QC

When I wasn't in relationships I was generally too afraid to talk to women without being introduced by a third party. I was paralyzed by a fear of appearing "creepy," which maybe was disguising a fear of rejection.

Overall, I was cut off from myself, in many ways and for many reasons, and that meant I was cut off from women, too. I couldn't really feel or relate to them as people (only as the rom-com role I needed them to play), because I couldn't really feel or relate even to myself.

I contorted myself into the shape I thought would make women happy, and in doing so I hurt both them and myself in ways that took me a long time to start looking at and working on. In doing the work, getting back in touch with myself, a few things gradually became clear:

1) I have always felt a deep desire to be of service to women. That desire is good, and real, and true. I have seen the power that comes from sincerely inhabiting it. It is a core component of what it means to me to be a man. _And_...

2) I have also always felt a need to earn my worth as a human being. Growing up I was repeatedly told by my parents that I wasn't good enough, that I needed to be more like they wanted me to be in order to be accepted. I rejected this, but it wounded me - how could it not?

Serving women was the most purely good thing I could think of. So my self-worth got tied up in "succeeding" at it - I felt like I needed to do it in order to have any worth as a man at all - and when I "failed" it crushed me.

3) When I need to "succeed" at serving women to feel okay, I am giving women responsibility for my okayness, which they did not ask for and which does not serve either them or me.

In the last few years I've met some amazing men who've been real role models for me. They have a masculinity that I never saw growing up and had no idea was possible. And it is _not_ predicated on respecting women. Respecting women falls out of it naturally.

Their masculinity is predicated on a deep experiential understanding of being human, and being humans together, and the ways in which we are hurt by and hurt each other. It is badly needed today, and much of the relevant work can only be done by men, for men.