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You can join
the email list that receives his columns. Part One: "The Desperation to Be a Couple" — August, 2004 Part Two: "The Fear of Getting Close to One's Own Sex" — October, 2004 Part Three: "The Danger of Masculinity" — January, 2005 Part Four: "Be a Lady " — May, 2005 
How to Wreck a
RelationshipAn Occasional Series By Bob Minor Part Two, The Fear of Getting Close to One’s Own Sex Of all the ways that our culture sets up our relationships to be less than they could be -- particularly close, partnered relationships -- the fact that it installs homophobia in every one of us is one of the most critical. Because the core definition of homophobia is seldom examined personally, we don’t recognize its effects. We rarely notice how it hurts both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. Be aware, then, that what we’re really supposed to learn from birth from the people and institutions around us, what we’re expected to internalize beyond question, is the core of homophobia. And the core meaning of homophobia is the fear of getting close to one’s own sex. This fear is a deep, internal, culturally conditioned approach to life, oneself, and others that pervades our society. More often, though, we use the word homophobia to refer to what are actually its symptoms and effects -- discrimination, oppression, hatred, fear, and prejudice toward people who don’t appear to be straight or who identify as something other than heterosexual. At times we use it for the fear that I myself might be gay, or even the fear that homosexuals or homosexuality will destroy me, or the whole world as we believe it is. But the basic fear our culture really wants us to internalize -- the fear that lies behind and within all these others -- is the fear of intimacy between women and between men. Many of our culture’s institutions and approaches to life are built upon this fear, from advertising to investing to producing and consuming. Anything that can obscure the natural closeness people have with each other because we’re fellow humans, will allow advertisers to sell us things to make us feel we can purchase the closeness we naturally expected in early childhood -- before we were scared out of it. In heterosexual relationships, this fear makes the pressure to couple with the other sex an even more desperate matter. All of the closeness needs that would otherwise be met by the entire human race cannot, or should not, be met by one-half of it, according to this message. So, for people who identify as heterosexual, closeness must be fulfilled only by the half that doesn’t include them. But it’s not even that easy for the heterosexual. An accompanying message says that all closeness needs can only be met in a limited, culturally approved way -- by only one other person of that other half of all humanity. All closeness needs, then, must be met by him or her, and no one else. You cannot be close to the rest of the human race. Further still, the culture defines closeness based on its limited definition of masculinity. It’s therefore something ultimately fulfilled only in one activity -- the sexual act. Fear of closeness, then, is fear of being sexual with the wrong people. Fear of closeness with one’s own sex is fear that I’d have to be sexual with another person who has a similar set of genitals as I have. Since no single person can meet all of a human being’s needs for closeness, this stifling collection of messages piles up in any intimate partnering relationship we are trying to have. It guarantees that there will be an underlying resentment that that other person hasn’t fulfilled my needs, a gnawing sense of being unfulfilled, a settling for less than I was supposed to hope for in a relationship, and, finally, the need to move on to look for that someone else whom our culture says will finally be the one who can fulfill this impossible task. This is a setup for disillusionment and failure. Our dominant conservative culture never responds to these relationship failures by analyzing any of its core messages that keep it sick. It responds by looking for scapegoats to blame for its miserable inability to create fulfilling relationships. That way it isn’t forced to examine its homophobia. What gay people are here for culturally is to take the fall for straight culture’s miserable relationships. Ah yes, it’s their fault. It’s not something down deep that we’ve got to change. Since lesbians and gay men have been raised in this same culture, they too have been taught to be homophobic. They’ve internalized a set of homophobic messages that hurt same-sex relationships. They seldom seriously examine these messages as well, even though writers have pointed out examples of internalized homophobia in the gay community for decades. Imagine the problem for gay people. Fear of getting close to one’s own sex is a setup for difficulty when one finds oneself attracted to one’s own sex for companionship, love, partnering, sex, and commitment. It gnaws at relationships, lurking deeply behind an inability to trust one’s partner in matters as diverse as sharing finances, space, sex, romance, and friendships. Coupled with the idea that only one person in an intimate partnership can fulfill a person’s needs, we respond by assuming that few if any can be met by the other sex. In fact, in reaction to the oppression of heterosexism, we might over-react with an inability to relate closely to the other sex. Though many gay men have relationships with women, and lesbians with men, many others write the other sex off as if they are from other planets, or as if they just must have a problem with the other sex. After all, we’ve been brought up to believe we’re not just different but “opposite” sexes who come from as far away as Mars and Venus. When we add our culture’s teachings around sexism, there are often difficulties with gay men and lesbians working together that can break out in open opposition. This helps ensure difficulties with working together to change a culture that hurts us all. Fear of same-sex closeness makes us suspicious that the partner with whom we’ve become somewhat vulnerable will take advantage of that vulnerability, think less of us, cheat on us sexually, hurt us emotionally, or leave us. It may make us cling desperately to a partner to try to counteract this. These fears really, however, reflect the fear of abandonment, ridicule, humiliation, or even violence that helped install homophobia in us in the first place. Homophobia, then, is more than a condition that’s acted out in the oppression of LGBT people. It’s a condition that needs examining and healing by everyone no matter what their sexual orientation in order to create relationships that can be open, vulnerable, and close. It’s another case of fighting back by choosing to act on the fact that what we’ve learned can be unlearned if we want to do the sometimes difficult work that will improve and strengthen our relationships.
Part Three: The Danger of Masculinity It just takes a lot of emotional and societal conditioning to turn little boys into those “real men” who can’t talk about their feelings, fear the loss of those they commit to, over-react in anger, and suffer alone in desperate silences. Cultural patterns of male conditioning teach men at all costs to assume ultimate responsibility for others, armor themselves against other men, and expect others to depend on their stoic, unwavering strength. Early in life and often, boys are taught that there are crybabies, sissies, sallies, wusses, pussies, and fags who’ll be hurt by other men because they act more like girls than the true men Thoreau described as living “lives of quiet desperation.” It’s just the beat-or-be-beaten boy code that says unless you quickly join the masculine world that puts down non-masculine males and females, you’ll fall victim to other men. The goal of the training of boys in the US is not to create men who are capable of loving, close, emotionally intimate relationships at all. Its purpose is to turn them into competent warriors. They’re needed as leaders and fodder for a military-industrial-prison-media-complex that demands arms races, wars, insecurity, and bloated Pentagon spending to propel corporate profits and stock values higher and higher. “The strong silent type” idealized by many is the result. He’s the one who looks steeled enough to protect us all. Even his physical presence should look strong, armored, and successful at mastering or beating the system. He’s the one we’re supposed to value as a nation’s president, a corporate leader, a woman’s husband, and a strict, never wrong, morally unflinching father for otherwise helpless children. If women in our culture aren’t breaking out of their conditioning, which prepares them to function as warrior support personnel, they’ll need men to be this way. If they aren’t learning to take care of their own space, value their own ideas, and secure their own lives, they’ll freak out when a man they’ve bet their lives on to “love and protect” them begins to reject the internalized masculine patterns he’s bet his life on over the years. Patterned masculinity devalues emotions, even removes men from consciously feeling the emotional spectrum. While men walk around feeling deeply hurt, often afraid, and unsure of the answers to life, they can’t know it or show it. It’s hard for such a masculinized partner who can’t feel when he’s hurting to understand that something hurts someone else. It’s hard for him to know when something he himself is doing hurts someone else, too. “Really? That hurts you?” is a fully conditioned masculine response. He’s also supposed to have all the answers, fix all the problems, and be an unwavering pillar of strength against a threatening world. So his very masculine image is on the line when he’s expected to show vulnerability, share his true feelings, describe the demeaning or devaluing day he experienced at work, or even admit that something he’s supposed to do is slowly killing him inside. Relating to such masculinity is difficult, frustrating, and unhealthy for both the man living it and the partner who seeks an intimate relationship with him. Real intimacy, the kind that shares heart to heart, is an impossible dream. Fully conditioned men only function emotionally from the neck up and the waist down.Sex becomes the only place to feel anything other than the expected manly anger. Sex again becomes a desperate need for conditioned males. But it doesn’t work. It can’t. Sex is not a replacement for intimacy. In same-sex male relationships the problem is doubled. Vulnerability is just as difficult. What will he think of me? Doesn’t he want me to be strong too? Since patterned masculinity, and that includes gay men, is afraid of emotional intimacy, both partners in gay male relationships enforce the fear. Neither man wants to hear about those feelings from his partner because that would trigger his own masculinity issues. And he himself doesn’t want to face, express, or even admit his deepest emotions. It’s better to keep them buried. It’s not that many gay men don’t express emotions more freely than their straight-acting brothers. Because they’re stereotyped as doing so, the straight world questions the possible masculinity of homosexuality. At its extreme, there are drama queens who always seem to be indulging their emotions, wearing them on their sleeves if not on their whole outfits. But dramatizing emotions is not being in touch with them either. It’s merely drama. It’s acting, not being. The drama itself is a coping mechanism, a way not to get to the hurts and feelings. The drama may get attention. It may feel better than therapy, support group confessions, or vulnerable sharing with affirming close friends. But it’s not healing. It’s just a way of expression that the stereotype of gay men permits. It’s another pattern that most straight-acting men just haven’t embraced. But it’s still a pattern to avoid feeling male hurts. Add to this the childhood beat or be beaten attitude of patterned masculinity, and the fear of one male partner becoming emotionally vulnerable with another male – or any other type of vulnerability for that matter. What results is an unspeakable fear of abandonment, rejection, ridicule, or humiliation. Masculinity as defined by our culture, then, is a major hindrance for the kind of close, intimate relationships human beings long for. Rejecting masculinity, however, is a scary notion. Few men do it. It takes internal work, which is hardly masculine at all. If I do it, the fear says, I’ll never find anyone in the entire galaxy who’ll love me. I’ll be alone forever and ever. So, the desperation for partnership keeps masculinity grinding on. Keeping it going maintains frustration in relationships. They’re never what they could be and what we so deeply desire: intimate, whole, unconditionally loving, and healing. What we need, then, is men of courage who are brave enough to face these issues, who decide to reject masculinity, and to explore and feel all the fear, hurt, and confusion that this raises. Those heroes will lead us all out of a wilderness in which we’ve become comfortable, even though we’ve become comfortable far from the promise land we dream of.
Part Four: Be a Lady The ideals our culture installs in little girls to make them into “real women” hurt close relationships. The goal is to make women the warrior support personnel needed to maintain masculine-based warrior culture. The pattern of masculinity that destroys deep relationships requires the pattern of femininity girls get squeezed into as early as possible. By the time they’re in junior high -- or sooner -- girls should have internalized the message that in spite of all else they’ve been taught, their real value is their ability to get the attention, approval, and partnership of a man. As many still put it, a real lady needs a man to “love and protect” her. To the extent that a woman hasn’t internalized the ability to love and protect herself, she won’t be able to form a close, all-that-it-can-be relationship with a man who shows vulnerability, sensitivity to her feelings, and the ability to learn from her. She’ll have to find one who looks as if he can beat the system and fend off other men and their threats. He must be strong, no matter what, steeled, no matter how she wishes he’d share his feelings with her, and resolute, no matter how reading directions or listening carefully to her might improve the relationship. She learns to adjust her body so that men approve -- no matter how much, before she was told, “you’ll never get a man that way,” she had valued her body for what it could do for her. She learns to be demure, diminish herself, take up less physical space, never threaten a fragile masculine ego, and never, ever compete with a man. A lady sits quietly and looks pretty but never too independent. As a diminished human being she needs that man who’ll make her complete. If she can’t get a boyfriend, there’s something wrong with her. A desperate need for a man damages her ability to choose an equal and supportive companion who’ll support her flourishing as a whole human being. She’s taught to seek male approval. It’s more valuable than self-approval or the approval of women. And no matter how much fun she has when she’s “out with the girls,” she’s set up in the end to compete with them for manly attention. I’ve watched women together without their male companions sharing, laughing, and playing with a freedom I’ve never seen them have with their boyfriends. And almost every woman knows how the dynamic in a room full of women changes when an “eligible” man enters. A hint, or more, of competition for the man’s attention interferes with women’s closeness. When a woman has been so conditioned to need a man, she’ll freak out when her companion begins to show his emotions, fears, and confusion, even though she might otherwise complain that he’s emotionally unavailable to her. How will he be able to protect and love her when he’s so emotional? And is his love really worthwhile if he isn’t capable of being her manly savior? This need for masculine approval, as well as the need to convince herself that, and to appear as if, she’s successful at the feminine role, impels her to settle for the best catch she thinks she can get. And once she’s gotten her man, she must hold on, rather than fail at womanhood, and possibly never do any better in the desperate search for Mr. Right. Settling, convincing herself this is how it has to be, learning what issues never to raise with him, and distracting herself from an underlying, deepening depression through children, fantasies, or substances, helps her cope. If she chooses to reject this diminishment and demeaning, chooses to develop her self-concept and to protect her own space, and refuses to settle for the least awful manly alternative available, she must face the fear of being “alone” and the accusation of being a lesbian. Again, as long as it’s considered bad to be a lesbian in a culture, women can be squeezed back into their place with a lesbian slur. Otherwise, the slur has no power. It’s a double dose of this female gender conditioning that complicates intimacy between two women, especially if they’re lesbians. The culture, of course, prefers to blame their sexual orientation for what are really the results of turning girls into little ladies. Many lesbians themselves accept this as “the trouble with lesbians.” It’s in lesbian jokes and their interpretations of their own personal troubles. The inability to believe in one’s own value, wholeness, and completeness, coupled with the lack of a man in their life, adds a new dimension to the need for a relationship. Seeking the solution in coupling with another woman but having been brought up with the seldom examined conditioning that it’s a man’s approval and love that are really supposed to matter, hinders her ability to rest in the positive valuation of another woman, whether she’s a friend or life-partner. When the initial romantic endorphin high fades and without healing, awareness, and support to break the installed “be a lady” emotional patterns, the alternatives that seem available to her will damage a same-sex relationship. She may hang on awhile hoping “things” will change in the relationship. When they don’t, there’ll be a desperate need to couple up again as quickly as possible with almost anyone. Maybe another woman, she believes, will be the one who solves the unexamined problems she feels. Maybe she’ll be the one who will really love her, thereby finally proving she really is loveable. She may even be willing to settle for a demeaning or abusive partner rather than face the fear of being alone. Being without a lover, she feels, means she’s not loveable enough to find anyone. All the while at work is what women’s movement leaders have identified as the cultural conditioning of most girls. Unhealed, it’s tragic. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be. What is learned can be unlearned, and every woman can unlearn it to find her wholeness again. |
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"How
to Wreck a Relationship"
How
to Wreck a Relationship