The War of the Roses

There is a gap between man and woman, even those in relationship; a gaping void that seems to a lot of folk to be growing exponentially wider and deeper by the minute.

The resentments run deep and the tangled web of beliefs and wounded feelings seem impossible to navigate. And at whose feet do we lay blame for this sad state of affairs? I mean, how far back to we have to go? To our parents and the blueprints they laid for us? To their parents or the generation before them? Do we need to travel all the way back to the metaphoric Adam and Eve tale to find the roots?

And the psycho-spiritual movement which is so prevalent for us these days seems only to have given birth to more confusion. The Yin and Yang, the encouragement of the 'sensitive male' contrasted with 'what happened to real men?' The Feminist movement going from women defining, establishing, and achieving equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for themselves in a male-dominated society to outright attacks on the male psyche. This giving birth to the The United Anti Feminist Coalition (or Women Against Feminism), motivated by the belief that feminist theories of patriarchy and disadvantages suffered by women in society are incorrect or exaggerated, that feminism as a movement encourages misandry and seeks to harm or oppress men. This, in turn, gave birth -crazily – to the anit-anti-feminist movement who have taken to attacking the anit-feminists.

And now we have MGTOW – Men Going Their Own Way – which I understand and feel in principle. They are saying that, as a man I will not surrender my will to the social expectations of women and society, because both have become hostile against masculinity. But the drama of it all is just very, very sad. The videos and interviews and articles and Facebook posts... it's disheartening to bear witness to it all.

Who have we become as a race?

We are divided.

There's this guy and girl. They fall in what they call 'Love', swept up in the hormones and romantic notions. Years later, after pressing one another's buttons to the point of total and complete hatred, they rip apart, violently. You can then stand on either side of the fence and hear one or the other bicker and bitch and whine about how their ex did them wrong and count the ways. You can listen to these vitriolic outbursts and really feel for them, on either side. So who is right and who is wrong? Listening to these debriefs from either side I can truly say that both of them are right and wrong in equal measure. He's right about this and she's wrong about this; he's wrong about that and she's right about it.

So more to the point, how do we find our way clear of all this ugliness?

Clear and open and honest communication just isn't doing it anymore because all we end up doing is getting swept up in a raging debate about beliefs.

And the divide remains.

The spiritual folk among us tell us that your partner is a reflection of your own shadow nature; that we must not focus on the person in front of us but come inside and make the adjustments within; that snarling back at the reflection in the mirror only perpetuates the issue.

And I happen to agree, but it's not an easy thing. Believing it... saying it... meaning it and then actually doing it are entirely different things. Reading it in a book or having someone tell you in a workshop and then having an actual human being expressing their turbulent, hurt feelings (or not expressing them) right in front of you is a whole different ball game.

So what do we do?

How do we move forward together?

How do we heal the wounds?

I don't have any clear answers for you. I thought I'd open up a space here for you to share ideas and feelings. You can just drop comments in the comment box on the main page but I'd like to keep this forum open and respectful if we can; a safe place for people to come forward without being attacked, if you all feel you can manage it.