Do men love? Giving Men a Bad Rap

            Recently, a comment swayed my thinking about love and sex towards a different direction.  “I don’t have bad men stories to tell,” was the comment I made, which might be defined as “I don’t have man-hate.”   For sure I do have some really bad stories to tell that have involved a man.  I have been that one in four statistics often quoted; it was a relative and I was a mere three when it began.  In my younger years it did shape some perceptions of trust but bad things happen to all of us.   It really is what we do with the bad that truly shapes us. 

            When I began my research on men and love I discovered (it was easy) that many of us hate men.  Really hate men; and we love to hate men.  Sure, we find one here and there we exempt from the man-hate rule.  We brand them different, exceptional or worthy for some reason.  “He’s not like the rest of them,” I heard my girlfriend tell me. 

            Man bashing is a sport.  I have spent a lot of time around women and a lot of time they get on the male bashing rant.  I remember many years ago  the conversation in college that turned to the bad sex we had experienced with men and dialogue went on to the about the strangeness, uniqueness of their body parts or techniques.   This poor guy Rob was discussed by two of the women.  He was my Physics study partner and every time I looked at him in the face I could only think about the fact his penis turned to the left and he had one testicle.  Okay- that might be funny but here is the real point- How often do men get together and degrade vaginas?  Tell me if you are a guy out there and you and your buddies have sat around degrading and discussing the bad sex you’ve had.  And it’s not all about sex.  I’ve been privy to all the faults of men for my 25 year history as a therapist.  In couples therapy I hear it all, what a louse he is, his sexual follies, fetishes, hygiene habits but when I meet this guy he only mutters “I don’t know what is going on.”  Nothing about fat ass that say in my chair the hour before.  Men have a really difficult time ranting about us.  And God forbid they do- I cannot image a male college professor entering a class and talking about women and the power tactics they use. 

            But we are entitled to do this.  Yes!  Somehow our enslavement has given us a sort of permission to sling the mud right back and in a way, we are set up for us to do this.  We can hate men politically and historically for enslaving us and taking away our freedoms.  Show me a time in history where women were on equal footing, when double standards did not exist—yes there are a handful of examples out there, but it’s child-sized.  I’ve had women heckle me—yell out in lecture centers, “ female circumcision…rape…divorce laws….”  Yes I agree.  They also kill us!  Murder us!  I have a theory about why men have done this, why some men do this and why society and social forces were culpable.   It might be a strange idea but I believe that men love women far more than women may realize.  Controlling women is the cultural or societal method to do so- bind them in marriages they can’t leave, sew their vagina’s shut, stone them for adultery.   What religion is not guilty of setting up rules to make women obey men?  Yeah, I know we’ve come a long way.  But really, women are second class citizens in most of the faith realms. 

            Aside for culture, religion and history, on a personal level men will go to great lengths for their love objects; they take the physically most demanding jobs, they take the riskiest jobs, they die on the job ten times more than women do, and engage in the most dangerous activities to support their families or women in their lives.  And they die much earlier than we do.  My poor father-in-law built his own house out of wood crates, worked 60 hours a week as a meat cutter to support his 10 children and dropped dead days after he retired.   Yes, my poor mother-in-law was delegated to her role of cooking, cleaning, making him happy and reading her bible which told her to never complain. 

            I know I’m getting philosophical on you.  but I want you to think of all the things we have come to associated with mans’ hate and control a little differently—It  is driven by fear of abandonment or the fear of losing the object of love.  Men might love us so much they enslave us, and sometimes themselves in the process.  And there is evidence in the brain and the neurochemical make up- but that will have to wait.   

What do you think? 

Looking for Men in Love- Are you There?

No, I am not crazy.  Men love more than women think.   I am looking for men who would write their love stories.  Yes, men!  So if you know a  man who has a love story, ending good or bad, long or short, pleasure or pain,   I’d like to hear from him!   Length is unimportant.  Love, livid, lurid, longing, life-changing, lachrymose, lascivious, lustful, lasting, laudable, lubricous, low-bred, luminous, lush, or lucid  -  I want them!  Lesson learned, hearts tormented, love that sustains It is all good.  Email the longest to dawnmhopper@gmail.com   -  I am collecting them.  Yesterday an 87-year-old man wrote me a 6 page single spaced story… WOW!  It was great.  I might publish it in a series, so wait….Thanks!

Jealousy

Jealousy

     While love can bring us rapture, it can make our lives crazy.  Nothing feels as worse as that demon, jealousy.  It is an emotion that results when we detect a relationship is being threatened but a third party.  It is the fear of being totally abandoned.  If the threat is very high the message is sent immediately to the amygdala, a center in our primal brain that we have little control over. Your autonomic nervous system is now on and you center on all the facts to determine just how you will respond. Intense and consuming; few people can truthfully say “ I was a little jealous” because it is not the kind of emotion that we experience lightly.  So negative is this feeling that we need to at once deal with it.  The feeling is so harsh that we will make any kind of bargain to take it away. Fear or anger is often unconscious, fast, impossible to control and direct.  

     So what do you do when you find this jealousy pit bull in your face?  You may cry, plead, threaten, be reduced to hostile reactions that in your normal state you may not had ever considered.  Aside from obsessing the jealous person becomes vigilant and will focus on the behavior of the other person.  Here is when we can get into all sorts of trouble because our brain might over process the situation. Guess what? You were wired to do that. 

     Jealousy is not only the worst possible feeling it also motivates us to act to preserve our bonds and to rescue our relationships.  Nature intended it to work exactly this way.  Jealousy is the detection system that insures the bond between lovers is preserved so we could stay together to raise our young. Because when we feel it we may do what we need to do to keep that person from leaving.  

There is a strange flip side most people don’t notice with regard to jealousy. So terrible is that feeling that sometimes we don’t want to believe that we are being jilted.  Girlfriend tells me that and tells me that loverboy told her he’d like to take some time off the relationship- get a little space.  A breather. “what do you think he means?” She asks me.  I immediately knew.  So does girlfriend # 2 who is part of the conversation.  My friend is in denial, her brain not wanting to face that devil.  Of course she eventually did when he showed up at her house to pick up some of his things with his new lover on his arm.  My rational GF went crazy.  For the next few months we entertained her visions of retaliating.    She was going to slash her tires,  put dog poop on her car handles,  but the best one was asking one of her other GF’s (who knew her) to put hair remover in her hair conditioner.  We just listened and eventually she was able to get back to her normal self. 

     As bad as the J word is it can serve us.  Strange but we deliberately use that little devil in our relationships.  We might mention an old flame we ran into…flirt with someone in the presence of our love or in the worst case leave our love and let them know we’ve found another interest.  Jealousy is often the first sign they care about you!  How many movies have that theme- they break up and then she finds someone new and then he goes crazy…Well evidently loverboy was reading that script.   GF began dating loverboy’s neighbor.  About a month later he sent her an email….”I really miss you…” It began.

This brings me to a final point and another blog I must write. Men are far more jealous than women….

Any comments? Dr. Dawn Marlena Hopper

Controlling Relationships...The Noose of Love

12/4
            Girlfriend’s phone is ringing again. 
            “It’s him again.”  She answers.
            I listen to her reply.  “I’m doing the same thing I told you I was doing five minutes ago.”
            It was the tenth phone call in three hours. 
            Yes it’s flattering for about a week or so. Then the cord of attachment becomes a noose. Have you been there? Has lover called several times when they know you are working on a project.  Do they tell you to cut the friendship with someone you’ve known since you were 5?  Do they go through your phone log,  scan your Fb with questions ?  Are you spending much of your time proving to this person that you are not doing anything.  Do you find yourself trying to convince them all the while thinking that once you demonstrate your faithfulness it will end.  Is it a rough spot in the road of love or a huge boulder? 
             There is a dynamic in new passionate relationships.  Lovers want to be with their love object.  You dwell on them.  At the same time the fear of love lost pops up in your mind.  It’s not jealousy per se but a nagging little fear that you could be burned.  In a health union trust builds and we relax.  Real issues of control only get worse because the controller lacks the ability to trust.  What is control?