Jayson Gaddis believes there is a better way than blaming or apologizing to the other sex.
Dear Women and Men,
It’s time to get more creative in healing the divide between our genders First things first. I won’t apologize to either gender. Not yet.
Why? I’ve grown tired of apologies.
People apologize too quickly in this culture. Even to the other gender. Recent examples include the Letter of Apology to Men, Dear Women video, Dear Divine Feminine, I’m Sorry, the Hoʻoponopono method, etc. And, while I like the Call to the Sacred Masculine from Lori Ann Lothian, I also felt a bit boxed in and missed (my video response to her here).
I do love the intent; however. I so appreciate the attempts to clean up the rift between us in order to love deeper. I’m a yes to that. Thank you for the effort. And, if it truly worked, we’d be in a different place. We humans are a funny lot, we need more than just an apology to come back into love and openness.
Apologies can work….sometimes. It’s understandable why we want to apologize and make amends. That’s what we all learned as kids. Everyday I see grown ups teach their kids to apologize first and foremost once the children have done something the big folks perceive as “wrong.” Then, the kids go back to playing, but something got missed.
What gets glossed over?
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My own take is that adults expect kids to apologize fast because we are, by and large, an emotionally constipated culture.
Adults and teachers are straight-up afraid (i.e. very uncomfortable) to validate or “stay with” someone’s pain so we want to fast forward the process when people are upset. “Hurry up and get back to your happy place, you are making me uncomfortable.” Apologizing is a “get out of jail free card.” It lets you off the hook. We don’t need to own anything. Somehow, we get to clean our hands of our mistakes because “hey, I apologized.”
Another hidden cost of the rapid-fire apology is that if we have been on the receiving end of pain by another person and they rush to apologize (because they are uncomfortable and want us to be “okay”) and we are not “over it” at that point, we are victims, whiners and weak. It’s a strange trap—we get hurt by their actions, then blamed if we take too long to “get over it.” I certainly have done that one to my partner many times, and even my own children.
Yuck.
I can do better and we can do better.
Earlier in our relationship, when my wife and I fought and I tried to speed up the process of reconnecting because I was uncomfortable with her upset, she felt missed, became irritated and the rift between us increased.
Hmmm.
So, I had to go back to the drawing board and listen to her feedback.
Aha, impact and validation. Right, she loves it when I see, get, and know her experience best I can. She wants me to know that my actions have impacted her in some way. As I get her experience, she softens, her nervous systems comes out of fight or flight, and she is available for connection again. I’m the same way. Don’t rush me. I’ll get there eventually. When I begin to understand the impact of my behavior, an apology is often not even necessary.
So, we can apologize all we want to women or to men, but without first getting the impact and truly understanding what we did or have done from their perspective, our apology is premature.
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It is my strong opinion that what we need is not apologizing, but instead listening.
Deep listening to each other’s rage, grief, hurt, and pain. In my view we need serious gender healing where we really get the impact male behavior (personal and collective) has on women, and female behavior (personal and collective) has on men.
I know for me that when I feel heard, I relax.
Think about it. We, as a collective, are like one big scared animal—like a giant porcupine with its quills out, on alert, defensive and protecting deep hurt inside. Saying “I’m sorry” has only gotten of few of you to relax your quills. The rest of us need to be known. Our hurt needs to be seen, acknowledged and received by another human being. Then this giant porcupine that is you and me can begin to relax, open and trust.
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So here’s my advice. Yes, this is straight up advice.
1. Stop apologizing. Set it on the shelf until we’ve done the next three steps.
2. Do whatever inner work we need to do to genuinely listen to the other gender. This will include reconciliation/integration with our own inner man or animus (i.e. introjected father or male figures in our life) and our own inner woman or anima (i.e. mom and introjected key women from our upbringing).
In other words, when I’ve been hurt by, or mad at, “the feminine,” thus carrying a resentment toward “all women,” the path to resolve it was not to ask women to be different, but to heal me by going inward.
If you think “masculine” or feminine” are false constructs, no worries, just focus on the yin and yang inside of you, or pick whatever split is going on in there. Dark/light is very useful for some.
I personally start by accepting I have a polarity existing within me. I want the entire polarity (both sides) to be known and integrated as much as possible as I grow.
3. Be aware of the trap of asking the other gender to be different than they are.
As a man, I can want my wife to be different, but I don’t need her to be. At the end of the day asking the opposing gender to be different is a slippery slope into a familiar dead-end. Accepting my wife as she is is the way out. When I accept her as she is, I’m cast back on myself, and instead of struggling to change a world I can’t control outside of me, I get to change what’s going on inside of me.
4. Listen deeply with unflinching curiosity.
We all know that when we come in angry at the opposite gender with our guns loaded and blame ready in our quiver, it ain’t going to go well, period. Unless he/she is really available to listen without getting defensive, she/he will not hear you. He/she will respond in kind with his/her own shit and your rage will provoke his/hers. You want to fight? Do what you’ve always done and blame him/her. Anyone can play that game and we all know where this leads us—right where we currently are.
Try approaching a scared animal with blame or aggression and the feedback will be instantaneous—it will get more scared and, in turn, aggressive.
Instead, let’s get creative in our commitment to really hear their side. What effective listening tools do we have at our disposal? How about we try some new ones? NVC, imago and circling, are some of my favorites. I am willing to do whatever it takes to deeply listen and receive someone’s pain. When someone is upset, whoever they are, let’s attempt to get their experience. Get curious and stay curious.
Will the above suggestions really do anything? In my opinion? Yes. And, I don’t have any illusions to solve all gender challenges. I just want some freakin’ traction here. Our scared animal needs some serious love people!!!
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Gender healing conferences and workshops
Here’s my final suggestion– An experiment called “Healing the Divide” that I have done successfully on a small scale.
In the past, academics and intellectuals have done most of the “gender work” analyzing the problem from 30,000 feet. While incredibly valuable, this does little to heal the wounds between us. I believe we need real, raw, face-to-face interactions with artful facilitation in a “safe” space where we can clear the logjam between us. I know it’s possible because I have seen it happen with real people in real time (More on my proposal here).
In my experience with couples and workshops with men and women, the deal breaker is when one person lays down their sword and gets the other person’s experience. And for some of us, we need to express our hurt or outrage before we’re able to hear someone else’s. It can be very tricky work. But the willing folks come out the other side more connected, less resentful, and move toward more integration and wholeness inside.
So, before I apologize to you women, I need to know what I have done. Keep in mind, some men might not be ready or willing to listen. I’ll speak for myself. I am. I want to hear it. Bring it. How have I personally hurt you, abused you, betrayed you, and caused you undue suffering? I’m here and I’m willing to listen as best I can. One condition: in person, face to face. And, if you don’t know me, and the man who has deeply hurt you is not present, I’m willing to stand in his seat so that you can be seen and heard by a man willing to receive all of you. I know dozens of men like me, ready and willing.
The entire point of an experiment like this is to eliminate projections and get us connected again. Let’s clear the subtle or overt ways we might still be blaming women or men for our own challenges in life.
And for now, I suggest we pause on the apologizing before we really know the impact (and it will be different for every person). If we are going to use “divine” and “sacred” to describe each other, let’s act like it by getting into our human bodies where our pain and hurt live. Only there, in our immediate somatic experience can we release the pain, one step at a time.
That was my take, let’s hear yours.
This is a good piece. But it’s true of my same sex relationship too. So I’m not sure it’s much to do with gender. It’s just about humans. But thanks.
I think this is valuable. Like it was said, we are told listen listen listen. But when you actually get down to the rawness of it, there’s a method to listening and making the other feel heard. It’s not simply waiting quietly for them to be done. Humans need validation, so that has to be factored into the listening.
Some people seem to have difficulty understanding that there are no ‘bad’ emotions. Every emotion you feel – even the so-called ‘negative’ ones – exist for a reason. They evolved for a reason. Just as Love exists to bind social animals incapable of independent survival together, hate exists to drive those that threat that cohesion away. Just as forgiveness exists to allow us to move past temporary slights, vengeance exists to teach others that there is a price to those slights (and without that, such slights would be far more likely to recur). Even jealousy – an emotion people often… Read more »
What if we listen patiently to somebodies grievance, but then think that the complaints are ridiculous?
Is there really a meaningful divide between the genders, which causes grievances? I see feminists talking about the “war on women” and anti-feminists talk about how feminists have launched a war against men, but this to be more about ideology than about gender.
I regularly participate in the “Gender War” but I do not do so out of any sort of personal pain. I do it because I have grown tired of hearing, over and over again, that the pain of my friends and brothers’ is somehow their own fault. I watch our media destroy male role model after male role model, demonizing male success. We live in a society where academics claim that men have earned none of their current status (apparently we were all “born on third base” and our actual hard work is meaningless), followed by the claim that men… Read more »
I regularly participate in the “Gender War” but I do not do so out of any sort of personal pain. Oddly when I first got involved in this “war” it was no out of any sort of personal pain. No the personal pain didn’t kick in until having to deal with repeatedly being told that my personal pain was somehow “less than” someone else’s because I’m male and my pain was only personal while the pain of women was much, much, more. You can only have your own pain denied while being expected to take personal responsibility for the pain… Read more »
“You can only have your own pain denied while being expected to take personal responsibility for the pain of others” I think that this is probably the biggest problem I see. I first began reading up on gender relations when two of my good friends from high school had very bad experiences in college and decided that the only solution was to get really involved in the the “pick up community.” I watched my friends change for the worse in a very short period of time. Their heartache fueled a desire to see women in general as less-than-human, and PUAs… Read more »
To put it simply: when the problem is that your ex-girlfriend was manipulative, the solution is not a lecture about how you are secretly a slacker with a sense of entitlement. Yet this seems to be all that the gender studies field is currently selling young men. Pretty much. And about this topic specifically I think there is a bit of a problem where critics of PUAs seems to always come to the conclusion that guys that get involved with PUA communities inherently started off with having no regard for women and see them as interchangeable. Which of of course… Read more »
Not being listened to isn’t the only problem. In addition to not being listened to, I’ve never had the opportunity to listen. Let me explain. When I have been hurt, it’s primarily been because another party tells me that I’ve hurt them, but is completely unwilling to say anything more about it. Naturally, this leaves me frustrated as I want to try and make up for hurt that I’ve caused and I want to prevent myself from repeating the hurtful action, but when I honestly don’t understand what action they’re talking about or why they found it hurtful, there doesn’t… Read more »
Our hurt needs to be seen, acknowledged and received by another human being. One thing that has been a burden on my mind/heart/soul/whatever has been a slight twist on this. It’s not that I want my hurt to be seen and acknowledged by another human being. It’s more like: …hurt needs to be seen, acknowledged and received by that hurt us. Simply put I don’t want acknowledgement from someone that just happens to match characteristics with the ones that hurt me. Well such acknowledgement and apology helps a small bit but it’s like like putting a cotton ball on a… Read more »
Danny, I really appreciate you sharing this, and I was wondering if you would be willing to discuss why it is so important that the people who have hurt you acknowledge that they have done so. Personally, I have a great deal of trouble understanding this. I have had my share of pain. One particularly bad spell involved a controlling long-term girlfriend who cheated on me. But I have no wish for her to suddenly show up and acknowledge that she hurt me. Nor do I have any desire to rage at her: over time, she simply ceased being a… Read more »
….and I was wondering if you would be willing to discuss why it is so important that the people who have hurt you acknowledge that they have done so. I’ve had revenge on the mind lately. Thinking about where the desire comes from and the damage that it can do. (Been working on a series called Musings of a Vengeful Spirit the last few months.) From that thinking I believe that (in some cases) it’s a matter of validation and somehow putting things back the way they were. Also I believe that sometimes it’s a desire for some sort of… Read more »
Oh I know. That’s the conclusion I’m reaching now.
The reason that conclusion is so hard to embrace (and I bet this is not limited to myself) is that doing so feels like it’s letting them get away with what they did, especially in the face of the fact that ones aggressors seem to not only got off with never answering for what they did but have seemed to prosper afterwards.
But ultimately you’re right.
I spent many years being angry. No point going into all of it, but my parents are crazy. My dad was extremely verbally abusive and left me with deep emotional scars. I raged inside for many years. I had a lot of trouble having relationships with men because of it. After a long time and a lot of therapy, I came realize that there are some things that you just have to put in a room in your mind and shut the door. I don’t care any more about getting an apology from my dad or an acknowledgment of my… Read more »
Agreed. One of my biggest problems is that, like most guys, I was left hanging on the emotional upbringing. Even though my parents are good people and did the damn best they could in other areas they came a bit short on the interaction side of things (which is to say they weren’t horrible and abusive but they weren’t actively loving and caring either, just a blank grey area). When you never learn the basics you are doomed to have trouble later on. As a result I simply never knew how to handle certain things and situations. I’m working on… Read more »
Oh boy, I know that feeling of cramming stuff in and the door won’t shut! That means you aren’t ready yet to let go. It is a long, tough process but it can be done. Like I said, for me it took a lot of therapy. I also studied Buddhism for awhile, where the concept of letting go is key. You have learn to be aware of your hurt and anger, then set it aside where it doesn’t affect you. It will always be part of who you are but it doesn’t have to be the only part, or even… Read more »
“It’s just stuff in your head about things that are long past….” So true….I had to get my head readjusted as I prepare to tackle some health issues…part of that was participating in a woman’s support group sponsored by my doctors….my husband also went to the spouse support group where he talked freely with about 5 other husbands with the therapist present…. What a huge relief! We did and didn’t talk about all kinds of things…it was just reassuring that other people went through the same crazy feelings…I suppose if you hear that other people endured the same process and… Read more »
” I believe that (in some cases) it’s a matter of validation and somehow putting things back the way they were. Also I believe that sometimes it’s a desire for some sort of payback or revenge.” I can understand the desire for revenge. I do not agree with it, but I can understand it. I was wondering if the ideas about validation and “putting things back” are more context specific. When I think about pain in my own life, more often than not there is simply no ability to “put things back,” and so I have little desire to try.… Read more »
I was wondering if the ideas about validation and “putting things back” are more context specific. When I think about pain in my own life, more often than not there is simply no ability to “put things back,” and so I have little desire to try. However, I can conceive of instances where it might be possible, and this makes me wonder if those instances are more conducive to these sorts of emotions. I would imagine that it the feeling of “putting things back” changes or even disappears depending on the context (which is why I’m not trying to make… Read more »
I think that revenge is really just an act of forced empathy. And if the other is willing to show such empathy, it may very well detract from the need for revenge.
“Danny, I really appreciate you sharing this, and I was wondering if you would be willing to discuss why it is so important that the people who have hurt you acknowledge that they have done so.” If I may put my thoughts… Imagine being beaten to a bloody pulp, having someone take a baseball bat to your ribs arms and legs and just letting loose. A short time later your informed sibling of the person who hurt you plead guilty, and will be serving any sentence issued… Would this be acceptable to you? To allow your attacker to go without… Read more »
I think the point is that you are right. We are NOT the ones that did the damage. And that’s something to consider. It’s a cycle. Most of us are not the ones that did the damage to the ones that hurt us. But sure enough they did damage us. This is why things get so heated when it comes to trying to talk about negativity in feminism. There are still too many people that would rather think we made it all up or try to pretend such people are only in the dark corners of existence or we hate… Read more »
And I know that being happy or choosing happiness often feels like letting someone get away with something, but that someone (especially if they aren’t reachable) doesn’t know either way. I think what happens with some people is that the payback becomes the happiness. Like I said before the taking of that specific eye, the revenge, is seen as what is needed in order to be happy and move on. And when that happens well the pursuit of happiness gets real interesting. Bitterness and pain is so tiring, so exhausting. It leaves no room for other people, or delight, or… Read more »
If the delight is getting payback. If happiness is defined as getting back at others well…I don’t have anything to offer that. Because it looks dark and shadowed to me. My Christian roots are showing (mingled with a lot of pagan and eastern philosophy here) but you are right that an eye for an eye leaves the world blind. I can understand you not having anything to offer that. It takes a special kind of something to take delight in hurting others. Well maybe that special something isn’t the addition of something but the absence of something and taking an… Read more »
There is really no evidence that listening more actually works. By “works” I mean actually preserves your marriage or relationship. Our culture is full of endorsements for listening but the divorce rate is still high.