Masculine Loneliness

Loneliness and solitude, it seems to me, structure the masculine psyche in a most pronounced manner. I am only a man and know the feminine psyche only from a distance so my thoughts are tentative. Perhaps some women will enlighten me! Consider these three: First, paternity, in contrast to maternity, involves greater distance from the strange, fascinating and discomforting little creature. Intrinsically, naturally, the father lacks the enveloping intimacy the mother shares in the womb, on the breast, with the overflow of oxytoxin, and the entire maternal endowment (physical, social, emotional and spiritual). Secondly, the baby boy of necessity needs to break this profound bonding, already by the age of two or so, in order to develop a masculine identity. The female, by contrast, maintains a more integral, unfractured communion with Mom. Last, partially as a result of the previous two, the male psyche is characterized by enhanced independence and autonomy and an inclination to separation, solitude, and competition in contrast to woman's propensity for cooperation, inclusion, and communion...in friendship, family, work and all relationships. This male loneliness can finally be eased in a twofold manner: communion with God and a plurality of wholesome relationships including friends, family, and spouse-or-celibacy/virginity. Being-in-love with God and with others are distinct but mutually infuse each other: without the one, the other will be insufficient and defective. A man loves Mom first, then Dad, then brothers and sisters and friends, then mentors, and then spouse (or sublimated spouse which is Christ and His bridal-Church) and then children and spiritual children. But at some point (or actually, at many points) the man goes into the desert, and faces loneliness and sadness, and confronts the devil and his own poverty, and surrenders in love to our heavenly Father. When this surrender in love to God and friend is incomplete, the male faces one of two contrasting temptations: towards weakness and passivity or towards violence. Those of a weaker constitution will be drawn to regress to the breast and womb in things like lust, pornography, inebriation through chemical substances, laziness, inaction, isolation, and general discouragement (lack of courage, lack of strength, lack of spirit!) Those endowed with excessive testostronic energies will seek release in the opposite direction: aggression, violence, dominance, high-risk behavior like gambling, workaholism and reckless and irrational activism. On the one hand, the man is demasculinized and impotent, on the other he is disordered and destructive in a bogus machismo. The path to authentic masculinity...to gentle, loving, tender, paternal and Christ-like strength...is the cultivation of wholesome relationships of all sorts. But particularly, the man must own his loneliness, his sadness, his isolation...and bring this into a trusting intimacy with our Lord and our heavenly Father in the Holy Spirit.