Monday, November 22, 2010

You Are A Hero

I was helping my son study for his Latin quiz this morning and learned something very interesting. The root word viri, from which comes virile and virtue, is the Latin word for both man and hero.

So if you think about that for a minute, to be a man is to be both a virtuous hero and a virile stud! Are you? Are you virtuous; do you live according to your virtues, or do you sell out regularly? Are you being a hero for your wife or are you tired and whining all the time? Virility has no room for tired and whining! Let's step it up a notch today. Be a hero - it's what being a man really means.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Transforming Pain

Robert Bly says we carry all of our hurts and pains around in a big sack that gets heavier and bigger as we age. But what is it that we do with that pain. As men we are much better at doing that holding. Perhaps our female counterparts can hold on to pain and endure far longer that we males can. So at some point we face the issue of having to do something with the pain.

The only thing that we can really do with it though is transform it. We transform pain when we listen and learn from its message - its lesson. Each pain has some specific message - a value to teach; a line never to be crossed again; a door to be opened. And when we learn that lesson the pain is transformed into the teacher. It is no longer resident in us as a lesion or tumor. it has healed and transformed.

But the pain that we do not embrace and allow to transform us we will inevitably pass on to another. So as Richard Rohr always says pain is either transformed or transmitted. The choice is yours. Stop the cycle of violence - the pain do its work in you.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Marriage Jujitsu

In the martial arts we learn how to use the opponent's attack and movement toward us as the power to move him. Nowhere is that practiced better than in the form of jujitsu. If your adversary throws a punch at you, you learn to take his thrust and help it go further than he intended while side stepping it to avoid impact. In a sense you help him punch and then trip him on the way past! it is at the same time both powerful and totally effortless.

The marital arts could learn from these martial arts! You would do well to learn how to take your wife's attack and allow it, side step it and have it work to your advantage. But what might that look like? We are not talking about your wife physically attacking you however. But sometimes you do stupid and unthinking things that evoke her anger and rage.

Step 1. Acknowledge she's mad (angry, upset, hysterical, name the emotion - and for help see the post on November 8) and that from her perspective, she has every reason to be so. Acknowledging it means naming it back to her: "Wow, I see that I really pissed you off!"

Step 2. Assure her that you did not (and never do) intend to upset her.

Step 3. But let her know that you want to hear it all - like the full frontal attack (you are man enough to take it, so shut your mind up and stand in there). This can be a simple, "Tell me more" or "Tell me about it, I want to learn."

Step 4. Shut up and listen. This is the jujitsu part of it: you let her anger or tears or whatever run their course and wear her out. Once she's expressed the full gamut, there will be little combat left in her - she's made her point and you listened.

Step 5. Let her know you heard what she said. Don't let this get into a quiz but just assure her that you got the point and that you will give your level best not to do that again.

Now there are two exceptions to this (when she essentially wants you to violate your personal terms or what you stand for, or when you have violated some major ethical issue like had an affair) but we wont go into those here. The bottom line is to learn to practice martial arts in your marital relationships.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Quiet Despiration

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau once wrote - and here is one. Veteran's Day I was making my coffee and saw the police coming down the street with blue lights on - and turning up the next street over. Right behind him were fire engines - way too many for that hour of the day. That's when I saw the smoke. It was already too late though.

Not for the house, though that was totalled, they were too late for the man inside. As the story unfolded, it turns out the couple had been having domestic problems, and I guess financial problems because the house was scheduled for foreclosure as well. I have to confess I don't even know their names - they always kept to themselves and the kids could not stop there on Halloween because they kept the lights out. Quiet desperation.

She left; he was alone. So he set the house on fire and then took his life. The note said something about this being an appropriate day being that he was a vet himself. Fifty three years old and done. Very quiet desperation. And I didn't even know him. None of us did.

Hey men, if you know of a man out there who is alone, maybe someone you even know but he's been down stairs for some time now, take this as a reminder that there are about a million ways men cry out for help only one of which is, "Hey help me! Please" The other 999,999 don't sound anything like that. Most of them make the inaudible noise of quiet desperation. Make a call. Drop by. Sit down beside him. But do something.

I know that this is supposed to be the Married Man's Survival Guide blog, but this is why we wrote the book, and why we do this work, and even then one slips away right under our noses.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Don't Remove the Arrow!

Shakespeare called them the "slings and arrows" but whatever you call them, the pains of living the masculine life can certainly feel like a direct arrow in the chest. I was working with a man who had been divorced and is now contemplating marriage to a chart-topping, classy woman. All was going well until he called me recently in agony and depression saying the arrow he'd taken in the divorce was just too painful. It was actually stopping him from proposing to this magnificent woman he knew he wanted to marry.


He said, "You're my mentor - help me take out the arrow. I can't get it out by myself!" But (and I am certain he didn't like my response at first) I said no. That is masculine wisdom. Men learn through our pain and what we learn are our values and our terms. Because the pain speaks loudly, in a sense, saying, "NO - I will never ever feel this pain again. I will never let this happen again." And that is the first step in driving the stake in the ground that says what your commitment is.


There is no legitimate "no" that is not the result of a committed "yes" to some principle or value. So if your pain is saying a loud "NO!" then there is a value that has been challenged; a line that has been crossed. That man lost - massively - when he did not hold his ground and let his values be compromised, and it cost him his first marriage (for better or for worse). And now that pain is what he needs to ensure that his commitment in this next marriage will be stronger than any circumstance or hiccup that can (and will) arise. "NO, I will not quit!" "NO, I will not get lazy in the relationship, because I will never allow that thing to happen to me again!" I told him that the pain is not what should stop him from proposing - it is the watchdog that will ensure that this will be an unstoppable marriage.


So a good mentor (I will claim that in this case) will not take out the arrow. A true mentor will help a man embrace and cherish the pain as his teacher. We do not learn any other way (sorry, I wish it were easy)! Wisdom is the ability to look through your pain and scars and find the lessons learned. Then turn around and teach another man - pass it forward.