Being tender, loving, and connected with my wife and kids is such a priceless gift. It was quite the journey to get here.
In the early 2000s, a girlfriend said to me,
“I wish you could be more tender.”
I lost my shit.
I screamed, “Stop trying to manipulate me!”
It was a head-spinning moment for her.
She was like, “ummmm, what just happened?”
It was head-spinning for me too, actually.
But I had to double down because the shame, at that time in history, was too intolerable for me to stay calm. In fact, I had no clue that staying calm and present was even an option.
Back then, whatever this thing called “tenderness” was, it felt dangerous. Like a setup.
Context
I feel deep love and compassion for my mother. She passed away in 2020 and I miss her a lot.
But when I was growing up, and she was at her worst, she could be violent. At other times, when I expressed vulnerability, her common refrain was, “Give me a break. Don’t be a Mary.”
Clearly, she had been on the receiving end of violence herself, physical and emotional. Probably much more than me. It guts me to think about that. She didn’t deserve it. No child does.
But I couldn’t imagine any of that when I was growing up.
Like many boys, I just learned quickly and well that absolutely, under no circumstances, should I ever take the risk to “be a Mary.”
Fuck that shit. Not happening. Ever again.
I played that out for a lot of years.
The Right Help is All Around Us
Thankfully, we men can heal. We can learn. We can grow out of old programming and into new ways of being.
We can learn that hurtful figures of speech only have the reality we give them. They are just insults being handed down by someone who is consumed by their own unhealed wounds, shame and insecurity.
There is no such thing as “being a Mary.” Or, “being a pussy”.
What does exist are ways of being in relationships that make life rich and rewarding. And there are other ways of being in relationships whereby we men are deprived, and deprive ourselves, of the best stuff in life.
I lived in the latter for a long time.
The former is way better and it is available to us if we work for it.
