By Bob Livingstone

It is the twenty first century and gender roles have evolved from the 1950’s working father and housewife mother. But, how significantly have these roles changed?

Men are still assigned superior status over women in our sexist society. Men are given permission to dominate and conquer. Men are allowed to show anger, but not sadness. Anger in men is viewed as assertive and sadness is perceived as a character flaw. This all comes with a huge downside. We feel insignificant if we are unable to meet these standards.

We also may not really want to be dominators and conquerors. This alternative belief itself may make us question our masculinity. We may not want to take charge of every situation and want a break from that demand. This kind of thinking may cause us to feel ashamed.

We feel that our main function is to provide for our families. If the assessment is made that we are not measuring up, our self-esteem and confidence take a great hit. Our partners may feel that we are inadequate providers and/or we may believe that ourselves. In any case, we tend to suffer in silence and are often too ashamed to reach out to anyone else.

For all the buzz about men now having permission to freely express our feelings, often times that sharing is viewed as weakness. That weakness is targeted by those who wish to do us harm or want to feel superior to us.

This influences men to be guarded and on hyper alert for those who may hurt us. This is a phenomenon that leads us to a further shut down.

We become so guarded that we lose the ability to feel our own pain. If we cannot feel our own pain, we have no means to put ourselves in another’s shoes. If we cannot empathize and be compassionate towards ourselves, it is impossible to do so with others.

The pressure to provide and fix all that is broken makes us feel incredibly anxious. We feel that anything less than perfection is not acceptable to the world at large and therefore to ourselves.

Your partner asks you to please buy toilet paper when you know you have run out. We feel wounded by this perceived criticism because we feel that we strive so strongly for perfection. We react badly when we hear about our mistakes from others. We respond to this criticism with defensive outrage and we tell those closest to us that they are making a big deal about nothing when in reality there is really no severe criticism here; just a suggestion to change some approach or way of doing things.

At this moment this perceived criticism feels like a punch in the stomach and a total loss of dignity. When in reality it was nothing more than a request to be more aware.

Deep down inside we are angry at ourselves for not being perfect and we respond to the feeling of inadequacy by verbally striking out at those who care about us the most.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article shortly…..

– Bob Livingstone is the author the critically acclaimed Unchain the Pain: How to be Your Own Therapist, Norlights Press 2011, The Body Mind Soul Solution: Healing Emotional Pain through Exercise, Pegasus Books, 2007 and Redemption of the Shattered: A Teenager’s Healing Journey through Sandtray Therapy, Booklocker 2002. He is a psychotherapist, licensed clinical social worker in private practice in The San Francisco Bay Area and has nearly twenty five years experience working with adults, adolescents and children.