Randall Horton discusses violence as a part of men’s grief.
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If you have ever lost someone you love, you have probably felt judged for the way you grieved. You may not have cried enough at the funeral, or you may have wailed uncontrollably. You may have continued your life without interruption, or you may have “wallowed” in grief for too long. You may have been unable to mention your loved one, or you may have been unable to stop talking about her or him. No matter what you did, someone probably cast a disapproving eye your way.
I’d like to tell you that you should just grieve in your own way and at your own pace because there is no wrong way to grieve, but we have to face the fact that some ways of grieving are harmful either to ourselves or others. Think of Hamlet, for example. Overcome with grief, he wanted to avenge his father’s death, which is understandable, but along the way he drove his girlfriend to suicide, murdered the father of his best friend, and ended up bringing ruin to himself and everyone around him.
The impulse to respond to loss with action can be extremely positive, of course. After traumatic losses, many people begin campaigns to change policy or laws, raise money for research, or raise awareness of preventable deaths, but the same desire to “do something” can have disastrous results. Grief researchers Terry L. Martin and Kenneth J. Doka mention that some cultures condone or even encourage “blood feuds” or revenge slayings. In some cases, revenge targets the original murderer, but sometimes bereaved individuals also take out friends and families of the murderer, members of the community, or bystanders who aren’t related to the conflict at all. They note that for some grievers, violence “offers action as a way to reassert a sense of control.”
When men know their status is secure, their expression of grief changes significantly. Unfortunately, many men exist in a trap. They will express their emotions to their closest friend, but too many men have only one trusted friend, their romantic partner. When a man faces the loss of his romantic partner, he may become completely isolated.
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Psychotherapist Thomas R. Golden says men are driven to action when confronted with grief because of their biological makeup. He says, “We now know that the directions men and women tend towards when in grief, men towards action and women towards interaction, are not simply socially determined behaviors. A strikingly different biology between men and women impacts our chosen paths to heal from grief.” Golden believes higher levels of oxytocin in women cause them to turn to relationships for comfort after a loss while men have a “fight or flight” response to grief.
The desire to act moves individuals to violence, but it can affect entire societies. When nations are attacked, we often see mass movements to avenge the attacks and bring the attackers to justice. We can think of Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11, ongoing conflict in the Middle East, or any number of other conflicts around the globe. The desire to seek justice or simple to “do something” seems quite natural, and it seems to me that both men and women support attacks on perpetrators. Is it really the case that only men turn to action in response to grief and that women seek friendships? It seems unlikely to me that styles of grieving could be so easily categorized by gender.
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In an inverview with Victor Yalom Kenneth J. Doka says that he and Terry L. Martin began with an assumption that men and women grieve differently but soon realized gender didn’t tell the whole story. He says, “We’re saying gender is one of the factors, certainly, that influences one’s grieving style, and certainly we would be comfortable in saying more men may have an instrumental style or lean toward the instrumental style in U.S. culture and probably in many Western cultures.”
Contrary to Golden, Doka sees that both men and women fall on a continuum of grieving styles between the instrumental (taking action) and intuitive (emotional) styles. Some individuals may switch between grieving styles at different times after a loss. In the immediate aftermath of a loss, we often have no option but to turn to an instrumental style as we put together a funeral or memorial service, sort through belongings, contact relatives, and care for our own homes. Our energy at that time is focuses on channeling our grief into honoring the deceased by being competent and not drawing undue attention to ourselves. When there is time, we can “fall apart.”
The desire for revenge may be more accepted and expected among men, but women are certainly motivated by revenge as well. Ellie Nesler made national news in 1993 when she shot her son’s abuser to death. In another case, a woman poured gasoline over her daughter’s rapist and set him on fire, which ultimately resulted in his death. The only difference between the vengeance of men and women is that men may feel obligated to seek revenge more often than women.
When it comes to grief, I strongly disagree with Golden’s assertion that biology is destiny. We all grieve with the tools we have. Those men and women who turn to violence, do so because they don’t have any better ideas of how to overcome their own pain. The same is true of those who turn to suicide, substance abuse, or reckless sexual behavior. If men turn to violence more often than women, it is because we have failed men by not providing emotional support and encouraging emotional growth in boys.
Golden notes that men share their grief only when they are secure that they will still be worthy of respect. Showing vulnerability may lower them several rungs on the real or imagined hierarchy of social worth. Women, feeling less pressure, seek only positive relationships, free from concerns of hierarchy. Even if men and women have biological differences that account for their ease of shedding tears, I feel certain men will express their grief differently when they know it is safe to do so.
When men know their status is secure, their expression of grief changes significantly. Unfortunately, many men exist in a trap. They will express their emotions to their closest friend, but too many men have only one trusted friend, their romantic partner. When a man faces the loss of his romantic partner, he may become completely isolated. I have known a few men who have lost partners, and they all sought new relationships fairly soon after the loss, which brought disapproval from acquaintances and family members.
We must accept that our grief is part biological reaction, part personal history, and part social construction. In the 21st century, we seem less able to discuss death and loss than at any time previously. We do our best to hide both death and grief from public view. No longer, at least not in the United States, do we wear mourning dress to indicate our state of grief. No longer do we discuss death, dying, and grief openly.
As a result, both men and women are left to grope their way in the darkness, trying to grasp anything familiar that can lead them into the light. If we want men to be comfortable nurturing their own emotional health, we must be comfortable acknowledging masculine pain and loss. We must be comfortable assuring men that their self-worth will remain intact, even if we see their weakness publicly. We must form a new model for masculine grief.
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Photo credit: seyed mostafa zamani/flickr
Something that bothers me about this article is that it began with something as general as “grieving” losing a loved one but then went to some extreme situations. In particular, what caught my eye was your statement “I’d like to tell you that you should just grieve in your own way and at your own pace because there is no wrong way to grieve.” But like I said, you went to the extreme and spoke of “revenge.” I’m not sure why it went in that direction. Five stages of grief ..Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This is simple and… Read more »
Revenge almost makes sense. I remember writing an article for GMP about when a friend of mine died. It wasn’t published, but the title was something like sometimes I just need someone to hate. When a guy’s in a lot of pain, sometimes you just want to lash out. My friend died from a blood clot and there was no one to hate. No one to take revenge on. No one to pay for the pain I was feeling. I almost cried at his funeral and maybe a couple tears did get out, but it’s really tough when you’re not… Read more »
“Anger” is a stage that many guys stop their process. Even when there is no one to identify with as being the cause of the death, anger still sits inside of us. “Anger” though is often times a secondary emotion …. guys are okay with anger so it’s a comfortable feeling. We can rationalize it, we can deal with it … it’s almost tangible. Once we get past the anger stage and allow other emotions to surface, some of us feel better. A few years ago, at my brothers wake/funeral, all was well for two days of viewing. In some… Read more »
grief may last a life time ,depending on how close you are to the circumstances!
There’s the late James Brady who, with his friends and family, decided to limit gun ownership.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, writing about the Nuer, a Tutsi-related herding people, called them an acephalic society. No hierarchy. What kept the young bloods from being more obnoxious than usual was that their more experienced elders didn’t want to have to turn out to fight off yet another revenge attack. Revenge, or the prospect thereof, functions as a deterrent in some cases.