A Crisis of Male Loneliness
How Can We Help?
I thought that you all would love my conversation with Jungian therapist James Hollis, author of 19 books, including classics like Why Good People do Bad Things and Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life. But I didn’t know that it would resonate on quite the level that it has—or that many of you would write me that you also started crying when Hollis spoke to the cultural epidemic of male loneliness. I’m going to explore some of the roots of this loneliness in next week’s newsletter—specifically what’s going on with boys—but for now, I wanted to share what he writes on the topic in The Broken Mirror, which is my favorite Hollis book. (My friend Regina thinks The Eden Project and Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life are the best; we agree to disagree.)
While The Broken Mirror covers a lot of ground, Hollis made my breath catch when he got to the section about men.
Here he is:
“In later years, I was asked by various women’s groups to talk to them about those peculiar creatures with whom many of them lived. I appreciated their invitations as not many men’s groups would have requested the topic: how can we understand women better? I usually began by articulating three propositions, and asked them to imagine they were the defining frames of their lives.
“Imagine that all of your close friends, here and elsewhere, are cut away from your life forever. Those friends with whom you share your worries about your children, your marriages, your sex life or lack thereof, your body, your troubles in general—they are never again to be available to you.
“Imagine that your linkage to what you consider your internal guidance system—call it your instinct, or your intuition, or whatever—is severed forever.
“Imagine that your worth as a human being would forever be measured by your competitive wins or losses, and your general worth contingent on meeting elusive standards of productivity as defined by total strangers.”
Has your breath caught in your throat too?
Hollis then lists out what he’s come to understand about the lives of men. All the boldings are mine.
“Men’s lives are as much governed by restrictive role expectations as are the lives of women.
“Men’s lives are essentially governed by fear. Through the millennia, men’s chief task was to hide, deny, divert their core fears in the mistaken belief that every other little boy out there was not intimidated by overwhelming challenges and abiding fears of personal inadequacy.
“The power of the feminine is immense in the psychic economy of men. Men are born of women, and most of their early relationships are with women. Yet, their destiny is elsewhere. How can they become a man, whatever that means, with such a paucity of modeling, teaching, and mentoring by their kind? This educational discrepancy is especially deepened since men moved from the land and the crafts to offices and factories and came home dispirited, angry, and often self-medicated.
“Men collude in a conspiracy of silence whose aim is to suppress their emotional truth. By the time a boy is five or six, he has learned that to express his feelings, cry, or show what is going on inside is risky indeed. He has learned shame, ridicule, bullying, and isolation. If he doesn’t want to spend his life in those dismal neighborhoods, he has to keep his mouth shut. In time, keeping his mouth shut so strongly means keeping his mind shut also, and he often loses contact with what he really feels about anything. So, whenever he says, ‘I don’t know—I really don’t care what we do,’ he usually means it because he has lost his inner compass. For many, the chest is an arid zone.
“Because men must leave Mother, and transcend the mother complex, wounding is necessary. … In later life he will have a tendency to burden his partner with a profound ambivalence of both need and fear of encroachment.
“Men’s lives are violent because their souls have been violated. Because men’s souls are as violated as women’s, and because they have fewer psychic resources for protest and support, men will often turn to violence because many of the roles awaiting them will violate their souls even more. Few boys today want to grow up and be like their dads.
“Every man carries a deep longing for his father and for his tribal fathers.
“If men are to heal, they must activate within what they did not receive from without. Women cannot fix this mess. Only men can, and more and more men are realizing this, thus becoming better partners and dads.”
If you missed last week’s episode where we explored all of this, I’m putting the episode here:
Next week, I’m going to explore the crisis unfolding with boys—essentially what sets them up to experience the above. We’re going to get into why our current culture, which tends to insist that the feminizing of boys is the cause, is so deadly wrong.
NYC FRIENDS! There are a few spots left in the very intimate workshop I’m hosting with Lauren Roxburgh at The Well, THIS Sunday, September 22, from 10:30-3. You can get your tickets here. It’s a workshop on On Our Best Behavior paired with gentle movement from Lo—we will talk, excavate, move, and eat together. It’s called “Feel it to Heal It: Alchemizing Toxic Anger & Fear Into Compassion.” Come join us!
THE LATEST FROM THE PODCAST:
9/12: On finding our soul’s vocation with James Hollis
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
9/5: Why cynicism is not smart with Jamil Zaki, PhD
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
8/29: Contending with the Inner Critic with Tara Mohr
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
8/22: Navigating the Upper Limit Problem with Katie Hendricks, PhD
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
8/15: Magical overthinking with Amanda Montell
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
8/8: Qualities of good leaders with Jerry Colonna
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
8/1: Staying with discomfort in Part 2 with Thomas Hübl
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
7/29: My long-awaited conversation with the singular Carol Gilligan
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
7/25: Finding shadow in the body with Thomas Hübl
Apple | Spotify | Transcript
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Full archive HERE
My New York Times bestselling book—On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good—is out now.
As a mother to two boys, both now young adults, Hollis’s insights hit hard. And if “women can’t fix this,” I wonder what we CAN do… Does his book have any guidance?
This is such a powerful piece evoking empathy for the challenges faced by men. I look forward to hearing more.