Women and girls are socialized to be more vulnerable. Boys are told to be tough. And this, feminists say, is because of “the patriarchy,” or whatever. But feminist explanations of men’s behavior often hide behind a blind spot, namely, that mothers don’t love their boys as much and that boys are often forced to grow up largely without a meaningful emotional support system. This forces boys to “toughen up” and prepare for a life that doesn’t have much love to offer. Girl grow up with love, whereas boys are starved of it.
Much of masculinity is explained as a coping mechanism designed to deal with extreme emotional loneliness. Only 20% of women in a long-term relationship say their partner is their primary confidant, compared to about 50% for men. Women, then, aren’t as emotionally attached to a relationship as men are, and this explains why 70% of breakups and divorces are initiated by women. Women are the ones who hold the emotional reins. Most men, having no other options, have no choice but to submit. Women can more easily break up because they have meaningful emotional support networks elsewhere that they can always rely on.
Women have easier access to emotional support and, therefore, have no interest in giving more love than they already do. By denying their spouse or long-term partner love, they end up holding the emotional reins in the relationship. It is women’s way of domesticating and controlling men: By offering some love to renew loyalty, and by denying love when she needs him to work harder. A man can quickly be reduced to a beast of burden if he does not learn how to make a stand for himself.
Feminists speaking from behind the blind spot will say that men should just build more vulnerable friendships with other men. This blindsided nonsense ignores that most of those men have never experienced emotional support at home to begin with. They cannot form “vulnerable relationships” because they don’t know what that is. In many cases, a man’s long-term lover is the only person he knows how to open up to. Losing her means to be condemned to emotional loneliness again. Emotional support and vulnerability were things denied boys by their family of origin, often paired with the threat of abandonment and physical violence.
When we pretend not to understand this, men’s behavior all of a sudden becomes inexplicable, stupid, weird, or hypermasculine. As lion cubs in a pride, boys are emotionally cast out from the youngest ages and expected to “fend for themselves.” This, in many otherwise reasonably adjusted men, translates into feverish hard work—to make money, to succeed, to achieve—namely, in hopes of someday winning the mythical love they never had. And then, women casually break up with them, leaving men feeling “not good enough”.
If I had to personally describe the average woman, I would use the following words: cold, harsh, cruel, unloving, unlovable, hateful, absent, dismissive, manipulative, vague, immature, money-hungry, materialistic, overly passive, unhelpful, unreliable, gone with the wind. The only reason I don’t outright hate women is that I’ve had the privilege—a luxury—of having had some brief experiences with women that made me feel somewhat loved or cared for (emotionally). But the moment I thought I could rely on this emotional support as a foundation to continue my life, it was ripped right out from under my feet again, returning me to a state of permanent falling with no end to the depths below me.
And yet, I am expected to be some kind of superman who should just “learn to fly.” The godlessness of our atheist-materialist society compounds men’s problems, for where can a man find any sort of stable emotional footing if he most certainly cannot get it from women, nor from his family of origin? The one traditional alternative has always been God, but God has become a dirty thing, for feminists have declared God patriarchal and evil.
There have been many famous prayer experiments that proved that prayers have no effect whatsoever on the person being prayed for. However, the person who performs the prayer may experience incredible mental health benefits. When the pious person imagines his connection to God as a personal relationship, whereby God becomes this man’s confidant, then he gains the sort of benefits he would have gotten from a real relationship (such as with a loving woman). God can be the stand-in for what is missing in a man’s emotional regulation: the eternal, unrelenting solid footing in the world that women and society neglect to provide.
God can cure depressed men if they succeed in developing a secure attachment to God, for “persons who pray often to a God who is perceived as a secure attachment figure derive clear mental health benefits” (Ellis et al., 2014).1 In a more foundational paper, An Attachment-Theory Approach to the Psychology of Religion,2 Lee Kirkpatrick established that God can psychologically function like an attachment figure for believers.
Can people who grew up in dysfunctional households benefit from turning to God? Yes, says Kirkpatrick:
Early secure attachments to caregivers lead to secure, loving relationships with God;
Insecure attachments lead people to turn to God as a substitute attachment figure to fulfill unmet needs for security, especially during distress;
An unloved man can never succeed on his own. He must find love, but if women don’t (want to) give him the emotional love he so desperately needs, then turning to God is his best and only alternative. What emotional support does for a human being is to be cupped in the hands of pure Love and protected at all times wherever you go. The idea is that a strong attachment to God offers a man a shield that protects him from emotional damage.
Men who feel emotionally understood and supported by others, such as by a loving woman, move about the outside world with visibly greater confidence. They act more maturely. They have lower stress and higher testosterone than the unbelieving, unloved man. But the man robbed of this secure love, who grew up without emotional support, may find the best substitute by cultivating a personal relationship with God.
“It is the myriads of trustful souls, that this sense of God’s unfailing presence with them in their going out and in their coming in, and by night and day, is a source of absolute repose and confident calmness. It drives away all fear of what may befall them. That nearness of God is a constant security against terror and anxiety.” (Voysey, 1882)
Ellison, Christopher & Bradshaw, Matt & Flannelly, Kevin & Galek, Kathleen. (2014). Prayer, Attachment to God, and Symptoms of Anxiety-Related Disorders among U.S. Adults. Sociology of Religion. 75. 208-233. 10.1093/socrel/srt079.
Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1992). An Attachment-Theory Approach Psychology of Religion. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(1), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0201_2