The Good Men Project

Editor’s note: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood contributing writer Amin Ahmad, author of the essay “Structural Failure,” offers his recommendation of the recently published The Murderer’s Daughters (St. Martin Press). Also, the novel’s author, Randy Susan Meyers, discusses how her experiences with domestic violence—personally and professionally—informed her writing. 

The Blurb
The title of The Murderer’s Daughters should tell you that you’re in for a psychological roller-coaster. Over the lifetimes of two sisters, author Randy Susan Meyers traces the pain and fallout of a hidden event that scarred both women.

I found myself reading this book into the night. Meyers creates an intricate narrative, with chapters alternating between both sisters voices. It’s hard to pull off a book that traces a lifetime, from the voice of a little girl to that of a grown woman, but Meyers succeeds.

If you want to understand how a hidden event of violence resonates through the next generation, read this book. It is both unsparing and compassionate. It shows a deep understanding of family life, of violence, and of the terrible things men—not monsters—do.  —AMIN AHMAD

The Backstory
Why did I write this book?

When my sister was eight, my mother warned her against letting my father into our Brooklyn apartment. Perhaps she also cautioned me, but I was barely five and can’t remember. Years later, as adults, when my sister and I began exploring our childhood in the way siblings do—comparing scars and recollections, piling up wrongs and shining up the funny stories—my sister said, “Remember when I let our father in the house and he tried to kill Mom?”

She swears I was there (where else would I be at that age?), but I didn’t remember any of it. As the years went by, and my sister fed me more details, the scene rooted in my mind and became my memory also. I heard my father sweet-talking his way in. My mother’s screams echoed.

I worked with violent men for many years, men ordered by the courts to the Boston-based Batterer Intervention Program where I ran groups. My clients climbed all over continuum of ferocity toward women. They bullied, hit, smacked, punched, and broke bones; some had murdered. When asked where their children were during these incidents, almost all answered the same way: They were sleeping.

Children do not sleep through these traumatic moments. Some freeze. Some bury the horror so deep it can’t be accessed. Some become stuck on the road of re-creating the incident in their own lives (like so many of my clients had.) Many become strong at the broken places and as adults are teachers, nurses, law enforcement; they are all over the helping professions.

When talking with batterers and speaking with their victims, I thought of my mother and father. I couldn’t ask my father what happened—he’d died when I was nine. My mother never liked visiting the past under any circumstances: She hated how my sister and I examined it from every angle, rolling her eyes when we did our usual and made troubles into humorous anecdotes. We didn’t dare ask about the time our father threatened to murder her.

However, I kept asking myself, What if? What if my sister hadn’t been brave enough to get the neighbors? What if the neighbors hadn’t pounded upstairs? What if the police hadn’t come in time?

What if my mother had died?

Writing is like that for me, a series of “What if?” after “What if?”

When my sister and I were young, after being forced to turn out the lights, we’d pretend to take imaginary books off imaginary bookshelves and ask each other: What are you dreaming tonight? Somehow, my waking dreams were always part nightmare; giving the truth that macabre twist we all fear. The Murderer’s Daughters is from that childhood shelf.  —RANDY SUSAN MEYERS

[Photograph of Randy Susan Meyers by Jill Meyers]

By BOBBY BASKSHI

The TRU 2009 Global Teen Edition survey questioned nearly 16,000 teens ages 12 to 19 all over the world, and more than 80 percent of them said Mom is the most influential advice-giver when it comes to decisions about the future.

Dad was number two. He did receive much higher scores from teen guys than from teen girls.

I’ve been thinking about these survey results since reading about them last year.

First, I think it’s great and no surprise that the primary nurturer (by nature) is reported as the primary influencer on our youth. My wife and I, the parents of three little ones, have a pretty traditional setup of roles and responsibilities: She is fully with the children, and I earn a living so we can have the life we desire. It works really well. I do my part in the evenings and on weekends, which mostly involves playing with them. She is always with them–with the exception of a few hours of preschool and other activities.

I have sensed for some time that even if I do the best job I can to be the best father to my kids, she will always have more time with them. And I love that they have at least one of us giving them such dedicated time.

Next, I look at this survey and am thrilled that boys give higher scores to their dads. A part of me wishes dads scored higher than moms as influencers, and I am humbled by the importance teens put in looking up to Mom. But it’s is affirming that both parents are the top-two influencers of our teens.

I’m sure that if the survey asked about the impact on a teen guy’s masculine identity, Dad would rise to the top. Clearly the presence of a male role model, ideally a dad, is critical to the positive development from boyhood to manhood.

Finally, I wish the data measured the impact or discussed the impact of both Mom and Dad being present during those critical teen years. By present I mean emotionally as well as physically. I believe it is ideal, especially for boys, to have both the feminine and masculine modeled throughout those developmental years.

One of the first books I read on my search for my masculine identity was Absent Fathers, Lost Sons by Guy Corneau. The author does a great job of describing the many levels of a father’s absence and the impact each can have on a boy’s development.

It took me until I was 40 years old to wake up to my father’s absence, because it was very subtle. He was always physically there; my parents were happily married until he passed away, and he was regarded as a saintly man by all who knew him. I knew and still believe he was a great man. But I didn’t realize until after his death that I desperately needed an emotional and physical bond with him. He didn’t know how to give it, and I didn’t know how to ask for it.

I will stop here, except to say that it’s tempting to theorize about the different responses from different countries, but in the absence of deeper questions that might get at what’s behind those differences, I will let this sit for now. In the meantime, I continue to seek ways to better understand the depths of the masculine journey one man at a time, starting with myself.

*****

Bobby Bakshi, is a marketing professional in the technology industry. He has specialized in segmentation research and has been at Microsoft for the past eight years. He is a certified facilitator of several training and leadership programs and is a Co-Active Coach from the Co-Active Training Institute. He has coached and trained executives in the United States and India, particularly men. He is currently working on his first book, Getting to Your 101%, which will be released by June 2010. Bakshi lives in the Seattle, Washington, area with Judy, his wife of 20 years, and their three children. He is an active member of the ManKind Project community in the Northwest. Read more of Bakshi’s writing at The Resonant Man.

By RICARDO FEDERICO

After a public reading of my essay from The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood, I leaned forward in my chair and asked for feedback from the audience on what the Good Men Foundation is trying to accomplish. There were a few tense moments when I wondered whether anyone would be willing to share. Then a woman in the back spoke up. A single mom raising two teenage boys, she said she was extremely grateful for The Good Men Project. She had come to the reading after seeing it advertised in the local paper because, as she put it, there just aren’t that many good men around.

She spoke without malice or spite, but with all the rock-solid conviction of a person who knows what she’s talking about. She had come out on a cold Thursday evening in December to hear some guy talk about a book exploring what it takes to be a good man, and she brought an intelligent, painful perspective along with her. I realized then that the Project has struck a collective chord, exposed a thread pulsing beneath the everything’s all right veneer of our male-dominated culture like a raw nerve in a root canal.

I felt this woman’s need for guidance. She is performing as both mother and father, a dual role she was never meant to be cast in, and she is doing the best she can. And while I don’t claim to know the details of her situation, I feel safe in saying that she came to our reading because she is desperate to know that there are men willing to be leaders for her boys and all the other sons and daughters whofor whatever reasonhave a similar void in their lives.

I’m not saying anything we don’t already know, or that we haven’t seen borne out in countless studies and statistics, but our society has been devastated by an entire generation of boys growing up without anyone to show them the ropes of what it takes to be a man. This mother with two teenage sons was probably doing a fine job by our altered standards. But why is she playing by a modified rule book in the first place. When did things get this far out of hand?

As I sat my chair in front of the group, an oft-borrowed phrase from the Old Testament book of Hosea came to mind: Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. That’s one way to look at it, that we are reaping the whirlwind from our brothers who in recent decades tripped and either couldn’t or didn’t want to get back up.

The weekend after I did my reading and had this epiphany, the news broke about Tiger Woods’ infidelity. I was sitting in traffic on the way home from work, listening to the news and hearing everybody from Leno and Letterman to the unnamed blogger issue an unbroken stream of Tiger jokes. And I shook my head. Am I getting so old that I can’t grasp how a man could do that to his family? Am I so small-town that I can’t imagine the inebriating effect of superstardom, or the anesthetizing impact of privilege?

The news devastates us all the more because until this moment Tiger epitomized everything males in our culture tend to hold sacred: phenomenal success born from relentless dedication (especially to a sport), enormous wealth, and a model wife (literally). But what has me shaking my head, the realization that saddens me so deeply, is that Tiger just happens to be an extremely high-profile example, the proverbial tip of a much larger, more pervasive, and terribly ugly ice berg. And yes, I realize that this particular contagion isn’t limited to the rich and famous. Far from it. They just pay more dearly for their mistakes in the national spotlight while the workaday folkslike the lady at my readingtrudge through the aftermath without the spotlight or paparazzi.

So an underlying theme I’m taking away from all of the Projects essays, exchanges, events, blog postings, etc. is that the power to change and improve the standard of manhood begins with a willingness to learn about ourselves and each other through the honest exchange of our stories, and a willingness to daily explore the question of what it means for each of us to be a good man.

It sounds like a cyclical answer, but it’s what we settled on in the discussion following my reading. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. What’s important is that each of us resolves to get up every day and ask the question and then do something productive, something to contribute, something more than just what it takes to get by.

*****

Ricardo (Ric) Federico is a contributing author for The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood. He also is a senior project manager at EnSafe Inc., an environmental consulting firm headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. A grateful husband, father and son, Federico blogs about life, what it means to be a good man, and other mysteries at http://ricardo-federico.blogspot.com/.

[Image by Marco Bellucci]

Garry Prater and his wife, Victoria

By Garry Prater

I want to be completely honest with you, I told my fiance. The thing is, I like to look at porn. My attempt at honesty, initially met with reluctant acceptance, would subsequently shake our very foundations, but eventually become part of the bedrock of our relationship.

Masturbation and porn had been the perfect combination for a shy, awkward teenager to keep the loneliness at bay. The fantasy and sensation, combined with the safety of never having to deal with a real relationship, were an exciting brew. Later, a seasoning of guilt was added as I tried to conceal my fascination for porn from my girlfriends or my ex-wife. It was my hideout, a refuge where I could temporarily let go of the responsibilities and anxieties of reality.

But I was tired of the concealment and the shame I felt. I took the chance to start our relationship with complete honesty. At first, since we lived in different states, it was easy for Victoria to feel little concern about it. But after we moved in together, even though I tried to conceal it, my porn use was constantly in her face. The nights when I stayed up late at the computer, the pop-ups and suggested web sites from the computers web history, made it evident to her that this was more than an occasional interest.

Victoria told me how she felt about it and asked me to stop. I resisted at first but agreed for the sake of our relationship. It couldnt last though. I still thought about it. Every sexy commercial or TV show was a reminder of the promise of porn. I looked at other women with desire. It felt like I was hiding a big part of myself from Victoria, and I was resenting her for it. Our relationship suffered. I didnt want to continue like this.

I cant just cut out what seems to be a big part of my life like this. Porn feels ingrained in me. Having grown up with Playboy magazines, locker room remarks, and sexy shows and moviesporn feels normal to me. It seems like an extension of so many commercials promising that happiness is in the image of a sexy woman. In our modern commercial world, sex sells; pornography, selling sex, is the logical conclusion.

I know that I should be satisfied living with the beautiful, sexy woman you are, but there is some deep attraction to porn that I dont understand. I know my looking at porn upsets you, but Im asking you to be patient with me as I try to become more aware of whats going on when I look at porn. I dont want to repress a part of myself or to hide this part of my life from you. I want to feel you accept me as I am, which includes knowing that I desire to be open and honest, and Im willing to change if I can understand why.

Im grateful that Victoria stuck it out with me even though it was rough going at times. We searched for help and answers in books and with counselors. It was a minefield. I couldnt understand why it was such a big deal, and she couldnt accept living with it. On both sides of the issue there were lots of opinions backed up with little real knowledge. All the advice seemed to promote ways to avoid porn or put up with it. None offered any real understanding of it.

The turning point came when Victoria heard something in a discussion with a practitioner of NVC (Nonviolent Communication) that rang a bell for her. Looking at porn is just a strategy for meeting needs; so if you can identify the needs he is meeting with it, you will have your answer.

The basic premise of NVC is that every human action or behavior is an attempt to meet important needs. To meet those needs, we learn and develop strategies that are more or less effective. But since most of this occurs subconsciously, we often continue with the same well-worn strategies even when theyre not effective, or even counterproductive. Once the needs are revealed, however, the strategies can be evaluated, and different, more effective, strategies can be developed.

The logic of this description made sense to my male brain. But the part about needs was difficult to grasp. The obvious answer was a desire for sexual release. But there had to be more than that, since I often viewed porn without masturbating, and sex with Victoria was certainly wonderful. It took a lot of work to peel back the layers until we understood the two primary needs that I was looking to satisfy with porn.

Porn was a strategy I used to meet my needs for intimacy and safety. Sure, I had intimacy with Victoria, but being close to her made me feel scared and vulnerable. I learned early on that the people I loved could also hurt me the most. And here was Victoria, struggling to accept me, on the verge of leaving me. I couldnt feel safe with her. To insulate myself from this vulnerability, Ive been a loner much of my life. Even in numerous relationships with girlfriends, I held myself back, reserved.

Understanding the links between needs, strategies and behaviors was the beginning of tremendous emotional growth for both of us. The journey started slow and haltingly at first; its hard to change lifelong habits. I began to recognize that each time I chose porn to meet certain needs, there were other needs that suffered: honesty, integrity, and my desire to care for Victoria, and for women in general.

Im happy to say that I havent indulged in porn for over a year, and I dont miss it. I have been tempted, especially as we have researched this issue in our mission to help others struggling with the same situation. But each time, I realize that it wouldnt satisfy my needs the way it used to, and that there are other, more important needs to meet.

This new understanding of the connection between our basic needs and our actions goes way beyond the issue of porn. Victoria and I have developed surprising levels of empathy, compassion and understanding that affect our daily lives positively. We have a happier, more loving relationship than we ever imagined possible.

My original attempt to be honest with Victoria was with the hope that she could accept me as I was then. I could not have envisioned the journey that began at that moment, and the result that I could finally accept myself and feel pride for who I am.

*****

Garry Prater lives happily in Florida with his wife, Victoria. Coauthors of Love and Pornography: Dealing with Porn and Saving your Relationship, they have created a website, Get Help with Porn, dedicated to helping others who struggle with the effects of porn on their lives and relationships.

By Paul Kidwell

The six or so weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years are a time when many of us feel the urge to reconnect with old friends, estranged family members, or old flames. We sometimes give in to the emotional sway of the season and dial a once-familiar phone number. Some calls are welcomed; others do little to reignite past enthusiasm or passion and perhaps should have been left undialed.

This past holiday season the voice on the other end of the phone line was vaguely familiar, and as soon I fully recognized it I knew the reason for the call. It was my ex-girl friend Janice (not her real name), and as we said our hellos my eyes were drawn to the desk calendar and the date staring back at me. Next week was the anniversaryI have lost track of the number of yearsof the most defining date in our history together, the date when our loving relationship began to unravel. All those years ago, on a cold December evening that was eerily similar to this night, Janice was raped.

The impact on Janice was devastating. It transformed her from warm and passionate to fearful, angry, untrusting, sometimes paranoid, and eventually distant. The emotional suffering often consumed her, and weeks after the rape it was not unusual for me to come home and find her sitting alone in the dark in our bedroom, giving into the inescapable freefall of anguish.

Reliving a rape, I was told by a psychologist whom I sought out to help me navigate my feelings about the incident, is unavoidable. I learned that no matter the victims inner strength, the hours spent in counseling, or the unwavering support of loved ones, a rape forever shapes a womans existence. Years after the rape, the attack continued to haunt Janice. In a smaller, far less severe way, I, too, never fully recovered.

Although its rarely discussed, the impact of rape on a male partner can be significant. When a woman is raped, understandably all concern and care are focused on her as she endures an unimaginable pain. Men, like me, may never understand the depth of our partners trauma, but we do realize the importance of our support. In my case, I felt it was important to offer Janice the safety of a home, to do my best to not judge her emotional swings, and to attempt to keep our lives grounded in some sense of normalcy during a very unpredictable timeto give her that soft place to fall while she dealt with the paralyzing aftermath of rape.

It became clear early on, however, that the hold this event had on our lives might never let go. Our once-vibrant and promising life together was reduced to one of neglected plans, broken dates, and long hours spent in solitude. It also became clear that I was losing Janice, which, I suppose, was inevitable when I couldnt penetrate her grief and move through this tragedy with her.

Eight months after the rape, she left, forever. And now, after all these years, came this phone call.

Im not sure what I should have said to Janice. Reliving the past and seeking answers to my many questions seemed out of place at this time. I was glad to hear her voice, but I was puzzled why she called. Was this part of her ongoing grieving process?

I also was struck by how two people who were once galvanized by love could become detached with the passage of time. We have become familiar strangers who are bound and separated by our past.

During the call, I heard the sound of childrens voices in the background, and I smiled as I imagined Janice as a mother. Perhaps the love of a family has helped soften the pain that we were unable to overcome.

The rape, although a part of our history, is still with us, and this phone call brought a fresh hurt to the surface. Neither of us mentioned the rape, but it was there, in the dark reaches of this conversation, gripping us as we tried to move across time and tragedy.

*****

Paul Kidwell is a public relations consultant and writer. He lives with his wife and son in Boston.