The two poles of what I loosely call my creativity these days are my garden and my blog. On rare occasions like today they come in conflict with each other. I was eager to start my blog for next week, but the brutal temperatures indicated that I had to first deal with watering while the conditions were still tolerable. Now I’m back at the computer and ready to roll.
Rosellen and I were so moved and impressed with both the quantity and the quality of the responses we received to last week’s entry about our portrayal of “good” marriages as we age. What we had to say resonated with the surprising number of couples among our friends who have been lucky enough to experience long marriages. Some younger friends read our piece aspirationally, while others were just happy for us and touched by our efforts at honesty.
But one of the most interesting responses came from a dear friend who asked permission to share the blog with his men’s group. He said that they meet online every two weeks, but their conversations typically devolve into depressing conversations about the state of the world. By sharing this piece, he hoped he could redirect the group to think and talk about something more focused on relationships and feelings. That would require a willingness to lower their defensive shields and make themselves more vulnerable. These are the foundations of deep and enduring friendships.
Sadly, it’s generally accepted that men are not as good as women in building those kinds of relationships. During her freshman year one of our daughters introduced us to a book she was reading in a seminar about a senior citizen center in southern California. The male attendees declined over time because they lacked the skills the women had to weave themselves into a fabric of rich friendships that replicated what they had thrived on in their “civilian” years before the senior center.
We all know there are deep cultural roots to men’s beliefs about how “real men” are supposed to present themselves publicly – act strong, don’t cry, don’t show your emotions in ways that will make you vulnerable, don’t interest yourself in “domestic” matters that are traditionally the domain of women, favor action over reflection. In my long years as a teacher and teacher educator, I saw these principles already reflected at an early age in what boys read and wrote. The stories they composed usually consisted of unbroken chains of actions by the main characters while girls were more likely to write about friendships, replete with betrayals, triumphs of acceptance into popular circles and a sprinkling of fashion tips. Their reading inclined in the same direction.
There are elaborate evolutionary theories about how all this came to be. I don’t intend to step into this minefield, nor do I know how to turn it all around, but I do hold this strong belief that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are many of us who have managed to escape the seemingly inevitable. We read novels (!!). Sadly, it appears that most men don’t, depriving them of one of the most effective stimulants for growing empathy and feeling. When we visited the friend who asked permission to share our blog with his men’s club, even before we sat down, he was eager to show us the novel he was currently reading. He’s a man with a tough exterior, but by his own admission he has become softer with age and is enjoying the space it allows him to grow emotionally.
I am blessed with male friends with whom I have the kind of 1:1 relationships that are typically considered women’s territory. Yes, we talk sports and politics, but we can also talk about feelings and complicated emotional interactions with family and friends or personal feelings of success and failure as we reflect on our lives. It takes work to maintain any relationship worth having, and that is equally true about keeping my Guy Friends close – scheduling our Zoom visits and drop ins to our apartment, arranging visits to interesting cafes around the city for our conversations.
In the early days of the feminist movement, many women joined consciousness-raising groups where the conversation was intimate and personal. (Rosellen participated in one, so I’m relying on a credible informant here.) It’s hard to imagine men being attracted to groups like that. That kind of exchange is more likely to happen in the individual conversations I’m referring to. That’s where I’ll continue to invest my emotional energy. It’s paid good dividends so far.
