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What Are Mid-Men Looking For When They Leave
Their Partners?
In my previous posts I began to explore what
mid-life men really want and why men (and many
women) leave a partnership just when it seems that
they could begin to enjoy the fruits of their
labors. In order to understand what men are really
searching for, you have to understand the impact of
the thinking that began in the 1970s that was
reflected in the phrase, “A woman needs a man,
like a fish needs a bicycle.”
Many, including Time Magazine, credit Gloria
Steinem with coining the phrase about what a woman
needs. It certainly was consistent with the
thinking of many Feminist women in the U.S. who
were awakening from lives of dependency and
recognizing the fact that they were powerful women.
In the euphoric emergence of this wonderful
feminine spirit some women concluded that men were
superfluous and unnecessary. I’ll come back to
this point in a minute, because it is crucial in
helping us understand the dilemma faced by many men
of this era.
First though, we need to give credit where
credit is due. On my recent trip to Australia I
learned that this famous phrase was coined by Irina
Dunn, a distinguished Australian educator,
journalist and politician, back in 1970 when she
was a student at the University of Sydney. “My
inspiration arose from being involved in the
renascent women’s movement at the time,”
says Dunn, “and from being a bit if a
smart-arse. I scribbled the phrase on the backs of
two toilet doors, would you believe, one at Sydney
University where I was a student, and the other at
Soren’s Wine Bar at Woolloomooloo, a seedy
suburb in south Sydney.”
The 1970s was a difficult time for us. Like many
men I grew up without the presence of a strong,
loving, involved Dad. My father became depressed
and tried to commit suicide shortly before my 6th
birthday. He was hospitalized and I didn’t see
him again until I graduated college. My mother
raised me. She was a very independent, dominant
woman who seemed to get along fine without a man in
her life.
Although she was never overtly hostile towards
men, she saw most men as vulnerable, weak and
untrustworthy (a holdover from her broken marriage
and a father who had died when she was young).
I’m sure the belief that men are unnecessary,
fit the experience of many women of my generation
as well as many men.
Poet and writer, Robert Bly recognized the
damage that these beliefs were having on young men
of the times. In his now famous New Age Magazine
interview with Keith Thompson in May, 1982 he
talked with sadness and concern about was going on
with young men in the world. “I see the
phenomenon of what I would call the ‘soft
male’ all over the country today. Sometimes
when I look out at my audiences, perhaps half the
young males are what I’d call soft. . . . Many
of these men are unhappy. There’s not much
energy in them. They are life-preserving but not
exactly life-giving. And why is it you often see
these men with strong women who positively radiate
energy?”
I think that phrase captures the way I was back
then, as were many of my contemporaries. We were,
indeed, lacking in dynamic energy. We were
life-preserving but not exactly life-giving. I
believe we had lost confidence in our ability to be
generative, to give something to our families and
communities that was valuable and unique. The Viet
Nam War had disabled many of us, whether we fought
or protested. The death of the Kennedy’s and
Martin Luther King caused us to wonder whether
taking risks for the betterment of the world was
worthwhile.
But most of all, I think we wondered whether men
were really necessary at all. More and more women
entered the workforce and men wondered whether we
were needed as bread-winners. Women learned
self-defense and we wondered whether we were needed
as protectors. Women bought vibrators and learned
to pleasure themselves and we wondered whether we
were needed for sex. Women used birth-control and
decided if they wanted to have children. When they
did have them, they often decided to raise the
children without the involvement of a man. We
wondered whether we were needed as fathers.
Now it’s 2006 and these “soft”
men, the superfluous-feeling men of the 1970s and
80s have reached mid-life. We often feel trapped in
a family where we increasingly feel that we are not
needed. The kids, if we had them, are moving out on
their own. The grandchildren ask to speak to
grandma when they call. “Grandpa” is a
word that seems foreign to them. Our partner seems
content to get whatever sexual pleasure she needs
from somewhere other than our starving loins.
Perhaps she can take in what she needs from the
air, like a fern. She’s got her own job which
may be more secure than ours and often her own bank
account and assets.
Some men don’t leave. They stay and die
slowly of boredom or keep themselves drugged on
marijuana, booze, and T.V. sports, with a little
internet sex thrown in occasionally to prove they
can still get it up. Other men confront their
feelings of uselessness, hopelessness, and
helplessness and begin to make constructive changes
in their personal lives and in their relationships.
They want more and are willing to work for it.
Then there are the guys who leave. What are they
looking for? Well, for starters I think
they’re looking for a reason to go on living.
They want to find out if there is a place for them
in the world of the 21st century. Are we dinosaurs
just waiting to fall over and become extinct, or do
we have some important purpose here that we have
yet to discover. Are we as useless and ludicrous as
a fish on a bicycle? Or is there a greatness in men
that we have yet to uncover. It’s an exciting
time to be alive today. But it is also terrifying.
We truly are living in a new world, with new rules,
and new dangers.
I believe the number one reason that mid-life
men are leaving is to find out whether they have a
reason to live. What do you think? How do you feel?
Is there something mid-life men have to offer the
world?
©2010 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
+ Suicide
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of seven
books including Male
Menopause, now
translated into 17 foreign languages and his
latest book, The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression. For over
38 years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Men’s Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Men’s Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. He looks forward to your feedback.
E-Mail.
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com
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