I have met many men in the 67 years of this life. Some have come into it for a moment or two, some for a little longer and a few have been around for most, if not all of my life. They have been of all ages, all sizes, all personalities and all so very different in the way they live and see the world around them.
Some of the men have been related to me, some have been friends and some more than just good friends. I have fallen in love with men, and them with me, and we often fell out of love together as well. We have laughed together, cried together and had adventures together but now I can see that through all these times I really didn’t understand what it was like to be a man.
What did it feel like to be a man in a world that expected him to be tough, macho and in control of his emotions: what made him ‘tick,’ what were his fears, his joys and was he really being the man he knew he could be?
I can also see that I had been well and truly programmed into believing the many ideals, beliefs and stereotypes that are attached to being a man. That he should be strong, the provider in a family, that he shouldn’t cry, that he would open doors for me, he would do the hard jobs but not the ones in the kitchen, he would be the fixer, the builder and the problem solver. He was the one on the white horse who would save me from the world and we would ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after – this ending was definitely not one to count on!
I knew from my own experience growing up that it was hard enough being a girl and then a woman in the world, at times feeling that I wasn’t being who I knew I truly was but who I was expected to be: I simply rolled with the expectations that society had of a woman, and therefore I should know how to be and how I should act to fulfil these ideals and beliefs. I wanted to fit in, be ‘normal,’ so I went along with the crowd.
So, was it the same for a man? What were the expectations he grew up with and did he have to change to meet them, or did he choose to stay with who he knew he naturally was and how did the world react when he did? Was he punished when he rocked the boat and did he keep on rocking or simply acquiesce to keep the peace?
So, let’s go back to the day a little boy is born. When you look at a new born baby girl and a baby boy laying side by side, except for a few obvious physical differences there is a deep sense of them being the same. They are very small, vulnerable, fragile, delicate beings having just arrived in this world at the start of this cycle of life. They sleep, they cry, they demand food and they need love and nurturing from those around them as they slowly grow.
But it doesn’t take too long before the expectations and beliefs of society begin to kick in… in some cases almost immediately when they are dressed in either pink or blue.
But who was it that first said:
- A boy should wear blue.
- Dressing him in pink is breaking every rule in the baby etiquette book, maybe even scarring him for life.
- His first stuffed toy needs to be blue and that as he grows the toys he begins to play with must include cars, trucks, trains and planes.
- It is so very wrong for a boy to play with dolls.
I would really love to meet the person/s who came up with these rigid ideas and ask them why colour code our precious children and place them into little boxes so early in their lives?
To me that makes no sense at all and surely fosters the separation of boys and girls from such an early age when they certainly don’t look at another as being different. As they grow, this belief that they are so very different may stay with them, manifesting in various extreme behaviours in adulthood such as misogyny and man hating – a really big step away from being colour coded I know, but a possible step if they continue to be raised in this separatist way.
I certainly don’t feel for a moment that the fabric of the world would fall apart if little boys were encouraged to retain their tenderness and their sensitivity, were allowed to be whom they truly are and it certainly wouldn’t fall apart if they wore pink. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the world would be a whole lot more harmonious than it is now if a man, from the time he was born, was supported to be who he naturally is and allowed to express that in his own unique way.
It definitely didn’t fall apart for my youngest son when I used to put his sister’s pink trousers on him when he was little. But it did confuse people who would automatically presume that he was a girl; curiously there was little, or no, confusion when I dressed my daughter in blue. Have you ever wondered about the depth of the programming so many of us have been exposed to, lived by and in very few cases rarely ever questioned?
And then of course there are the expectations that:
- Little boys will need to harden up on the journey to becoming a man
- Tears and displays of sensitivity are not encouraged, and
- The games that they will play will be full on body contact sports, the harder the better.
And I have also noticed that boys are often referred to as little men whereas I can’t remember anyone calling a little girl a little woman very often.
It was hard enough growing up to be a woman but observing the process of a boy growing up to a man in this world seemed so much harder. From where I see it, a little boy is just as precious as a little girl, just as sensitive, tender and just as delicate, so why is he expected to bury these innate qualities to become someone that he’s not, and what happens when he does? How much force does he have to call in to bury what he naturally is and what happens to his body and the state of his mental health as a result?
I remember blaming some of the men I was in relationship with for not being sensitive to my needs, for not running after me if I ran away, for not knowing when I needed a hug and so much more. It now makes sense that if they hadn’t been raised to know who they were beneath their macho behaviours, how on earth were they going to understand me as a woman? – I didn’t understand me!
So, no wonder relationships struggle under the weight of expectations when the parties involved (both the man and the woman) don’t understand who they are in the first place as they have been programmed from a very early age to be someone they are not.
If today someone placed a new born boy in my arms and I took on the responsibility of raising him, how would I do it?
I would honour him for the delicate and tender being that he naturally is and support him to retain the connection to this true essence.
I would allow him to express his feelings, show his sensitivity, encourage him to be honest and to respect all others as equals.
I would support him to be himself in a world which is set up for him to be anything but the true man he innately was born to be.
By Ingrid Ward, West Auckland, New Zealand
Further Reading:
Men – Are we set up to fail?
Stitched Up
“Boys will be boys”…I Don’t Think So
491 Comments
This is beautiful Ingrid, I love your last three pointers of how you would parent a boy now. And the beauty is, these are not lost and we can bring these same gifts to our sons, our children no matter what age they are. By honouring and expressing, respecting and supporting ourselves as well in this way we are always offering the that reflection, that opportunity. Thank you.
The person who came up with the colours and how they apply … that person is us.
I too know this to be true, as men melt when they are seen and met for who they truly are.
Thank you Ingrid, we don’t question beliefs but allow them to be our security and can then enforce them quite defensively. We have lost our ability to contemplate and question, to observe and see what works and what does not in life. Part of this is the normality of moulding each gender and how pervasive it is. This has become our way, our tradition, even though we each have had to fight against the very essence of our being to live such expectations. This is why Serge Benhayon’s reflection is so vital, not only is he observing what is not true in our society, he is speaking up about it, and what he is saying makes sense. This is also supporting others to awaken out of their slumber and begin to deeply ponder and question life as it is. Society as it is has so many problems, and these are escalating, we need to go back to the beginning, to childhood, and see where the issues are starting.
It is so obvious that the majority of us don’t question or even discern our beliefs, as didn’t those who passed them on down to us. As you say these beliefs can become a security, an anchor in our lives, and the mere thought that we may have been living a lie can set off a feeling of being set adrift with the associated fear of what happens next. If we realised what we are actually being offered is an opportunity to connect with the truth, that is what could happen next, if we so choose.
As a humanity, we are so far from allowing men to be the sensitive, delicate people they are. We are so used to men being a certain way, that we have lost our connection to the truth. This blog highlights the fact that men feel and are tender and I know men who live in this way and it is a joy to be around them because they are being themselves.
The men in my life are becoming more and more tender and it is absolutely exquisite as it comes with a depth, a beautiful, beautiful depth that I recognise in me as well. We are all on our way back to a way of being that we have lived before and so when one of us takes a step back towards that way of being then it makes it easier for the rest of us to take a step back towards Home as well.
The color pink reflects to me the inner romance. Dressing in this colour supports me and those around to feel their loveliness.
So why boys, men should miss out indeed? How great it is that they go for their inner romance too. What a blessing for us all.
‘how much force does he have to call in to bury what he naturally is’. I would just say: a lot with all the consequences of it.
You make a great point here Ingrid. If we muddy the waters so to speak from a very early age, then men are raised with a strong inner tension between their natural tenderness buried deep inside and an imposed expectation to live the complete opposite. When we allow men to re-connect to and claim their innate and very beautiful tenderness, we all receive an immense blessing, as the grace they express is simply heavenly.
I totally agree men and women alike are told the parameters of which they can make the choices of who they’ll be. These parameters are clearly defined and if we go outside them we quickly get remarks or looks off others who have seen the different choice we made and insist we come back into line. It is part of the human communication that we all pretend is not there, yet it is….
As women, loathe as we are to admit it, there is a program running in us that we want our men to be tough and out of touch with their innate tenderness so that it does not put any pressure on us to connect with our delicateness and honour the sacredness that lives deep within us.
Great comment Liane, as women we have allowed and often fed this expectation of men so we avoid reconnecting ‘with our delicateness and honouring the sacredness that lives deep within us’. Is this not our purpose as women?
Great comment Liane, as women we have allowed and often fed this expectation of men so we avoid reconnecting ‘with our delicateness and honouring the sacredness that lives deep within us’. Is this not our purpose as women?
It really is crazy and cruel society that we have created, one that demands that when boys reach a certain age they need to change who they are and cease expecting to be, receive or express the tenderness of love. It is a crime that we have allowed this, and that we are continuing to do so is equally a crime. These are the crimes against humanity that need to be arrested, as they are seeming subtle only because they are normalised, but in-truth are the insidious crimes that continue to perpetuate assault and abuse to our natural way of being.
A young boy being called ‘a little man’ or ‘my little man’ comes loaded with a whole raft of expectations as to what he should be or how he should as he gets older.
Absolutely agree Gabriele. I can remember so clearly when not long after I separated from my husband that someone looked at my then five year old son and said – ‘now you’re the man of the family’. My response was instant and very fierce as there was no way that anyone was going to dump that weight on to my son’s very young shoulders. And I know that this was not an uncommon belief as I had heard it being expressed many times before and many times since, so there will be many men out in the world who are carrying this hugely damaging belief and the associate burden.
“I had been well and truly programmed into believing the many ideals, beliefs and stereotypes that are attached to being a man. That he should be strong, the provider in a family, that he shouldn’t cry, that he would open doors for me, he would do the hard jobs but not the ones in the kitchen, he would be the fixer, the builder and the problem solver. He was the one on the white horse who would save me from the world and we would ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after…” – Ingrid you have nailed it here – in these 3 sentences you have covered most of the most common ideals and belief that we can impose upon a boy/man from a young age. How crazy is this!
Thank you Ingrid – this is a great reminder of how we are all one and the same in our tenderness, delicateness and sensitivity, and that no matter what roles or behaviours we take on in life, deep inside we are all the same.
I remember as a young child I wanted to cut my hair short just because I felt like it and maybe a little because my mum had that too, straight away I was teased in class to be a boy. The ideals and beliefs are indeed so ingrained in society that boys that wear pink are thought to be a girl and girls who cut their hair short are called a boy at least in kindergarten in my experience. We do have to take a moment to wonder if this is really what we feel is true and if it is something we like to go with in life.
Listening to teenage boys and men talk about how they are treated differently in school and society than women, there is underlying hurt, sadness and resentment. They’ve shared how girls are allowed to kick and punch you and if you say stop they just laugh whereas, and I may say rightly so, if boys were to hurt a girl they would be reprimanded…. there should be no mistreatment either way and should be dealt with in the same way. As you say Ingrid, there is a consciousness that all of us have at times or do fall in to playing without even stopping and being aware of it. Thank you for sharing this blog and giving everyone a stop moment to consider how are we adding to and creating this separation.
Yes this is totally unfair on men that it should be ok to abuse them in this way. There is a real imbalance here that needs to be addressed.
” I would support him to be himself in a world which is set up for him to be anything but the true man he innately was born to be. ” This is such an important statement , the world has to be changed so as to support the true qualities of men and not the imposed false identifications that a man is burdened with.
Yes it is true that men are deeply tender and sensitive beings (same as women) and also very strong and powerful. Often we label men in both extremes on the one hand expecting them to be tough as you have described and in another way trying to turn them into something soft that we can feel safe with – neither being true.
Ingrid a beautiful sharing and one that resonates with me to feel the importance of raising all our children and supporting each other to be all that we naturally are and not what we think we should be.
“If today someone placed a new born boy in my arms and I took on the responsibility of raising him, how would I do it?
I would honour him for the delicate and tender being that he naturally is and support him to retain the connection to this true essence.
I would allow him to express his feelings, show his sensitivity, encourage him to be honest and to respect all others as equals.
I would support him to be himself in a world which is set up for him to be anything but the true man he innately was born to be.”
How beautiful Ingrid, and how inspiring for any mother to read these lines and to share them with her son, whatever his age.
I did have a newborn baby boy placed in my arms nearly 10 years ago and I have done my best to do all of the above and yet the reality is there is no perfection. Depending on how I am with myself has very much depended on how consistent I have been with all of this. Sometimes I haven’t been able to be as consistent as I would have liked, and although in the main my son feels honoured and allowed to be delicate, sensitive, honest and respectful to all others as equals at home he doesn’t always choose this for himself, either at school or at home. This is palpable quite often when he comes home from school as he has taken on, very much so, the conditioning there and has reacted to what is going on with friends and the education system, which he brings back into the house. He does eventually return back to himself – settling down and being himself but it can take a lot of nominating, a lot of support and a lot of consequences sometimes to get him there. The key is to stay with the awareness of his essence and not accept anything less, but at the same time being aware of my own because if I am lost to it and not in the right quality I cannot truly support him with this – there have been many times where I thought I have but in reality have just been nagging and he has had a bombardment to deal with – not great I know – but that is the truth of it. At the end of the day though, the love we share always wins out and he is such an amazing boy that I know we are both doing something right!
There is a belief that is perpetuated that women are a mystery and that men will never understand them so it is not worth trying. If we were to bring up children as you suggest would then this belief dissolve in to thin air and would we have men and women who could truly meet and understand each other because they had been brought up as equal and allowed to foster their own qualities from the start?
Yes, whatever those qualities are.
Deeply deeply beautiful Ingrid and deeply felt! I was raised with the notion of a man being hard and tough and being able to brave anything in life. But I now know that the true might of a man is expressed when he is able to be himself and remain shining brightly in the face of these falsely imposed ideals and rigid ways in society.
I have often spoken to women who wish the men in their life where able to open up and be more sensitive, and yet also be so easy to scorn and reject the expression of tenderness or fragility in a man because we are not used to it, and in some cases it can even be an uncomfortable thing to be adored as a woman when we can feel such lack of worth for ourselves. We really need to learn how to put aside all we have been fed and allow men and woman to just be
“So, no wonder relationships struggle under the weight of expectations when the parties involved (both the man and the woman) don’t understand who they are in the first place as they have been programmed from a very early age to be someone they are not.” So true Ingrid – this is such an important and powerful point.
A lovely blog Ingrid. It is for all of us, men and women to work together and unpick all the expectations we have placed on ourselves and each other so we can get back to the tender joyful beings we naturally are.
Debra, Ingrid amazingly put as the real joy and magic of life comes together when we allow ourselves to be all that we naturally are.
The sweetness of this sharing is palpable ???? – when a man is given the support he needs to truly be himself the world is blessed with a man that is tender, loving and true.
Thanks Ingrid for a marvelous reflection on how we, as a society, set up these ‘rules’ around child rearing and caring along gender lines. Working with new parents I know it’s a ‘hot topic’ and clearly shows me how expectations around parenting boys (and girls) are passed on from generation to generation. It’s so important that we talk more openly about alternate ways of rearing our young. I feel there are many parents who would like to do things differently but are scared of going outside the ‘norms’. Your blog offers readers the opportunity to stop and consider the implications of their parenting choices.
Yes, we all play a part in it, even if just one small part, it all adds up to the whole.
Yes indeed we blame men for not listening but have we been listening to them?
Listening is something that so many of us simply aren’t very good at as all we want is to share what we have to say as quickly as possible and so interrupt the speaker. If we took the time to listen to our children when they have something important to share we are honouring the fact that they are not just little people who ‘don’t know what they are talking about’; words that are very often spoken by adults. I feel so strongly that by committing to listen to our young ones and respecting what they are sharing that we may just prevent them taking on many of the childhood hurts that so many of us carry, unresolved, with us through into adulthood.
I would love to be the baby boy in your arms!
Smiled when I read this Rosie and several hours later I’m still smiling!
All of what you’ve shared relating to how boys are often raised and instructed to be is teaching them to have a specific ‘identity’, and is thus promoting separation, inequality and for them to feel like they have to conform to an image rather than be who they are…
Observing the tenderness within boys, especially at a younger age, reminds me of the tenderness I hold within.
The melting quality this offers another is the joy we can experience with men of all ages if we allow them to just be!
I too know of the expectations I have had of the men in my life and the disappointment when they didn’t stack up to what I wanted them to be. There is so much harm in this reality, a constant cutting away at any love, honour and respect that may have been present in the start of a relationship. So, I do say that both men and women equally are responsible for the reality we now live with where we have men needing to live up to the ideals and expectations of what a man is, to the absolute denigration of society to where we now have such excessive rates of domestic violence, and violence in many other forms.
We can turn this around and as Ingrid has shared, it all begins with how we bring up our boys.
I agree Leigh, there is much harm in wanting people to be how we want them to be, to match our ideals of how we think they should be, instead of allowing them the space to be who they are, and how they want to be. It doesn’t mean we put up with abuse, but it does mean that we call ourselves out and allow ourselves to see the expectations we hold and place on others (and ourselves), and how crushing this can be.
I am with you Ingrid, boys or men are just as precious, sensitive, tender and delicate. Like you say when you see a baby, it doesn’t matter if it is a boy or a girl they are just from heaven, both the same. And we all have the power to change the way we look at men and how we ask them to be something they are not, as we all have contributed to this restricting way of imposing our expectations, ideals and beliefs on them and on ourselves too. Becoming aware is the first step and taking responsibility to be honest and open about our current way of living is the next to eventually come to a more harmonious world.
This is a great exercise you are presenting here, to reflect through the eyes of another and feeling into how they might feel. We are so very much set up in this world to be a certain way that it is so very important that we work together to unravel all that that has made us into but doen’t allow for how we truly feel and would natural express.
What an absolutely beautiful & touching sharing, Ingrid offering so much love and understanding to who men really are and the honouring of this . ” the world would be a whole lot more harmonious than it is now if a man, from the time he was born, was supported to be who he naturally is and allowed to express that in his own unique way.” Amazing how simple this could be.
Yes I agree Tricia and Ingrid – same applies for men and woman. Imagine if we were all supported to express in our own true way – without any preconceived idea of how that “should” look or be.
I second that Trish – Ingrid has presented a great reminder for us about how we can all support the sensitivity of men and women. For it is never about the ‘them’ and ‘us’ approach, rather it is about the ‘we’ approach and the realisation that we are all ultimately the same on the inside.
This is so beautiful Ingrid, you express the truth of a man in all of his natural tenderness and sweetness very well. Thank-you.
Yes our precious boys are equally tender, sensitive and amazing as our little girls, we have a long way to go before we redress the pressures we place on children to be everything they are not.
True Vanessa, we have to learn who we are so we can spot when someone is not living from that essence themselves. We cannot ask another to be what we are not prepared to be and it may take a little while for trust to be rebuilt.
We have been caught in a cycle that tells us we need to prepare our children for the tough world that is out there and therefor force them to be something other then what they innately are, not realising that it is precisely this change that is causing the rough world around us.
I totally agree with you Carolien, I was in the company of a young 20 year old recently and their whole upper body was hard and ridged. They know this and explained this is because they are bracing themselves against the world, it’s their way of protecting themselves against the intense way of life that is coming at them. They know they are living in the brace position but do not know how to be otherwise. Most parents want to toughen up their children so that they can cope with school and life, many feel that being sensitive in this world is a recipe for disaster for the child. But actually by squashing our delicateness and sensitivity we are actually disempowering ourselves by taking away the tools that will actually support us to live in this life.
This is true Ingrid it would serve us well to examine all the ideals and beliefs we have been programmed with, that we take for granted as they are ‘normal’. But what has set the standard for normal? And what if normal often is far from what would be true?
The movement of “normal” or the ‘norm’ needs to be watched closely. If we have a look back over anyones lifetime, ‘normal’ has made movements away from itself constantly and is really just a title for what any collective group is doing at the time, it doesn’t have a constant terminal to bring itself back to, it can just keep moving. We seem to be put at ease by ‘normal’, we feel like we belong or are justified or similar but what if normal isn’t normal to what is truly natural? Should normal be allowed to simply just keep moving at every point or should the norm stay consistent and call us back to a central point? At this point normal is a cover and the use of the word in it’s current form has allowed us to continually slip into where we stand today, which is far from truly normal.
I really like your unpicking of ‘normal’ here Ray, it may deserve it’s own blog.
Who defines normal and more so why do we define it .. to feel safe and not evolve or question how we are living? Personally I am very glad Universal Medicine are re-defining normal to be of true health, vitality, well-being, love, care, integrity, responsibility and commitment to life to name a few .. oh including consistency and steadiness. I know if I had this as a reflection growing up as a teenager my life would have been very different in a positive way.