“If it isn’t already blatantly obvious, then let me make it so: most men lack masculinity. Most men drift through life without any sense of purpose or direction. Most men let the women in their lives call the shots, too afraid to upset their girlfriend or wife, lest she leave or stop putting out.
Too many men have been broken down to a childlike state—too afraid to express their masculinity and develop into the men that the world deserves. So, they just shut their trap, sit down, and keep quiet like a “good little boy.”
In my opinion, our culture’s lack of masculinity is a multi-faceted problem, and there are numerous causes that contribute to this lack.” -www.masculinedevelopment.com/lack-masculinity-root-cause-problems/
I grew up a product of a single parent home. I remember glimpses of my father early on but those were mainly just visions of us doing fun stuff like walking the lake and going out to eat afterwards, or going to the occasional Oakland A's game. The majority of the knowledge I gained growing up that shaped me came from my mother. Mothers are there for our emotional support, our nourishment, and nurturing. When we have a bad day, the message that we get from our mothers is far different from the one that we get from our fathers. When we experience failure, that message is different, and when it comes to dating, the message is different. Women coddle their sons because they know the world is harsh on men and where else better to be then right up under her where she knows you are safe. Men raised by their mothers sometimes stay within the nest for years after entering adulthood, and if they ever need a place to come back to, they know that is the safest place. but what does this do to the mental mind state of a man? What would the message from a father be and how different would it be from a mother's stance? And would it make a difference approaching adulthood, specifically when it came to dating?
As an adult I struggled with dating and I really couldn’t tell you why at the time. I mean, I was opening up doors, pulling out chairs, being polite, not bringing drama into the relationships but yet, many of the relationships that I was settling for just didn’t feel right. In my head I always envisioned this type of relationship where I was the man who worked long hours and had a woman who came home to cook, clean, and tend to me while I fixed everything in the house that needed to be fixed, took our cars to get serviced when they needed, and was the financial backbone of the household. This was an idea which stemmed mainly from television because throughout my life I really didn’t have any real examples of this outside of a couple of my friends who had parents with stable relationships. I would always struggle with this idea in my head because the majority of women that I was in relationships with didn't prefer that type of lifestyle. They preferred to work over a traditional way of life. When my back hurt from working long hours, they would state that they worked long hours as well. When I was hungry I would often have to fix myself food and them sometimes, too. When I needed emotional support, I was looked at as being soft, even if they didn't say it, you could see a shift.
Cohabitating with a woman during these times seemed more like roommating than building a future with a life partner and potential wife. I would blame the women most of the time because I felt like I was doing everything right, everything that a mother would teach her son to do when it came to dating.
I began to realize that I needed to start looking at myself for the answers. One thing I did notice was that I had no problem attracting women, even attractive ones, but once things became more serious, there was a loss of Attraction somewhere along the lines. And that would be great if I wanted to live a lifestyle of promiscuity moving from woman to woman but I eventually wanted a family and that would have to start with a wife. I started to research the effects that broken homes have on children and became more and more enlightened to how I was the problem in a lot of these cases rather than the women, solely. Little to my knowledge, this was the first step of gaining masculinity in my adulthood, which was accountability.
Many, if not all of the women that I had dated up until this point of enlightenment, didn't have active fathers in their lives. so I started to research the effect that fathers have on daughters. being a father with a daughter, I thought this was important for me to really dig deep and find a solution to my problems with women, and how I could better lead my own daughter in life. A father can't teach a girl how to be a woman any more than a mother can teach a boy how to be a man. My mother taught me to be sensitive, caring, to be accepting, and to make the best out of whatever position I was in, in life. A father would be his daughters protection, be responsible for her provisioning, teach her survival, teach her accountability and how to handle failure, and be an overall example of what a man is so that she knows how to recognize one when she is choosing. So when you’re dating a woman who has no relationship with her father and doesn’t have any active male role models in her life, she will more than likely have a lost sense of expectations within you. This is probably where the roommating symptoms stem from. You both work, you both cook, you both clean, and no one really owns any particular role when it comes to the house. You simply both just get it done in whatever organized (or lack thereof) fashion that you can.
Later on, I began to date a woman who had an active father in her life thinking that this was everything that I had been asking for and it was, however I wasn't ready at the time. I entered into this relationship with a lot of feminine energy, energy that I got from my upbringing. But she didn’t respond the same way that previous women responded to it. I could see that it really affected her and that she looked at me as less of a man by having this energy attached to me. I nearly ruined the relationship by being more emotional than her, by being more needy than her, and by not having a real purpose outside of the relationship. These are all things that are unattractive to feminine women. What she needed me to be, was masculine, and I had no idea what that was.
“masculinity is courage, risk-taking, physical/mental/emotional strength, aggression, and the ability to do violence. Masculinity is the effect of our hormones and physiology of our brains. Hormones and our physiology account for our ability to be aggressive and violent.
Each of the virtues I listed above; courage, risk-taking, strength, aggression, and even violence are not inherently bad, evil, and/or wrong. In fact, all of those virtues, in certain scenarios are desirable traits in men.
“The reason they are is that when the wolf comes knocking at the door, whether it’s a natural disaster, an emergency, a violent encounter with another individual, or a war, it’s the masculine virtues that serve us all well.” -Ryan Michler/https://www.orderofman.com/whatismasculinity/
It makes sense now why I was attracting the energy that I was attracting and that was all because of the energy that I was putting out. I began to look at different scenarios in my life and how I could have handled them differently to possibly produce different outcomes. I realized how timid I was and scared to upset the women in my life. How I would often give women a choice in a lot of things when really they just wanted me to take charge and be assertive. How I would let a lot of things come to me, instead of going after what I wanted. How I responded emotionally to disappointment rather than calculated and positive. It became clear to me that this is not what masculine men do and if I didn't straighten up my act, another relationship would end.
The biggest thing for me to accomplish was breaking down the man I was that attracted women in the first place and maintaining frame throughout a relationship. I realize that when I entered into a relationship, I lost that frame of mind, and all of my focus would go from being assertive in my ventures to being assertive in the relationship and that only. And I honestly think that's the natural thing to do, we all get complacent and lose ourselves when we are comfortable.
Before the relationship I was:
1. Driven
2. Social
3. Confident
4. Charismatic
5. More fit
6. Hard-working
7. Groomed
8. Less needy
9. Less emotional
10. More distant
These things made me attractive to women and as long as there was no emotional investment, I could keep things in their proper perspective and not lose frame. But the object is to remain who I am while also being emotionally invested in a woman. And for me it became simple, I would have to find emotional investment in something else. My purpose would have to come first. I would have to find something that I woke up every single day and loved to do.
I began to shed parts of the feminine energy that was in me once I started to differentiate between that and what masculinity was. I could recognize it when it was coming out and could suppress it. It’ll probably always be there buried somewhere, but you learn how to deal with it and overtime, your habits change.
“Being a man means a lot of things to a lot of people, but to me it means standing in your truth and on your principles. Knowing who you are and what exactly you are capable of. Knowing how to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.” -Will Hines/FB
Masculinity isn’t about getting over or being an asshole, it’s about being a leader but most importantly, being fair. Placing yourself first before anyone but understanding that there are benefits for everybody when you do so.
Bottom line is, your woman has to look at you like not only are you her man but you're THE MAN, like she did in the beginning when you placed a high importance on you.
At the end of the day, I think everybody needs to take a look within and find out what energy they are putting out into the universe, because it could be a huge reason why you are attracting the types of individuals you are attracting. Once you address you, the right ones will find you.
Thank you could reading.
