculine manner is to be destructive. Is that a fair assumption to make? Perhaps we need to examine what is means to be masculine and/or feminine.

When it comes to sexual behaviour, the definitions seem pretty clear, or clear enough. When it comes to other types of behaviour, perhaps it is unfair to use these sexual terms as blankets to cover complex topics that do not come in one-flavor­-describes­-all types.

I can understand the tendency to equate masculinity with destructive behaviour, especially when I look at how the draft dodgers in the White House took us into this stupid war in Iraq. It seems to me that their desire to be seen as masculine contributed to their need to go to war. They chose not to go to war when they had the chance, as young men, during the Vietnam War, but now that they are old men they want to make up for lost time by sending other young men to their deaths. Anyway, I digress. Masculinity (showing strength of character) = Crushing Men? Not really. It is much more complicated than that.

[imfedup]

You have my attention!

[iupty]

I look forward to reading your articles! This is a topic that our culture doesn't really know how to deal with- the balancing of male and female. And as someone who had an appreciated "feminist" education, I would love to see a real analysis of the roles that we create for each other without it denigrating into a typical battle of the sexes rhetoric.