I believe this new path will begin with heterosexual men supporting each other, empathy is a path to compassion, and there’s potential to turn individual turmoil and alienation into brotherly love and solidarity.
If you look at AA groups the first step is to accept that you’re an alcoholic. I think something analogous needs to happen, where men take responsibility for themselves and their fellow man.
I believe it’s important for it to start with other men because there are too many confounding distortions with women. So much male sense of being worthwhile involves women, and I do not believe a new framing of self-worth can arise while in compulsive pursuit of the current framing.
However, once a new framing is found I believe the next step is atonement, atonement to women. So many women have been hurt – so many friends, teachers, extended family. My sister and mother have been so deeply hurt by Dad. In the absence of understanding his suffering it’s natural to first personalize, feel like his suffering is your fault, but as this trapped responsibility has no path to resolution it warps into a smoldering anger and resentment. It took nearly two decades to figure Dad out, but I did, but it was contingent on sharing some of his struggles as a man. And when I understood, my resentment disappeared; it was never about me. A boulder of anger, shame, and fault evaporated and I was a thousand pounds lighter.
I don’t think women have a responsibility to understand male suffering. I believe it’s on men to bridge, to apologize, to surrender, to atone. I think that’s all Anna and mum need. If Dad stopped denying, resisting, and could accept the pain inflicted on others, the root of his own suffering and turmoil, and truly apologize, they would forgive too. His apology would mean it wasn’t their fault, and I think that’s really what they need to hear. Their boulders of fault might evaporate too.
But for Dad to ever let go, he needs safety, and that safety must come from other men who understand the turmoil, the shame, the regret, men who will love him because they’re deserving of love too. To take the internal leap he’ll need a net he knows will catch him. We’ll catch him because we can’t give up on him. To give up on him is to give up on ourselves. I am deserving of love, I am capable of being worthwhile, and to abandon you is to abandon myself. That’s not happening.
My Persian-Arab housemate had given up on himself, had internalized and accepted his own baseness, his self-hate had warped and metastasized and he was on a path to a wolf-like disinterest in empathy. I wonder if this is the path to psychopathy – the acceptance of his own baseness removes any obligation for empathy, for compassion. There’s no upside, because redemption and social affirmation is impossible. They’ve embraced their own utter social abandonment. That’s the path of dark acceptance, dare I say, the path to evil.
This is the alternative if shared but divided turmoil remains divided, and does not coalesce into circular care and redemption.