Is The Man in the Mirror a Fraud?

For the past few days, I've been reading Dr. Jed Diamond's newest book, The Irritable Male Syndrome with rapt attention (in advance of interviewing him on my upcoming internet radio program). In my estimation, this book is required reading for anyone in the helping professions. It explores a complex of issues that work together in men to create a raging animal out of concerned and loving person. Many of these issues have been explored and addressed separately from a variety of perspectives: psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, physiology, etc., but never (to my knowledge) has anyone brought all these perspectives (and more) to bear at one time and in one place to provide a holistic presentation of 21st Century man. In particular, he looks at 21st Century man in transition. Since change is of the essence of humankind in history, it's a close-up and personal (and sometimes unsettling) look at us.

One of the aspects that I really like about Dr. Jed's book is that he agrees with me so perfectly! Seriously, though, I do feel very supported and affirmed as I read such a scholarly and scientific presentation of the issues that I've seen at work in the midlife male, but, up until now, only verifiable by anecdotal evidence. Both Dr. Jed and I have understood that the midlife transition, when it's misunderstood and mismanaged can lead, in the extreme, to divorce, bankruptcy, and even suicide. Men face enormous hurdles as they attempt to deal with the forces of the irritable male syndrome (IMS), so that only a relatively small number of men can make this transition smoothly. In many cases, it's up to their life partners to understand and appreciate what's going on, and to call upon all the love and interpersonal skill at their command to assist the man-in-transition through his period of crisis.

At this point, I think it would be helpful to look at the context where IMS in the midlife transitioning male most often first shows itself: the family. It shouldn't be surprising that the family would find itself on the front lines of a midlife transition, because generally this is where the man's most intimate relationships and most powerful bonds are found. When a guy's inner world starts to come unglued, the first to notice it are those who love him. In most cases, they even notice it long before he does. The man in midlife transition tends to deal with his inner discomfort with the dual escape mechanisms of denial and blame (either 'it's not happening: I'm fine' or 'it's not my fault: if only would change, everything would be fine'). Regardless of the opacity of the smokescreen that the midlife male puts up to hide his own inner truth from himself, it does nothing to mask his erratic attitudes and behavior from those who have to learn to cope with them. His life partner, his children, his parents, everyone who truly loves him knows that something very troubling is going on, although they're most often at more or less a complete loss to understand what that might be.

The psychological defense mechanisms that the mind engages in to avoid having to deal with uncomfortable — or painful — truths are really awe-inspiring. Take 'projection,' for example. The mind has a sort of innate adeptness to project outside of itself what it fears seeing within. Of course, part of this adeptness comes from sets of, so to speak, emotional 'raw nerves' that cause it to pay attention to the very things on the exterior that it has most difficulty dealing with in the interior. In this way, the 'midlife male' sees all around him in his most intimate surroundings reflections of his own (supposed) shortcomings. He will have as much trouble accepting theirs as he does accepting his own. The root fear at midlife boils down to the suspicion that he's not the man he appears to be. He's a fake, a phony, a fraud. He's grown increasingly more ashamed of the person he's become, and his wife and family take on the role of mirror to him of his shame. The more they try to appease him, the more wrathful he becomes at them for reminding him of the person whom he fears that he really is.

Although they are simply innocent reminders to him of the person he always wanted to be, thought he could be, and tried to be (although now he believes he'll never be), his refusal to look at (let alone accept) the truth about himself turns him into the man who kills the messenger. Sometimes disparaging their best attempts at pleasing him for falling short of the mark (an impossible mark at that), and at other times berating them for not trying (when they back away in frustration). It becomes the family version of the classical double-bind: 'damned if you do; damned if you don't' or 'I love you; go away.'

If what the man sees in his family is but a constant reminder of how he has failed, then what the family sees in the man (although they're seldom able to put their feelings aside to recognize it) is the reflection of how he's feeling about himself. When he's screaming at them, that's mild compared to how he's screaming at himself. When he's alienated from them, it's only a shadow of how alienated he feels from himself. You know, I find it difficult to describe in words the magnitude of the havoc that shame can wreak in the male psyche. At the same time, when the core of a man's self-esteem (built as it most often is on a combination of cultural bias, faulty assumptions, and dysfunctional belief systems) begins to dissolve, the principal (if not exclusive) emotional pain that a man feels is exactly that: shame.

When you move, the image in your mirror moves with you. If you weren't self-aware (like a budgie in a cage), you might believe that your image moves on its own (the way the budgie pecks at its image, acting as though it were another bird). Yet, you are aware that your reflection changes only because of the changes in you. Look at the difficulties that you, as a man in midlife transition, may be having with your closest family members. In addition to their own individual personalities and transitions which certainly have a bearing on their behavior, to a larger extent than you might imagine, they're mirroring your own behavior back to you. If your household was once quiet, peaceful and loving, but now has (almost overnight) seems to have become a violent contest of wills, it may not be they who have changed — it may very well be you. The ones you love may be the mirror in which you're seeing your own reflection: the reflection of a person you may not want to meet face-to-face. Yet, this is exactly the person you're going to need to confront, and, in spite of your fears, he's not a fraud; but he's not the man you thought he was either. It's someone that you're going to need to get to know all over again for the first time.

Learning as much as possible about the irritable male syndrome (IMS), andropause (so-called male menopause), and the almost impossibly difficult set of choices with which men at midlife find themselves confronted will help you to appreciate what's happening to the man you love (if you're a family member) or what's happening to you (if your the man). Remember: knowledge is power, and understanding what's happening (although it won't necessarily solve everything) will at least keep you from jumping to faulty conclusions and making some desperately bad choices. The male midlife transition in the 21st Century can be very difficult to navigate for everyone. Nobody wants to see themselves or the ones they love in pain. But, the midlife transition is a process and, sooner or later, it will eventually work itself out in some significant way in spite of all the pain. You'll find yourself in a new (but, we hope, familiar) world of your own creation. The decisions you make in the meantime will decide what that world is ultimately going to look like.