Becoming a Man

The old cultures have many ways of helping children and adolescents move into adulthood.  They understand, in particular, that an adult identity is not something that happens at a certain age, but rather through a certain process.  For boys, that process must involve elder men.  And with the epidemic absence of fathers across our world today, boys are being completely cheated of an essential requirement to make it to mature adulthood.  Little wonder that so many men, straight and gay alike, suffer from insecurities about our masculinity; and little wonder that we attempt to rectify this in so many destructive ways.  Never having heard from the elders that we "made it", we keep trying to prove it and accept all sorts of compensations in the meantime.

At some point, however, the coping mechanisms stop working so well. We may find ourselves sacked by depression or anxiety, having difficulties with anger, being overwhelmed by addictions or traumatic experiences, or by new life responsibilities.  These events are usually very painful.  They may also be life's invitation to a heroic journey, a journey of healing and initiation. 

In today's world, psychotherapy and group work can be the modern man's path to initiation and a deeper sense of himself and his maturity.  Like the initiation rites of the old cultures, this path is full of challenges, hard work, and deep rewards.  Along the way, it is painful, and involves going through rather than around our pain.  If we choose this path, it is true that  we will experience more discomfort for a while.  We may discover and deal with profound rage and anger, fear, and shame.  At some point we will also need to grieve the care and guidance we did not receive.  Yet for the man courageous enough to make the journey, a maturity and solidity await that he cannot know in any other way than to make what is nothing less than a sacred journey. 

More for Gay Men

Gay men in particular suffer from the absence of male role models and mentors.  Most of us had straight fathers who even in the best of cases were poorly prepared to understand their gay sons. As a result, they frequently rejected us, no matter how subtly, at the very moment we most needed them: the entry into adolescence.  At some level, most gay boys realize at this point that they are on their own when it comes to becoming an adult man: they cannot do it as their fathers did it, and precious few are shown another way. As a result, gay men like many straight men, are left to figure it out for ourselves -- a genuinely impossible task.

And it is not only a lack of help that confounds us, but also the presence of homophobia and heterosexism.  Not only do we rarely have anyone taking us through the rites of manhood, we also face on a daily basis cultural messages that we are not "real men," should not have our desires, and are in some way defective.  It is not surprising that more gay men find themselves in treatment centers, contemplating or committing suicide, and reporting higher rates of depression than our straight counterparts.  It is also understandable why many gay men feel unsafe to come out, staying closeted and often in marriages that are unfulfilling for both partners.

Healing from this neglect and abuse of our core selves is hard work.  At first, it can seem more comfortable to just stay in the adapatations we have created to "make it" in a homophobic world.  Many gay men entering therapy have denied their sexuality for years.  Others have come out but have found ourselves in addictions, traumatic situations, or a kind of eternal boyhood where it is easy to relate to women but difficult to relate to men, with little guidance or support from other gay men.   

The gift in all this, though, may be that it can serve as a kind of initiation.  The requirement in many of the old cultures for boys to become men is a rite of passage involving danger, often life-threatening danger.  And most gay men know danger intimately, whether the danger of rejection, of violence, or of never knowing which rights and privileges will be allowed and disallowed to us.  Our work, then, is to transform all of this "betrayal into wisdom," in the words of the book Gay Warrior, at right.

This is very frequently the process that a gay man entering psychotherapy comes to complete.  We know the pain, but we have not been helped to find our way out -- to transform the pain into the basis of a solid, strong male identity.  In this way, working with a therapist and frequently with a group who assist us in this rite of passage can be transformative and life-changing.  

At long last, we again have elders to assist us in the realization of our own manhood.  Here are a few books that can assist straight and gay men interested in personal growth and in the transformation of suffering into wisdom.

Iron John, by Robert Bly

 Gay Warrior, by F. Jim Fickey and Gary S. Grimm 

Intimacy Between Men,  by John Driggs and Stephen Finn