It was Christmas Eve. She stayed in bed. She would not get up, no matter how hard he persuaded her. Her demons were with her, crowding her mind. They would not let her go; she would not let them go.
I find myself drawn into being in charge or leading. In any group situation I find that I see what we need to do to make a group vision work and that I work to create this. In committees I find myself chairing them to create a common vision. I see that this is about my mind and the skills I have developed over my life. I also see it as an expression of myself as a man. I have the ability to focus and see the way ahead—the vision—as well as what needs doing to get there—the detail. It is a part of what I see as my masculinity that I am proud of.
I would like to suggest a way to look at your life that will help you understand why you are here and what your purpose is.
My wife has been reading the book ‘Getting To “I Do” – The Secret To Doing Relationships Right‘ by the well-known relationship expert Dr Patricia Allen. She has been reading excerpts to me and I have been getting increasingly agitated.
Does the male menopause exist? Assessing opinions, the field seems to be divided. It certainly doesn’t have such a specific physical component as it does for women, our ‘reproductive organs’ are fully functional throughout the full course of our lives.
We do not suffer from the hormone imbalance that our female friends experience in their monthly cycles. Overall men are much more ‘steady’.
When both men and women are asked why do men cheat, the immediate responses are often,
Over at Good Men Project—Good Feed, we heard Gloria Steinem say, “We know that women can do what men can do, but we don’t know that men can do what women can do.”
They are extraordinary assertions that cry out to be challenged, not just the statements but also the assumptions behind them.
This move away from the feminine was achieved in tribal societies through initiation and ceremony. In modern society we have lost this blunting our access to our masculine characteristics and making the shift more problematic and painful. The lack of involvement of fathers in this process makes the situation worse. The result is increasing conflict between men and women because men either fail to make the transition or they over-compensate and dominate women.
It is similar to the stagnation of the First World War and its trenches filled with soldiers facing each other and dying for a forgotten principle. There is no point to it and no-one wins.
We face this stagnation in everyday life, The Battle of the Sexes. What are men and women, why all the strife between them?
What I loved was not just that people had fun but that they had fun with family and friends in their town. People were enjoying themselves because they knew the people they were spending time with and they enjoyed making fools of themselves.
