The order of operations
Order of Operations
As children, in mathematics, we learned about something called the order of operations. Remember? PEMDAS? When solving an equation you have to solve components of the equation in a particular order to get the correct answer and outcome. If you don’t adhere to this you risk getting the wrong answer and moving forward with incorrect information. You get lost.
As I continue to work with men in masculine health there is one thing that I see addressed over and over that is out of order. It is yielding a result but as the complex equation, that is our mental and emotional health, continues to unfold we are solving for the wrong “number”. We navigate the maze of our healing from the wrong starting point.
I have spoken about this many times before and because It can be seen as sexist it almost always is seen as sexist. I am generally met with anger, argument and defense. I am prepared for that with this post because this matters. A lot. All of that being said I hope that you, the reader, can receive this in the spirit it is intended.
Men need to work with, talk with, connect with, coach with, cry with, be with men. This is the first step towards a man stepping into healthy masculinity. Plain and simple. I have not seen an exception to this yet. If he starts working with a woman on any aspect of his masculine health or well being before working with men it is going to cause harm to himself and to others.
Now, does this mean men don’t need women? Does this mean that men can’t benefit from a plethora of talents, abilities, services, products and offerings provided by women? Of course it doesn’t!!! My statement is not about the validity and necessity of women or their value in a man’s personal healing and health. It is about order of operations.
In our society we have a generation of “nice guys”. If you haven’t read Robert Glover’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” you really should. Without going into a detailed history of how we’ve gotten to this place, men have learned that they need to be “good boys” and betray important aspects of themselves to get their needs met and to be accepted into their village or tribe. Their fathers have been either physically or mentally and emotionally absent. They have been instructed by well-meaning mothers doing their very best to teach them how to be fine upstanding citizens. After those most formative years with their mothers they are sent to elementary school where the overwhelming majority of teachers are, you guessed it, also women.
This is a phenomenon unique to our time in history. For thousands of years boys worked with their fathers, they spent time with other men in their towns, villages and tribes. They were given rites of passage and moved into adulthood in a clear-cut experience. This does not ignore the horrible, deplorable ways men have shown up in history but one would argue that some of the worst ways we have seen men show up in misalignment have occurred once they no longer had a tribe of men holding them accountable to a higher standard.
Because of this cultural conditioning men have learned to get their needs met in covert and hidden ways. We have learned to avoid conflict, to lie, to hide and to let our resentment out towards the women in our lives through subtle and abusive ways. We have forgotten how to be men. We have isolated ourselves from other men because we were taught that inherently, being a man, is a bad thing. We don’t trust men. We trust women. Our mothers were women. They fed us, clothed us, told us they were proud when we obeyed and loved us for repressing the parts of ourselves that they had learned to fear most. Our teachers were women. The ones who taught us, gave us tasks to do and graded us on how well we did the thing they said was best. We were literally graded not on our intelligence but on our ability to conform and regurgitate.
I had an experience the other day where a female coach was advertising her coaching package for “awakening the divine masculine”. Her argument was “I’m a woman, I know what women want and I can help men be those things”. My reply that fell on deaf ears was “EXACTLY”! She will reinforce with these men that it does not matter what they want or who they are, the only thing that matters is being the good boy that this woman wants you to be and so the resentment, misalignment and hidden agendas will grow and deepen.
Ask any one of those men why they’re working with a woman instead of a man and they’ll tell you that they just don’t get along with men. They’ve always gotten along better with women. They don’t trust men. If they were being honest with themselves they’d tell you that they hope they can create some sort of connection with this woman beyond any declared expectation. This is why female servers are tipped more than men and why female servers who are deemed attractive by their male patrons are tipped even more than that. Ulterior motive and hidden, illogical agendas. Anyone disputing this reality cannot have long existed in our current society and culture.
We have forgotten and lost our capacity for aggression. At first glance this might seem like a good thing but when you realize that aggression doesn’t just represent violence but, for men, it also represents will power, ingenuity and passion than you start to realize why most of the men you see have a grey, dull, dispassionate look on their face and a robotic, disconnected personality.
We have, also, been taught that our sexual desire is bad. That it is to be repressed rather than harnessed and focused. We learned that pornography was bad, not because it demeaned and degraded women, but because it had to do with sex. Many women seem to think that they have the monopoly on sexual shame but I promise you, through thousands of conversations with men that simply isn’t true. This is a universal experience that needs to continue to be addressed.
We have learned that accountability doesn’t just mean recognizing our own choices but that it also means we are responsible for someone else’s feelings about our choices. This is why we work so hard to avoid conflict. When given the task of managing someone else’s emotions one quickly learns that this is an impossible and unsustainable task.
So, order of operations, men need men. Once men get clear about themselves and are able to clean up their energy and behavior then, by all means, men need to interact with women. They need to practice showing up in an aligned way. They need to learn clear communication. They need to benefit at that point from the vast skillsets and phenomenal wisdom held by the feminine. Those skillsets and wise offerings will build on a solid foundation of personal clarity and an independent self-worth. Interdependence is a rare experience within any relationship. It cannot be experienced until both parties find a healthy version of independence.
The solution here is not that men don’t talk to or work with women. The solution is that they start talking with and working with men, first.
