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INTRODUCTION

Where the Hell Am I Going and How the Hell Do I Get There?

I was recently in London and had the opportunity to visit the underground bunkers used by Winston Churchill and his staff during World War II. While London was under siege, they strategized the defeat of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime from these secure and incredibly well-fortified dwellings, known as the War Rooms. Throughout these bunkers were maps. Many of the maps showed the locations of the different battleship groups around the world, those of both the enemy and the Allies, tracking their movement. What would they have done without these maps? They would not have been able to see the more complete picture. Not only did the maps show the layout of the current situation, they also helped the British think about and plan their next moves and develop a vision of where they wanted to end up. The strategy for winning the war was contingent on having the context and information these maps provided.

So, where are the maps for men in recovery in our quest to love and be loved? They are few and far between. Maps for women? Yes, some wonderful ones. Maps for couples? Yes, many. But maps written just for men and written by men, especially for those in recovery from addiction? Not really. Why? There is a long-standing belief that men don’t care about relationships as much as women do. The good thing is that we are not at war in our relationships. It is not a battle and should not feel like one, even though for many men I know it does. As men we attempt this journey, often with little idea of where we are going. We try to steer our ships on the treacherous seas of intimacy, vulnerability, trust, and love, often crashing on the rocks of our belief systems about men. These rocks are everywhere, and if we are not paying attention, they will sink every meaningful relationship we set foot in.

We all know that men don’t often ask for directions, even when they are lost, but they might just use a map. This book is meant to provide such a map—one that can help chart some of the territory that has yet to be crossed successfully. Just for men. Just for you. Of course, a map is of little value unless it is used.

In my first book, A Man’s Way through the Twelve Steps, I wrote about important areas that have been poorly addressed in men’s treatment and recovery. Men and women thank me for having the courage to take on the toughest aspects of men’s recovery. As in that first book, some of the information contained here has been gathered through interviews with men I respect and admire, many of whom have been on the journey of recovery much longer than I. I interviewed over thirty men: gay and straight; older and younger; men of diverse ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, and spiritual/religious (including the nonreligious) backgrounds. Each of these men had at least ten years in recovery, and many of them had twenty-plus years. A few men even had over thirty-five years in recovery. All of them trusted me enough to be willing to be open and vulnerable in their responses. And the similarities across so many of their responses were striking.

Do Men Care About Relationships?

Bobby, one of the men I interviewed for this book, said it well: “Life is meaningful only within the context of the connections we have with the friends and family around us.” I have always cared about the relationships in my life. My guess is that you have, too. I did not always know how to show it, or have the courage to show it, and I would often act in ways that sent the message that I didn’t care. I had no map. I did not know how to navigate the terrain. Relationships are complicated and challenging territory for everyone, but particularly for men. Even today, relationships can sometimes leave me wishing I lived on a deserted island, just as they did when I was stuck in my active addiction. I still don’t always know, or have the courage to show, how much I care about the relationships in my life. I certainly do not do it perfectly.

The assumption that underlies this book is that all men care about relationships. We want to be good sons, partners/spouses, fathers, and friends, but we need help. We are shaped by these “Rules” about being males that tell us asking for help is not okay. We may follow these Rules, but they belie what is in our hearts. I have worked with, sat with, cried with, and even physically held far too many men to ever believe that deep inside of most men’s hearts is not a real desire to connect, to love, and to be loved. Yet, an incredible force inside of them pushes them to separate, disconnect, push away, and pretend otherwise. This seeming contradiction is at the heart of this book and the conversation in which I want to engage you.

The process of recovery and the Twelve Steps embodies some of the greatest tools to help us find our way in relationships. This book is for all men, but focuses specifically on men in recovery. It is another tool you can put in your toolbox to help you become more successful in all of your relationships. As Mark, another of the men I interviewed for this book, said, “Without recovery, I have no relationships.” And I would argue that without relationships, there is no quality life for any of us. This book can help you find your way when you feel lost—and you will get lost. To effectively use it, though, a real man will first have to find the courage to admit that he is lost. Then, he will have to be open to experimenting with new ideas and new behaviors that offer the possibility of finding his way back to the path toward healthy relationships.

A lot of us feel as though we were absent the day they passed out the manual on relationships in school. There is beauty in learning that we need to depend on others if we want to make real progress and that we must dig deep and take risks to go outside of our comfort zone. It requires us to humble ourselves again and again, admitting to ourselves and others that we are confused. We are lost. We are scared. We are angry. We are hurt. We are insecure. Previously, we hid all this underneath our armor of beliefs about how men are supposed to be. In this journey through life, we succeed by taking off the armor.

Any man who seeks to participate fully in his relationships will experience failure. That failure may look different for different men, but we cannot succeed without risking failure. Out of that failure comes our liberation and the transformation of our relationships as we become fully known to others. As counterintuitive as it seems, invite that failure into your life. Embrace it. Failing means you are trying and pushing yourself. It means you are being courageous in the face of fear.

To what extent do you feel encouraged to engage in your relationships? I do not mean guilt-tripped or manipulated, or any of the actions you may have taken due to a feeling of obligation. I mean encouraged. If women want men to step up in relationships, they need to encourage us and see us as partners rather than as large children. And men have to stop being passive about their participation in relationships and stop acting like children, especially when their partners need them to be serious adults. As my wife, Nancy, says, “I need my grown-up husband right now.” Time to put on those big-boy pants.

Those men who truly care about and want to improve how men are viewed in the context of relationships need to speak up because there are too many men acting out the most damaging parts of the masculine script, giving women and others every reason to believe the worst about them. They take the more stereotypical macho path and typically hurt a lot of people along the way, including themselves. Yet, even most of the guys we consider “jerks,” “cretins,” “playas,” and “douche bags” want more out of their relationships and want to be more within them—they simply do not know how to get there. They are confused, unsure, and scared. They are acting like boys. They are following the “Man Rules” to a tee. They want love and connection, but they don’t have a map. They are simply adrift.

The Journey

Learning to love and be loved is the greatest journey you will take. If you are reading this book, you have already begun or are ready to begin this journey. But this journey is different from most of the others we have taken as men, where the armor of self-protection may have had a useful purpose. As I stated earlier, we need to take off the armor in order to make progress. We think the armor protects us, but instead it separates us from others. In the process, it kills love—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but almost inevitably.

This journey takes place mostly inside us. As men are expected to be more engaged, more emotionally present, more everything in our relationships, most of us are (or were) floundering in trying to do it on our own. In the world of twelve-step recovery, we have been given permission to seek help when we need it. Recovery teaches us Emotions 101—how to feel our emotions and express them in healthy ways, a prerequisite for success in any relationship. Recovery also teaches us how to think of someone other than ourselves and how to be a part of the community, two other prerequisites. Recovery is the perfect training ground for men to learn new ways to act and be in relationships with others.

We spend every moment of our day in and out of relationships. You say all you do is work? Guess what? With few exceptions, work is all about relationships—with every person you pass, every person you email or text, every person you call, every person you convince yourself is the reason you are having a bad day, and every person you stand with in silence on the elevator. And when you are sitting in your office with the door closed, staring at the computer screen like a zombie, you are still immersed in a relationship. With whom? Well, with the most important person in your life—you.

Based on my interviews with men for this book, there appear to be no significant differences between what gay and heterosexual men value and struggle with in their relationships. In fact, while a lot of the language in this book may seem to be focused only on heterosexual relationships, I have worked hard to make it applicable to all men. There seems to be a common thread, regardless of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, and other variables—that is, the challenges we share in a world full of expectations and Rules that make it hard to feel “like a man,” to feel good about ourselves, and to be our best in our relationships. Though we may experience these challenges somewhat differently as individuals, some groups of men experience them differently from others, and some groups (such as gay men or men of color) may have unique challenges; my focus is on the common struggle of men to connect with others in ways that are authentic and emotionally intimate.

That said, I know the importance for me to recognize the lens through which I see the world: I am a white, middle-class, heterosexual male of primarily Irish (and Polish and German) descent in recovery from alcohol and other drugs since May of 1994. I am a trauma survivor who has done and continues to do extensive work to heal from the pain of my experience, healing work that includes having had a father who was addicted to alcohol and who behaved violently. But it has clearly affected my relationships with other men and women and my perception of myself as a man. Another significant part of my trauma that I discuss in more detail throughout the book is having had to receive medical intervention to grow and achieve puberty over the course of six months at the end of my sophomore year of high school and through that following summer. This gave me a fairly unique view of the process of becoming a man. I also have a master’s degree and trained to be an addiction counselor at one of the most prestigious addiction treatment facilities in the country and have worked in the addiction field for almost two decades. I have been married for over a decade to my beautiful wife Nancy, and we have an amazing daughter named Grace.

I believe, and the men I interviewed have convinced me, that a lot of these relationship issues transcend race, class, generations, and sexual orientation. That does not mean we are all the same. Some of these issues will apply directly to you and others will not. You are going to hear from men who have had incredible journeys in their relationships, some of whom have been married for decades. Others have experienced the pain of divorce or the death of a spouse. You may be surprised at the depth of the sharing and the honesty of those interviewed. The men in this book talk candidly about being fathers, lovers, friends, and men. They have learned hard-fought lessons about relationships, many through the high cost of pain.

We have all made plenty of mistakes in conducting our relationships. The point is that relationships take work. It may well be some of the toughest work you have ever done in your recovery, possibly your life. I have seen many men who have conquered incredible challenges brought to their knees by the struggles they faced in their relationships.

I also want to make one thing very clear: This is not a book that tells men how much they have screwed up relationships, or what assholes men are. Far from it. I was meeting with a group of men in recovery, and one with several decades of recovery said to me, “I sure hope you are going to talk about all of the things we do well. There are a lot of things we do that work and that should be celebrated.” I could not agree more, and I hope that also comes through clearly in this book.

The Space Where We Meet

Men and women are not from different planets; we are, at most, from different countries, and we can teach each other our native language. I like to say that men are from Minnesota and women are from Wisconsin. We have a river that separates us, but we can always cross that river.

As a generalization, men and women have different relationship needs and skills. Women are not the only ones with the answers, contrary to what some think or espouse. As my wife Nancy says, each of us has to weed our own garden. That is, when relationships go well, both partners, irrespective of gender, are paying attention to their own side of the street, to their own “stuff.” Both partners need to do the actual weeding, and get help from others when the weeds prove too numerous and/or deep-rooted. Relationships simply don’t work when only one partner works to till and care for his or her garden. One of the last things that my mentor, Earnie Larsen, a phenomenal man who gave so much to our experience as people in recovery, told me shortly before he died, “Dan, I have become convinced that the only way any relationship can survive is if both partners are willing to do their work. Period.”

There is a beautiful place where men and their partners meet in a relationship. It is at this place where both individuals are truly in a new space. Both have entered foreign territory; both have the opportunity to create and explore together a vast landscape of intimacy. Nancy and I hit this point several years ago, and it seems we keep hitting it at a deeper level after a decade of being married. It was here initially that we acknowledged we both did not know what we were doing. We both had to acknowledge that true intimacy and vulnerability are scary as hell. And that was okay. We have built our intimacy over the years and continue to do so. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of working through pain, grief, rejection, anger, and toxic shame as part of that process.

Consider men in recovery. Whether we are dressed in suits, biker gang attire, shorts and a T-shirt, or any other of the numerous skins we wear, you will most likely be amazed at what you hear us talking about—if you pay attention. You will hear men engaged in their relationships, working to understand their emotional lives, willing to see their role in problems, learning to be aware of their own needs and how to set boundaries. This is a sacred journey, and I want to encourage and celebrate the reality that it is possible for men to learn how to “do” relationships well without forfeiting their masculinity. I want to help those of you who, for fear of being vulnerable, have been unable to take off the armor that prevents you from being yourself and speaking your truth within your relationships. I want you to be one of those people who dares celebrate how wonderful men are. With all of our contradictions, imperfections, immaturity, and goofiness, we are still awesome. You are awesome. You may feel hopeless at times about your relationships. You may feel lost. But you can find your way with the help of others and a good map, such as this book.

Men Learn by Doing

In my many years of experience working with men, training others how to work more effectively with men, and in my own personal growth, it has become clear that many men learn by doing. We can read the ideas and even agree with them. But in order for many of us to truly learn it (whatever “it” is), we have to practice it. For that reason there are sections throughout the book with suggested assignments. I recommend that you buy a notebook specifically for completing the assignments. These are called “Into Action” and offer ways to practice applying the concepts and lessons in each chapter and sharing what you find with those closest to you.

It took many years to get this book published, because there is a prevailing myth out there that men will not read a book about relationships. The fact that you’re reading these words proves that “they” are wrong. Men are not as predictable, stubborn, or one-dimensional as many would believe. I have known that for years now. So have many other men—and women. Now it’s time to make sure that every man, both in and outside recovery, gets the same chance at having loving, quality, and healthy relationships. You deserve them. And everyone who loves you deserves to have them, too.