Why Men Have Trouble With Intimacy
Real intimacy, unlike sex or hanging out, requires a vulnerability the man code prohibits.
By Bill Cloke
The other night, while at dinner with some friends (all married or with someone), something occurred that is so common I barely took notice of it. One of the women popped up and went to the restroom and four other women jumped up and went with her. We’ve seen this a million times. They go off to the restroom, fix their hair, adjust something and talk about EVERYTHING. If men meet up in the restroom, if they speak at all, it would be a very neutral topic like golf or baseball. I think to myself that if a man got up and went to the restroom NO ONE would go with him. This is of course a generalization but in this small vignette it tells the story of the difference between men and women. So why do men have such a difficult time with intimacy?
The answer is that most men are taught from an early age to be competitive, that feelings are a sign of weakness and to avoid vulnerability and dependency at all costs. The ideal for men is fierce independence and strength. Herb Goldberg writes in The Hazards of Being Male that 85% of the men in this country have no friends. We see beer ads that proffer an image of the American male as having tons of friends but nothing could be further…
