A Trip Into My Past: Brief Thoughts on Negative Male Behavior in Romantic Heterosexual Relationships

I was perusing some of my old notes and documents, and I encountered the following snippet. It's rather cynical, but I stand by it, because A) it's part of where I've come from, intellectually; and B) I think the insight has some validity. Namely, I was attempting to honestly describe what I perceived to be a rather pervasive and destructive pattern of attachment in male-female romantic relationships.

Here it is, in only slightly edited form (as to properly represent where I was 'at' in a rather impassioned moment seven and a half years ago, at age 25):

A reason that men can be so horrible to their female companions is that they weren’t “allowed” to express themselves, or to sound off, if you will, to their peers as they grew up.  The [socially] acceptable manner in which males relate to one another during their adolescent years is dominated by sports talk and participation; neo-gang pack mentality; self-inflation (weight-lifting, braggadocio); and mischief and derision in general.  Men are, in essence, encouraged to channel their turmoil into one of these pack-endorsed pursuits.  When they land a girlfriend, then, they are presented with an altogether new outlet.  If the relationship matures, the man will recognize that the woman has accepted him to some degree for who he is, including all of his foibles and heretofore buried emotions.  The result is that the male will at first sound off to his girlfriend in quick, exhilarating vapor bursts of release.  As he receives positive feedback for this practice, however, he will make it his habit to closely include her in the smallest nuances of his emotional life, eventually growing to depend on her; and he eventually becomes, in essence, addicted to her ear.  The male will proceed to employ an astonishing variety of tactics in order to secure his girlfriend’s ear; he comes to operate under the premise that he even controls her, or that she is his right, his possession.  The original opportunity to grow, of course, has been squandered or missed altogether, and only through conscientious effort and communication can both parties rid themselves of this facet of co-dependence.

I don't usually write in such general, sweeping terms any more, and with good reason. And I spoke from a certain cultural perspective, of course. That and other criticisms notwithstanding, however, I agree with the essence of what I wrote rather hastily during a time of personal flux and transition. 

It's neat to revisit that time of my life -- not the outer circumstance, mind you, but the inner. Psychologically, I was highly interested in origins as my vehicle of understanding human behavior; i.e., I was interested in pathology, or the questions, "where does this behavior come from? how did it start?"  And that makes sense. After all, I was an actor, and part of my creative process entailed a certain reverse engineering from the outside in; furthermore, such methodology was my mode of introspection, and I came to greater degrees of self-knowledge that way.

Anyway, thanks for indulging this little trip of mine.