My father was a wounded angry man. When I was five years old, he swallowed a quantity of sleeping pills believing that his family and the world would be better off without him. Luckily he survived and was sent to Camarillo State Psychiatric Hospital, but our lives were never the same again. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and how I could keep it from happening to other families. I am happy to say that my father not only survived but thrived and I was able to share our story in my book, My Distant Dad: Healing the Wound of the Father of the Family.
I swore I would never reach the point of despair my father experienced, but after two failed marriages and a third in trouble, I felt hopeless and almost gave up. Fortunately, my wife and I were able to learn how to change our relationship. (See my MenAlive.com welcome post, “Confessions of a Twice Divorced Marriage Counselor”).
What helped us immensely was a book by Harville Hendrix and his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. Over the years, Harville and Ellen have become friends and colleagues, and I’ve had the privilege and honor of interviewing them many times for my podcasts. I most recently interviewed Harville on July 11, 2024.
You can listen and watch our interview here.
Our conversation ranged over many areas, including our gratitude to the philosopher Martin Buber for his early work in understanding human relationships and healthy dialogue. In my book, The Warrior’s Journey Home: Healing Men, Healing the Planet I talked about Buber’s contribution to humanity.
“In his book, me and you Buber describes two kinds of human relationships, I-It and I-Thou. In relation to nature, ourselves and God, He sees Us as separate. Others will be used for our benefit. The I-Thou sees us as engaged in a sacred relationship of communion. Others should be respected and loved.”
As Buber says,
“Love is the responsibility of an I for a You.”
In The Warrior’s Journey Home, I noticed that for most of our human existence, for at least two million years, humans lived in close relationship with nature. Only relatively recently, in the last ten thousand years, have we moved from our relationship to nature as a partnership and understood our role as one of control and dominance.
I quoted Joseph Campbell in his book, The Power of Myth, he says
“The Indians addressed all life as ‘you’—the trees, the stones, everything.”
He goes on to say,
“You can address anything as ‘you’ and if you do, you can feel the change in your own psychology. The ego that sees a ‘you’ is not the same ego that sees an ‘it’.
In my interview with Harville he said:
“Martin Buber was the first since Socrates to do anything substantial in dialogue. When Me-You published in 1925, Buber was a conduit for a new way of being in the world. But Buber didn’t make it work, that’s something Helen and I have done with our work helping couples over the years.”
Secure conversations and quantum connections
Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and his wife, Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D., began by asking:
“Why do couples fight?”
What they discovered led them to develop a simple process of taking turns talking and listening in a structured way that creates safety in relationships. They found it works in ANY relationship and began teaching workshops to share the life-changing process. Now they bring what they have taught couples how to do to improve their relationships to all other areas of human life.
On their website, Secure Chats/Quantum Connectionsyou can learn how Harvill and Ellen plan to teach 2.4 billion people, over the next twenty-five years, the simple practices that can literally save the world between now and 2050. They say,
Quantum Connections brings the transformative power of Safe Conversations Methodology and Dialogue Tools to small businesses, large corporations, global communities, educational institutions and community organizations, along with individuals, couples and families.
In their recently published book, How to Talk to Anyone About Anything: The Practice of Safe Conversations, Harville and Helen say,
“Most of us have felt invisible, unheard, undervalued and disconnected at some point. The fact is, we are wired to connect. It is not something we can do or stop doing. We connect beings. It’s our nature.”
They go on to say,
“So why have so many of us experienced disconnection lately? We have become politically and socially polarized to the point where many feel invisible and vulnerable. In response, they go into self-protection mode and become defensive, because we all need to feel valued and part of something bigger than ourselves.”
Why Healing Men is important
I have been working with men and their families for over fifty years. My work focuses on men for a number of reasons. First, my own experience and studies from around the world show that males die earlier and suffer from serious illnesses at higher rates than females. Second, the more I can help men, the better things are for women and children. Third, incurable men pose a great threat to everyone’s well-being.
Comedian Elayne Boosler captures this reality in a humorous and insightful observation.
“When women are depressed they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a completely different way of thinking.”
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strong: Mussolini to date describes the danger some men pose to their country and the world.
“Ours in the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who avoid accountability while robbing their people of the truth, treasure and protection of democracy.”
It is no coincidence that each of the seventeen “protagonists” he describes in the book are men, including Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin, and Donald J. Trump.
“They use masculinity”
says Ben-Ghiat,
“as a symbol of power and a political weapon. Getting what you want and getting away with it becomes proof of male power. They use propaganda, corruption and violence to stay in power.”
Richard W. Reeves, founder of the American Institute on Boys and Men, calls the upcoming US election, “The Election of Masculinity.” He goes on to say:
“The 2024 vote was going to be a referendum on women’s rights. Instead, there has been a discussion about men’s needs and desires. The question now is which male model will win in November. The macho brawl of the Trump-Vance ticket or the suave “daddy’s girl” offered by Harris and Walz? The fighter or the trainer?’
Reeves cites statistics showing a significant gender gap in voting intentions:
- Among likely female voters, Harris leads Trump by 14 points (55% to 41%) in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, while Trump leads by 17 points among men (56% to 39%).
- The gender gap among younger voters is particularly stark, with women under 30 moving to the left while their male peers move to the right.
My own work for the past fifty-plus years is that men desperately want and need the therapy I found in a men’s group that teaches and practices the kind dialogue that Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt plan to bring to the world. Our group has now been meeting for 45 years and hopes to continue meeting for the rest of our lives.
We really need a revolution in men’s health and I look forward to working with Harville and Ellen to help it happen. You can reach Harville and Helen here. You can contact me at MenAlive.com and MoonshotForMankind.org.
