The Sleeping Lord of Manhood

“Look at me. I am a male human being. I came from Woman…the origin of my life, the source of all nourishment, support, safety, and love. I am a male human being. I cannot emulate the Woman-Source to find who I am. I have no choice but to turn my back to Her. My maleness wears separation like a scarlet letter. I am different …but what am I?

This search hurts a lot. Do you know? Will you try to understand? God does not demonstrate in my body. Newborn life does not come out of me! I am asked to manipulate the natural world and join other men to fight over finite pieces of Earth. Woman is Earth! But what am I?

It is said there is an infinite supply of love. But there is not an infinite supply of Earth. I want my share of Earth. I want my share of Woman returned to my body! Is it enough for you if I just Be? All this striving, striving, to build your nest….it makes me so weary. I try to construct your pedestal. My body becomes rigid and dead under the weight of it.

And now, you have your groups and your rituals. Feminine manifestation is easy to see and understand…. and you recognize one another. But where is the Sleeping Lord of Manhood? Only a few of my brothers even ask this question. I find most men drunk on acquisition. They report that partitioning the Earth and creating false needs is very sexy. I don’t belong to their club any more than I belong to yours.

Listen to me. The patriarch is a shell of a human being. I am a male human being unlike most of my brothers and I want your acknowledgment and support. If I discover a new kind of male power, will you honor it, will you desire it, will you desire me?! Or will you only notice the amount of security available for your archetypal child?

Admittedly, I speak from a particular and personal psychological context. For the time being, spare me your spiritual teachings, spare me your list of exceptions. I expose my projections. I expose my sour grapes. I expose my battle with the “laws of prosperity.” Just hear me out and be honest. It is time for women to tell the truth. It is time for women to look at men in a new way…..for the Earth calls out to you, to its own kind, to welcome the awakening of the Sleeping Lord.” 

~ Steven Fearing (May 1985)

The Jung and the Restless

The Sleeping Lord of Manhood was written 35 years ago. I was a young man, an aspirant for an unfolding new world — carrying the dreams (albeit pipe dreams in the near term) of cultural transformation birthed in the late ’60s and ’70s. I was attempting to integrate the teachings and “spiritual” impulses of the human potential movement, the explosion of body-mind therapies, and the profound resonance of my humanistic psychology graduate program. (A program developed by a colleague of Abraham Maslow.) I could still hear the echoes of Joni Mitchel from the human potential “Mecca” — the front porch of the Esalen Institute and the land of Big Sur, California. Joni pleaded, “we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” And we are still trying to do that.

The Sleeping Lord was a personal journal musing, perhaps indulgent and naively “self-important.” Yet, it revisited an ancient question of metaphysical and biological essentialism: what is the primary essence of a male human being? The Sleeping Lord was written in the time of Ronald Reagan’s America; the hopes of structural change engendered by the human potential movement seemed to be dimming. I searched for meaning as the fledgling men’s movement awaited Robert Bly’s Iron John: A Book About Men (1990) and the men’s mythopoetic movement. This version of the New Age men’s movement largely sought meaning through ideas from Jungian psychology and Jungian archetypes – the King, the Warrior, the Magician, the Lover. Many men were lost, and for good reason. The “old masculine” — the stoic, self-controlled, body-armored, emotionally reticent patriarch, seemed done, finished, and not desirable. What the hell was next for men? I was mostly on the side-lines, but succumbed to the search for male initiation, the “Father,” and the “deep masculine” or inner self. Initiation into manhood was a central deficit and wound for boys in modern America. (Arguably, the plight of boys and men in 2020 has gotten worse.) My Father, Frederick Nelson Fearing, was a lovely man of little means and a lot of unexpressed emotional depth. He had much pain and guilt from a failed (and quite undiscussable) earlier marriage, and a failed marriage with my mother. I was not properly initiated into Manhood, or so it felt in 1985.

A Hero’s Journey

The “Hero’s Journey” – a search for noble masculinity in the ‘80s, was an attempt to ease the soul, or find the soul, of men who were (to use a phrase poetically delivered by Jean Houston), “between dreams” of the old and “new male”. Feminism and feminist voices were in full throttle and criticized the men’s movement with a direct assault – born of a misunderstanding of the movement’s inherent focus on psychological work, and it’s supposed lack of attention to issues of political power. In reality, these particular men were nearly 100 percent behind all empowerment positions of the women’s movement, and still are. (The feminist/academic assault on contemporary expressions of men’s rights is a part, albeit a small part, of what Mating Straight Talk will explore going forward.)

Disappointment and Feeling Betrayed

Ultimately, what was revealed (it seemed to me), unspoken but acted upon, was that the “old male” was still very much desired by women for the security they delivered. And the original men’s movement faded over time from the weight of men’s disinterest and the structural intrasexual competitiveness between men. For heterosexual men at least, women remained the priority. The fledgling “soft male” was not as unmoored as depicted in the media, but he brought mostly disadvantages to the mating game. My keen interest in evolutionary psychology and mate selection science was born out of these conditions.

Time to Get It Out

Mating Straight Talk is an important narrative in my life story. (Not the only one by any means.) I have cataloged and collated thousands of pages of articles and research, written many words, and read dozens of books on a broad range of topics related to evolutionary psychology, relationships, and sexuality. Before I wrote The Sleeping Lord of Manhood, I designed and facilitated a workshop, “Intimacy as a Path to Wholeness,” based on the work of Susan Campbell’s The Couples Journey. In 1991, I sponsored a workshop, “Sex and Power in the Workplace” (prescient of things to come) at the University of Texas Graduate School of Business. Recently, I designed and delivered experiential workshops for male-female disclosure. This website, at launch, is but a fraction of what I want to say. As the “About” page might suggest, I have a long list of blog topics in the queue. But this is also a conversation with the reader. I hope to engage and learn from others. And the relationship-sex-love-gender conversation keeps evolving with more speed than ever.

Why I Created this Website and Blog (also see About):

• There is a conversation happening about sexuality, relationships, and the politics of gender, and I want to join it; I want to lead some of it.
• I have a fairly unique “voice” to share with the world. I am a political progressive, post-new-age-sensitive-guy, heterosexual, humanistic “psychologist” who wishes to promote (among many other things) understanding and respect for male sexuality and male stewardship of the planet beyond memes of toxicity, and do so outside of strident positions and speech of the so-called “manosphere.”
• I blog to legitimize the science of sexuality, relationships, and especially mate selection in humans. I blog and have a website to defend evolutionary psychology.
• I have a website and blog in order to explore the evidence of evolved behavioral differences between men and women.
• I blog and have a website in order to be a “truth-teller” – to bring a dose of honesty about our mating behavior and decision-making; to combat mistruths and political correctness, and expose the collusion of deceit held by men and women about mate selection and the mating economy, and share observations about the “gravitational forces” of money and physical attractiveness from an evolutionary and modern perspective.
• I blog to share my observations about unexamined misandry and the failure to apply issues of socio-economic class and intersectionality perspectives to white men. I will promote a balanced, rational approach to “being woke” while my athleticism allows me to dodge incoming rotten tomatoes.
• I blog to promote “power equity” between the genders, acknowledge that equity is not “sameness,” and encourage my audience to become friendly (like “blending” in aikido) with the underpinnings of biological hardwiring.
• The counselor/therapist in me wants to explore the intersection or integration of evolutionary psychology with couple’s psychotherapy and sex therapy/sex education.
• Blogging and this website help me discover and understand myself and consolidate a large part of my life’s work.

Who Cares?

In all of this, I am curious to discover who will be interested. Those in long-term companionate partnerships may think this website has little to offer them. Yet there may be some useful, practical insights for those not officially in the mating economy. Those privileged in the mating game (as with most elements of privilege) are not excited to listen or talk about mate selection. I hope to engage with them anyway. And defending the truth of evolved behavior sex differences is generally out of touch with the current feminist zeitgeist and not attractive to most women. That tends to create silence and avoidance by me and other men. For a heterosexual man, the need to connect with women is an intractable imperative. (As a “courtship display,” this website/blog is mostly stupid.) I want to hear from women – what is your experience? And, I definitely want to hear from relationship/psychotherapy professionals and folks in the field of evolutionary psychology.

The Heart of the Matter

MatingStraightTalk.com has finally launched. And now I am suffering from diastolic heart dysfunction. Seems I literally have a broken heart. The contents of this website are somewhat related to my story of a broken heart in the conventional sense of romantic disappointments, loss, and pain in the mating game, although I have had a few stable, relatively long-term relationships. My experience of relationship disappointment (finding a true partner) is admittedly a catalyst, but my attempt here is to deliver the science, “the why” of human mating behavior. I want to deliver insights that may assist others who feel confused, alone, or ashamed. I could outline the actual science about romantic heartbreak and how the absence of partnership affects health issues and longevity, but I will leave that for another time; suffice to say, they are connected, especially for men.

More than a Little Help from My Friend

At times, I have been overwhelmed by the depth and complexity of the content and by the technical issues that plagued the execution of this site. It has not been good for my heart, and yet I could not let it go. With the help of my dear friend Tom Carroll, I persevered. My debt to Tom is incalculable. Tom kept me going with his technical skills, creative brilliance, natural curiosity, childlike excitement, and support.

Going Forward

One of the true loves of my life, Jodi, met me in 2010 when I was successfully dealing with heart-related A-fib. She said, “I can’t date you if you’re dead.” So true. I hope to survive diastolic heart dysfunction* long enough to get most of my story and thoughts into this blog — into “Steven’s Stories” and the other nine blog categories.

Years ago, I created a “Sleeping Lord of Manhood” album-cover with song titles that marked significant life events and challenging conditions that shaped me. Each song is a story perhaps worth telling (another time). There is also an “album” of stories more aligned with the pursuit and science of happiness, excerpted from my writings on the “Seven Domains of Well-being.” Taking a cue from the ancient Greeks, I will uncover the “True,” the “Beautiful,” “the Good,” and “the Pleasurable.” There may be a few stories about my family: “Kansas City Home,” “Brothers Four,” “Beary-Bowl Bred,” and “Jayhawk Nation.” (These song titles only make sense to family and close friends.) Ultimately, the focus of “Steven’s Stories” will be less about the past and more about the present. But here’s a loving peek at (my) youthful “Brothers Four” – from left: Max, Me, David, and Greg. The Sleeping Lord of Manhood shows up and calls forth.

Thanks for reading this long post!

Steven

*I am quite optimistic about healing my heart physically through renewed (post-COVID) fitness and a functional medicine protocol to fortify heart mitochondria.

A quick addendum:  My diastolic heart “dysfunction” was apparently healed by my aerobic regimen and other health protocols, or perhaps never really existed.  My follow-up echo in September showed no problem.  

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