Women’s
versus men’s
experience: relationships.
It’s a woman’s world, Sam Keen writes in his book “Fire in
the Belly”, SHE has a mythic power over us.
It is new to realize that men do
indeed emerge from women, and not as suggested in the bible, the other way
around.
In contrast to the feminine
mystique, which casts women as appendages and playmates/helpmates of men, Keen
acknowledges that an average man spends a lifetime
denying, defending against, trying to control and reacting to the power of WOMAN.
“She is the savior who is supposed to make us whole and reconnect us to our
severed feelings”. He admits that most men do not consciously know the extend to which their lives circle around their
relationship to WOMAN in her different aspects.
“She is the mysterious ground of our being that we cannot penetrate”.
For those who choose his way of
the pilgrim, the first step is to leave behind the questions about women, and
relationships to women. Before asking where she wants to go and if she will go
with him, Keen wants men to ask themselves what his journey should be. The first act of
“freedom” however is the willingness to see how we have been
enslaved. For this men need to step back from
women and cultivate their relationship with themselves first.
Could the fact that we are primarily raised by women during the first years of
our lives, cause such a difference in male/female perspective? Is it true that
a man needs to go away from home (mother) to find himself, and a woman stays
home to (learn from mom to) welcome him back?
What do women traditionally do
to find themselves, and do we need new ways?
Borysenko (A Woman’s Book of Life) also speaks of the need to know
yourself. She says: “real intimacy with a person of
the opposite sex requires a firmly developed sense of gender and personal
identity”. As women are socialized to be more
responsive to the emotions and needs of others than to their own, for women the
real quest lies in the question how she will invest her energy: in her power to
please or in her power to be. This is not so easy.
It is important to realize
because this explains many paradoxes women live with:
to please is in a sense a woman’s way to be.
The typical feminine traits like
empathy, kindness and even subservience are in fact life-giving
to women in general. On the other hand seeking an identity or goal in life that
endangers the prospect of an intimate relationship has life-threatening
aspects, even if women are not consciously aware of them.
A female’s sense of self is based on her relationships to others (B).
Nowadays we are trying to escape
the consequences of this fundamental difference in perspective. But, as both authors admit, men and women derive part of
their identity and life’s meaning from the other gender, or at least from our
cultural constructs about gender. Sam Keen still leaves home to find himself (takes separate vacations, builds a cabin to be
alone) and Borysenko’s women are still taking care of
men and children, always encouraging, always compassionate.
Authentic love is, according to
Keen, a dance with three movements: solo, counterpoint, and coming together; it
embraces solitude, conflict, and intimacy. In a love relationship, people stand
alone and apart from one another, enter into respectful struggle with each
other, and rejoice in their interdependence.
Borysenko doesn’t think in these separate movements (she doesn’t
focus on man-woman relationships that much) , but
writes about the healing qualities of relationships: “to speak, to be heard and
to be held are basic to healing”.
A relationship should be
mutually interdependent; partners think the best of one another and through the
resulting kindness and encouragement bring each other more fully into being.
Relationality and spirituality are human traits that transcend gender
in Borysenko’s view (and I agree with her).
But I can see the importance of the “solo” movement Keen is
referring to. He stands alone to feel his own two feet. Maybe women can learn
how to do this from men, as men could learn the “staying together” part from
women?
I recognize the need to nurture
the relationship I have with myself and to find ground in my own being. Most of
the time I can connect with this when I am with people but lately I feel an
overwhelming need to be alone. Where relationships with people used to be a
field of mutual learning, now the prospect of contact with others often feels
like a burden. It seems to help me to step back from all to restore inner
balance. It is as if I need time off to do this particular feedback loop in a
solo way, free from entanglement caused
by my sensitivity (and “programming” to respond) to other people’s needs.
After a whole life of being in
intimate relationships (daughter – sister - wife - mother), it feels vital to
reassess who I am, especially
now that my old structures have disintegrated (I divorced, my
father died, my eldest sons left the house). I agree that we are self-in
–relation, but for me it is an acceptable notion that we sometimes need some
separate time to regain an awareness of who we are.
(Maybe especially because we are so much self-in-relation that we can hardly
feel our-(separate-)selves…).
I believe the relationship we
have with ourselves is the basis we live in and act from.
As we saw these two
writers insist that people can only relate in a mutually
nurturing way, when they (both) have an healthy level of acceptance of and
respect for themselves.
In our modern world
it is not so self-evident to accept and respect oneself. Somehow we, especially
in our culture, have constructed a way of living in which individuals are
rarely encouraged to full-heartedly love themselves.
If we feel secure in our own
love and self-acceptance, we do not have to seek this love and acceptance “out
there”. We are not dependent in that sense then; we do not need to have
intimate relationships with people because they carry the promise of filling
the hole in our hearts.
Humans are social beings and
have a need for belonging and recognition. We feel a sense of worth when our
name and story is known, and this gives us meaning.
We willingly enter into mutually interdependent
relationships because it enhances who we are. The relationship in itself is felt as worthwhile, not only what we personally expect to
gain from it.
Keen dwells on bitterness and
anger. He and his fellow modern men know that it is not pleasant for men when
women, struggling for liberation, begin to speak their bitterness. But instead of responding in a patronizing way, he is
willing to acknowledge the anger and bitterness: “Honor your anger against any
who have violated your being”.
Our gender construct has
violated our being.
It is intriguing that Joan Borysenko writes about this particular anger in describing
her “Guardian” archetype. Maybe we need this kind of righteousness and anger to
defend the boundaries of our selves and of that which we stand for.
High levels of testosterone
help, but this anger is surely not a typical “male” virtue. Borysenko’s
Guardian has a fierce directedness, a passionate protectedness
resulting in an unwillingness to let even small trespasses or injustices pass
unchallenged. In its ideal form this kind of anger has
the potential of making the world a better place – especially combined with the
Visionary Archetype (having the heart and the necessary guts to create change).
Anger is a necessary part of the
dance of love and according to Keen we must learn to
face and respect each other’s anger: “Without anger we have no fire, no thunder
and lightning to defend the sanctuary of the self. No anger = no boundaries =
no passion. Good men and good women have
fire in the belly. We are fierce.” I like this, for me it touches some
underlying truth.
“Give the person you intend to
love the gift of your discriminating anger”, Keen writes, and maybe he should add “be willing to hear her/his anger and bitterness in a
discriminating way”. An intimate relationship is a good place to heal or transform our
anger and bitterness.
When a relationship is an honest
give and take (vs. attachment, loss of self etc.,
etc.), and partners can discern between personal and non-personal anger, it can
be safe enough to share our stories. Telling our story is a vital process of
coming to terms with events and experiences in a way that can ultimately place
them in an expanded frame of reference, giving the dramas of life a cohesive,
spiritual meaning (B). Within such a relationship we
can share our dreams and nightmares, without fear of violation, and realize we
are not alone in our doubts and struggles. Within such a relationship
we are invited to face and come to know all aspects of ourselves.
Prophetic feminism is a model
for the changes men are beginning to experience.
We are free. Whether we exercise
this freedom or wallow in blame and victimhood is
also a matter of choice.
Sam Keen proposes to end the “Genderal Blame Game”. Only unconsciously chosen systems
have the face of fate. Since we are beginning to become aware of the way men
and women interact in a codependent way to maintain the patriarchal techno-economic
gender system, we can make different choices.
He describes the pathology of
the normal relationship between the sexes and the rules that we need to become
conscious of, in order to break them and reconstruct our relationships. Only
from beyond the horizons of the gender game can both players
be seen as cocreators of the social system
that supports the game. He suggest the “gestalt-way”: first observe and become
aware from a meta-perspective of what is going on (the process), and then
take/reclaim responsibility for your behavior, your feelings, your actions and
your values.
In Keen’s
terms this is the fastest path to ending the blame
game: a committed relationship in which two people agree to work together at
the process of becoming conscious and compassionate.
Borysenko’s women are committed to this kind of relationship: they
see a relationship as an entity larger than one’s own self and have the
intention to nurture and care for this evolving entity.
Borysenko is also referring to the gender controversy, but points
to the difficulties we have in changing the way we socialize our children.
Although most of us agree that women are not subordinate to men in our culture,
this perception is at odds with the way in which our children learn about society.
Where Keen
focuses on the man-woman relationship to change our gender constructs, Borysenko sees every human relationship as an important
link in the chain of coming to authenticity and integrity: “Throughout the
life-cycle we need to learn from one another and grow together if we are to
bring about a new Integral Culture based on the feminine values of respect,
interdependence, and care for future generations.”
Sam Keen also refers to Carl
Jung’s belief in the androgyny of men and women. In Jung’s view, to become
whole, men must discover their feminine side (anima or soul) and women must
explore their animus,
or worldly and aggressive side.
A man must go on a spiritual journey, turn inward, to explore womanly
feelings he has rejected. A woman, on the other hand, needs to go outward and
act effectively in the world to recover her rejected masculine fierceness and
aggression.
The end of the process is an
inner marriage between the masculine and feminine before he or she can relate
realistically to a member of the opposite sex.
Keen rejects the use of genderal language and claims his virility is inseparable from so-called
feminine virtues. Rightly so, I guess, but if we ignore the
assigning of certain virtues to male or female for a moment, we must admit that
this process of tress-passing into the other gender’s domain (according to our
constructs) has been going on for a while: man are encouraged and willing to
venture in the realms of emotions and feelings, and women are certainly moving
out into the active world of power and business.
The mix-up we experience
nowadays feels like a kind of menopause humanity as a whole is going through.
Gender constructs no longer fit what we are living; old mechanisms do not work
anymore and gradually fade away. We are cut off from our structures because we
lost our faith in their truth, but at the same time we
are limited and bound by the system we created.
Chaos is a word we could use to
describe what is happening to us at this moment in human evolution. No former
structure seems to fit. We even doubt if we need a structure as such. Just as Borysenko reframes menopause, we should step out of the
limiting focus on the “problems” and widen our perspective to see this chaotic
phase as a challenge to come to a new level of consciousness.
Both Keen and Borysenko suggest that it is much better to acknowledge the
not knowing and accept the resulting vulnerability as a potential (vs. a
problem). They find a new sense of direction in the questioning, in the
surrendering to what is. This is the way of the pilgrim (K) or the way towards
an Integral Culture (B).
In Gestalt
therapy growth is defined as a process of creative adjustment towards wholeness
and self-actualization. What is written about these
new ways of being and becoming reminds me of this “creative adjustment”. The
concept “creative” holds the promise of something new, not-yet-structured.
She, for example, refers to the
In our experience
insecurity and fear normally lessen when we structure what seems chaotic.
Organizing reality into comprehendible, controllable models helps us to face
it, and live with and in it. Our natural tendency is to hold on to whatever is
structured and known, and make new constructs to cast the unknown into
something knowable. We feel less frightened if we (think we) know what we are dealing with and
we are used to learn by structuring things into knowable constructs. Without a
definite impulse or the conscious intention to do so
we would not embrace chaos or uncertainty.
This is a new, creative way for us.
If we face the fact that life is chaotic,
and we choose this new, non-structuring (feminine??), questioning and questing way, a different stance in life
is called for. Simply surrendering to whatever comes is not enough. Only when
we realize what is going on, we can take responsibility and make conscious
choices, becoming co-creators of our lives and the world we live in.
Taking a step back and
consciously creating a distance between us and the puddle we
are in, helps us to relativate what we
perceive as frightening or too complex to handle. We need to become aware of
the bigger picture and thus widen our perspective. Issues like the appreciation
of diversity, a belief in the worth of all human beings, and the ability to
honor multiple points of view (intrinsic to the biology and psychology of women
- B) come into focus. Borysenko comes up with many
ideas for women to handle their growth-process towards integrity. Most of her
suggestions are worth trying in the bigger context of humanity as a whole.
Meta-awareness and process-awareness are our new tools to broaden our view to a
vision; we are more profoundly united by our common
humanity than separated by gender.