|
Many men today feel like they’re falling behind, unable to meet traditional definitions of success. They see that others have succeeded, both before them and today, and conclude one thing: This is my failure.
In our culture, men are expected to be providers and achievers. You’ve “made it” if you can pay your bills and land promotions. The social status of another person is what we use as a shortcut to judge who he is. And so we assume others do the same about us. When a man feels he hasn’t reached the level he should, he works harder. He will bring work home with him, physically or mentally. Anxiety over unmet expectations builds, making it harder to get things done and often leading to burnout. The looming fear of getting fired - the ultimate blow to manhood - becomes a constant source of stress. These pressures are made worse by how work is set up. The primary goal of any employer is to get the most output for the least amount of input. So they put workers on a treadmill and gradually increase the speed. If they see you can run at 4 MPH without faltering, they increase it to 5. From 5 to 6. If at 6.5 MPH you struggle to keep up, then they now know what your max speed is. Some employers may demand 7 MPH, and the job market is such that if you can’t do it, they will find someone who will. But either way the preference is that you alone do it. Paying you $60,000 to do a ton of work leads to more profit than paying two people $50,000 to do it. So if we know work is naturally set up to always have us on the verge of breaking, why do we feel so terrible when we do? Times are changing, but much of it is still to do with a pressure to “man up.” Our grandfathers overcame the fascists without complaint, so the story goes. Being able to work through pain is the highest cultural virtue. And that mindset is exploited by those who want things from you. If you are not able to cut it, then it is ‘your’ failure. Buy an expensive watch and you can convince people you have succeeded. If they are convinced, maybe you can convince yourself. Buy the biggest TV and you have the most impressive way to distract from the nagging pain in the back of your mind. Go into debt. The same people who promote the idea that you must be strong, independent, and constantly working are more than willing to lend you money—at interest rates they control. In therapy I see again and again that the symptom is not the real problem. Men come in all the time with vague feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. They tend to want “tools” to get rid of the anxiety, so they can get back in the race. But anxiety is not an ailment, it is a beacon. It is a red flag. It is an alarm going off that says “here, over here, this is what needs attention!” Just addressing how not to feel anxious is putting a band-aid on a lopped off finger stub. We need to talk about how you got here in the first place. How we all keep getting here. And we need to question in what way we would like to participate in the culture that is exploiting you and grinding you down. I often will ask “what does being a man mean to you?” I find that the answers are not usually ones that we have independently come up with. Rather they are usually just a re-frame of what we have been told being a man means. Which to me means we are living someone else’s life instead of our own.
0 Comments
There is a story that came out of the Russian Empire in the 18th Century, that golden age of the tsar. The story is about a man named Grigory Potemkin. Grigory was born in what then passed for a middle class and rose in the ranks of the army. A chance encounter saw him in the presence of the tsar who favored him and promoted him. Grigory’s ascent continued. He lost his left eye at some point and that slowed him down temporarily, but he rebounded well enough. He killed some Turks in a war and everyone agreed he was a worthy man. So worthy in fact that Grigory was put in charge of the southern regions that Russia had won from those Turks. Running a restive new frontier was hard work, and Grigory had every reason to want to show he was up for it. In 1787 the tsar decided to take a little trip to this region with some foreign ambassadors. This was the chance for Grigory to really shine. So the story goes that the tsar’s barge would approach a village on the Dnieper River. Grigory, having gotten there ahead of them, had erected painted facades of buildings. These one walled facades like Wild West movie sets would face the river, with Grigory and his men dressed as peasants milling about them looking productive. The barge would set sail and the “peasants” would hurry the facades further down the river to be erected at another sight. In this way, the tsar and all aboard got the message that Grigory Potemkin had pacified the wild frontier. That Russia was strong. And so with this story ‘Potemkin Villages’ became a part of our vocabulary. It’s a term popular in economics and politics, but these facades can be found in our relationships too. Indeed sometimes they can be found in our very minds. Say we are just starting to date someone. We dress nicely, groom ourselves, clean the place up, and generally give the best impression of us possible. Over time the real us is revealed, and so is the real them. It’s up to both people to either accept the other or move on. But sometimes we don’t reveal all. It is common to find couples who months or years down the road have huge conflicts because of the revelation of things long hidden. Sometimes we don’t just put fresh coats of paint on our metaphorical villages, sometimes we instead erect and maintain facades. It can be jarring when our partner finds out the truth. Relationships can end not because of what our partner discovered behind the facade - our shameful secrets - but because there were facades. There is one more important element in the legendary story of Grigory Potemkin. The tsar at the time was not some bushy mustachioed Romanov man. The tsar in 1787 was Empress Catherine the Great. And Grigory Potemkin wasn’t just an upwardly mobile army man, he was her one time lover. It’s next to impossible to analyze the thoughts and motivations of a man who died over 200 years ago. But for the sake of the story we could guess all sorts of things. Perhaps Grigory was desperate to win Catherine’s affection again. We know Grigory had suffered a dip in confidence after the loss of his eye and had retreated for a while from society. We could also imagine the frontiers of 18th Century Russia being a ruthless place and the pressures of running it to be overwhelming. But perhaps also there were things in Grigory’s mind that he did not want to face. All of the above could have combined with some shameful secret of his own that he was carrying. He may have crafted facades for Catherine, the other army men, or for the European observers. Or perhaps his Potemkin Villages were a reflection of the facades in his own mind. Perhaps by winning the favor of his empress, the dignitaries, and his boys he could continue to avoid looking in the dark corners of his mind. This happens frequently with people who have suffered trauma. Our mind seeks to protect us from heavy feelings. It’s a noble cause the mind is fighting for, but it has its costs. We put up facades around the stuff in our head we can’t bear to face. And we walk around those walls without daring to look through the windows to see the pain that lies behind. The trouble is, what is concealed back there does not always stay still. What is behind there is like nuclear waste. It seeps out between the cracks and infects our day to day lives. It poisons our lives and our relationships, often in such subtle ways that we don’t know that it is the true cause. It is definitely not easy to confront what is back there, or to tear down those facades. Few things are harder. But if you have those facades know that when you are ready that tearing them down can be worthwhile work.  Potemkin with the Battleship by Alexander Roitburd (2016) |
AuthorPhilip Monte Verde LMSW Categories
All
Archives
September 2024
|
RSS Feed