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LadyEllen -> RE: a good man really is hard to find (3/26/2007 5:32:30 AM)
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Thanks to everyone for their interest and advice for dealing with Adrian - he's had so many mentions in the past from me on here that its pointless to hide his name really.
Adrian's problems go back to when he was 7, when his father upped and left his mom for another woman and he lost his only adequate male role model, being then brought up by his mom and his older sister and living in a down at heel housing estate which his parents had chosen because they were very much socialist in outlook, where the adult male role models were guys who drank to excess, were loud, aggressive and violent and it must be said, ignorant and ill educated.
From talking with Adrian, these are the roots of his issues. Being intelligent and academically gifted, like his mom and his sister, but surrounded by a world where such was not the aspiration of the men and their sons with whom he naturally associated, he had to fit in, developing thereby a front of being the macho male, whilst being in reality an insecure and sensitive little boy. This is where the drink came in, being an excellent means of suppressing his insecurities and preventing sensitivity from being displayed, whilst also strengthening the whole macho image in respect of his peers where the ability to drink the most is evidence of manliness and the tendency to become obnoxious and get into fights because of the drink is to be applauded by that standard. In better circumstances, it might have passed, except that as a young man located where he was, the young women by whom he was surrounded and who had also been brought up with a less than savoury ideal of manhood, flocked to him because he conformed to that ideal. He only ever lost girlfriends apparently, when he showed his sensitive side or demonstrated learning, reinforcing the idea that there was only one way to be a man, and generating the idea that his sensitivity and education were weaknesses forced on him by the women who brought him up and specifically the fear that he might be seen as gay (a huge social crime here still and especially in those days) and so the notion that he had to pile on the macho image even more and suppress further any evidence that he might be anything but.
Because of all this, he ended up following the career path of those boys with whom he had been brought up; he was expelled from college, ended up in front of the courts, was homeless for a long time and got into numerous fights and scrapes. He has never held a job for more than a week and not had a job now in twenty years and will never have one. His conditioning is such that speaking politely to a stranger is now largely beyond him - he has been expelled from AA countless times and been refused rehab several times because his reaction to anyone offering help is to associate it with femininity and an attempt to emasculate him. Stock response to such approaches is to say he isnt a girl, he isnt gay or to accuse those offering of being gay if theyre male.
All this. Except with me. Because he says, I am the only person he ever met with whom he can be sensitive, caring, polite and show his intelligence and learning without being accused of being gay for it, or feeling that he is in some way emasculated by doing so. I am the only person he is prepared to talk to about anything and all his life experiences and issues - he's been through the mental health system more than once and they know nothing about him because he wont talk to them. At his core, he's a really nice guy, caring and capable but the conditioning is so strong now after near on 30 years that he wont open up to anyone else - but then I get a lot of that from all sorts of people in crisis for some reason.
As for the whole sexuality thing, again his issues seem to be akin to the social ones. He loves women, absolutely, hopelessly and wonderfully. He has a sex drive like there's no tomorrow, despite the drinking, and isnt backwards in showing it either. To most of his girlfriends, he has always been this macho, sexually aggressive beast - which is in him, but isnt all of him, because thats what they expect of him. Only with me is he able to show the rest of him, where he worships the feminine and holds it in such high regard. I'd liken him to a trained beast in those situations - ever ready to spring on his prey, but held back by the trainer, except that the trainer often likes to be mauled!
Why he should be able to be this way with me is somewhat strange. OK, I'm the only person he can be himself with, but he also knows my background. Maybe that makes it somehow OK for him, in that I'm not a guy but neither am I a genetic female, so neither has to compete with me or for me in some way, so can do without the blustering macho front?
Anyway, thats the background for Adrian, though as I said earlier, right now and for the last month or so he's hooked up with a 21 year old heroin addict who is so starry eyed at him it makes me vomit LOL! But with her he can keep to the comfort zone to which he's accustomed I suppose, and not have to make the effort to resolve his issues as I'd like him to, for himself as much as anything else as he really could be someone in this world if only he could.
E
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