THAT'S MEN:The gender gap remains wide on this key area, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
THE IDEA that men are more scared of intimacy than women is so often repeated that it has become a cliche.
I am with counsellor Kevin Chandler when he asserts in Therapy Today that men are not more afraid, “we just tend to do it differently to women. I rarely ask a male client what he feels; I ask him to describe what he does, with his kids, or at work, or play, and his feelings will usually gleam through. Men often find intimacy through doing and being together rather than via talking.”
We crave intimacy.
As Chandler writes: “People embark on affairs in the hope of finding it, and leave homes, marriages and families to lay claim to it.”
But what is it? Is it closeness?
No, it is knowing the other person more deeply than is usually allowed by the image they project to the world and letting the other person know you more deeply than your defences normally allow.
So there is an awful lot more to intimacy than closeness.
As Chandler says: “not all closeness is intimate, whether it comes in the form of the enforced proximity of others on a crowded tube train, the feel of an unwelcome hand under the duvet, or the probing personal questions from the counsellor your wife or partner has dragged you along to see”.
It is letting the other person see what you are really like that frightens both men and women. What if the other person walks away?
In that eager exchange of information about feelings that women so readily engage in with each other, I sometimes wonder how much of themselves they are, in reality, holding back. With men, the barrier against becoming too well known is more likely to take the form of activity, distraction or silence.
How can the gap be bridged?
By accepting that we are different in how we express and experience intimacy and by not expecting men to turn into women or women into men. Perhaps in this acceptance we will have more success in experiencing real intimacy between the genders. Kevin Chandler's article is at bit.ly/kchandler
Addendum: How’s this for intimacy, lads? Galway girl Mags Treanor describes a visit to a spa in Karlsruhe in Germany in her elegantly named Daily Arse Kick blog. When she got to the baths she found everyone else was naked so she took off her togs and sat down in what was a group of mostly German men.
What got to her was not the nakedness but the silence.
“I want to talk to somebody,” she writes. “Everyone is silent and deadly serious. One guy is doing these weird yoga poses in our communal bath and a fat guy looks like he’s asleep.”
Then, of course, the inevitable.
“I try to be discreet but in the end I just can’t help myself: I have to look at all the men’s parts. I can’t help wondering if the tiny little knobby ones ever get any bigger once in action. Anyone able to tell me that? There are long thin ones, big armadillos, ones that you can’t see under the masses of pubic hair, average joe soap ones if there’s such a thing, and even ones that seem to hang sideways.
“By now I’m glad that there isn’t another Irish person with me, because undoubtedly the conversation would be about man parts and it would be a loud conversation with pointing involved. Instead, I soak in the communal bath and look like a middle-aged lady who has no interest in the size of a man’s part, or any parts come to that.”
All I can say is I don’t see the intimacy of the naked communal bath as a runner for most Irish men – apart from the Forty Foot brigade – especially with females like Mags staring and pointing the finger.
Her blog is at arsekick.blogspot.com
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is free by email.