Wounded Masculine, Man-Child, Nice Guy... The Specific Wounds of the Masculine and How They Influence Your Love Life
182. Wounded Masculine, Man-Child, Nice Guy… The Specific Wounds of the Masculine and How They Influence Your Love Life
You struggle to find your place as a man, either in romantic relationships or in male friendships, and you would like to know how to improve this? You have become increasingly aware of gender inequalities, the harmful consequences of patriarchy — you clearly have no desire to be the alpha male, and yet it is difficult to find the right balance of healthy masculinity. You are rather the nice guy, the kind one and you have the impression that it works against you in love because women still prefer bad boys and virile men and tell you that you are too sensitive, too fragile, without enough charisma, or that the spark is missing. Or you are a woman interested in men and you want to dissect their behaviours (I am watching you sista!). You will see that there is also some deconstruction to do on your side. Having accompanied more and more men, among the 600 people I have accompanied, who come to coaching, I wanted to dedicate this episode to you men to talk about what makes it more difficult to be a man today (I am not disparaging the fact that for women it is also difficult) and your specific wounds.
A deconstruction of the man-woman relationship that upends the place of men
Over the past 50 years in France, the relationship between men and women has profoundly evolved under the impetus of feminist movements, which have enabled major advances for women’s rights, such as the legalisation of abortion, political parity, the fight against sexist violence, and continue to address workplace inequalities and gendered roles in relationships. These evolutions have questioned traditional models of masculinity and the role of men in society. This rapid transformation, while necessary, has also created zones of identity uncertainty, particularly among young men. Studies conducted by bodies such as the INED or the Observatoire des inegalites show that some men express a sense of losing their bearings, facing a masculine model in crisis, often judged as “toxic”. The sociologist Didier Eribon and the philosopher Pierre-Henri Tavoillot speak of a “masculine crisis”, in which the contemporary man struggles to define his place between rejection of patriarchy and the absence of new stable models.
Gregory Pouy shared his personal reflection on Vlan in his episode entitled “What does it mean to be a man?”, where he explains the contradictory expectations that bombard men daily, the negative impact of patriarchy on men which has conditioned them to suppress their emotions and avoid vulnerability, and the absence of models of positive masculinity which encourages the worrying rise of misogynistic masculinity. He also describes in this episode his personal difficulty in positioning himself. Since I am not a man, I thought it would resonate more with you to hear another man share his feelings.
This deconstruction is not yet complete in women either, and explains our contradictory behaviours where women can want a strong man to rely on and a feminist man who talks about his emotions and treats them as equals. (And I include myself because my husband gives me this feedback too.) In her book Desirer la violence, Chloe Thibaud shows how much pop culture, films… have made us “desire” sexist norms: the bad boy, non-consent, and this creates a conflict between what our mind thinks and what our nervous system desires.
All this to say that there are still deconstructions to come, that it is not clear on either side, that things will evolve. And to navigate this uncertainty that is uncomfortable and necessary in any phase of growth (as for crises, I talk about it in episode 47), my advice is to talk about it with your partner, to clearly say what you find difficult to express in your masculinity, or what you sometimes find contradictory in her.
Personally, I think it is by laying these things out within the couple that the deconstruction will be completed. (I am not very objective because I think that repairing the couple repairs everything: men, women, our children, our society… well I would not do this work if I thought otherwise ☺)
I am now going to list the most frequent causes I have encountered with the men I have accompanied:
Decades of an absent father, little involved in raising children
If, like many men, you had an absent father who was little involved in your upbringing, spending most of his time evaluating your performance (at school, in sport…) without considering your emotions, you can imagine that your first male model, your father, will influence what you think you must be to be a man:
- Either you will reject his model and cultivate more feminine (yin) energy in yourself to “distance yourself as much as possible” from his model: this is often the “nice guy” pattern, the kind person, the sensitive one who gets on very well with girls and often has many girl friends. In romantic relationships, you will tend either to stay in the friendzone or to attract women who tend to be more dominant (masculine (yang) energy), and it will be more challenging to assert yourself in relationships (to use your own authority).
- Or you will adopt his model, thinking it is the “only model that works”: on the surface you will adopt the Alpha male profile but inside you will be in combat, in internal conflict with this masculine that you are copying and which at the same time made you suffer as a child. This is mainly visible in the violence of your inner dialogue when you feel weak, when you are not performing. It is as if your father’s voice has become your own voice. In relationships, this often leads to a lack of empathy toward fragility and vulnerability, a need to be in a power dynamic in relationships, to “dominate”/control, and a desire to flee intimacy.
Decades of gendered role distribution
The gendered distribution of roles in your family may also have influenced the role you will adopt in your couple and what you “expect” from the feminine:
- You may have “the Madonna-whore complex”, i.e. difficulty desiring your wife when she becomes a mother.
- If you saw your father “work himself to death for his family”, you may want to avoid commitment in love to avoid carrying this burden.
- If you were raised in a classic patriarchal model, you may fall back into this model once the couple is established, whereas during the dating phase you behaved differently.
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Your relationship with your first woman: your mother
The ease of your relationship with your mother will greatly influence your behaviour toward other women:
- If you felt a secure and stable bond with your mother, you will find it easy to connect with other women, feeling heard and trusting.
- If you were your mother’s favourite child, you may tend to expect the same in relationships and adopt the role of the man-child.
- If the relationship with your mother was conflictual, if you feel that your mother stifled you, manipulated you or wanted to control you, you may find it difficult to want to commit with the feminine because the feminine is unstable and dangerous.
Your relationship with other men
The ease or difficulty of integrating into groups of men will influence your ease in embodying your masculine among other men and also influence your behaviour with women to value yourself in the eyes of other men:
- If you were mocked or bullied a lot by other boys in childhood, you may
- either shift into the masculine that wants revenge and needs to succeed to show others they were wrong. In relationships, you may want to accumulate many women to show that you are attractive, to show your “value” to other men.
- or accept this position and avoid competition with other men as much as possible. In love, this is observed in the fact that you do not dare approach partners you are truly attracted to, because you think you have less chance than others.
- If you were very immersed in a male environment with few female friends, you may prefer to adopt the competition/comparison mode with your partner instead of entering into connection. It bothers you if your partner earns more or is more intelligent or more attractive or more popular, as if that diminishes your own value.
- Attachment styles (Episode 89)
- The 5 wounds of Lise Bourbeau (Episodes 14 to 18)
- The 4 categories of love patterns (Episode 153)
For you
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Going further
And if you would like to work on your love patterns and transform your love life, the programme Opening Up to Love with the Day of the Past option, a day of Somatic Deprogramming: a psycho-corporeal approach to deprogram the automatisms of the nervous system and reprogram new relational reflexes.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Editions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir a l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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