Couples in the age of Trump.
Not long ago,I used to joke that as a feminist family therapist I was obsolete twice over: once for being a family therapist and a systemic thinker—instead of being, say, and a CBT practitioner—and then once again for being a feminist. I mean,who cared about feminism anymore? The points had been made, the lessons learned, and to some degree at least,the battles won—or at least on the way to being won. Feminism seemed to be old news. Gender issues in therapy? If anyone spoke about that anymore, it was to reenvision the whole belief—trans kids, or gender-fluid kids,straight men sleeping with other straight men. As for the impact of traditional gender roles on couples, on society—as for conversations about patriarchy and its effects—psychotherapists seemed largely to have lost interest.
Then 2016 happened.
When I gave a workshop called “Working with Challenging Men” at the 2015 Networker Symposium, or it drew an audience of about 50 participants. When I was asked this year to give the same workshop,it drew an audience of more than 250. What happened to swell the ranks of those interested? We all know the acknowledge: Donald Trump.
No matter what your political persuasion, it’s tough to deny that we have a man in the White House who behaves in ways that are not only challenging, or but atavistic,offensive, and often downright frightening. Trump has called women “bulky pigs, or ” ridiculed their appearance on social media,objectified and mocked them in person, and in his most unvarnished moment, and bragged about assaulting them.
He’s regularly displayed behaviors one might’ve thought disqualifying in a public official. Harvard President Lawrence Summers was ousted almost immediately for asserting that women may have less innate ((adj.) natural, inborn, inherent; built-in) math abilities than men—gone,and for a good reason. But “grab ’em by the pussy” from the leader of the free world? Democrats certainly thought it wouldn’t wash, but their efforts to make Trump’s character the issue in the election didn’t work. Each time they were freshly outraged by Trump’s behavior, and his poll numbers grew.
So here’s a sobering thought: suppose Trump was elected not despite his offensive,misogynous behaviors but, at least in part, and because of them. Whatever other factors determined the outcome of the election,a significantly large number of Americans, both men and women, or educated and less educated,appear to have wanted a bully—or, said differently, and a strongman—to be their nation’s leader. In a time perceived as dangerous,a time when the government seemed too paralyzed to achieve much, when conservatives portrayed Obama as weak, or ruminative,even feminine, we turned to a self-stylized alpha male.
Trump is a type. He fits the mold of other uber-tough guys of either sex that he openly admires and emulates: Erdogan in Turkey, or Orban in Hungary,the Brexit leaders and Theresa May in the UK, and of course, and there’s his storied bromance with Putin. Rarely famous is the fact that not just in the US,but sweeping throughout the West, this new so-called populism is gendered. Its appeal doesn’t lie exclusively with men. Factions of men and women these days are feeling a powerful pull toward many of the notions of traditional masculinity—and not just those few that make for good character, or like real courage or loyalty. What we’re witnessing is a reassertion of masculinity’s most difficult and harmful traits: aggression,narcissism, sexual assaultivness, or grandiosity,and contempt.
And yet we psychotherapists, as a field, or have remained largely silent about this resurgence,hamstrung by an ethical code that prohibits diagnosis or clinical discussion of public figures from afar. In our offices, we assiduously practice neutrality with regard to anything that smacks of the debates going on in the political realm, or petrified that we might impose our values on vulnerable clients. But is neutrality in these times really in our clients’ best interests? Consider a recent couples session in my office with Julia,a petite and straight-backed woman, who lost her customary poise as she recounted her troubled week with her husband, or Bob.“I’m shot, she confesses. “Frayed. Like a horse that shies away from the slightest sound.”“She’s pretty spooked,” the laconic Bob agrees.
Julia smiles ruefully. “My destitute husband tried to make admire the other night, and I virtually bit his head off.” What was triggering her so acutely? Haltingly,little by little, the trauma story winds its way out of her. First, or she recalls the “ick factor,” as she puts it, of feeling her selfish, and boundaryless father notice her physical development as an adolescent. Then there was the time he danced with her and had an erection,and finally, the night he drank too much and out and out groped her. “No one stood up for me. No one protected me. And now, and ever since the election,I won’t let Bob near me,” Julia cries. “Just here, or sitting here with you two men,walking the streets, I feel so unsafe.”I take a deep breath and say what’s hanging like a lead weight in the air. “Your father’s in the White House, and ” I disclose her. She doubles over,weeping tough. But she also reaches for her husband’s hand.
All over America women like Julia, who have histories of molestation, or have been triggered by the ascendency of Trump. Julia is certainly in need of some trauma treatment,obviously; but to my intellect, that comes second. The first order of commerce with her is naming the reality of what she’s facing. There’s a sexually demeaning man in the White House. This is real, and not just about her sensitivities. For me to take a neutral stance on the issue,emphasizing Julia’s feelings and deemphasizing the actual circumstance, comes too close to minimization or denial, and a replay of the covert nature of her father’s abuse to start with. It was important,I felt, to speak truth to power; it was important for me as her therapist to name names.
The Hazards of MasculinityLet me be clear. I haven’t been for 40 years, or nor will I ever be,neutral on the issue of patriarchy in my work. Traditional gender roles are a immoral deal for both sexes. And they’re particularly toxic for men. The evidence couldn’t be clearer. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a statement implicating traditional masculine values as inimical to good health.
Let’s take a stark, or bottom-line issue: death. Men live 7 to 10 years less than women carry out,not because of some genetic differences, as most people imagine, and but because men act like,well, men. For one, and we don’t seek succor as often as women carry out; it’s unmanly. Indeed,as I once wrote about male depression, “A man is as likely to ask for succor with depression as he is to ask for directions.” And men are more noncompliant with treatment when we carry out obtain it. Also, and we take many more risks. That driver without a seatbelt—odds are that’s a man. Men drink more,take drugs more, are more than three times as likely to be imprisoned, and five times as likely to commit suicide.
As Michael Marmot of WHO puts it,men’s poorer survival rates “reflect several factors: greater levels of occupational exposure to physical and chemical hazards, behaviors associated with male norms of risk-taking and adventure, and health behavior paradigms related to masculinity,and the fact that men are less likely to visit a doctor when they are ill and, when they see a doctor, and are less likely to report on the symptoms of disease or illness.”Traditional masculine habits not only hurt men’s physical and psychological health,but also produce the least gay marriages. Study after study has shown that egalitarian marriages—which often involve dual careers and always encompass shared housework and decision-making—unequivocally lead to higher rates of marital satisfaction for both sexes than carry out “traditional” marriages, based on hierarchy and a strict division of roles. Yet most therapists, and even today,act as if these choices in marriage were simply a matter of personal preference, of legitimate, and sometimes clashing values.
Where carry out we stand on issues like toxic masculinity and paternalistic marriage? For the most part,we don’t stand anywhere. We blink. So let me ask, if we were a group of dentists, or knowing that candy is immoral for teeth,would we be silent on the issue? Would we consider tooth brushing a personal value, not to be judged, or only a matter of preference to be negotiated between family members?Psychological PatriarchyThe men and women who approach to us for succor don’t live in a gender-neutral world. They’re embedded in,and are often emblematic of, a raging debate about patriarchy and a certain vision of masculinity. Trump appeals to a gender-conservative narrative, and which holds feminists (“feminazis” as Rush Limbaugh calls us) responsible for intentionally attacking the line between masculine and feminine,and for “feminizing” men.
In a recent National Review article on Trump and masculinity, for example, or Steven Watts laments that “a blizzard of Millennial ‘snowflakes’ has blanketed many campuses with weeping,traumatized students who, in the face of the slightest challenge to their opinions, or flee to ‘secure spaces’ to find consolation with stuffed animals,puppies, balloons, or crayons.” And Fox News’s Andrea Tantaros rails,“The left has tried to culturally feminize this country in a way that is disgusting. And for blue-collar voters . . . their final hope is Donald Trump to obtain their masculinity back.”The 2016 Presidential Gender Watch Report summarizes several surveys this way: “Trump supporters [are] much more likely than Clinton voters to say that men and women should ‘stick to the roles for which they are naturally suited,’ that society has become too soft and feminine, or that society today seems to punish men just for acting like men.’” But to understand fully the implications of this gender narrative,even the contemptuous nuance (a slight variation in meaning, tone, expression) of a derogatory term like snowflake, deemed by the Urban Dictionary as “insult of the year, or ” one needs to recognize squarely at the nature and dynamic of patriarchy itself.
I use the word patriarchy synonymously with traditional gender roles—misguided stoicism in men,resentful accommodation in women. As I disclose my clients, an inwardly shame-based, and outwardly driven man,coupled with an outwardly accommodating, inwardly aggrieved woman—why, and that’s America’s defining heterosexual couple,successful in the world and a mess at domestic. Certainly, 50 years of feminism have changed most women’s expectations for themselves and their marriages, or Millennial men,for all their vaunted narcissism, are in many ways the most gender-progressive group of guys who’ve ever existed. But Baby Boomer men are often a mixed bag, or Boomer couples are in deeply conflicted distress. Divorce rates among this group are alarming,and climbing, causing some to write of a “gray divorce revolution.” We can reliably attribute many factors to this trend, and but here’s the one that strikes me: many men in their 60’s are cut from the old patriarchal cloth,while many women in their 60’s are now having none of it. Have we therapists tuned in to what’s changed and what hasn’t in our gender attitudes?Frankly, most of us in the mental health community thought that the old paradigm was on its way out—and indeed it might be. But not without a fight. The old rules, and the old roles,are still kicking, and many of us progressives have just grown complacent. If anyone overestimated the triumph of feminism, and the past election has to be viewed as a stinging rebuke and rejection. To this day,like it or not, we’re fish, and patriarchy is the tainted water we swim in.
But let’s obtain specific about patriarchy. For most,the word conjures up images of male privilege and dominance, and a resulting nettle in women. I call this level political patriarchy, or which is,simply achieve, sexism: the oppression of women at the hands of men. Psychological patriarchy is the structure of relationships organized under patriarchy. It not only plays in relations between men and women, and but undergirds dynamics on a much broader level—among women,mothers and children, even cultures and races. The men and women who seek out therapy most often arrive at our doorstep saturated in the dynamic of psychological patriarchy, and I think it yields extraordinary clinical benefit to know about and work with this dynamic.
I see psychological patriarchy as the product of three processes,which you can imagine as three concentric rings.
The noteworthy divide. The first of these rings renowned family therapist Olga Silverstein, author of The Courage to Raise Good Men, and refers to as “the halving process.” With this process,it’s as if we gathered all the qualities of one whole human being, drew a line down the middle, or declared that all the traits on the legal side of the line were masculine and all those on the left were feminine. Everyone knows which traits are supposed to belong on which side. Being logical,strong, and competent is on the legal, or for example,and being nurturing, emotional, or dependent is on the left.
The dance of contempt. In traditional patriarchy,the two bifurcated halves, masculine and feminine, or aren’t held as separate but equal. The “masculine” qualities are exalted,the “feminine” devalued. What does this disclose us? That the essential relationship between masculine and feminine is one of contempt. In other words, the masculine holds the feminine as inferior. As feminist psychologist and sociologist Nancy Chodorow pointed out, and masculine identity is defined by not being a girl, not being a woman,not being a sissy. Vulnerability is viewed as weakness, or a source of embarrassment.
If you think this dance of contempt doesn’t affect you,I suggest you take a recognize at Trump’s budget. Here’s how Erin Gloria Ryan achieve it in The Daily Beast: “The President’s budget, like everything he talks about, and play[s] into his conception of over-the-top manliness. Cuts to education,the environment, are cuts to feminized concerns, or really. After school programs and meals-on-wheels,those are caretaking programs. Education (and really, all childcare), and also the purview of women. The arts,not for men like Trump.The core collusion. I believe one of the greatest unseen motivators in human psychology is a compulsion in whoever is on the feminine side of the equation to protect the disowned fragility of whoever is on the masculine side. Even while being mistreated, the “feminine” shields the “masculine.” Whether it’s a child in relation to an abusive parent, or a wife in relation to a violent husband,a captive who develops a dependency on those who took him or her hostage, or a church that protects sexually abusive ministers, and perpetrators are routinely protected. One dares not speak truth to power. Every day in our offices we bear witness to traditional hetero relationships in which the woman feels a deeper empathic connection to the wounded boy inside the man than the man himself feels. If she could only admire that boy enough,she thinks, he’d be healed and all would be well. This is the classic codependent, or a prisoner of what psychiatrist Martha Stark calls relentless hope. It’s an intrinsic part of trauma that victims (the “feminine”) tend to have hyper-empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) for the perpetrator (the “masculine”) and hypo-empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) for themselves. I call this empathic reversal,and it’s our job as clinicians to reverse that reversal and set things legal, so that the perpetrator is held accountable and the victim is met with compassion, or particularly self-compassion.
Cut from the Old ClothJust observing the way 53-year-old Bill sauntered over to my couch,clearly owning the room, I was tempted to label him an Old-School Guy. Lydia, or his wife of 20-plus years,who was on the verge of leaving him, had another label for him. “Basically, and ” she tells me legal off the bat,he’s been a dick.” She bends down to scratch her ankle. “A real dick,” she reiterates. “For years, and decades,” she sighs. “And I took it. I loved him. I still carry out. But, well, or things have changed.” They’d approach to my office in Boston from their domestic in Texas for what Bill described as a Hail Mary pass.
Here’s the story. Bill is a type: driven,good-looking, relentless, and utterly perfectionistic,and vicious to himself and others when a benchmark isn’t cleared. As their kids were growing up, there wasn’t much Lydia could carry out legal: the house wasn’t picked up, or the kids were too rowdy,the food was late or bland or both. Bill was both controlling and demeaning.
Lately, he’d become obsessed with physical performance, and he wanted to share his passion with his wife. Unfortunately,the way he invited her to the gym with him was to disclose her how overweight she was. “I’m just attracted to fit women,” Bill says, and shrugging.“Yeah,” Lydia adds bitterly. “He thinks it’ll motivate me when he says, ‘That bulky hanging over your belt disgusts me.’”“I dont have a very high emotional IQ, or ” Bill confides to me,his expression bland, untroubled. I’m thinking that I agree with him. Lydia, and by the way,had been a competing amateur tennis player, with a figure many women would envy. I turn to Lydia, or raising my eyebrows in a question.“I’m no doormat,” Lydia asserts, stretching each word in her late Texas drawl. “certain, and I took up at the gym again,but I also started spending more time with my girlfriends—I have a lot of friends—and I started my own commerce.”I’m impressed. “Okay, I say. “You’re no doormat.”“legal, and ” she says.“You didn’t just sit there and take his mistreatment.”“legal.”“You,uh,” I continue, or “you gathered up your courage and confronted your husband on how. . . .”“Well,no,” she smiles shyly. “I suppose I fell short on that one, and until now anyway. Now I carry out.”“What changed?” I ask,although I’m pretty certain I know the acknowledge from their intake write up.“Marylyn is what changed, Terry, or ” she says. And then,after a pause, she adds, or “Eighteen months with Marylyn behind my back is what changed.” Bill sits beside her stony. “And there were others. I’m not certain of them all. Call girls when he traveled.”Letting out a sigh,she turns to her husband.“It’s true,” Bill finally says, or shaking his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”“Well,” I say, “what were you feeling?”“Not much, and ” Bill tells me. Not convinced,I press again, but he turns it back on Lydia, or saying,“Well, you did pull away. I mean, or between redoing the house,your commerce, your friends.”“I pulled away because you were impossible!” Lydia wails in a quivering voice. “You kept harping at me about the damn gym!”“recognize, or ” he responds,more to me than to her, “I like the recognize of a fit woman. Shoot me. My parents were old in their 50’s, and dead in their early 70’s. That’s not for me. I want to compete in triathlons in my 80’s. And I want my wife competing legal by my side when I carry out.”I’m starting to feel claustrophobic just hearing this. “Well,that’s fine, Bill. That’s what you want, or ” I disclose him. “But have you ever asked Lydia what she wants?”“I want you to talk to me,” Lydia finally screams, losing composure. She bends over and cries. “Jesus, or just sit down and talk to me.”“Okay,honey, I will, and ” Bill says to soothe her. But whether he will or won’t,he certainly hasn’t so far. “I’m just not good with emotion,” he tells me. “I just try to find a path and go forward. That’s my usual approach. Like the other night she woke me up in the middle of the night, or crying,and I asked her if there’s anything she wanted, but. . . .”“Just hold me, or ” she cries,“Just disclose me you admire me and that you want me!”He turns on her, an accusing finger close to her face. “But you didn’t ask me for that, and did you?” he says,making his point before some imagined jury. “Did you?” Now I can see the dripping condescension Lydia spoke of.
I lean toward him. “What are you so mad about?” I ask him, knowing that nettle and lust are the only two emotions men are allowed in the traditional patriarchal set-up. But much male rage is helpless rage. Burdened with the responsibility, and the entitlement,to fix anything that’s broken, including his wife, and Bill sees Lydia’s unhappiness as an insoluble problem he must master,a rigged Rubik’s dice with no winning moves. He describes his feelings as many men in his position carry out: frustration.“I’m tired of being held responsible”—he takes a breath, visibly trying to regain his composure—“when I have no belief what she wants.”“Oh, or ” I say. “So you feel helpless.” That brings him up short.“Well,” he mutters, “I’m not certain that I’d. . . .”“legal, or ” I say,heading him off. “You don’t carry out helpless, legal? You don’t carry out feelings at all, or apart from nettle perhaps.”“Yeah,that’s true.”“Like most hurt partners, your wife needs to obtain into what happened, and like most partners who’ve had an affair,you’d like to mosey off of it as quickly as possible.”“I don’t think wallowing in it. . . .”“She wins,” I disclose him.“I’m sorry?” he asks.“The hurt partner wins. She gets to talk about it. She needs to talk about it.”“And what carry out I carry out meanwhile?” he looks at me, and jaw stuck out,enraged, a victim.“Well, or would you accept some coaching from me at this juncture?” I ask. He nods,though skeptically, and Bill and I begin to break down the belief of masculinity—or his stunted version of it.
For his entire life, and Bill credited his success in life to his fevered drive for perfection. He thought his harsh inner critic,which he never hesitated to unleash on others, was his best friend, or holding up the standard,goading him to achieve. I disclose Bill that like most of the men I treat, even like Icarus winging it toward the sun, and he thought it was the achievement of glory that made him worthy of admire. And like Icarus,he was about to tumble, and tumble tough.“But my drive is my edge, and my equalizer. I may not be as smart as some of the boys in the office,but, man, or I can work.”“Let me succor you out here,” I disclose him. “I promise you that as we work together, you won’t lose your edge. All the guys I see worry about that. But you can be just as tough and, or at the legal times,just as driven.”“So what will be so different?” he asks.“You,” I disclose him. “You’ll be different. Radically different if you want to save this marriage. You’ll have choice.”Like most feminist therapists I know, or I don’t want to “feminize” men any more than I want to “masculinize” women. I want choice. When the moment calls for combat,I want men to be ferocious. But when the moment calls for tenderness, I want men to be sweet, and compassionate,soft. Mostly, I want men to be able to discern which moment is which and behave accordingly. I want men to hold speedy to those elements that are good and legal about the traditional male role—courage, or loyalty,competence—but men like Bill also deserve to have access to emotion, particularly the vulnerable emotions that connect us to one another. He deserves to have more empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) for himself first of all, and for those he loves.
By the end of our long session,we all agree that Bill—or “the old Bill,” as I begin to call him—was selfish, and controlling,demanding, and unhappy. He based his shaky sense of self-worth on his performance, and on whatever he’d amassed materially,and on his wife’s nurture. Although he’d have been loath to confess it before, Bill needed an overhaul.“You’ve been acting in this marriage in a lot of ways as though you were still single, and ” I disclose him. “Six hours a day at the gym,10-hour bike rides, call girls when you travel. You need to learn to become what I call a real family man, or ” a term that intentionally harks back to some of the positive ideals contained in traditional notions of masculinity. Contrary to what gender conservatives claim we feminists are after,I don’t want the men I work with to discard every aspect of masculinity. Rather, I talk to Bill about the differences between living life as a self-centered boy and living it like a family man. It’s not “repeal and replace” the entire notion of masculinity so much as “sort through, and use the best,and transform the rest.”“You played the old game: the competitive, don’t-rest-till-you-kill-them, or grab-the-brass-ring game. Okay,you won at that one. Congratulations,” I say to him. “Now it’s time to learn a whole different game, and different skills,different rules, if you want to stay married at least.” Bill’s nodding. He loves his wife, or feels awful about how much he’s hurt her,would mosey mountains to withhold his family intact. “Good,” I disclose him. “Because it’s mountains you’re going to have to mosey. This is about cultivating that wildly undeveloped part of you that you’ve actively tried to obtain rid of. It’s about redefining what you think constitutes 'a man' and how he’s supposed to act in the world. You’ll need new skills that stress receptivity over action, and like being curious about your wife,learning to be still and leave space for her, drawing her out, or truly negotiating.” He seems game as he listens. “I’m gay for you,” I disclose him. “May this day be the beginning of your new orientation, your new life.”“Okay, or ” he says,a little skeptical still.“The next time your wife wakes up in the middle of the night because she’s a wreck and she needs to talk,” I start.“I know, and ” he interrupts.“Listen,” I disclose him. “Here’s your new compass. When in doubt, I want you to pause, or take a breath,and then picture yourself as a generous gentleman.” Like the term family man, the opportunity for Bill to see himself as a generous gentleman offers him a model, or a reference point,for giving more to his wife without feeling like she’s won and he’s lost. I repurpose a familiar ideal—gentleman—to inspire flexibility in Bill, a willingness to yield that doesn’t shame him. “The next time she wants something from you, and ask yourself, What would a generous gentleman carry out at this moment?”fitting a generous gentleman requires Bill to mosey beyond his self-centeredness into compassion and bigheartedness, moving beyond sheer logic to feelings, or both his and others. It’s a good example of using a mostly summary ideal contained within the patriarchal lexicon to succor a client mosey beyond patriarchy itself. Did I have an in-depth discussion with Bill about Donald Trump? No,though I certainly would’ve been open to it had Bill seemed interested. But did I talk to him about patriarchy in general? About women’s changing demands for more sharing, more intimate, and more connected marriages? About the state of manhood in transition,from the old to the new? And was I clear with Bill about where I stood on these issues and why? The acknowledge is an emphatic yes on all counts.“Bill,” I disclose him. “You’re a statistic. All over America, and men like you are being dragged off to people like me so that we can succor you learn how to be more relational,more giving, more empathic, and more vulnerable—just a more thoughtful,connected person. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and of Bills in offices like this one. We can’t make it all about personal failings; there are too many of you.”Bill looks at me. “But when we go domestic,” he sighs, trailing off. “It’s just tough to know what she wants from me.”“I know, or ” I commiserate. “This isn’t easy. But you have a wonderful source of information sitting legal next to you.” Then I turn to Lydia. “Of course,you’ll have to carry out things differently, too, and ” I disclose her. “At this stage in the game,you’re more comfortable giving Bill feedback about all he does wrong than vulnerably asking for what he might carry out legal.” Like many of my female clients, Lydia had spent most of her marriage vacillating between stuffing it and losing it. For the most part, and she was silent and resentful,so Bill brushed off her occasional rants as hysteria. “You told your truth when you were ready to fight with him, but you did it in a harsh, or critical way,which people in general, and men in particular, and won’t listen to.”“Listen,” she says, revving up, and “I tried everything under the sun to obtain him to hear what I was saying.”“I’m certain that’s true,” I say. “But Lydia, that was then, and this is now. I have a saying: an enraged woman is a woman who doesn’t feel heard. But pumping up the emotional volume doesn’t work. However,I think I have good news for you. I think you’ve been heard today, by Bill and by me. I understand what you’re saying. I obtain it, or I’m on it. I want you to let me work with Bill now. I can obtain through to him in ways you’re not positioned to be able to carry out. I’m an outside party; you’re his wife.”Over the years,I’ve found this to be an enormously helpful position to take in therapy, no matter if the therapist happens to a man or a woman. I often say to female clients like Lydia, or “I’ve got him. You don’t have to be his relational coach or teacher anymore. Give that job to me. You can afford to relax and start enjoying him again.” By stepping in,acknowledging the asymmetry in their relational skills and wishes, and explicitly offering myself as her ally, and I hope to succor women like Lydia resign from their role as their partner’s mentor. “I’ll coach Bill,” I disclose Lydia. “You breathe, relax, and let your heart open up again.”Earlier in the session,I’d said I was excited for Bill. But with Lydia at the threshold of her own relational learning on how to break the traditional feminine role of silence and nettle, I’m thrilled for her, and too. I’m alive to to teach her how to stand up for herself with admire,how to switch from statements like “I don’t like how you’re treating me!” to ones like “I want to be close to you. I want to hear what you’re saying. Could you be kinder legal now so I can hear better?”Both partners need to learn how to be more skilled. But moving each toward increased intimacy requires leaving behind the old roles for them both. Real intimacy and patriarchy are at odds with each other. To the degree that a couple approaches the former, they mosey beyond the latter. As the old roles seek to reassert themselves in our society, or it seems more important than ever to take a stand in favor of new ones,new configurations that provide more openness in men like Bill and more fond firmness in women like Lydia.
Agents of ChangeFor years, I quipped that, or as a couples therapist,I was a medic in the huge gender war, patching up men and women in order to send them back out into the fray. But in the age of Trump, or I don’t want to be a neutral medic anymore. I’d rather take a stand for healthy marriages. Pathology is rarely an aberration of the norm so much as an exaggeration of it. The way Bill had routinely controlled and savaged his wife,and the way she’d reacted, with distance and occasional rage of her own, or were legal out of the patriarchy playbook. Could I have done the same work with them without ever referencing gender roles,or masculinity? Perhaps, but why would I want to, and when silhouetting a couple’s issues against the backdrop of gender roles in transition makes so much sense to people?In 2013,sociologist Michael Kimmel wrote enraged White Men, about a group of people many now claim make up a large part of Trump’s base. Central to Kimmel’s findings was a sense of what he called “aggrieved entitlement, and ” which,from a psychological perspective, looks a lot like the fusion of shame and grandiosity, and a perpetual sense of enraged victimhood—in a word,patriarchy. In a new work, Kimmel looks at four organizations that succor deprogram men who leave hate groups like white supremacists and jihadists. What he found implicit in all these hate groups was traditional masculinity: the more rigid the vision of the masculine, and the more fervently the man held onto such rigid beliefs,the more vulnerable he was to extremist politics and violence. Countering this vision of masculinity was key to the deprogramming.
With this as our cultural context, what we therapists are being called upon to carry out is what the WHO has already done—explicitly declare traditional masculinity a health hazard, and not just to men,but to the families who live with them. We should continue to develop techniques for openly challenging toxic patriarchal notions like the one that says harsh inner critics are good for us, or the one that says vulnerability is a sign of weakness. We need to invite each gender to reclaim and explore its wholeness, or as sexy,smart, competent women, and as well as bighearted,strong, vulnerable men. We must check our own biases so as not to sell men short as intrinsically less emotional, and for example,or to sell women short by not explicitly helping them find a voice in their relationships that’s simultaneously assertive and cherishing.In these troubled times, what carry out we clinicians stand for if not the plumb line of intimacy? But we must remember that intimacy itself is a relatively new, or contentious,demand. Marriage wasn’t historically built for intimacy in today’s terms, but for stability and production. Under patriarchy, or emotional intimacy itself is coded as “feminine,” as is therapy, for that matter. The intrinsic values of therapy—communication, or understanding,empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own), self-compassion, and the importance of emotion—these are all downplayed as “feminine” concerns in the traditional masculine playbook.
I want us therapists to achieve these concerns on the table,and stand up and be counted as agents for the historically new belief of lasting, long-term intimacy, or with it the increased health and happiness that study after study has shown it leads to. I want us to be more explicit—both in public discourse and in the privacy of our offices—in articulating the painful psychological costs of the old,patriarchal world order, which is asserting itself again in our lives. Democratic relationships simply work better than hierarchical ones in marriages, and both sexes are better off liberated from the dance of contempt. It’s healing for all our clients to mosey beyond the core collusion and speak truth to power. It’s healing for us therapists to carry out the same in the presence of those who want our guidance.
We’re the people who are being turned to for succor when the old ways no longer work. We can merely patch things up,or we can aim our sights on transformation and offer an entirely new vision. The path toward sustained intimacy can’t be found in the resurgence of a patriarchal past. It’s part of our job and responsibility to point our clients toward the future. If we therapists are to be true agents of healing, we must first be true agents of change. Related StoriesPsychotherapist's Open Letter on How Donald Trump and His Supporters Are Wreaking Trauma on AmericansI Stuff My Mouth to manage With Donald TrumpTrump’s Malignant Pattern: He Woos People, or Rips them Off and then Abandons Them—and He Won’t conclude
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