BECOMING ONE’S OWN MAN: THE PARADOXES OF SUCCESS
Posted on 2009 under Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction | No CommentIn our society the great paradox of success is that, on the one hand, whether a man succeeds or fails at mid-life matters greatly. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter at all—because he will go through a crisis regardless.
During this period, say the Yale group, most men fix on a key event in their career that will symbolize their affirmation by society. Given an almost magical quality, this event can be a promotion, a new job, or some other form of recognition. The pressure of waiting for the outcome usually stimulates a man to make “the special bet” on himself, increasing his efforts to capitalize on this last big chance. If the outcome is favorable, the assumption is that the future is assured, and that he is all set. But this is not true. Whether affirmed or not, a man will have a crisis. Only the form varies.
The key issue is not whether he succeeds or fails in realizing his goal, or achieving his dream—but the sense of disparity he feels between what he has gained, in an inner sense, and what he still wants. It is not a matter of how many rewards a man has gotten—money, status, power, or fame—but of the goodness of fit between his life structure and his evolving self. A man may do very well in terms of reaching his goals, but find success hollow or bittersweet. The severity of his crisis depends on the extent to which he questions his life structure and feels a strong need to modify or change it.
Ironically, failure can yield unexpected advantages. When a man fails he may be in for a rough time, and have to deal with a narcissistic wound, but he will also be freed to ask what he really wants. For example, Bruce D. discovered that his being fired, at forty-two, from an advertising company was the best thing that ever happened to him:
As soon as I got fired I felt this great weight off me. Then a headhunter called about another job and I thought, well, I’m a responsible father and all that shit so I’d better go for the interview. But when they offered me the job I felt so depressed again I said, “No!” I saw myself killing time for 20 years and getting $100,000 in the profit-sharing plan and then retiring. Just thinking about it was horrifying.
So I made up my mind to freelance and I got some book assignments lined up. Now I won’t have to sit in on client meetings and act as if I’m thinking seriously about whether toilet paper should be sold on the basis of softness or absorbency! I can write and live in the country and do what I want to do—and life will have some meaning. I feel I have a future now!
By contrast, success can sometimes be dangerously inhibiting in terms of future growth. If a man succeeds, his sense of inner turmoil may be reduced and he may be more inclined to stay locked into the same situation, thinking he can go on that way idefinitely. But men who deny the mid-life crisis are likely to lose the vitality they need to continue developing.
Equally ominous, many men who fail to resolve the issues presented around forty will experience a more severe crisis at fifty. This belated reaction can lead to, a suffocating feeling of futility, or trigger bizarre, impulsive changes. The Yale group describe this as an instance where “the chickens come home to roost.”
“It’s a very simple notion,” says Dr. Edward Klein, “which means that if you don’t look at these issues in your gut when you are younger, and you just keep masking them over with Scotch tape, they are going* to break out. They mount up in some critical mass-—God knows, I don’t know how to quantify that—and they build up over time. Then a man breaks out in some sort of inflated act.”
Another paradox of “making it,” says Levinson, is that “just at the time when a man seems to have accomplished all he set out to accomplish in his twenties, the meaning of it changes somehow.” The reason for this is that he himself has changed and so have his values. In young adulthood a man was trying to make it in society’s terms. By mid-life, however, after these contests have either been won or lost, he begins trying to make it in personal terms. Having arrived at the place where he was so intently heading, he begins to ask himself: Is this what I really wanted? Was it worth all I had to give up? And do I want to continue doing this for the rest of my life?
As an example of the dissonance likely to develop, Dr. Braxton McKcc explains that somewhere along the career ladder, most often in his late thirties, a man usually takes an important step toward “making it” that involves deciding he must do things in his own way—and act with more authority. The minute he does that, however, he starts becoming more aware of what he wants for himself, and possibly more aware of how this differs from what the organization wants from him.
The result: “Just as becoming more responsible and autonomous helps him to reach his goals and to ‘make it’ within the original structure,” says McKee, “it also puts him in touch with parts of himself that lead him away from it.”
And that is the ultimate paradox of success: “Making it” leads to breaking it—and then breaking out. When a man gets there, when the dream comes true, he suddenly becomes conscious of all the ways in which reality differs from fantasy. This, in turn, causes him to search for new and different challenges that will satisfy a more mature, discriminating, and diversified self.
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