Let me be very clear that the Rules are not necessarily bad. How the Rules are taught to us (sometimes literally beaten into us) and how we respond to them can be problematic. Rigidly following the Rules is unhealthy because there is no freedom; there is no choice. The Rules at their extremes are toxic. They lead to disconnection, violence, homophobia, objectification of women, and extreme competition, as well as isolation, loneliness, self-hatred, and misery. Discover who you are despite the Rules, and you cannot help but become the man you were meant to be. With self-aware practice, the Rules become more relaxed and flexible. They feel less like tight, constricting clothes and more like loose-fitting, comfortable garments. Mike said this about how recovery and the Twelve Steps had changed his ideas of who he was as a man: “I like what I see when I look in the mirror. I have come to a level of self-acceptance I’m comfortable with.”
Many of the men (and women) I know who defend their behavior by saying, “It’s just who I am,” are often lost in the Rules because they are not aware of the Water. These are the people who keep using old, out-of-date maps. It is easier to simply say men don’t know how to communicate feelings and continue to be disconnected in their relationships than to take the risk of communicating feelings. That involves immense vulnerability for those of us who have been told all of our lives that sharing feelings, outside of anger, is not manly. As Mike says, “When I share my feelings, honest connection is possible.” The converse also seems to be true: When we do not share our feelings or our inner lives, it is hard to truly connect with others. This is just one of the many “ways that men are” that I still hear all the time, even in the rooms of recovery.
Of course, the Rules are not always specific and concrete; they can be a set of ideas that we react to or resist. For instance, all of my life I have felt more emotional and sensitive than most men (and women). I have found this to be a common trait I share with a lot of men in recovery. The Rules, however, dictate that men are not to show emotions other than anger, and that certain emotions, such as fear, sadness, and hurt, are signs of weakness. These emotions are associated with being feminine, which in the context of the Man Rules has negative connotations. Maybe we feel “less than.” We may even spend a fair amount of time trying not to engage in certain Rules that we consider unhealthy and even destructive, but doing so may affect how we feel about ourselves as men. However, if we’re self-aware and allow ourselves to experience how becoming emotionally vulnerable can enhance the quality of our connections with others, through practice we begin to have a better understanding of the man we want to be rather than one whose relationships are being suffocated by the Rules.
Implicit in many of the Rules are a lot of “don’ts.” For example, if the Rule is “Men have to be strong,” an underlying message is “Don’t be weak.” Which is the greater Rule—that men have to be strong or that men cannot be weak or show weakness of any kind? In other words, the negatives associated with many of the Rules tend to be the stronger part of the message. These “don’ts” are important because, at the heart of it, they are telling us as men what and who not to be. How much of your identity is built around what and who you are not? How much time do you spend not being somebody as opposed to being someone, or more importantly, being who you are and who you want to become?
Interestingly, if you look at the “don’ts” and get rid of the word “don’t,” you get a list of Rules that tend to be associated with a particular group of people. Let’s look at some of them.
• Don’t be weak.
• Don’t show emotion.
• Don’t ask for help.
• Don’t cry.
• Don’t care about relationships.
What group do we tend to identify these statements with? Women. Practically from the moment we are born, men are raised with messages that conflict with those given to girls and women. We receive messages—explicitly and implicitly—that not only are certain behaviors against the Rules, they are to be avoided because they are associated with the “weaker” sex. Now, consider that some of the same behaviors are exactly what we are expected to practice in our most intimate relationships. This is one of the phenomena that creates serious internal tension for men and conflict between men and women in relationships.
You may be saying, “But, Dan, I don’t live by a lot of these Rules.” Fair enough. But as a man you are still frequently judged consistent with them. Chances are there is still a voice inside you, a model of a “manly” man that you have internalized, with a tendency to judge you more harshly than you realize when you don’t follow the Rules. I know that is the case for me, and I have been living an examined life with respect to my masculinity for a very long time.
The Man Rules have also changed a lot in the past two decades. They have loosened up, allowing for what I referred to in my master’s research as a “relaxed masculinity.” The armor I talked about earlier is less rigid. We have more flexibility and more room in which to move. I am convinced we are on the right path as we evolve as individual human beings and as a society. Unfortunately, I have also found that this relaxed masculinity can cause a great deal of confusion. In the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s the Rules were pretty clear. Men and women knew exactly how to act and how to be in relationship with each other. Half a century later there is much less clarity and certainty. Under what circumstances is it okay to show weakness? When is it acceptable and preferable to be vulnerable with our authentic emotions? Some men have learned the hard way that when they do not follow the Rules they are made fun of or rejected for not being manly enough, not only by men in their lives, but by women as well. Understandably, women can buy into the Man Rules as much as men do. They don’t see the Water either.
The Rules provide one very important experience for all men: safety. When I ask audiences what following the Man Rules offers men, they often say “acceptance” or “sense of belonging.” I will push them to look further underneath that. What does acceptance, a sense of belonging, or being liked give us? Safety. At the heart of the Rules is an attempt to be safe in the world, to not only be validated as men but to truly feel safe and fit in. Every young boy learns that when he follows the Man Rules he is safer in that he is less likely to be made fun of, criticized, beaten up, and so on. The majority of us did not learn the Rules in peaceful conditions. Maybe your home had a more enlightened approach to gender, but no boy escapes the brutality of the schoolyard. In fact, I would say that given how much the process of socialization cuts us off from core parts of our humanity, there is a degree of trauma experienced by every man. For some of us the trauma is severe. To make matters worse, at the heart of any attempts we make to be intimate and truly known to others is a level of vulnerability that we may not be prepared for or have the ability to navigate. This experience can touch our trauma, triggering it constantly in our most intimate relationships, and when it happens we have no idea what to do and end up sabotaging our relationships as a result.
Finally, there is another nuance of the Rules that affects some men differently than others that must not be ignored. The people I have had the honor to train and share this conversation with have helped me to see more of the Water. When we think of criminals or drug dealers, whose face do we tend to see? When we think of illegal immigrants or people doing menial work, if they are even men, whose faces do we see? The point is that the Man Rules are not color-blind or classless. I will never know what it is like to walk down the street and have people fearing me simply because of the color of my skin. Or make judgments about me and my intelligence, moral character, or basic humanity simply because of the color of my skin or who I am drawn to love. The intensity and expression of the Man Rules also seem to be different in the suburbs where I grew up than they are in the inner city, the child protection system, or the juvenile and criminal justice systems. All men are not socialized equally.
Through the process of recovery, something happens to us that changes how we express ourselves at the foundation of our identity: our gender. Many people can get confused about the difference between sex and gender, not to mention sexuality (covered later in this book). Our sex is a biological and physiological attribute based upon having specific genitalia and other key distinguishing factors (breasts, etc.), even though there