Real Men Process

The following psychotherapy “story” is about two gay men struggling with their issues in couples therapy. “Carlos and David” are character composites that blend components from a variety of client couples, both heterosexual and gay, in order to protect client confidentiality. With the exception of homophobic oppression, the basic psychodynamic issues presented in this story are relevant to all kinds of couples and are not exclusive to gay male couples.


Real Men Process

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is two men can have a perfectly healthy, intimate, long-term relationship if they so desire. The bad news is they have to learn to do the work of “processing.”


Processing is what all couples must do if they want to nurture and grow their relationships. I find it a bit mystifying at times that men shy away from the often times hard work of processing; they certainly don’t shy away from hard work at the office or working out at the gym. No pain, no gain, right?

Well, all right, I confess: I am not all surprised that men find it so difficult to process in relationships. The ability to process successfully involves being able to identify the full range of human emotions and to express them authentically. However, many men have been trained to deny their feelings. So, if you are reading this and scratching your head, then I suggest you first take Human Emotions 101 (subtitled: Why Am I So Angry) or make an appointment with a qualified therapist and start to sort out your internal life. It takes some work, but is well worth the struggle in terms of the meaning it will bring to your life.

If the rest of you knuckleheads can admit that you occasionally feel hurt, confused, embarrassed, ashamed, or sad in life—or within the context of your relationship—then you are man enough to begin learning about processing.

What is Processing?

“Processing” is psychobabble for talking about how you and your partner are feeling about the relationship. The myth about successful relationships is that when two people are really in love, or perfect for each other, then they will live happily ever after, never arguing or hurting each other, effortlessly. The clinical word for this myth is horseshit. Every successful relationship involves having long, frequent talks about each other’s feelings, your family histories and childhoods, and the current state of the relationship.

The truth about authentic love and intimacy is that while it can bring great joy, it can also unearth the pain we all experience growing up with less than perfect (read: human) parents. When our love reaches deep inside, it stirs up our secret insecurities and we feel very vulnerable. But if our partners show us that they will listen lovingly and respectfully to our hurt and fears, then we will feel safe enough to work through issues as they arise.

If, on the other hand, we do not feel secure in talking about how we feel, then we understandably get defensive and fall back on the one emotion Society gives men full rein to express: anger. And, boy, we men can find all manner of creative ways to express this anger. The problem is, when conflict arises in this way, we create issues to argue or fight about in the here and now, when the real source of the conflict may have its roots in early childhood feelings of our parents not fully loving or accepting us. Classic examples of childhood issues that we play out in relationships include: 1) Internalizing the homophobia from our families and communities, 2) Feeling abandoned either physically or emotionally by our parents, and 3) The experience of being physically or emotionally abused.

Carlos and David

I worked with Carlos and David for over a year. Both were in their early 30s and had satisfying careers. They were bright men who loved each other a great deal. At first blush, they seemed to have an enviable relationship and life together; but in the privacy of their Manhattan Co-Op they often felt hurt and angry at each other, growing more distant over the years. A particularly difficult argument brought them into couple’s therapy.

Carlos grew up in an upper middle class family in Mexico City. Financially, he wanted for little as a child, but he grew up with unmet dependency needs from his parents. His father was quite homophobic and, sensing his son was somehow different, made constant anti-gay remarks throughout Carlos’ childhood. This made it difficult for father and son to share any bonding and kinship. In his early teens, Carlos began to look for emotional dependency and connection through anonymous sexual encounters. He, like so many men, confused sexual intimacy for emotional intimacy and brought this conflict into his adult life.

When Carlos was four years old doctors diagnosed his mother with colon cancer,that required a series of operations. She struggled with her illness for many years before passing away when Carlos was fifteen. As a child, Carlos knew his mother was ill, but had difficulty with his overwhelming feelings of abandonment. His mother simply could not be there for him emotionally the way he needed because all strength was spent battling her illness. Carlos felt emotionally abandoned and thus overwhelmingly vulnerable. He was forced to cut the proverbial apron strings years before he was ready. To defend against this overwhelming reality, Carlos learned to shut down his feelings to the point that all he could experience emotionally was irritation and anger. Additionally, his mother wasn’t able to be there for him in a way that might have softened the impact of his father’s harsh, rejecting homophobic comments.

David grew up in a solidly middle-class household in the Midwest. Unlike Carlos, David’s mother was largely available to him emotionally and supportive of him throughout his childhood. However, he too had a traumatic relationship with his father. In retrospect, David could understand that his father suffered from chronic depression, but as a child all he knew was that his father always seemed to be critical and angry toward him. It seemed he could never do anything right and this created painful feelings of shame and a sense of inadequacy. On a number of occasions his father became physically abusive, throwing David into walls, screaming at him, and calling him a sissy when he cried.

Even more traumatic was his father’s constant irritable mood and emasculating tone. David feared his dad could get out of control at any moment. He even found himself wishing at times that his father would just hit him. At least then he would have known he could have survived it! Instead he nursed an internal, smoldering rage for his father and learned to express his anger in indirect, passive ways. As he grew up, he would avoid open conflict with everyone in his life, and instead grew sullen and distant, hoping that this would somehow punish those with whom he was angry.

Both Carlos and David grew up and, as adults, made peace with their fathers. Carlos’s father, distraught over his wife’s death, eventually learned to cherish his relationship with his son. Life was simply too valuable and short to allow such a thing as sexual orientation to separate father from son. David’s father eventually sought out psychotherapy to treat his depression. Through family counseling, David and his father were able to put the pieces of their relationship back together. David’s parents also eventually joined a P-FLAG (Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) support group and learned how to value their gay son.

Trouble in Paradise

Carlos and David’s life stories would seem to point toward a happy ending. At peace with their respective fathers, these two bright and capable men found successful careers and met each other and fell in love. All was romance and fun for more than a year, and they became as good of friends as they were lovers. However, slowly they started to let the personal baggage left over from childhood infect their relationship.

They began to argue more frequently without achieving resolution. Over time a basic pattern emerged. David became increasingly hypersensitive to any kind of criticism. Even constructive criticism from Carlos would produce powerful feelings of shame that David hadn’t felt since childhood. To defend against this lacerating, painful shame, David would get angry and sullen, withdrawing from Carlos for days at a time. This withdrawal would trigger Carlos’ abandonment issues and he would worry that David might leave him if he confronted him directly. Carlos felt trapped and controlled by David’s moods and, unaware that he was actually feeling scared and vulnerable, he would get angry.

They would repeat this basic cycle until Carlos sought solace in an anonymous sexual encounter after an especially painful argument. Unconsciously searching for an emotional connection, he had sex when he was really looking for love.

The infidelity haunted Carlos, but fearing even more that David might leave him, he found it impossible to tell David about it. Carlos began to feel more shame and anger and would look for ways to find fault with David in the relationship. Both men found themselves in a cycle of anger and recrimination until one night Carlos threw the fact of his sexual encounter in David’s face.

Carlos and David get “Real”

The couple limped into my office. Hurt, angry, and embarrassed at even having to bring their relationship into therapy, they laid out their tale for me. Every time I would try and get to their underlying feelings, they would resume arguing about how the other had done them wrong. Going into their actual feelings was simply too painful for them at first, especially when the past seemed so irrelevant to the here and now of their lives together.

In the end, Carlos and David fought valiantly to find their way back to each other by finding the courage to go fully into their painful childhoods. The pain at times was excruciating.

Slowly pride gave way to tears, which gave way to humility. Though they knew quite a lot about each other’s childhoods, they started listening to each other’s life stories with empathy. In time they were able to gain the necessary insight into their mutual cycle of hurt and shame. They learned how to take responsibility for their own issues and how to “process” their thoughts and feelings about each other as these issues came up.

In the end their friendship and romantic ties turned into a more mature bond where they were able, with humility, to accept each other’s limitations and human foibles. They learned how to identify their feelings and express them tactfully but directly. They would still go through painful times together, but something new started to happen. Whenever they would courageously face up to a difficult conflict and process through it, they would be able to find each other again more quickly. They discovered that their anger did not destroy their love, which in turn made it safer for them to deal directly with future conflict between them. Their love deepened. Their parting gift to me was saying in their last session, they never knew how much they could love another person, and they thanked me for all my help. I told them they did all the hard work and their results were theirs alone to own and celebrate.