tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240488022024-02-08T22:43:25.732+10:00ManSideOutThis is Men's Business / Me Business. It is not secret, but it is important to me. The content represents my responses to various events in my life. The content may challenge. I welcome your responses; I ask that you retain 'ownership' of your responses. Please check with me if you wish to offer a judgment.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-72101619888681497162011-08-17T15:18:00.002+10:002011-08-17T15:26:58.008+10:00Boundaries : Know when to say 'No'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://mynmw.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/boundary_full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://mynmw.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/boundary_full.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A boundary is an edge, the limit,</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">beyond which no more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Boundaries are defined by 'No'. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And ‘No’ is not open to negotiation!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Boundaries are defined by action </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">not by words.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(For more on boundaries, check out the following which will help you <a href="http://artofmanliness.com/2009/06/17/30-days-to-a-better-man-day-18-find-your-n-u-t-s/%20">"find your n-u-t-s"</a>)</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-64932263488338391862009-12-08T09:51:00.002+10:002009-12-08T10:17:02.967+10:00Family of Two (by Lucas Dell)One young man’s very insightful view of a fairly modern phenomenon – a family of two comprising mother and sonUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-59295825594187540082008-04-17T10:46:00.000+10:002008-04-17T10:47:22.455+10:00Fatherhood is...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-68402891648576314672008-03-26T22:48:00.004+10:002008-03-27T00:39:31.598+10:00Confessions of a Putative Child AbuserMy confessions as a putative child abuser can be found <a href="http://insideoutsite.blogspot.com/2008/01/diary-of-putative-child-abuser.html">at this link.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-77120130019742926342008-03-26T22:41:00.003+10:002008-03-27T00:14:42.592+10:00On the Nature of AbuseSome thoughts on the nature of abuse (and particularly child abuse) can be found <a href="http://insideoutsite.blogspot.com/2007/08/on-nature-of-abuse.html">at this link.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-81620715633200823572006-03-15T13:43:00.000+10:002007-01-02T13:44:26.683+10:00Navigating the Sea of Separation<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6925/2482/1600/cookbook%20image.0.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 259px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 228px" height="239" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6925/2482/320/cookbook%20image.0.jpg" width="273" border="0" /></a> I feel like I am on a sailing ship, let’s call it Endurance. The figure head is an energetic, long-haired beauty, looking remarkably like my ex. I am navigating the sea of Separation. Today has been an awful day at sea. As the wind wails and whines in the rigging, I listen for a quiet, internal voice to explain to me the wonder in the world.<br /><br />The weather outside reflects my inner state. I am fulminating – or is that female-hating. I cannot comprehend how one person who claimed to love another can go on to do everything in her power to demonstrate behavior that she would only reserve for one who had truly wronged her.<br /><br />Together, she and I created the greatest gift that nature can allow two people to create – a human being, flesh and feeling, mind and behavior, spirit and soul. Our child, our son.<br /><br />Her revisionist history now writes me as her rapist rather her lover. With the wrong now written, she wreaks a revengeful rage, as if I am one who threatens life rather than the one with whom she created a life. The creator/destroyer in one person is a profound mystery; I struggle to fathom the depth of this conundrum at times.<br /><br />I muster all the masculinity I can to rise above this feminine rage. Woman, like Mother Nature, can do awesome things. However, Nature’s rage, only hinted at by a wind-whipped ocean, a Himalayan storm, a spewing volcano, is distinct from that of woman. Nature’s rage lacks intention. Woman’s rage is full of intention.<br /><br />However, I wonder if this woman truly grasps her own intentions. She later excuses her behaviours as due to her being beside herself with rage. The behavior is aptly named out-rageous. I am truly perplexed when a woman tells me later, ‘I had no idea how you were feeling. I cannot imagine how you must have felt at the time.’<br /><br />I seek to find my place within the fabric of that which makes up our extraordinarily complexity. I am here to exorcise the fear of the feminine that exists in me – not to exorcise that from the woman that makes her woman. I am like a witch-hunter in Salem who belatedly realizes that the devil is not in others outside and around me, it is in me.<br /><br />A woman’s role in creation is awesome. As a man, I have contributed so little to the act of creation, a nano-tadpole, and that is completely absorbed by her enormous egg. I can only sit at the birth like a voyeur, never capable of coming even close to experiencing the feminine power of extracting the ecstatic expectorant of an excited man, and creating, developing, bearing, suckling life.<br /><br />It is my unenviable task to accept that the will of the feminine will dominate in my young son’s life. My sole power is to sit, to reflect, to be grounded, to maintain my contact with the earth. I reach down to touch the feminine earth with my fingers like the Buddha acknowledging the witnessing of the Mother Earth as he dismisses the final challenge of Mara and his temptations.<br /><br />She who bears me can be forgiven for her indifference to the touch of my fingers. Just as I am forgiven for the fact that I touch her tenderly with my fingertips while my ass cheeks are spread wide as I sit cross-legged upon her.<br /><br />Barely surprising that she bites me when the man in me gets a little cocky. If I get above myself, think of myself as on top of her, thinking of the mighty power I wield, she can (and does) bite me, on the ass, hard.<br /><br />My role is to be grateful, to see that the mother of my son accepted me, allowed me to enter her, me as opposed to another. Of course, it could be that it was another. It is possible that I am a cuckold. Man can never truly know his children. Mother Nature’s delightful irony is that man must feel his connection with his child, he can never know it physically like the mother does.<br /><br />The new challenge for me is that she is with another, and therefore, my son has a new man in his life. I hope that her new lover will grow through his love of the child of another man, to embrace the idea of the gift of having a child of his own, with her or with another. My gift to both my son and her new lover is to have contributed to the growth of each as a man.<br /><br />I seek calm knowing my son will return to me. As the child innately suckles at the mother’s breast, so eventually the child will seek the father for a broader understanding of the complexities and paradoxes of the world. One of those paradoxes is that woman whose very core essence is about care, can be such a master of hurting behavior.<br /><br />Perhaps it is easier for the man to accept this from the position of observer. The woman can claim to have been beside herself when acting, but must accept that even if she splintered in some schizophrenic fashion, it was she who did the doing.<br /><br />He, while outside of her, must remain beside her – she was beside herself, and he must find the courage to be there too: to support her, to support his offspring by her, and to support the offspring of other women – including the women themselves.<br /><br />I honour myself for the role I play, for having, with a mere spit, given life. Through that union, I now see the unity in all things. She gifted me with an opportunity to see my own connection with all other life – my son, my ex, my ex’s new lover and all those others, men and women, that I do not know but with whom I know I am connected.<br /><br />And the wind continues to wail and whine in the rigging.<br /><br />(© Stephen Holden 2006 - published Summer 2006 in <u>Mentor</u>, Newsletter for the Men's Health & Wellbeing Association, QLD)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-29986086419150140872005-11-28T13:46:00.000+10:002007-01-02T13:47:06.620+10:00Archeological KidsI was floating around at home after the departure of my son – as deserted Dads do. The lonely life of an part-time, childless father.<br /><br />I was digging around in his box of toys. Not sure why, just for something to do I guess. My mind began to wander, as it is wont to do. I saw the brightly coloured array of toys, the inevitable palette of colours that assailed my visual cortex.<br /><br />I began to dig into the toys, perhaps thinking that I could find a better system for organizing everything that was there. From the top came the toys that he had played with today. Little vehicles that are worked by pushing a lever, and a fire fighting figure emerges from under the roof, points his hose, and says, ‘I’ll put out the fire,’ before disappearing inside. Meanwhile, the wheels roll forward, the truck charges on fearlessly to face the putative fire.<br /><br />My mind is given to wander and I think of the endless supply of batteries that I need to keep all this stuff together. Enough heavy metals to poison a large pond – or a small child. It is disturbing, but I’m unsure how to deal with it – and I sweep off this layer without too many other thoughts.<br /><br />Beneath, I find some older toys, out of favour mostly. Some are broken a bit, but nothing that a little bit of lick, spit, glue and tape could not fix up. But I wonder ‘what’s the point’ given that he has moved on. I’m reminded of one toy that he loved, a really cheap plastic car transporter that did not last more than five minutes after he got it. The trailer became separated from the prime mover – and it was only with careful repairs using a pin that I was able to reassemble the whole. My boy is a very gentle boy, and so, when the truck broke again – somewhere else if I recall correctly – I simply buried it so that it wouldn’t be found.<br /><br />Beyond this layer, I find older toys, toys reflecting a childhood. I shake the rattle, and I watch the balls in this rattle fall down through sieves of various sizes that allow some balls through, but not others. I wondered whether my son ever noticed this. I’m not sure that I did before. The intricacy of these designs in something as ‘simple’ as a rattle. I wonder how many other toys have such elegant little design elements that are barely ever noticed.<br /><br />Moving to the lower levels, I find the smaller pieces, the pieces broken from the toys above, or cast into the box in the hope that they might later be matched to the toy from which they broke, and perhaps might be used to repair the toy. Vain thoughts probably. I feel like at this level, I am fossicking through toy detritus, the remnants of an earlier era. An era when my son was a baby, so small that I could virtually hold him in my hand. I turn over these relics, thinking of the DNA of my son deposited thereon, mostly in the form of spittle combined with porridge, mushed peas, dried milk.<br /><br />I realize that this box of toys is like an archeological dig. The various strata offering various insights into the past, the past of my son, his various preferences, his trail of destruction, the toys that he detested or perhaps wore out or more simply outgrew. I look back at his toys, sorting through. My eyes are old like any dusty archeologist perhaps, but there’s a spark there when I see something that I recognize, something that reminds me of the little man that carries my own spark forward in him, that is after all, a chip off the old block.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-28199786743969988792005-08-15T13:47:00.000+10:002007-01-02T13:48:39.595+10:00Wait for the Green Tram<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6925/2482/1600/z%20bonpepe.0.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6925/2482/320/z%20bonpepe.0.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Zachary was so excited, he was nearly beside himself with excitement. This was to be his big day out in Melbourne. He had graciously accepted my offer to go and catch a tram – nay, he had grabbed the opportunity with alacrity. And off we went, he and I, hand in hand, to await the arrival of a tram down at the stop.<br /><br />This was to be Zac’s day, this was entirely about Zac’s pleasure. I was just delighted to be able to entertain him so easily – a couple of dollars to buy tram tickets, no destination, and voila, some simple entertainment for Zac for a couple of hours.<br /><br />We were a fair way out of town, a quietish part of the track, but trams could be expected to come along about once every 15 minutes or so. As we stood waiting beside the road, Zachary was tense with excitement. His eyes surveyed the ‘train tracks’ awaiting impatiently the arrival of the tram.<br /><br />He began to speak to me in partial sentences. ‘Going on green tram? Go on green tram?’ He was making it clear to me that he was excited about this possibility of travelling on a tram.<br /><br />A tram lumbers into view away down the street – and I ask Zac what it is. ‘Is it a tram?’ Yes, most definitely it is a tram. As it gets closer to us, we are both awaiting its arrival with anticipation. Unfortunately it is a grey tram, but as it rumbles to a stop in the middle of the road, I automatically grab Zac and we walk onto the tram.<br /><br />We check for traffic which has of course stopped, but the practice is good for him, and we walk out to the tram and climb aboard. The doors gently hiss to a close. As the tram begins to move off and I walk him toward the ticket machine, Zac begins to gently remonstrate. He bellows ‘Want green tram’.<br /><br />“Zac, sure, it’s a grey tram, but hey, what’s the difference from inside.”<br /><br />Through tears, sniffles and blubbers “Want green tram.”<br /><br />Endeavouring to envelope him in my arms, I try to placate him, “We’ll find a green tram, we’ll take this one for a little bit and change to a green tram.”<br /><br />“Want green tram. Waaaaaahhh.” A long continuous moaning wail ensues.<br /><br />Everyone looks at me and the child who is wriggling so violently that he is likely to slip out of my arms any second, and in falling to the floor, add physical abuse to my list of child-related felonies.<br /><br />Zac has declared what he wants quite clearly. Everyone from the driver through to the deaf old bugger at the far end of the tram understands exactly what he wants. The combined public sentiment aboard this tram at this moment is “What are you, some kind of moron – or worse, an asshole?”<br /><br />As the tram trundles along the track toward the next stop – never did two tram stops seem so far apart – I reflect on the lessons of this little episode.<br /><br />Zac had made it clear from the outset that he wanted a green tram. So the teacher and learner inside my head have the following discussion:<br /><br />“Why did you board a grey one? Did you miss the fact that from the moment that you had suggested trams to Zac to the moment you boarded the tram, Zac had been excitedly talking about a green tram?”<br />Defensively, I argued “We might have had to wait a long time until the next tram came along. And who knows when a green tram might come along?”<br /><br />“Uh-huh. So, who was the intended beneficiary of this whole excursion?”<br /><br />“Zac.”<br /><br />“Right, and so you put him on a tram even though it was not the one he wanted because of the potential wait. Did Zac say he could not, would not wait?”<br /><br />“No, I guess I assumed that waiting would be onerous on him. That after the grey tram had passed, he would regret his decision and wish that he’d taken the green tram.”<br /><br />“Right, but you didn’t test this out, you didn’t let him discover the consequences of his decisions, you simply decided to implement a decision based on an untested assumption.”<br /><br />“Yeah, I guess so.”<br /><br />“And what else was there that led you to take the tram. There’s always multiple reasons for why we behave in certain ways.”<br /><br />“Well, I guess it was kinda conditioning. Even though this entire trip was for his benefit, all sorts of conditioning popped into place with the arrival of the tram. If there’s a tram shown up, and we’re waiting at a tram stop, then I guess we should board the tram – isn’t that why we’re there?”<br /><br />“Right, and perhaps some social desirability. I might look like an idiot standing at a tram stop, tram rolls up, and I don’t board, and as it rolls away, I will look up along the trams to see if one green in hue is on its way. Yeah, and people will bother themselves to remark on what an idiot I am, right.”<br /><br />“Yeah, I guess there was that. Being in a city, waiting for transport, feeling rushed and conditioned to board public transport given that I’m waiting for it – even though I am not waiting for public transport, I was really waiting for a green tram to give my son a fun experience.”<br /><br />“Good, and anything else that we learned?”<br /><br />“Hmm. I guess I’m intrigued that expectations play such an enormous role in our lives. My son, at 2 & ½, is hung up about clambering aboard a green, not grey, not red, not purple, not blue, but a green tram.<br /><br />“In addition, I learnt that what I said to him about us not being able to see the colour from the outside is not really relevant. That is, my argument wasn’t relevant to Zachary. It didn’t matter that the colour could not be seen from the inside, it could be seen as he boarded, and I made him board a tram of a less than ideally coloured tram. I guess in terms of his desires, he doesn’t have to be reasonable – any more than I am reasonable in my desires. For instance, I want others to treat me with respect, but that’s just the colour on the outside. How they treat me should remain irrelevant, those are their decisions to make, and I would be foolish to be so influenced by those things. But foolish or not, I am influenced by them."<br /><br />“Excellent, and anything else that we have learned, how about the value of biding your time?”<br /><br />“Yeah, I think I see that one. I tried to offer the argument to Zac that if he could just be calm for a couple of hundred metres, we could get off the tram and go back to waiting for a green tram as we should have been doing in the first place. He was clearly not placated by that.”<br /><br />“Right, but what did we learn from this, how does this apply to us?”<br /><br />“Well, I guess that when I reject people saying to me ‘Give it time, time heals all, it will all turn out,’ I need to remember this experience here. Sometimes those removed from the very personal, very human situation in which I am immersed can be offering useful insights even though I dismiss them.”<br /><br />The next stop arrived, we descended and awaited a green tram. One arrived within minutes. We ascended, Zac was delighted, and so we continued for a few, happy hours getting on and off trams. He became so engaged in the whole process that the the need for the tram to be green became irrelevant. Now it became important that he be allowed to clamber on and off by himself – even if it meant that others might be delayed a second or two. Same lessons, different context.<br /><br />© Stephen Holden 2006Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-37930047722519377502005-07-21T13:49:00.000+10:002007-01-02T13:49:42.417+10:00The Boy, The ManThe Boy. Lively, energetic, full of energy, racing backwards and forwards along the seashore, chasing seagulls, scrawking out a cry of protest as they lift off the sand as he approaches. He gathers stones and shells, and hurls them at the seagulls. They wheel and protest some more while nonetheless accommodating to his stones and threats. A microcosm of what it is to be a boy. There is nothing in his world but himself. He’s not just the centre of the universe, he is the universe. The gulls, the stones, the sand, the sea are all there to satisfy his whim, his desire, whatever it might be in that particular moment. There is nothing aside from him, nothing apart from his perception, nothing aside from his identity, nothing separate from his identity.<br /><br />The Man. Walking along the seashore. Carefully, thoughtfully, watching the lapping of the waves up on the sand, around his feet. Watching how not only the water moulds to his shape, but if he stands stationary in one spot, how the sand moulds around his feet as well. He looks behind him. For one or two steps behind, there are some dim prints in the sand, but disappearing rapidly, smoothed, shaped and generally lost by the gentle waves and the roiling sand. He realizes his own place is very small, a tiny little dent in an endless beach, accommodated by the sand, the sea, connected to it all, but nothing more than a part. He is a part, a tiny part, an infinitesimal part of all that is around, but integrally linked to it all. He shapes and is shaped by all that is around him.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-32373565626196788262005-05-14T13:50:00.000+10:002007-01-02T13:50:41.345+10:00The Old T-ShirtI feel like I have been tested, really tested. It is like I have been through a trial, a rite of passage, an initiation. However, I think I have confused the notion of initiation experience with initial experience. This is not a beginning, it is the middle…of an ongoing experience.<br /><br />My beloved partner has taken up the mantle of a witch to be my guide this last week. She has shown me the best of her Kali spirit : words delivered like angry arrows, insults hurled with barbs, cruel, cutting criticisms – and that’s the good stuff!<br /><br />When she really wants to get to me, I am treated to hours, even days, of intolerable silence. Never did silence bespeak so much disdain and scorn.<br /><br />In a rare and generous moment, she deigned to share some words with me. Well, kind of. The words were in a letter, written by hand, delivered by hand. That all sounds rather nice, but the delivery was made without a single stated word. Soundless is bad. In the letter, she remarked that she was feeling lots of the hurts that she had felt in the past. She described it as feeling ‘the old t-shirt.’<br /><br />I wanted to scream, ‘Yes, your fucking t-shirt, your safe space, your comfort zone. Why make me wear the horse-hair shirt, the sackcloth? I’ve felt it before, and it sucks.’<br /><br />But I didn’t scream out the words. I didn’t respond. I said nothing. I looked inside myself – not retreating, but searching, on a quest.<br /><br />And I found something. I found my anger, I found my sadness, and I found my own words – the ones I wanted to scream to her. I listened to my own words again. ‘Yes, I’ve worn this itchy, prickly shirt before, and I’ll probably get to wear it again and again and again and again. Better get used to it.’<br /><br />I started to feel into the shirt. I felt its prickles against my skin. And I began to see my feelings differently. Underneath the prickles against my skin, I felt myself alive, alive enough to feel, to feel pain and hurt and sadness and anger and frustration.<br /><br />Then, I started to feel the superficiality of the prickles. They were trivial, skin-surface, not skin-deep, they did not even constitute a flesh wound. What was I bellyaching about? Besides, these prickles were all self-inflicted. They were my response to her words.<br /><br />I can’t say that the shirt now became comfortable like a t-shirt, but I did realise that I could choose to be irritated by the feeling on my skin, even as a t-shirt can begin to irritate me as I become conscious of its presence on my skin. I realized that a t-shirt or a prickly shirt can irritate.<br /><br />I felt the shirt, and then, I chose to remove it. Now I was naked. I’m not sure that this was better. However, despite my discomfort, I felt a strength in being exposed, in seeing myself and in being seen.<br /><br />From this point, I began to see that the t-shirt that my beloved was wearing was tight, incredibly tight. This can be very sexy, but right now, I could see that she was feeling pain, the t-shirt was constraining her, strangling her.<br /><br />I wanted to remove this t-shirt from her, with pure intentions of course, that included both love and lust. However, I realised that the shirt was metaphorical. I cannot remove her t-shirt, her problem. I just felt her pain, her anguish.<br /><br />Something magical happened then. When I got to this point, I was able to offer an apology for the hurt and pain I had caused, letting go of my own hurt, pain and desire for my suffering to be acknowledged. I was sorry for how she felt, and for my part in her hurt.<br /><br />Then, to my complete surprise and delight, my beloved took off her t-shirt. She was beautiful to behold. I got to exercise my pure intentions and show her my love.<br /><br />© Stephen Holden 2006Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24048802.post-73850395229602769562005-04-24T13:51:00.000+10:002007-01-02T13:51:39.546+10:00A GardenI entered into a garden, all tangled and gnarly. A vague path, overgrown, only loosely marked – “no fucking directions” someone probably remarked. Three witches told us to go down that path. Since when did men take directions from anybody – let alone women!<br /><br />So, a no-path pathway, and no-one, not even the wise witches, could tell us what we would encounter on that path.<br /><br />I watched various men tackle this path. I saw grinding, burning, slashing, tearing, stomping, heaving, toiling, tearing, breaking, destroying – and that was great – except that not one came back to give any bloody directions.<br /><br />I could hear them holler, ‘Come on through, its great, but watch out for…’ and the call of some bird (or was that a witch?) would lead to their voices being lost to me.<br /><br />Well, to join them, I obviously had to beat my own path through. The garden was tenacious and rapidly grew over other paths – besides, the witches forbade others following the same path. So, I made my way – into the garden.<br /><br />I was troubled by the violence that I saw in that garden. I saw that men had fought animals and plants, they had tackled the garden in no uncertain terms. Shit, it looked like they had been battling demons – a killing field.<br /><br />I wished that there might be some other garden – but I realised that there was none. However, more than that, I realised that this garden was a great place. Yes, there was danger and even evil (to my eyes at least – maybe that is important to note), but there was also Life.<br /><br />Life – be it plant or animal (of course, including man), is a state that creates conflict. Each life in the garden seeks to organise raw elements in its own way. There is chaos, but through it all, there is incredible organisation and vitality.<br /><br />The garden is for picnics – but it is also for carnivorous feasts. So beware, but more importantly, be aware, and most important of all, just bee there - to drink the honey.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0