The Sadness and Brutality of Ignorance

Day after day, in my counselling office,
I watch the damaging consequences of men’s abject ignorance of how relationships work.
Because ‘real men’ don’t learn about relationships,
they eventually have to wear the consequences of this terrible ignorance...
that, for the most part,
so many just don’t know how to make relationships work.

And it’s only right at the end,
when his woman is pulling out her hair in frustration,
and she’s forcing him to go to counselling,
and he thinks he’s there to support her in her fundamental craziness…
that he realises that it’s time to learn something new.

But often, it’s just too late.
It’s just too late, because his partner is shattered with exhaustion
from having to do all the emotional work,
for having to do everything it takes to ‘be a team’
... ON HER OWN.

And now because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,
he thinks it’s okay to blame her.
To blame her for breaking up the relationship,
for hurting the children, for ruining his life.
And he sits there, shattered and suicidal…
Wondering how this all happened.
Pretty much clueless that the vast majority of this came out of his own ignorance.
An ignorance prescribed to him, forced on him,
brainwashed into him every day since he was born:
“Only girlies think about that relationships shit.”

And now he’s realising he was sold a lie.
One of the biggest lies in his life,
A lie with the biggest of consequences.
The potential loss of his children, his wife, his life.

And so, if he has the courage, the real work begins,
piecing together the disowned parts of him,
the parts of his heart, the parts of his humanity,
the parts of his soul,
that have been stolen and ignored and shamed and punished,
by those who uphold the power and control of the Man Box.

And so the journey begins
The journey back to his deep humanity, to life, wife and love.

~ Frances Amaroux – November, 2019