"The case of a man seriously split off from his masculine side and identity was at one time a pathological rarity, a condition to be met with only now and then. Men, affirmed as men by their fathers and the men of the community were by and large free to mature as husbands, fathers, and leaders. In secure possession of their gender identity, the great majority of men moved from the chest, as it were, out of hearts freed from legalisms of childhood, the narcissisms of adolescence, of the perfectionisms of an adulthood spent futiley seeking self-acceptance (or the affirmation of parents). Now, however, what was once the exceptional psychogenic factor, has become, unhappily, a ruling feature of the culture at large. Very few men indeed are adequately affirmed AS MEN (author's emphasis) today, and many are pathologically split off from their masculine side altogether."

Leanne Payne, Crisis In Masculinity, p. 12-13

"We are a society without a father, and a nation of men who have a hole in their psyches because their fathers were not there." Jack Balswick, Men at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional Roles & Modern Options, InterVarsity Press, 1992, p. 40)

Sociologists blame the advent of the modern industrial era as the cause of the above evaluation. While there is a lot truth to this connection, you didn't have to grow up with 'Lunchbox Larry' as a father who went to the mill everyday to experience the above reality.

I grew up on a Canadian farm in the 50s and 60s. My father was an agribusinessman who believed that he needed to 'save the family farm'. His work of salvation lead him to become a traveling executive for the Canadian agribusiness community.

Beginning when I was about 12, my father left our home every Monday to fly a plane to eastern Canada to go to weeklong meetings. He returned on Fridays (and sometimes Saturdays). When he came home he was too busy catching up with his farm business to spend time with me and my siblings. My father was very successful at what he did. When he died our family received letters of condolences from the Prime Minister of Canada and down.

Meanwhile, my father missed my teen years and I missed my father.

About the time my oldest son was 12 I was recruited for a national position with a church organization. The office for job was based in Kansas, however, I would not be required to relocate. After I was offered the position, I checked with the person who had just left the position after about 10 years. He told me that while they may be telling me that the job was about 40% travel/60% home it really was the opposite. There were days, he told me, when his wife met him at the airport in Phoenix, he gave her his suitcase of dirty clothes and she gave him a suitcase of clean clothes. Upon hearing that, I turned down the job offer. The result was that I didn't miss any of my son's ball games for four years!

I have spent many years in groups learning to deal with my father-wound. I am still healing.

2008 (c) Ronald Friesen

I am writing this during the week of Valentine celebration in US. This is the week that romance, intimacy, and love are celebrated in western civilization. During this week many men find themselves trying to figure out, 'Is it roses my wife likes?' or 'What kind of chocolates does she enjoy?'

Meanwhile, many men find themselves trying to figure out who they are. The culture sends confusing messages: real men enjoy sports, real men spend time with their famiies, real men make big salaries, real men end their workday with a Coors in their hand, real men give big presents.

So who is a real man? Where is the heart of a man to be discovered?

Actually the 'new men's movement' launched by Robert Bly, Sam Keen and others in the early 1990s says that the real man is all of the above.

Contrary to the common misconception that men are inadequate (which is what the older men's movment proclaimed), these men are men in their own right who understand their role and place in society.

I would say that real men know their wives (or significant other's) tastes, they work hard, they play hard, they are men of faith and they love their families with all their heart.

Is it easy to balance all of these? No.

One of the reasons it is difficult to follow through on these ideals is that we have not had to role models to show us how to do these things well. (I will address this in another blog.)

Meanwhile, have a Happy Valentine's Day.

(c) 2008 Ronald Friesen

"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create."

"I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process."

"The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a _flaneur_, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility."

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1913 (Gutenburg press on-line)