Why Do We Think of Men as Wounded Souls?

It is often said that men are wounded in a variety of ways, and that this prevents them from fully embracing life. Since childhood and young adulthood, as the theory goes, their ability to effectively adapt and cope has been compromised.

Stagnant patterns have developed that restrict self-understanding, emotional awareness, empathy and compassion for others. These patterns leave men with very few tools with which to cope with serious issues that arise and things that go wrong in life.

This is the consensus theory that has now pervaded public spaces, including the extreme right-wing masculine and the liberal feminist perspectives.

I will acknowledge that I am always wary of pervasive theories arising from public spaces. But this one focusing on so-called wounded men is one on which I’d like to focus for the moment.

Of course every person suffers wounding, whether emotional, psychological, and in some cases, physical — or any combination of these. This appears to be a universal pattern for men and women alike and for all cultures, and the range of socially appropriate responses is equally broad. As we move through life, we experience both joys and hardships. How we cope with each of these experiences is often at the heart of what kind of men and women we become.

Our personalities may be hard-wired, but how we move through childhood hurts and adult challenges is all about our experiences and, more importantly, how we process and interpret them.

But it seems that men are wounded in ways that they perceive to be far more severe, and from which many do not recover. Tough times become buried, joys quickly forgotten, love after a time becomes loss for lack of attention. And as the years pile up, men look back and ask, “What have I achieved?” “What have I done with my life?” Or, rephrasing these questions in a more typically negative light, “How did I manage to fuck-up things so badly?”

Men gaze upon a pile of wounds buried in shallow graves, believing in their hearts that what was wounded will stay wounded.

Simply put, many men lack the tools for deep emotional engagement, and without these, few wounds are ever truly resolved. Instead, the wounding remains with us and influences everything we do and think. At least according to the consensus theory.

It is true that some men develop the ability to latch onto activities, interests and creative challenges that keep their minds working toward positive goals and bury their accumulated wounds deeper in the earth. These men are often seen as happy and well adjusted. Many will have convinced themselves that they are in fact happy and well adjusted.

For many others, the wounds remain so bright and painful that they prevent these individuals from any actions other than those which provide a modicum of relief from their wounds. They may seek refuge in alcohol, drugs, sexual addictions, pornography, excessive anger and self-imposed isolation.

This is to admit that men are generally wounded as they move through life just like all people. But unlike most women, men seem especially adept at covering up their wounds, either with a facade of positive adjustment or by self-medicating with mind-altering substances or anti-social diversions.

This conversation is made all the more confusing and frustrating by the political climate in which we find ourselves. To a large extent, liberals have ceded the discussion of wounded men to the far-right “bro-culture” extremists, the latter now having convinced many men that they — the bro-culture talking heads—offer the only viable solutions to these challenges.

To be clear, women are not the cause of men’s wounding, at least not in the general sense. I am not suggesting that we roll back women’s advances in order to better accommodate men. But for many men, women’s economic rise has seriously destabilized the way they think about their roles.

One more point of clarity. In many particular incidents in which men are wounded, women are involved, and often at the center of the experience, at least as perceived by men. For a man recently divorced for example, he may well assign blame to his ex-partner or to the divorce process. In reality, in most cases, both partners contributed to the collapse of the relationship.

Women and other intimate partners may be involved in another way as well. During the course of a relationship, the partner may have taken on the role of “mankeeping.” This is a new term for an old dynamic whereby the partner plainly sees the man’s faults and helps him work around them or comforts him despite his inability to confront his wounds. The partner assumes a caretaking role which usually becomes a burden, and eventually the relationship fades or fails.

Thinking of men as wounded souls is similar to mankeeping. The more everyone agrees that men are wounded, the greater their license to continue collecting the benefits and rewards of being kept, protected and consoled.

Children certainly need protection and consolation, but they just as often need a dose of tough love. Parents generally realize this tactic as a means of helping their children develop character, socially positive behavior and self-soothing capabilities.

Ultimately men are solely responsible for understanding and working through their wounds, however deeply buried they may be. And no, I will not add the counterfactual “not all men” because I believe strongly that all men are wounded and each of us is responsible for resolving our wounds.

This responsibility is not just for individual men, but also to improve the lives of their partners, families and communities. Everyone suffers when men fail to confront and work to resolve their wounds. Failing to take on this basic responsibility results in seriously anti-social behavior which threatens families and damages communities.

Men may begin the healing process with most any form of self-reflective activity: community service, religious practice, men’s groups, psychotherapy, meditation or any activity wherein a man learns about himself through purposeful interaction with others. Healing our wounds is so important that the methods and means we choose are very nearly without limit or restriction.

In the worst cases, we must weigh the hurt or disappointment caused by our healing tactics versus the continual wounding we are experiencing. I have noted elsewhere that some people are overtly toxic and dangerous, and we must make every effort to avoid them. Never assume that just because you have embarked on the courageous path of self-healing that others are doing so as well.

The real question therefore is not whether men are wounded souls. We have established that they are, like every other adult human, intrinsically wounded. The question men should ask themselves every day is “How should I be a man today?”

Or to state this in action terms, we may ask “How may I address my wounds so as to better serve my community?”

Vic Caldarola is the founder and lead facilitator of the Shine a Light Men’s Project, a men’s mindfulness discussion program, and a member of the Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center. He holds a PhD in Communication Studies.