Breaking the Male Code: Unlocking the Power of Friendship - Softcover

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Rob Garfield M.D., a psychotherapist and clinical faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, has been recognized by Philadelphia Magazine as both one of the city's "Top Docs" and "Best Therapists." An engaging speaker, he has presented his work on men's friendships to both lay and professional audiences and published numerous articles on the subject of male emotional intimacy.

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PART 1

CHAPTER 1

A quiet settled over the room as the seven men present realized that the pleasantries, initial joking, and munching on veggies and pretzels had come to a close. We were going to talk about why they were here, why they’d come to our men’s group.

There was a sense of awkwardness, as there usually is when men recognize they’re about to speak openly with one another. The silence deepened.

“Who wants to start us off?” Jake Kriger, my co-therapist, looked around the room. “Briefly. Let us know why you’re here.”

I expelled a deep breath. The saying “And so it begins again” ran through my mind. I was fastening my emotional seat belt, readying myself for the takeoff of this new group.

Randy, a fifty-two-year-old high school teacher, cleared his throat. “I’m here because I got laid off from my job. I’m a teacher, and I’ve worked at my school for twenty-five years. They just canned me,” he said, the hurt clearly visible in his face. “I’ve been out of work for eight months. I guess I’m depressed, and I haven’t been able to shake it.” He flicked his head back, as though trying to toss off this mood.

Heads bobbed in sympathy. Randy fell quiet, signaling that was all he had to say.

Jake and I looked around the circle. “Who wants to go next?” he asked.

Mark, a fifty-five-year-old hand surgeon, leaned forward. “I’m not really sure why I’m here,” he said, with a small shrug. He looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept well for several nights. “My wife and my couples therapist thought it would do me good. Our therapist told me that coming here might help my relationship with Sally.”

He hesitated. “She’s talking about leaving.”

The mood in the room plummeted. Mark tried to barrel on in a descriptive mode, but his voice began to quaver, and he slowed down. “Obviously, I’m shook up,” he said. “I don’t want to lose her. I didn’t know things were this bad. She says if I think that, I haven’t been paying attention.”

He paused and looked around the room. “I don’t have anyone to talk with about this. I mean I have friends, but I don’t talk with them. Not about this.”

The head-bobbing from the other guys had slowed, morphing into looks of sadness and concern for Mark. He’d just delivered a heavy emotional package, and I wondered how the men would handle it.

Allen, a forty-eight-year-old contractor, jumped in. “Well, things with Shelly, my wife, aren’t so bad. My problem’s more about my son. He won’t listen to me, and I get, well, pissed off. Lately, I walk out of situations so I won’t explode.”

Hastily, he added, “Not that I hit people or break things, nothing like that.” He smiled uncomfortably. Allen was a large, imposing guy with a soft, controlled voice. You could imagine him knocking things over if he stood up suddenly.

The TV character Tony Soprano flashed through my mind. I wondered if Allen had a more volatile side that he wasn’t copping to.

When things start to get uncomfortable or feel out of control in our groups, members typically try to rescue the mood, divert attention from issues that they can’t readily explain or fix.

As though he’d read my mind, Allen swiveled his head toward Mark. “And what can you do about these things? Sometimes I think it’s better to just shut up. You just don’t know how people are going to take things, you know?” He looked around, inviting a response from the other guys.

Allen was raising an important question. How safe is it to share vulnerable feelings with others, both inside and outside the group? Men often decide not to open up because they expect their feelings to be dismissed or that the other person will feel burdened listening to them. The group members seemed interested in his remark.

Sensing an opportunity to establish some direction with the group, I leaned in.

“The things you’re all talking about here are hard for anyone to bring up,” I said. “It takes a lot of courage, and skills as well, to share this kind of stuff, especially for guys. We really struggle to talk about these kinds of feelings.” I looked around the room at everyone. “That’s what we’re here for. We’re going to help each other figure out and say what we’re feeling, and support each other. So you can better deal with the problems that are going on outside in your lives as well.”

I hesitated, and raised my hands out to them. “Look. You guys have already started.”

Everyone had perked up, listening attentively.

“How does that sound to you?” I asked.

Many heads jiggled affirmatively. Some men looked hopeful. Others seemed thoughtful, as though they were reflecting on how this venture of getting real with other guys might actually happen.

Jake and I looked at each other across the circle, as we often do, communicating with our eyes and barely perceptible nods. The look said, “Good! Some connection is happening here.”

I breathed out. The train was starting to move.

The men I describe above share common problems, goals, and desires: They want to feel more open and emotionally connected with others. They want more authentic and satisfying relationships. And they want support to help them better connect with their partners, their children, and their colleagues. As a psychotherapist and a teacher for the past forty years, now in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, I’ve helped thousands of men with similar struggles—men who are in pain, who want to open up and connect with others but for a variety of reasons feel they can’t.

CONFRONTING THE EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES

A lot has changed since I started my career in the mid-1970s. Over the past several decades, we’ve experienced an ongoing sexual revolution, an explosion in dual-career families, changes in family structure due to divorce and remarriage, and an increasingly uncertain economic environment.

In the 1980s, psychologist Harriet Lerner wrote, “Men seldom become scholars on the subject of changing their intimate relationships, because they do not yet need to.” The challenges that face men today, however, suggest that we now need to look harder at how we struggle with intimacy if we want to feel fulfilled and have satisfying relationships.

Among other things, we’ve been called upon to share our emotions more openly, respond to women differently in the workplace, revamp our roles as husbands and breadwinners in our families, and involve ourselves more in parenting and day-to-day housework. We’ve been called upon, in short, to revise our conception of what it means to be men.

The women in our lives play an important role in this equation as well. While they’ve gained more opportunities for education, better-paid positions, and increased power in the workforce, they’re encountering their own new challenges. Women are now called upon to negotiate more responsibilities and make more life-altering decisions than ever before. Having been responsible for carrying the lion’s share of domestic work and child care as well as handling everyone’s feelings, women are now asking the men in their lives to participate more fully in both the practical and emotional aspects of family life.

Men seem to be adapting well to some of these challenges. A Pew Research report from 2012 showed that...