Breaking the Male Code

Calling for a new men’s movement, a noted psychotherapist examines the critical role close male friendships play in helping men lead happy, healthy lives.
 
For much of the past century, men have operated under the rules of Male Code, a rigid set of guidelines that equate masculinity with stoicism, silence, and strength. But as men’s roles have changed, this lingering pressure to hide their emotions has wreaked havoc on men’s lives and relationships, making them more likely to suffer from depression, anger, and isolation. Robert Garfield has worked with men struggling with emotional issues for more than forty years. Through his Friendship Labs—clinical settings in which men engage in group therapy—he teaches men how to identify inner conflicts, express emotions, and communicate openly.

In Breaking the Male Code, Garfield examines the unique challenges men face and urges them to abandon Male Code in favor of a masculinity that integrates traditional male traits with emotional intimacy skills. Drawing on real-life stories, original research, and his firsthand clinical experience, he shows how close friendships can serve as the foundation on which men can build and sustain deep relationships with all of their loved ones and in turn lead happier, healthier lives."Breaking the Male Code will help men discover and accept their own rich, complex emotional natures and respect the wide range of ways to express themselves as men. It will help men resolve their psychological issues. Breaking the Male Code is book every man needs to read to live a happy and healthy life."
—Washington Book Review

"Garfield has written a book I didn’t realize I needed. It’s hard to ask for more than that."
—Kansas City Star

“In this rewarding self-help book, Garfield guides men through the whys and practical hows of developing fulfilling male friendships...It’s hard to imagine a guy’s guy picking this book up, but if he were assigned to read it, he’d be surprised—it contains an empathetic, approachable, skills-driven guide to an invaluable reward.”
—Publishers Weekly  

“Dr. Garfield explains why emotional intimacy is a rare quality in male friendships and offers a clear road map for men to forge deeper connections. His style is warm, engaging, and user-friendly. I suspect that countless wives will put this book on their husband’s bedside table.”
—Harriet Lerner, Ph.D, author of The Dance of Anger and Marriage Rules
 
“Rob Garfield knows that the cure for what ails men is intimacy—connection to themselves and others. With compassion and wit, he shows men, step to step, how to move beyond the strictures of male code into the richness of an open heart. Both practical and moving, Breaking The Male Code belongs on the shelf of every man wanting to grow, and every clinician dedicated to helping.”
—Terrence Real, author of I Don’t Want to Talk about It
 
“In this wonderfully readable book, Dr. Robert Garfield brings his extensive knowledge and rich experience to show how men think and feel about their relationships with other men. Breaking the Male Code delivers a powerful and hopeful message, one that provides men of all ages with the skills necessary to enjoy deep and fulfilling relationships with each other. This book has the potential to dramatically improve all the important relationships in men’s lives!”
—Constance Ahrons, Ph.D., professor emerita, University of Southern California, and author of The Good Divorce and We’re Still Family
 
“A compelling book that goes to the heart of male loneliness and points the way toward deeper and more fulfilling friendships in men’s lives.”
—Sam Osherson, author of Finding Our Fathers and The Stethoscope Cure
 
“Remember how Thoreau said that men ‘lead lives of quiet desperation?’ If only he'd read Rob Garfield's book! He'd understand not only why they're desperate, but also how to address their needs. A vital message about men's emotional needs, offered with care, thought, and great compassion.”
—Michael Kimmel, author of Guyland and executive director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University
 
“With warmth and empathy, Rob Garfield takes on the task of helping us to overcome our stereotypes about maleness and our often incomplete definition of friendship so that men can relate to each other in an intimate way.”
— Donald N. Bersoff, Ph.D., J.D., former president, American Psychological Association
 
“Garfield does a superb job of revealing the obstacles to intimacy in men’s friendships as well as providing a detailed guide on how to build such friendships. Linking the theoretical with the practical, this book will be extremely useful for men everywhere.”
—Niobe Way, Ed.D. professor of Developmental Psychology, New York University, and author of Deep Secrets
 
“Breaking the Male Code is a book that will change lives. Garfield's broad and deep knowledge of men, their struggles, doubts and perseverance, coupled with their often unfulfilled wish to connect with other men, is evident on every page. His sage direction will enable men to relish life more fully.”
—Evan Imber-Black, Ph.D., program director, Marriage and Family Therapy, Mercy College, and author of The Secret Life of Families and Rituals for Our Times
 
“Breaking the Male Code has the potential to be among every therapist’s best friend in terms of what they’ll want to recommend to their male clients. A valuable resource for males of all ages and for the women who love them.”
—Robert Heasley, PhD, CMF, past president, American Men’s Studies Association, professor of sociology, Indiana University of PennsylvaniaRob Garfield M.D., a psychotherapist and clinical faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, has been recognized by Philadelphia Magazine as both one of the city's "Top Docs" and "Best Therapists." An engaging speaker, he has presented his work on men's friendships to both lay and professional audiences and published numerous articles on the subject of male emotional intimacy.

 

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

A quiet settled over the room as the seven men present realized that the pleasantries, initial joking, and munching on veggies and pretzels had come to a close. We were going to talk about why they were here, why they’d come to our men’s group.

There was a sense of awkwardness, as there usually is when men recognize they’re about to speak openly with one another. The silence deepened.

“Who wants to start us off?” Jake Kriger, my co-therapist, looked around the room. “Briefly. Let us know why you’re here.”

I expelled a deep breath. The saying “And so it begins again” ran through my mind. I was fastening my emotional seat belt, readying myself for the takeoff of this new group.

Randy, a fifty-two-year-old high school teacher, cleared his throat. “I’m here because I got laid off from my job. I’m a teacher, and I’ve worked at my school for twenty-five years. They just canned me,” he said, the hurt clearly visible in his face. “I’ve been out of work for eight months. I guess I’m depressed, and I haven’t been able to shake it.” He flicked his head back, as though trying to toss off this mood.

Heads bobbed in sympathy. Randy fell quiet, signaling that was all he had to say.

Jake and I looked around the circle. “Who wants to go next?” he asked.

Mark, a fifty-five-year-old hand surgeon, leaned forward. “I’m not really sure why I’m here,” he said, with a small shrug. He looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept well for several nights. “My wife and my couples therapist thought it would do me good. Our therapist told me that coming here might help my relationship with Sally.”

He hesitated. “She’s talking about leaving.”

The mood in the room plummeted. Mark tried to barrel on in a descriptive mode, but his voice began to quaver, and he slowed down. “Obviously, I’m shook up,” he said. “I don’t want to lose her. I didn’t know things were this bad. She says if I think that, I haven’t been paying attention.”

He paused and looked around the room. “I don’t have anyone to talk with about this. I mean I have friends, but I don’t talk with them. Not about this.”

The head-bobbing from the other guys had slowed, morphing into looks of sadness and concern for Mark. He’d just delivered a heavy emotional package, and I wondered how the men would handle it.

Allen, a forty-eight-year-old contractor, jumped in. “Well, things with Shelly, my wife, aren’t so bad. My problem’s more about my son. He won’t listen to me, and I get, well, pissed off. Lately, I walk out of situations so I won’t explode.”

Hastily, he added, “Not that I hit people or break things, nothing like that.” He smiled uncomfortably. Allen was a large, imposing guy with a soft, controlled voice. You could imagine him knocking things over if he stood up suddenly.

The TV character Tony Soprano flashed through my mind. I wondered if Allen had a more volatile side that he wasn’t copping to.

When things start to get uncomfortable or feel out of control in our groups, members typically try to rescue the mood, divert attention from issues that they can’t readily explain or fix.

As though he’d read my mind, Allen swiveled his head toward Mark. “And what can you do about these things? Sometimes I think it’s better to just shut up. You just don’t know how people are going to take things, you know?” He looked around, inviting a response from the other guys.

Allen was raising an important question. How safe is it to share vulnerable feelings with others, both inside and outside the group? Men often decide not to open up because they expect their feelings to be dismissed or that the other person will feel burdened listening to them. The group members seemed interested in his remark.

Sensing an opportunity to establish some direction with the group, I leaned in.

“The things you’re all talking about here are hard for anyone to bring up,” I said. “It takes a lot of courage, and skills as well, to share this kind of stuff, especially for guys. We really struggle to talk about these kinds of feelings.” I looked around the room at everyone. “That’s what we’re here for. We’re going to help each other figure out and say what we’re feeling, and support each other. So you can better deal with the problems that are going on outside in your lives as well.”

I hesitated, and raised my hands out to them. “Look. You guys have already started.”

Everyone had perked up, listening attentively.

“How does that sound to you?” I asked.

Many heads jiggled affirmatively. Some men looked hopeful. Others seemed thoughtful, as though they were reflecting on how this venture of getting real with other guys might actually happen.

Jake and I looked at each other across the circle, as we often do, communicating with our eyes and barely perceptible nods. The look said, “Good! Some connection is happening here.”

I breathed out. The train was starting to move.

The men I describe above share common problems, goals, and desires: They want to feel more open and emotionally connected with others. They want more authentic and satisfying relationships. And they want support to help them better connect with their partners, their children, and their colleagues. As a psychotherapist and a teacher for the past forty years, now in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, I’ve helped thousands of men with similar struggles—men who are in pain, who want to open up and connect with others but for a variety of reasons feel they can’t.

CONFRONTING THE EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES

A lot has changed since I started my career in the mid-1970s. Over the past several decades, we’ve experienced an ongoing sexual revolution, an explosion in dual-career families, changes in family structure due to divorce and remarriage, and an increasingly uncertain economic environment.

In the 1980s, psychologist Harriet Lerner wrote, “Men seldom become scholars on the subject of changing their intimate relationships, because they do not yet need to.” The challenges that face men today, however, suggest that we now need to look harder at how we struggle with intimacy if we want to feel fulfilled and have satisfying relationships.

Among other things, we’ve been called upon to share our emotions more openly, respond to women differently in the workplace, revamp our roles as husbands and breadwinners in our families, and involve ourselves more in parenting and day-to-day housework. We’ve been called upon, in short, to revise our conception of what it means to be men.

The women in our lives play an important role in this equation as well. While they’ve gained more opportunities for education, better-paid positions, and increased power in the workforce, they’re encountering their own new challenges. Women are now called upon to negotiate more responsibilities and make more life-altering decisions than ever before. Having been responsible for carrying the lion’s share of domestic work and child care as well as handling everyone’s feelings, women are now asking the men in their lives to participate more fully in both the practical and emotional aspects of family life.

Men seem to be adapting well to some of these challenges. A Pew Research report from 2012 showed that with dual-career married or cohabiting partners, fathers are spending three times as many hours with their children (7.3 hours per week) and twice as many hours doing housework (9.0 hours per week) as they did in 1965. Dads’ and moms’ traditional roles are converging regarding time spent on paid work versus housework and child care, though neither has overtaken the other. In 1965, the ratio of time spent on paid work versus housework and child care was 85–15 percent for men, and the inverse, 15–85 percent, for women. Today this ratio is about 70–30 percent for men and 40–60 percent for women.

THE EMOTIONAL INTIMACY DILEMMA

Guys still struggle in the feelings department, however. This is not new news. Men have long demonstrated difficulty in dealing with their emotions in close relationships with both women and men in the practice of what we call emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy is the experience of being deeply connected to another person who knows and understands your most important feelings and who shares his or her own with you. It is primarily a connection of the heart.

If there were a label for this problem in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it might read something like “Emotional Intimacy Deficiency—a problem characterized by a sense of shallowness in one’s relationships with others, associated with a failure to recognize or express feelings, to reveal personal details about oneself, to be vulnerable or let anyone help you, to comfortably share attention or let go of control, and to listen without having to solve a problem.” Guys who struggle with emotional intimacy are more likely to withdraw and isolate themselves during times of stress, when they most need help.

There is no such diagnosis, of course, but the problem is nonetheless real and its consequences are sobering. Men who have trouble communicating feelings or having close relationships with others are at risk for a number of problems. They take longer to recover from minor illnesses, have lower resistance levels, and have reduced survival times when diagnosed with terminal illness. They are 50 percent more likely to have a first-time heart attack, and twice as likely to die from it, than men with strong social ties. When depressed, these men have significantly lower rates of recovery than those who have close relationships.

Psychologist Niobe Way tells us that when adolescent boys stop sharing their intimate feelings with their peers, we see an alarming increase in their rates of depression and suicide. Wives who cite their husband’s “emotional unavailability” as the primary cause of divorce initiate two out of every three divorces today. At the far end of the life cycle, older men without close relationships have 20 percent lower ten-year survival rates compared with those who do. You get the idea.

The struggle with expressing feelings and forming intimate connections afflicts guys from all socioeconomic strata, ethnicities, races, and sexual orientations. A gay friend of mine who knew I was writing this book said to me, “Charles [his partner] is so impossibly uptight when he’s feeling upset. He just won’t talk to me. Does this count as an example of how guys struggle with feelings?”

“Oh, yes,” I told him.

While there is diversity in the way men both within and between different cultural groups express their emotions, our society’s dominant rules regarding how men should behave—otherwise known as Male Code—affect men from all backgrounds. For men to lead emotionally open and, as a result, healthier lives, we must first acknowledge the impact Male Code has on all of us. I will describe this more fully in the next chapter.

For men to succeed in today’s world, we need to expand our definition of healthy masculinity to include emotional intimacy (EI) skills along with traditional male behaviors. The important words here are expand and include. This book’s purpose is not to denigrate traditional masculine behaviors or insist that one model or set of behaviors supplants another. My purpose is to help men learn about and embrace their own rich and complex emotional natures, and honor the enormous range of ways we express ourselves as men.

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER’S MEN’S MOVEMENT

The changes in men’s attitudes about masculinity and emotional intimacy that I’m describing here are of no less consequence for men today than those Betty Friedan described for women fifty years ago in The Feminine Mystique. They have the potential to transform men’s lives and the world around us in equally momentous ways.

When people have asked me about the “men’s movement” today, I’ve joked that “it’s a very quiet revolution” because of the social stigma associated with men expressing their feelings openly, and their resultant aversion to admitting that they want more emotional connection in their lives. For many men, however, I believe that this desire for closer, more authentic relationships resonates with core values that they hold regarding equality, compassion, and respectful engagement with all individuals.

The men’s movement (originally called the men’s liberation movement) in this country started in the 1960s. I think of it as having evolved, roughly, in three stages: corrective, reflective, and now, connective.

Initially, in the 1960s and 1970s, some men aligned themselves with the egalitarian goals of feminism, attempting to redress gender-based inequalities, as well as those of other marginalized groups, including Blacks, gays and lesbians, and Native Americans. Other men chose to address laws and social policies that discriminated against men, particularly concerning fathers’ rights. Still others, many of whom were involved in religious and community-based groups, provided mentoring and counseling to men about issues of violence, abuse, and addiction.

A second, reflective phase emerged in the early 1990s, introduced by the poet Robert Bly (Iron John) and psychologists Michael Meade and Robert Moore, who formed the “mythopoetic men’s movement.” Here, men were encouraged to connect with their “deeper masculine natures,” to find renewed emotional energy in their relationships with other men, as well as to overcome what was seen as a passive response to feminism. This approach was based on archetypal elements drawn from Jungian psychology and Native American rituals.

Today, the key focus of the men’s movement is exploring and changing the ways men connect with each other and with important others in their lives. Over the past two decades, authors and researchers including Terrence Real (I Don’t Want to Talk About It), Samuel Osherson (Finding Our Fathers), and Michael Kimmel (Guyland) have powerfully shown that society’s expectations about how “real men” should act seriously constrict men from relating in openhearted and humane ways. The recurring themes in their writings underscore the importance of men forming healthy relational bonds with others, the pain of loss when these are broken, and pathways for repair and healing.

LEARNING EMOTIONAL INTIMACY (EI) SKILLS

When I arrived in Philadelphia in 1974 to begin my career in psychiatry, my life was in turmoil. My marriage was falling apart, I was in a new city, and I didn’t know anyone with whom I felt comfortable talking. I remember walking around in my clinic on Green Street in a daze as the new medical director. I was depressed, not sleeping well. I couldn’t remember having felt this bad—or disconnected—before. And I wasn’t talking with anyone about any of this.

I was, in effect, a poster child for the kind of problem I’ve been describing—the guy who was suffering and couldn’t admit it because he was ashamed and embarrassed to feel so vulnerable. Over time, I did manage to overcome these challenges, to heal and come out feeling better and stronger.

During these early years, however, I gained a strong understanding of how my male patients might be experiencing their own travails. I was struck by how allergic many guys seemed walking into my office, alone or with their wives, looking as if they’d rather be anywhere else, say, chained in a stockade rather than have to talk with me about their problems. I got it.

Over time, I came to realize that our traditional system of psychotherapy, based on focusing on emotionally sensitive material, underestimated how difficult this was for most men. Even those who are in desperate pain and who need help often lack the skills to talk about their feelings in a constructive way. It’s not perceived as a manly thing to do, and so they’ve never been taught how to do it.

I remember speaking with Tom, an engineer in his mid-forties, who was recovering from a heart attack. He had become depressed and withdrawn to the point that his wife, Marge, threatened to separate unless he would get help with her. “I told her that I don’t believe in psychotherapy,” he said, his eyes downcast, looking resigned.

We normally don’t think of psychotherapy as a religion, something that we “believe in” or not, but hearing these kinds of comments routinely from men caused me to wonder whether we were providing men with the right kind of help, with therapy that could feel more accessible to them.

HELPING MEN TO BETTER CONNECT

Over the next two decades, I worked with men in mental health clinics, as a teacher and training director of a family therapy program, as well as in private practice. During this time, I discovered some key principles, often ignored in traditional therapy approaches, that were vital in helping men to open up, better express their emotions, and connect with others, and to form a strong alliance in therapy.

1   Acknowledging the Goodness of Men and of Traditional Masculine Values

When men struggle in their lives, they feel down on themselves. They present to their loved ones in a variety of ways, by becoming depressed and withdrawn or, conversely, defensive, controlling, arrogant, and sometimes even threatening. Underneath, however, feelings of shame and humiliation usually predominate.

In the therapist’s office, men often feel at a disadvantage, deficient in what Priscilla Blanton and Maria Vandergriff-Avery called relational power. Even in situations where they emotionally flounder, however, they need to be reminded, to remind themselves, that they bring something positive to the table, that they’re worthwhile, even if not at their best.

I saw this in a touching exchange between a Hispanic couple with whom I worked at my mental health clinic during my early days in Philadelphia. Angel, a forty-eight-year-old elementary school teacher’s aide, and his wife, Maria, saw me because Angel had become depressed and withdrawn after his mother had died four months before in Puerto Rico.

“He’s a macho guy. Not much of a talker. But he’s a good dad, and he works hard. I know he’s going to be OK,” said Maria, sitting close to Angel. She turned to him, lovingly, and punched him in the arm. He looked up and smiled. We spent the rest of the hour talking about the impressive sacrifices Angel had made over the past year, traveling to San Juan, sending money for his mother’s care, while scraping to support Maria and their three kids. He agreed to talk a little more about how sad he was about his mom’s death, and to take some medication. True to Maria’s prediction, as Angel began to talk about his sadness, his mood began to lift over the next couple of months.

2   Presenting EI Skills as Behaviors That Men Can Learn

Cultural messages about how men are supposed to act, the rules of Male Code that I mentioned before, are so strong, and often invisible, that men frequently assume they can’t or shouldn’t be-have in any other way. They think being a man necessarily means operating under a prescribed set of “masculine” behaviors, those that include solitude, strength, and independence and shun intimacy, asking for help, or expressing emotion. These rules often interfere with men addressing their emotional problems in therapy.

Throughout my career, I’ve taken an interest in how individual psychological, familial, and cultural forces, as well as biological factors, collectively influence our gender behaviors. I’ve studied the research and the arguments about what accounts for “masculine and feminine traits.” My analysis to date: There’s no real evidence that EI skills are “hardwired” into the brain, or that if we dig down far enough we’ll discover an “essential” maleness or femaleness deep in our cores.

Men and women do not strictly conform to any one particular model, any one specific set of traits or behaviors that define their gender. Thus, as author Harry Brod suggests, we live in a culture of “masculinities” (or “femininities”) in which each person expresses their gender in a unique way, as a blend of mainstream traits along with alternative features or behaviors that give their maleness or femaleness its own unique character. Moreover, expectations about masculine (and feminine) behavior vary across cultures, over an individual’s life cycle, and, as mentioned earlier, over history as well. I elaborate on these issues in chapters 2 and 3. In short, we revise our gender behaviors as we go along and as we need to.

When men hear this, they usually feel hopeful and relieved. It’s comforting for them to know that they can learn EI skills, albeit with some work, and that these can become valuable additions to their emotional repertoires—new “tools in their emotional backpacks,” as I’m fond of describing them.

Tom, the engineer I mentioned above, routinely fought with his wife, Marge, about grocery shopping. He’d check the fridge to see what was needed, then go out to buy food, and later, she’d end up criticizing him for forgetting important items or not checking in with her beforehand. He was stuck on how unappreciative of his efforts she was and how she “emasculated” him. I asked him if he thought it was “unmanly” for him to check in with her, to ask for help on the grocery list. He hadn’t thought about this. I continued, suggesting that possibly being manly isn’t always about knowing everything in advance and being right all the time. I told him that maybe not knowing and checking as needed was OK, that it might even make him a better man. Tom agreed to try this out (to Marge’s delight) and upon being thanked by her, reported back to me, “It seems that there’s more than one way to be a man, correct?”

3   Appreciating the Power Men Have to Support Each Other

Toward the mid-1990s, my best friend and colleague, Jake Kriger, and I recognized in our discussions that there was a hole, a missing piece in the existing approaches to psychotherapy with men. Many “gender aware” therapists—Richard Meth and Robert Pasick (Men in Therapy) and others—were beginning to describe individual approaches for working with men in therapy that addressed the resistances about which I spoke earlier. This was progress.

Jake and I sensed that there was an untapped potential in the group experience for men, however. Author Samuel Osherson (Finding Our Fathers) alludes to this when he describes the deep desire in men for intimate contact with each other and for creating more openhearted emotional bonds. We also recognized the unique feelings of identification that could arise and empower men to open up and support each other in their important relationships outside of the group.

Jake and I had participated in men’s consciousness-raising and support groups in the 1970s and 1980s. These were groups to help men become aware of how social stereotypes affected their behaviors and attitudes toward women. We’d found these models to be initially promising, but ultimately disappointing in their failure to create deeper bonds of intimacy among the men in the groups. Some of their limitations were structural—lack of focus on EI skills, lack of clearly defined goals or of firm leadership. There were often undercurrents of competition (e.g., Who’s the most gender-sensitive man in the group?) or negative feelings between members that weren’t addressed and ultimately interfered with the men forming a solid nucleus of a group.

With these pitfalls in mind, we set out to explore and develop a therapeutic group experience for guys that might harness the positive energies of group therapy to create strong bonding experiences for men that could further support their developing EI skills.

THERAPEUTIC MEN’S GROUPS

In the fall of 1995, we began to run our therapeutic men’s groups, which we later named Friendship Labs. These groups involved elements of support, education, and personal growth for men. They focused on the development of EI skills, encouraging the men