Men, Are You Ready To Step Up?

I received a written cry for help from a man that I’ve just started working with in Couples Counselling. It’s a story I’ve heard so many times as a Couples Counsellor. His cry read like this:

The main reason we are in counselling stems from accusations of emotional abuse and manipulation. I have said things that are emotional abusive in the past, always in the heat of a moment and something I regret later. It is at the point that I recognise I have made mistakes in the past and understand how I hurt her, but it also feels like any argument is now met with another accusation, regardless of how well I feel like I handled it. I can read back a message and not think anything was wrong with it, but she will take it and tell me I am gaslighting or something else. About two weeks ago she told me that she has talked with her friends and showed them our text messages, and multiple people have told her she needs a safety plan because they do not trust I am safe.

I love her more than anything in the world, and I have put a lot of work into making sure I am the man she wants and deserves. I am worried that there is so much hurt in our past that we will not be able to overcome, and that is a large part of why we are here.

She has a great memory, and as a result she has access to every bad thing I have ever said about her. I often feel like even if I do not ever raise my voice or say something wrong again, that she will never not see me as someone she isn’t safe around. All the while, she tells me I am the only person she truly feels safe with, and she struggles to sleep if I’m not laying in the bed with her.

I am working with a therapist on my own to try to address the issues that come from emotional regulation (raised voice, scoffing, bad tone) that she has told me she will no longer tolerate at all.

I know this has turned into a long message, the last thing I’ll mention is that I recognise I have been verbally abusive in the past, and I can’t ever take it back. I have also been working very hard the last month to ensure I am not being cross or say anything that could be taken in the wrong way, and I continue to be told I’m being abusive. I am struggling to know if I am truly in the wrong in all of these situations and am so out of touch I haven’t realized it, or if there is some merit to how I am feeling.

And herein lies my reply:

Hey, thanks for sharing - and yes, I so hear you - and feel completely resonant with your experience. TBH I feel not only empathetically resonant, but personally this is something that I know all too well.

What you're experiencing with your partner, is what I consider the majority of what couples come to me for. Passion fuelled, heated, warrior fighting energies, and radical, if not tiring ongoing conflicts - just as you described.

In short, as men, we're being tested by our wonderful feminine partners, to step up. And man we are, and very much, you are! But it feels like a problem that'll never be resolved because the goal posts keep on shifting, and the issues becoming ever more sensitised to the point of feeling like it's impossible to move forward.

As men we're being tested (time and time again) to get out of our ego. To stop defending ourselves - with all the logic in the world, and all the sound reasoning - we're being told by our partners, that none of it stands up, because as long as there's a hint of defensiveness, we're not being enough.

And for every bit as men that we're standing up to uphold reason, and fair play, and rationality, women are screaming at us to accept that they can be irrational, ungoverned by 'fairness', in the present moment, and radically emotional, and project all of their sincerely felt truths of their emotional risings, to us - in desperate hope that we can 'hold their energy' in our powerful masculine, solid as fuck, limitless love.

And if we can move towards that, what the feminine rewards us with, is an opening into their limitless love, and support. All for the fact that we dropped our defensive shields and accepted their expressions of truth in the moments of pure felt perception - without refutation....and with acceptance, and even better, love.