Twenty minutes later this same man—one I arrogantly thought embodied so much of what I detested about traditional masculinity—was crying as he talked about his marriage falling apart at seven years of recovery and how he had been kicked out of the house again.
“Whoa. What is going on here?” I asked myself. And that was the first time I began to see the Water. I realized right away that in the rooms of the twelve-step community men expressed themselves differently than they did virtually everywhere else in our society (though that has changed somewhat during the past two decades).
Of course, that was one of many examples from my first year of recovery that I could point to demonstrating how men in twelve-step recovery tend to express masculinity differently than in American society at-large. The more I travel the country talking about these issues, the clearer it is that the biggest problem with the Man Rules is how oblivious to them so many of us are.
This is what Jim is talking about in the quote that heads this chapter; he has a choice now in how he gets to be a man and what that means to him. He is becoming aware of the Water. The freedom inherent in this idea is immeasurable, yet so many men have no idea of the opportunities and choices that are available to them. A lot of men have not thought about their ideas of being a man. If you do not consciously reflect on this, you can’t see or feel the Water in which you are swimming. When asked about the process of how his ideas of being a man have evolved, Jose said it this way: “I’ve let go of old ideas that I thought served me well but were actually based on false information or poor perspective on my part.”
How aware of your own internal conversations are you? What do the voices from your past tell you about being a man? I encourage you to listen closely without preconceptions. Only in this way can you come to truly see the Water in which you swim every day.
My guess is that a lot of the Rules have been invisible to you. If we do not consciously call them out, they tend to operate in the shadows, driving a lot of our behavior, with little awareness on our part. We treat them as reality, and as inevitable. How often have you heard the dismissive phrase, “Well, that’s just how men are”? I have heard it all of my life, and a lot of the time it did not apply to me. So I thought the only thing that made sense to me at the time was, I must not be much of a man. That sentiment haunted me for a long time, and I didn’t think I could tell anyone about it. Once I had the courage to begin talking about the insecurity of feeling like I wasn’t a real man and share about the negative judgments I hurled at myself, I heard from man after man that I was not alone; many men have these feelings in common.
Let me be very clear that the Rules are not necessarily bad. How the Rules are taught to us (sometimes literally beaten into us) and how we respond to them can be problematic. Rigidly following the Rules is unhealthy because there is no freedom; there is no choice. The Rules at their extremes are toxic. They lead to disconnection, violence, homophobia, objectification of women, and extreme competition, as well as isolation, loneliness, self-hatred, and misery. Discover who you are despite the Rules, and you cannot help but become the man you were meant to be. With self-aware practice, the Rules become more relaxed and flexible. They feel less like tight, constricting clothes and more like loose-fitting, comfortable garments. Mike said this about how recovery and the Twelve Steps had changed his ideas of who he was as a man: “I like what I see when I look in the mirror. I have come to a level of self-acceptance I’m comfortable with.”
Many of the men (and women) I know who defend their behavior by saying, “It’s just who I am,” are often lost in the Rules because they are not aware of the Water. These are the people who keep using old, out-of-date maps. It is easier to simply say men don’t know how to communicate feelings and continue to be disconnected in their relationships than to take the risk of communicating feelings. That involves immense vulnerability for those of us who have been told all of our lives that sharing feelings, outside of anger, is not manly. As Mike says, “When I share my feelings, honest connection is possible.” The converse also seems to be true: When we do not share our feelings or our inner lives, it is hard to truly connect with others. This is just one of the many “ways that men are” that I still hear all the time, even in the rooms of recovery.
Of course, the Rules are not always specific and concrete; they can be a set of ideas that we react to or resist. For instance, all of my life I have felt more emotional and sensitive than most men (and women). I have found this to be a common trait I share with a lot of men in recovery. The Rules, however, dictate that men are not to show emotions other than anger, and that certain emotions, such as fear, sadness, and hurt, are signs of weakness. These emotions are associated with being feminine, which in the context of the Man Rules has negative connotations. Maybe we feel “less than.” We may even spend a fair amount of time trying not to engage in certain Rules that we consider unhealthy and even destructive, but doing so may affect how we feel about ourselves as men. However, if we’re self-aware and allow ourselves to experience how becoming emotionally vulnerable can enhance the quality of our connections with others, through practice we begin to have a better understanding of the man we want to be rather than one whose relationships are being suffocated by the Rules.
Implicit in many of the Rules are a lot of “don’ts.” For example, if the Rule is “Men have to be strong,” an underlying message is “Don’t be weak.” Which is the greater Rule—that men have to be strong or that men cannot be weak or show weakness of any kind? In other words, the negatives associated with many of the Rules tend to be the stronger part of the message. These “don’ts” are important because, at the heart of it, they are telling us as men what and who not to be. How much of your identity is built around what and who you are not? How much time do you spend not being somebody as opposed to being someone, or more importantly, being who you are and who you want to become?
Interestingly, if you look at the “don’ts” and get rid of the word “don’t,” you get a list of Rules that tend to be associated with a particular group of people. Let’s look at some of them.
• Don’t be weak.
• Don’t show emotion.
• Don’t ask for help.
• Don’t cry.
• Don’t care about relationships.
What group do we tend to identify these statements with? Women. Practically from the moment we are born, men are raised with messages that conflict with those given to girls and women. We receive messages—explicitly and implicitly—that not only are certain behaviors against the Rules, they are to be avoided because they are associated with the “weaker” sex. Now, consider that some of the same behaviors are exactly what we are expected to practice in our most intimate relationships. This is one of the phenomena that creates serious internal tension for men and conflict between men and women in relationships.
You may be saying, “But, Dan, I don’t live by a lot of these Rules.” Fair enough. But as a man you are still frequently judged consistent with them. Chances are there is still a voice inside you, a model of a “manly” man that you have internalized, with a tendency to judge you more harshly than you realize when you don’t follow the Rules. I know that is the case for me, and I have been living an examined life with respect to my masculinity for a very long time.
The Man Rules have also changed a lot in the past two decades. They have loosened up, allowing for what I referred to in my master’s research as a “relaxed masculinity.” The armor I talked about earlier is less rigid. We have more flexibility and more room in which to move. I am convinced we are on the right path as we evolve as individual human beings and as a society. Unfortunately, I have also found that this relaxed masculinity can cause a great deal of confusion. In the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s the Rules were pretty clear. Men and women knew exactly how to act and how to be in relationship with each other. Half a century
