"What's life without a girl friend?" asks Jimmy, a tall, gorgeous, forty-five year old Sicilian man, who is an irresistible charmer. "I never say good-bye to one without a few more waiting in the wings," he says. "It keeps me going. Is that so bad?" Then he flashes his boyish grin. Although he never stays long, Jimmy has strong opinions on male female relationships. "There's a conflict of roles , with no roles clearly defined. "Women want monogamous relationships.Men don't want to get trapped. Men get guilty about leaving though. Believe it or not, it's hard to leave. We men do get guilty. Whatever we do we end up feeling like rats."
Underneath all this are his feelings of dependency and inadequacy. Jimmy believes a man is nothing compared to a woman, when all is said and done."A man really wants a woman to run the show," he says easily. "A guy doesn't know what's going on. But he also wants the woman to let him think he's running it. If women could only understand that -boy. It's a subtle thing. A man can't stand feeling that the woman's in charge. But, in truth, he wants her to pat him on the head and tell him what to do."
Commenting on this issue, Dr. Robert Berk, training and supervising analyst says, "There are a lot of men who can't
tolerate their own dependency on women because they experience it as emasculating. They therefore withdraw. Some downgrade the woman to make her appear a lot less valuable than she really is to them." Jimmy compensates by having as many women around as he can. This way he won't be the one to be left - an unbearable ego blow.
"A man likes a strong woman," Jimmy continued, "but she should be strong in subtle ways. He has to know he's doing the right thing for her. In order to have a really terrific woman that he wouldn't want to leave, a man has to be confident that his love was strong enough for her so she wouldn't go somewhere else. He's afraid he can't measure up to that. Good women are too much for most men." This is a clear and poignant statement of Jimmy's lack of
ability to be in touch with the wide spectrum of his own talents or to value himself sufficiently. This is an interesting contradiction many men live with. The strong male armor and ego identity is often based upon a lack of connection with their true strengths. When Jimmy finally found the woman of his dreams, he saw her twice, and after that, wouldn't ever see her again."The magic was really something. I held her close, we laughed a lot, she was terrific. Neither of us could part.It was perfect.At the end of the night we didn't take each other's numbers. We just had our
night and said good-bye. We both said to each other we hoped we never saw each other again. You see, we created this incredible illusion for two nights, but could we do it again?
After what happened that night, well, it can't get better than that.? I'm gonna live off that memory the rest of my life." For Jimmy, and many men like him, being truly happy, and affirmed in love can only happen in the world of illusion. He was determined to hold onto this woman and the two nights they spent together exactly as they had been. He needed it badly. At all costs he didn't want the fantasy to be destroyed, or to see aspects of himself or her that didn't fit in.
When a man is seeking illusion, fantasy, and escape from painful conflict or feelings of low self esteem, a brief, magical experience, in which no one is tested, becomes a substitute for real love. A fantasy love cannot be threatened or damaged. It also cannot be taken away. Of course, the contradiction inherent in this situation is that holding onto this fantasy keeps the possibility of ongoing, sustaining love away. Not all men leave seeking fantasy - there are many different causes which trigger the move. Basic to most of them is a feeling that a man cannot measure up - the woman is too much for him, her demands too great to bear, whatever he does will not satisfy her long, and the rewards he gets by staying begin to seem paltry.
Boredom sets in, power struggles, complaints,loneliness. Many men start to wonder why they started in the first place. To cope with these disappointments, some men go from one woman to the next, searching for the perfect partner, as if the solution to their conflict existed outside themselves. The repetition compulsion can then set in, with a man playing out the same scenario time and again.It is crucial for a man to understand his patterns -whether it is a
particular woman he is leaving, or his patterns that are pushing him to go.
