I was raised in a single parent family by my Mum. She was lovely; doted over me like every other loving Mum should do. She pretty much did everything for me and made sure that my life could be as comfortable as possible within the power of her knowledge at her disposal. See, I had a Dad that was an arsehole. I talk about this a lot because he was central to most of my problems, and my Mum, in her grand wisdom definitely didn’t want me being raised to emulate him in any way whatsoever. She was right, my Dad drank himself into an early grave around people that only cared about the image he had created for them, that he was rich and plentiful.
Turned out he was broke. That’s another story, though.
Mum really didn’t want me to turn out like Dad or any other man like him, so she set about giving me ideas and teaching the ways of what she thought a man should be like. She gave me some awesome traits by the way. I never see a threat in women and I never mind being managed or controlled by one. I’ve heard many men struggle with this, but me? I’m nice, kind, polite and respectable to every woman that I meet. Most of my friends now are women. Yup, I’m a great brother-like figure which every woman wants to be friends with.
See? That’s just it. ‘Friends with’.
Mum had forgotten to let me be myself. She was too busy teaching me what she ‘thought’ I should be like. It’s really not Mum’s fault though, I mean she only knew how to teach me to be herself because she didn't know any better.
Perhaps maybe she shouldn't have told me to shut up or halt me when I was angry.
Mum taught me to open doors for ladies, be polite and always respectful. She taught me that arguing was bad because Dad loved shouting and screaming, and that infidelity was a horrible thing to do (something I keep today). Mum spent so long teaching me what not to do as a man that she forgot to just let me be myself.
I still struggle with conflict in the household because of my childhood; I’ll partake in it but I hate it. My wife somehow loves arguments. Not shouty screamy ones, it’s been years since we had one of them, but bickering. I’ve had to slowly learn the nature of myself over the last 10 years and what it’s like to be awesomely masculine. There’s nothing wrong with my masculinity if I respect others around me. I had to learn that, you’d think it would come naturally.
This is why I see millions of men and women running towards dating guru’s and personality builders teaching people to be what they were born to do. Strange, isn’t it? How the hell does someone lose the very fabric of what it is to be themselves? It should be a lesson for us, we shouldn’t be afraid of our kids growing up with a deep sense of themselves and what they want. Sometimes we are so blindsided by what we want for our kids we fail to notice what they want for themselves.
I was destined for University from a young age but was that really what I wanted? At the time, probably not, but my family were so one-sided in their thinking by forcing me to do things that I didn’t want to do that it was a natural progression for me to go off the rails and get into alcohol and drugs.
Us men struggle with our emotions, it’s a given fact actually. You’ll often hear the jokes about the man walking off to his bat cave to process his bad mood. Perhaps maybe it’s time to stop telling our children to shut up or halt them when they are angry. I’m a great believer in accountability and ownership. Maybe it's time we let them properly express themselves.
When my son is really angry I let him get angry; he can stomp around and throw things about (within reason) but afterward he’ll be punished for it and explained to as to why he’s being punished for it. That way he learns that his emotion was natural, yet perhaps not the best choice of action. I feel if I was to punish him in the moment for being angry and try to stop him then he will begin to think that negative emotions are wrong, or bad. That’s why so many people in this day see negative emotion as wrong or unhealthy when they are actually perfectly natural.
It’s what Mum got wrong with me. Every time I was angry, or doing something I shouldn’t, it was linked to my Dads behavior, and no matter how many men she had in between, my Dad was going to be the only person that I looked to as a guide into a man’s world. If she had let me explore on my own, and learn that my Dad was a loser by myself, then perhaps life would have been different for me. Who knows?
Let our kids be themselves!