In under 72 hours, three people, completely unrelated to each other, informed Rebecca Wissink on the importance of having a mentor.
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My friend Luke wrote an article for the Good Men Project about where men go when they are afraid. If you haven’t read it, I will summarize: until men learn to face their fears, they fight, flight, or freeze. I wrote Luke and told him I found the article “really f**king sad.” The reactive approach outlined in the article originates in the reptilian brain, and is appropriate when fighting dragons, but letting your adrenal gland dictate your behaviour is not a measured or thoughtful approach to adult relationships with grown men or women who aren’t breathing fire in your direction.
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As a mother to a glorious and amazing young man who is now sober, my son’s ability to deal with his fear and shame concerns me greatly. I know what a trigger shame can be for relapse, so I worry that he is not addressing his anger, fear and longing in some healthy way, but is just fighting, freezing or fleeing from those emotions. I want nothing more than for my son to allow me to bear witness to his struggles. The way he did when he was young before society got to him. I want him to talk to me about his fears, as well as his triumphs, and allow me to support him, or celebrate with him.
I didn’t raise him to act like the men described in Luke’s article, but I see the behaviour to a degree. Only to a degree though; his generation seems to be doing a much better job of being physically affectionate with each other, and developing real friendships. My son has referred to his best friend as his “life partner,” is fully supportive of gay rights, and can ask for a hug when he is feeling down. He does struggle to name his emotions though, or identify when he has been emotionally triggered. He is only 24; I am 43 and just beginning to get some of this stuff figured out.
Has anyone ever told men that they don’t have to buy into societies dysfunction or listen to whatever bulls**t is being thrown their way?
As a woman who has just gone through a break-up with a man I love, the loss of his friendship and companionship is the hardest to bare. I don’t understand why he has fled and gone into the witness protection program. I have never grasped the concept that the underlaying friendship must also end when a sexual relationship ends. If I was sleeping with you, I really liked you as a person. I can guarantee I respected you, trusted you, wanted the best for you, and cared deeply about you as a man and an individual. When a relationship has an amicable ending, I don’t see a need for the friendship to end just because it was decided that the romantic relationship didn’t have a future.
When I feel sad at the end of a relationship, and I am in fear, anger or shame, I want to talk to my friends about my feelings. It is how I process, make sense of, learn from, and let go of what has happened. I wish I could include my ex in that list of friends. And vice-versa; I wish my ex would talk to me about his life, including his dragons.
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And therein lies one fundamental behavioural difference between men and women. I will talk about my feelings, my fears, my inadequacies, and my shame with a few select friends. I am a woman, so I have never been called a “pussy” for crying, or been told to “man-up” or “grow some balls” when I am feeling lonely or sad. I have been told to “suck it up” or “put on my big girl panties,” but when I think about the source of the advice, I usually dismiss it. Has anyone ever told men that they don’t have to buy into societies dysfunction or listen to whatever bulls**t is being thrown their way? I would never speak that way to a man, my son or otherwise, because it is reprehensible to shame someone for a normal feeling or reaction to a life event. Loss creates grief and failure creates embarrassment, almost every time. Therefore, because I would not condemn a man for speaking his feelings, I don’t understand why the men in my life won’t open up to me. It becomes their choice, I believe, as opposed to something I am doing that is pushing them away.
Luke says in his article that his female friends often ask him why men behave a certain way. They probably feel bewildered like me. Luke wrote: “Courageous women can break into this cycle, whether she wants to is another matter altogether.” I want to assist men in breaking their cycle, and I think I am courageous, so I asked Luke how I can do this. How can a woman assist a man in breaking his particular cycle of reacting to fear? Luke’s answer was to listen to men. I don’t accept the responsibility lies with me then, because if a man won’t open up in the first place, there is nothing for me to listen to. Luke then went on to state: “What we need is a mentor, a friend, a confidant, someone who has slain the dragons and can show us the way, … But good friends are rare, mentors are rarer and safe places are harder to find than Eldorado.”
Ah, I guess then, as a women who cares deeply for men in general, cares deeply for the women impacted by their relationships with men, cares deeply for the welfare of men in terms of our future western social construct, and most of all cares deeply for my son and his life experiences, all I can do is encourage the men in my life to find mentors. Men would still have to open up to their mentor though. The responsibility to take action and learn new behaviours still comes back to men.
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In his TED talk, The Law of 33%, Tai Lopez hones in on mentorship as being a mandatory ingredient for “living the good life.” “Everybody wants the good life, but not everybody gets the good life.” For you the good life could be health, happiness, fulfillment, success, altruism, wealth, love, or any combination of those. Tai believes that mentors have the ability to powerfully change your life. When Tai was 16 he wrote to his Grandfather, the smartest man he knew, and asked him for his help in designing the good life. His Grandfather told him no single individual can help you, and instead sent him a box of books.
Find a mentor because you can never resolve a situation with the same brain and perspective that created a problem; we need people to offer us a different way.
Tai has come to believe we don’t always need to look inwards to find truth; sometimes we need to look outwards, and access the “consciousness” of the smartest and wisest people who have gone before us. He argues we need a handful of people to guide us: 33% of our sphere of influence specifically. We need people that make us uncomfortable, that are 10-20 years ahead of us, that are 10 times more successful than us.
The talk has very specific rules you must follow to access the good life, two of which involve mentorship: you must be humble; you must persevere; you must, in turn, mentor those who have not reached where you are in life; you must read books ( at least one a week) to access the great mentors who are no longer are alive; and, you must choose to be “stoic versus epicurean.” Tai very specifically makes the point that you must persevere in your search for a mentor, you must seek them out and ask them for help. A mentor isn’t likely to fall into your lap. Throughout his TED talk, Tai provides some examples of the lengths people have gone to secure the person they identified as being most valuable to their learning process.
Tai says you must find a mentor, whether you are just starting out or experienced at what you do, because there is always someone to learn from. I say find a mentor because you can never resolve a situation with the same brain and perspective that created a problem; we need people to offer us a different way. Regarding our emotions, feelings, and relationships, we humans are incredibly complicated, and I do not imagine too many of us are an “expert” at the complexities of life, so find some mentors to help you “slay the dragons” that Luke speaks of. Find your mentors in the hundreds of outstanding books written to assist us in our life and relationships. Find your mentor in an author who is an expert in the field you wish to grow in. Find your mentor at a men’s group or a Meetup.
In less than 72 hours I was exposed to two different men, and a woman, proclaiming that a mentor is the way to move out of where we are, through the hard work of growth and learning, and into the place we want to be. I know what’s being added to my to-do list.
Photo:Flickr/ Duncan Hull
Some further reading on men and withdrawing, from the male perspective:
5 Signs a Man is Connected to his Heart
Why Men Withdraw Emotionally
Why I disappeared
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The post Could a Thoughtful Mentor be the Game Changer in Male/Female Relationships? appeared first on The Good Men Project.