In my men and masculinity class, we’re making our way through Robert Bly’s maddening, difficult, and challenging Iron John. Though the book is not nearly as celebrated as it was in the early 1990s (when it became an essential text of at least one wing of the men’s movement), it still is a useful introduction to thinking about men and "men’s work" on psychological, cultural, and spiritual levels.
It’s difficult, with a class that is heavily female, to keep the discussions about Bly from taking on an Oprah-esque quality. As we read through Bly’s account of the various stages of male growth, it’s important that both male and female students feel comfortable sharing their own responses (and their own stories) that are triggered by the readings. Where it gets problematic is when some want to use Bly — or the class — as a forum for relationship advice. I admit that I play a part in that (sometimes, I have talk-show host fantasies), and sometimes, I think allowing the class to discuss romantic relationships is an ideal way to help them connect the material to their own lives.
In my favorite chapter of Iron John which we talked about today (chapter four, for those who know the book), Bly talks about the phenomenon of "numbness":
In high school, a girl might ask "Do you love me?" I couldn’t answer. If I asked her the same question, she might reply "Well, I respect you, and I admire you, and I’m fond of you, and I’m even interested in you, but I don’t love you. Apparently when she looked into her chest, she saw a whole spectrum of affections, a whole procession of feelings, and she could easily tell them all apart. If I looked into my chest, I saw nothing at all. I had then either to remain silent or fake it.
Some women feel hurt when a man will not "express his feelings", and they conclude that he is holding back, or "telling them something" by such withholding; but it’s more likely that when such a man asks a question of his chest, he gets no answer at all.
When I first read Bly, more than a decade ago, those two paragraphs made me shudder with emotion and recognition. "My God", I thought, "that’s me. I thought I was the only one." Throughout my teen years and beyond, up until very recently, I struggled with that same numbness. Like Bly, when asked how I felt (as opposed to being asked what I thought or what I wanted), I would either "remain silent or fake it." Given my generally extroverted personality, I became skilled at faking it. I learned what other folks, especially the women in my life, wanted me to be feeling — and so I reported what I hoped was appropriate. (This explains why I got married so often, actually. I may not have always known what I was feeling, but I was very attracted to the certainty of the women who became my wives. They knew how they felt about me, and I let that be enough.)
I write about this because I’ve seen so many of my male students (and the boys I work with in youth group) respond as I did, with the "My God, I thought I was the only one." It’s not that we’re all icy sociopaths, far from it. It’s that I — and so many of the men I’ve known — grew up lacking any authentic kind of emotional vocabulary for their inner terrain. As Bly puts it:
My head was fiery and full of blood, and my genitals were fiery and curious too. The area in between was the problem.
I’ve read that sentence aloud in a lot of groups, and seen many a flash of recognition pass over the face of many a young man (and, to be fair, a few young women too, though that recognition is usually, not always, for the men in their lives.) I know full well it hasn’t been all men’s experience; many younger guys I know claim (perhaps rightly) that they are as in touch with their emotions as any woman. But they are few, a privileged few at that, and I’m convinced that exploring this numbness is one of the most vital roles of the men’s movement.
It was other men, not women, who helped me to overcome this "numbness" and to begin the hard work of stopping the habit of "faking it." I have found that even now, it’s with other men that I do my best work of finding out what I really feel. That defensive numbness that began before I can remember began to wear off when I began to hang out more and more with other men who had done the work of learning to feel. And because I was so good at telling the women in my life what I thought they wanted to hear about my feelings, I needed to learn to first tell the truth to men who would not be wounded or upset when they learned what was really going on inside of me.
With the boys in my youth group, my goal is an explicit one — helping those who are numb to be less so by providing a safe, (occasionally) all-male environment in which to talk openly. It’s a slow process, but an immensely rewarding one. With my college students, it’s not as prescriptive. But I am trying to introduce them to the various goals of men’s work, and overcoming numbness surely ranks as one of the big ones.
I’ll be 38 on Sunday. Even after years of "men’s work" and therapy and small groups and journaling and retreats and oodles of prayer, I still struggle with numbness. Even with my fiancee now, I sometimes feel bereft of an adequate emotional vocabulary. But I know enough now to know that those around me are not wrong for wanting me to share my genuine emotions, and I’m not a bad person because my truest feelings often seem so elusive. As Bly says,
Some of that numbness is gone now. I can answer questions about my feelings, and I can see people down there with different colored robes, walking around, and I can tell one from the other.
But there are still more down there whom I’ve not yet seen.
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