Alternate ways of showing my manhood

[somerandomguy]

I was raised to believe that men were only "real" men if they had a lot of sex and brought home a big fat paycheck to their families.

I cannot have sex with my wife. I am sexually impotent unless a lot of conditions are met. My wife is unwilling to help me meet the conditions because sex only satisfies her if it is spontaneous intercourse. It is what it is and I can't change it.

So I've been spending a lot of mental and emotional energy at a very unchallenging job because I've come to realize that if I want to be a man it's all I've got. But this also causes me a lot of problems at home, especially now that I have to work from home. My wife needs ton of help with our kids right now, and wants me to be emotionally present as well instead of thinking about or doing work.

If I can't have sex, and my work means nothing to my partner, I must be a eunuch - or at least some kind of not-man. (I've been thinking about the gay slur my classmates in middle school used to call me all the time. Maybe that's what I am.)

Please help me reframe my life? You'd think I would have thought of something by now. But I haven't.

 

[scout86]

Just because you were raised with that definition of masculinity doesn't mean you have to accept it, right? (I'm pretty sure you know that.) How to redefine it? Honestly, any way you want to. I'm not even totally sure rigid definitions of "masculine" and "feminine" are useful. Are they? For what?

Being supportive of your family, in any way, counts as "masculine" as far as I'm concerned. And it sounds like you're doing that. (From what I've seen of you around here, I'd be shocked if you weren't supportive.) You're putting your wife's needs before your own, it seems. That's pretty huge. (Although I'm not too impressed with her apparently unimaginative, black and white approach to the whole "sex" thing.)

Some people use money to keep score. Some people have other values. What is important to YOU?

 

[Ronin]

I would double think the impotency too....

Maybe you need specific things / stimulation / emotional care / atmosphere / mental relaxation etc to enjoy yourself / your body... that weren't explored yet, in face of focusing on abuse & dysfunction issues?

As in I struggle thinking of men who would be truly impotent in the meaning of that word.

I do, however, know of many ways guys just need a help out.

So something to think of.

Do YOU value your work & yourself in it, and what might help you value it better?

As imo others very rarely have the same insight into lives as people themselves. Work & other lives alike.

So supporters maybe aren't as supportive as would be helpful... but self confidence or sense of doing well can be built up. They are not binary present / absent, success / failure values.

Other thing...
Maybe work on upholding a sense of masculinity regardless of external reinforcements.

As outside validation for everything in the world is takeable.
Firm internal?
Self affirmed validation?
Not so much.

ETA: Everything you do is masculine. By definition. You identify as a man, hence are a man, and thus all your actions are masculine. ;) Stereotypes about gender roles are so location & social contracts relative, and not really all that relevant for self definition.

Longer answer, prolly, but wanted this up there for a start.

 

[grit]

First not a man and I am 100% cannot think like one but I see your post as general human struggle with identity and familial obligations....something I had to extract very hard in my life.

In my observation there are at least three areas infused in your post.
Who you are as a person (including both sexuality parts and non sexual parts like man, ambition, passion, meaning in life etc)
Who you are in a relationship
Who you are in a society

We all have different aspect of ourselves as identity. You are a person to yourself, a Great father to your kids, a husband to your wife, and somerandomguy to a person passing you by the road. When all our identities are undifferentiated, then we are confused. When differentiated and we can integrate into life experience, then we are less conflicted....not completely but just less.

Because you know these are cognitive barriers (and I believe only you can access your emotions)I will provide some intellectual and curios thoughts. Try to separate in language who you are, your sexuality, your relationship and your upbringing. A sign of a healthy adult is we no longer identify with our parents/upbringing exactly ...we can recognize and acknowledge their input/influence but we crave out our own path.

Who are you if you lost all memory of your past?

You can look around and will mostly notice those of us who have got stuck in exploration phase of our development or those of us who got stuck in commitment phase of what we were taught or learned along the way. And some of us have both and some of have none. I feel you are committed to who you were taught you "should" become and did not fully explored imaginatively who you could have become if you were free of the past. I often think (and this my own blindspot) if I was a parent what would I teach my child?

When you think of your child today what do you want to teach them about their own sexuality or their own genderhood? and why not do the same for yourself?
Do you want your child to think like you or learn how to think what you are ideally looking for? You have to imagine a different side of you in order to bring that imagination to reality. Who can you become? If you can elaborate, creatively express, and put into words, then maybe there is a path to become that...

I do not have answers but I can throw some questions to get you challenge yourself even if that is painful or shame ridden process...sometimes in trauma related processing, we have to push through the shame to see the gratitude of knowing we just passed the shame.

PS. the words I used above are based on adolescence developmental dimensions by Marcia (1966). here is the link: Dimensions of Identity and Subjective Quality of Life in Adolescents They may help in framing how you were hurt, delayed or abused and maybe can give a direction how to reclaim what was lost or a venture new path to find yourself.

Good luck

 

[MainerMikeBrown]

You don't have to have a lot of sex and bring home a fat paycheck in order to consider yourself to be a real man.

 

[siniang]

Not trying to be challenging, because I know this is really a hard and triggery topic for you, just putting out a thought here.

You cite your upbringing as a reason for your view (and expectation) on what it means to be a man.

I'm curious - do you have similar very narrowly defined gender definitions for women? Is a woman only a woman if... ____ insert blank ____ ?

And if not...why?

What I'm trying to get at: I'd personally be surprised if you did from all I've been reading from you. So. Why are you able to have a more lax definition for women, but keep holding on to those rather old-school definition for men? Why - trauma aside - is this this important to you? Not sure rn if you did EMDR on this already or not.

(Are women who want and have a lot of sex not actually women? Or those who bring home a big fat paycheck?)

I know the sex topic i a very difficult one for you :hug:

 

[joeylittle]

Please help me reframe my life? You'd think I would have thought of something by now. But I haven't.

So, the thing about core beliefs is...they are much more difficult to unseat.

Core beliefs are generally developed in childhood/adolescence, while the basics of self-concept are just being formed. Not all of them stick forever - new beliefs can form when the existing ones are contradicted by messaging that's more potent, or absorbed by a more comprehensive version of the old belief. Core beliefs that would appear (to the rational mind) to be contradictory can actually be made to co-exist, if the formative events are strong enough, and/or if the beliefs are created in two different phases of neuro-psychological development.

You need to do a lot of re-framing of the many, many smaller thoughts that reinforce the core belief. You also need to process any trauma (small-t or big-T) or intense emotion around the major events that informed and reinforced the belief. Through doing all this, the old core belief is dismantled. Generally, there's a vague shape of a new core belief starting to form in the place where the old one was...but it still has to be built.

Building a new core belief to replace an old one happens through consistent application of new supporting thoughts, as well as new experiences. Some of those experiences the individual can create for themselves. But they can also be things that happen to the person, that end up becoming part of a new belief/belief system.

The longer you've lived with a belief, the more difficult it is to dismantle and replace.

All this is also why it's criminally easy to shape a child's beliefs, just by controlling the input they are given. Or, more simply put - things we're taught to believe from a very young age will stick deep within the psyche. It takes time to get them to come out.

The good news is, one can go at them from a number of different angles. The bad news is, those really old core beliefs can't just be erased through re-framing. Think instead about re-framing the small, small bits and bobs that continue to reinforce the belief.

It might also be worth your while to do some EMDR around whenever it was you first experienced inner conflict around the "this is what a man is" set of beliefs - it might be the time you first thought, "I can't be/I'm not a man". Or, it might be a time when you saw a negative consequence of that belief in a way that placed it in conflict with a separate belief. There's usually something we can trace back, for these beliefs formed in childhood. It's not necessarily going to be a big-T trauma - but it will have made a big impression on you.

 

[Friday]

What do you admire in other men?

 

[Lionheart]

My therapist helped me to redefine what it is to be a man by teaching me that if you are male and at least 18 years old, you are a man (period). I came to accept that belief tho it took me a long, long time to shed preconceived notions of masculinity.

This is just my opinion...I think a lot of societal problems stem from the way we teach children about what it means to be men and/or women. That is to say that a lot of 'old school' beliefs follow narrow-minded and stereotypical beliefs that we all really need to examine and re-examine as men and women. Are the beliefs true? Do they make our lives better? etc.

So anyway, I offer the aforementioned definition of what a man is as a possible alternative to what you have been taught or previously accepted though I admit, this is a tough one!!!

I am really very sorry if this is not helpful for you @somerandomguy!!! I really hate that you are struggling and hope that something soon helps you to find a way to liberate yourself from any and all unhappy core beliefs.

Wishing you the best,
Lion

 

[Sideways]

My therapist helped me to redefine what it is to be a man by teaching me that if you are male and at least 18 years old, you are a man (period).

Can't like this statement enough.

I came from the exact opposite upbringing as you did, SRG. One brother, 2 sisters. We were all taught how to iron shirts properly, how to mow the lawn, how to cook a nutritious dinner, how to change a tyre. There were biological differences, but apart from the way they effected our physical health, those differences meant SFA. And to me? They still pretty much do.

I see so many people these days placing so much importance on the way they personally identify with masculinity and femininity. Most often, it seems to cause people huge amounts of distress.

In the same way that being "feminine" doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on how much sex I like, so too does it have no bearing whatsoever on how masculine you are.

What I'm reading in the subtext is that you feel inadequate. And masculinity is where you've been taught (particularly through your trauma) to direct those feelings of shame and inadequacy.

Have you tried thought diffusion?

I use it fairly continuously throughout the day with my own personal "I'm shameful" narrative. My narrative uses different words and concepts, but I suspect the roots of it are roughly the same. Feeling ashamed and inadequate.

There's lots of therapeutic approaches that work towards self acceptance. Not an easy thing to achieve. Maybe that's a theme worth exploring?

In the meantime, instead of trying to out-think the feelings of inadequacy, and the thoughts that are playing on repeat in your head and making life utterly miserable? Maybe (maybe not, not everyone finds mindfulness techniques helpful) throw some thought diffusion at it.

"Oh, there's that I'm Completely Inadequate story again. Thanks brain, but I'm actually concentrating on something else right now...".

Because I suspect if you examine @Friday 's question? The qualities of character that you value in other men you know? Are just good human qualities to have, and are probably pretty gender-neutral. And that your standards for everyone else place surprisingly little importance on how much a person identifies with a particular gender (do you care at all if Half Pint or SRK feel especially masculine or feminine? Suspect not. Suspect that you more value them simply accepting and valuing themselves).

You're a man. You were born that way. And you are more than adequate: irrespective of how much sex you have, how much beer your drink, whether you loooove using a leaf blower excessively, or any other stereotypically masculine traits that you may or may not have on any given day.

 

[grit]

I have been immersed certain cognitive dissonance of mine lately and realized some times as humans to grow we may also abject certain states of ourselves or others to make space for new way of being. For example one way I survived my Narsisstic mother was to abject her and believe I am not like her.... Hence the depth of my dissociation.... A child can t shut off mother and not be traumatized. So Friday comment reminded me... What is not a man? That you do not want to do.... Here of course being disgusted with certain behaviors are helpful. It is painful way to extract but growth is never easy at the beginning.

My downside of My strong repulsion to my mother affects me getting too close to others... One good example is I avoid reading trauma diary, I sometimes work against my therapist... I am becoming conscious of its damage... But I also have strong personality opposite of my mother.... I am not an abusive person.

Hope this helps. Honestly just even posting this shows there is a rich side of you trying to get out!

 

[somerandomguy]

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. I've been avoiding coming back to this thread because I really, really, really don't want to think about this. It's extremely complicated and it ties in with everything in my life.

Right now with the pandemic I'm really struggling. My wife doesn't appreciate that I work and doesn't really want me to work at all - she needs too much help with the kids. Sex is not happening and in the past when the sex doesn't happen, I've always just put my nose to the grindstone and worked even harder. But I can't do that at home. So I feel useless, powerless, unappreciated, and unmanly - even though I know I'm not any of those things.

I'd really like to go through each response and reply, but I just feel a nausea-like wave of fear when I try to reread these responses. I do plan to do some EMDR around this eventually but I don't know exactly when.

One thing I have to say is that when I dysregulate, I get angry at women, in large part because I feel like a woman, my ex, robbed me of my masculinity when she abused me. It is of course not supposed to happen to men. I bought into that so much that it took me years after we broke up to recognize that I had even actually been a victim of abuse.