Men and numbness

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.

Comments

[JIC]

When the emotional vocabulary is inadequate, have you tried the physical? Sometimes identifying the physical (tight right here, fluttery right there) can help as an intermediary step. A lot of people instinctively identify physical reactions as emotions (because, sometimes, they are). I wonder how effective it might be to start there in the process of building comfort in using emotional vocabulary.

Just a thought.

[Amanda Marcotte]

Extremely well-put. As a woman, you can imagine that I've dealt with the frustration of trying to deal with men that reflectively "faked" it. It reads as betrayal, a lie and it pisses me off royally--if you don't love me, don't waste my time! Argh. I get mad thinking about it. Perhaps this is a reason that men can help each other better because we women have to protect ourselves and have nothing left over to "help" a man who can't muster up genuine love. I'm not in the mood for saving anyone anymore.

I have to wonder how much of this numbness is due to social pressures to avoid feelings and even worse, the belief that having feelings is somehow "feminine" and to be avoided at all costs. My guess is all of it, but you might have a different read on it.

[Rachel]

I'm not a huge fan of Iron John, but some of Bly's poetry has knocked my socks off. He was poet-in-residence for a while at my MFA program, and every time I heard him read I came away moved...

[Hugo]

Oh, I think that numbness has a lot to do with social pressures, as they begin early. Bly connects them, I think rightly, to the absence of adult male role models who show emotion in healthy ways, who make it okay to connect words and feelings. And yes, if we are to believe that the first rule of American manhood is to avoid the feminine "no sissy stuff" then that numbness may have roots in institutionalized misogyny. And young men and women are both victimized by this.

[Mat]

Problem is, there aren't that many avenues open for men to express their feelings. This doesn't mean they are numb, just careful about expressing themselves.

[the amazing kim]

wow.
other people feel like that too. That's really a huge relief.

[Hugo]

Mat, I hear you -- and yet, Bly is insistent, as am I, that it's more than just an absence of avenues. For me, it was, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a case of "no there there".

[Rob]

I have no understanding of this numbness Bly speaks of. A touch of numbness might be an improvement.

I wonder if this is why I have such difficulty relating to men, but have no trouble talking with women? I know that when I get into the emotional aspects, guys tend to get real uncomfortable.

Of course, I am fighting depression. I wonder if there's a mirror image problem, sort of the opposite of "Doctor My Eyes."

[Ron O.]

I'm familiar with that numbness, though thankfully I rarely faked it. It did contribute to a few breakups though. Women complained that they never knew what I was thinking/feeling.

I think early socialization is big factor. I'll bet most boys are told often at a very young age "Don't be a crybaby." I've read studies that show boys are asked about thier feelings less often than girls. This early practice in identifying emotions may be cruicial to the development of an emotional vocabulary.

[Hugo]

Rob, you aren't alone as a man in having atypical experiences with emotion. Sadly, we do tend to stigmatize those men "fortunate" enough to have a clear sense from a young age of what their feelings are.

Be careful, however, what you wish for!

[Tripp]

Okay, let me begin by saying that I am glad that you are using Bly's book in your class. It is a very important piece of literature in gender studies. Thank you. I struggled with it, however, and if I recall correctly, Bly's approach at men teaching men to feel as men feel and not as women feel was, well, vapid.

I could barely stand the book. I managed to slog through it, but only barely. It enraged me, disappointed me, caused me to reel in bewilderment and to think "This is the dufus that is giving the rest of us a bad name. If anyone has fallen prey to patriarchal socialization it is Msr Bly."

I know, I am heavy-handed as usual. Socialization matters so much. Men need to learn from the women in their lives in this culture because women in this culture hold the keys to the seat of emotion. Men have abdicated that throne long ago. Is it possible to desire that numbness? Is it possible that the numbness is culturally desireable? You bet it is. Thank God for the Women's Liberation folk who have liberated men along with the women. People feel.

Hugo, I know you disagree with much of this. So understand that I believe your opinion to be much more informed than mine. I bow to your expertise. Honestly, I do. I am remembering a post of yours about male nurturing. It was thoughtful and intriguing. I disagree with much of it as my experience has informed me differently, but I appreciate very deeply what you are doing here.

So, it is with the utmost respect that I say: Bly? Blagh.

[cmc]

This experience of emotional numbness sounds completely bizarre and alien to me (a woman). Query: Does it apply only to one's feelings towards others or to one's feelings in general? It seems plenty of men I know have no trouble expressing anger or sadness or guilt or shame or happiness. It's the L-word that seems to stump them.

[Caitriona]

My husband, our 17yo son, and our older 16yo daughter seemed (to me) to have quite a bit of this "numbness" when we first met. I would agree that this is a learned, social construct. Here is why.

My husband feels things VERY deeply, but he had no idea how to express the things he was feeling. So he built walls between his conscious self and his feelings. This resulted in that numbing effect. Our son and daughter learned this from him. It has taken most of the nearly 6 years we've been together for the walls to come down enough that the three of them can at least acknowledge the existance of the feelings they have, even though they aren't always at a place where they can fully comprehend, look at, and talk about those feelings. It's been a lot of hard work for them to get to where they are now, and they each have a ways still to go.

[Mat]

Hugo,
What exactly does "no there there" mean? Does it mean that you had no feelings at all, and this is why you were unresponsive. Please clarify!

[Hugo]

Yes, it means that. As Bly says, women (and men) often confuse numbness with reticence. For me, and for Bly (and I think for many others), the problem wasn't just the absence of a vocabulary -- the problem was that the feelings were simply frozen.

[Stephen]

Hugo:

I think feelings, and learning to express them, are over-rated. My dear wife isn't particularly "in touch" (whatever that means) w/ her feelings at all times nor is she particularly effective at expressing them. She is also one of the kindest most decent people I know. I, on the other hand, need therapy after watching a Pepsi commercial -- and have had to learn that not every feeling needs to be expressed nor, for that matter, does it reflect what's "out there."

Seems to me that we exalt feelings at the expense of action or, in the Christian culture, obedience.

Stephen

[Caitriona]

Stephen, although I agree that we need to be careful how much importance we place on feelings, I've learned that burying them or disregarding them causes problems that keep us from living our lives as we should.

[Christy]

I've never read Iron John, but I very much resonated with the excerpts you quoted. In my case, it was dissociation induced by childhood trauma, rather than socialization. Maybe it's just the circles I run in - Most of my friends have some pretty difficult things in their backgrounds - but I think that numbness is more common in women then you might think. If you're a good and reasonably sympathetic listener with decent interpersonal skills, you can get by for years without anyone wondering why you don't ever display any emotion of your own. I did. I didn't even realize how numb I was, because I'd been shut down for so long, and I couldn't understand why others thought I was cold or hard. I was sharing what I was feeling. I just didn't feel much.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the process of getting from the numbness to being able to see the people in different colored robes walking around. It would be interesting to do a comparison/contrast with my own process.

[Mat]

Hugo,
Thanks for the clarification. This is definitely not true in my particular case. As a matter of fact, it is completely the opposite!

[Mat]

My feelings are definitely not frozen. And I certainly have no problem expressing them. My problem is that women always accuse me of "going over the top" whenever I do.

Just as an experiment, I will demonstrate my affection for this woman that I'm crazy about and I will report to your blog afterward. It will be interesting to see her reactions!

[Hugo]

Christy, I'll try and answer that in a future post. And indeed, there are women who are numb -- but I suspect that childhood trauma, rather than socialization, is more often the culprit there.

[Tara]

I think there is some socialization for dumbness though. Particularly negative emotions. I am working on it, but it still sometimes takes me weeks to realize that I'm angry/upset about something someone said to me or how they spoke to me.

I am somewhat interested in this book, whether maybe it would be a good introduction into, well, feminism, for men (like my brother), I will check it out.

[CT]

I think that church can also add to the numbness. There is so much talk there about oughts and ideals that we all know that we can't measure up and we really don't want to face up to the not-so-nice feelings.

I also wonder whether there isn't at least some contrast in the experience of numbness between extroverts and introverts.

[Jake]

I read Iron John some time ago, and recall reading parts out loud to anyone who would listen. It may be time to revisit it. I seem to recall he was somehow connected with James Hillman?

I wanted to comment on this line;

My head was fiery and full of blood, and my genitals were fiery and curious too. The area in between was the problem.

As a teen, I don't recall numbness as much as I do extremes. Love was all around; I had no difficulty declaring my love; the problem was limiting that declaration to one person. Anger was also readily available, as was euphoric joy. As I recall, my peers also easily expressed extreme emotions; the area in between was our problem.

[Ron O.]

Hugo, I look forward to your post, but hope you don't mind if I start on Christy's question.

One day I was driving around thinking about stuff and the Keb Mo song "You Can Love Youself" came on the CD. I had a moment of clarity that many of my personal issues stemmed from the fact that I didn't really love myself. Upon further thought, I realized that wouldn't change overnight, so I decided to BEHAVE as if I already loved myself. I worked on developing better mental habits, especially not beating myself up for negative thoughts. I worked on accepting those thoughts, but not dwelling on them. This internal work helped me to be less judgemental and more loving of others. I still have a lot of work to do on my insecurities, but have started to see results. Good luck to you!