A peek into First Tuesday meetups
Could you live a content, happy, meaningful life if you knew that you wouldn’t have a romantic partner the rest of your life? That was the question that one of the guys raised at our last meetup. I absolutely loved the question, and it’s one of the many great questions that have been asked in recent months. But what I loved most was the reflective, astute, thoughtful responses that happened in real time. It was once again a reminder of why I started these First Tuesday meetups and why community like this is so important for men.
It couldn’t have come at a better time, as I was coming off a weekend in Big Sur at the Esalen Institute for what I’m hereby calling Codependency Soul Camp, led by couples therapist and author Dené Logan. Dené writes in her fantastic book, Sovereign Love, about how we use maladaptive tools, or coping strategies, to regulate our nervous system. She writes, “These coping strategies materialize in various forms of addictions: Drugs and alcohol, gambling, shopping, sex, food, workaholism, and what is (to me) the most societally accepted addiction of them all-codependency.” As Dené continues, “Codependency is essentially a way that we learn to regulate our nervous system through our relationships to other people.” The video below is a good introduction to more of Dené’s work.
I feel Dené’s words deeply, especially as a recovering codependent myself and having quit drinking a few years ago. I wrote about that journey in my last essay. We often talk about recovery as if it’s recovery from a specific behavior. But it wasn’t so much what I had to recover from as it was who I had to recover. I had to go recover that little kid who, for his entire life, especially from men, was told that he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t man enough, wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t athletic enough, wasn’t skilled enough. I had to quit using things outside of myself for worth, aliveness, and value, and start giving myself the things I should’ve gotten in childhood—self-compassion, love, connection—but that were all too often absent. And I believe that this is much of our work—to cultivate love first and foremost within ourselves.
The reality is that for many of us, what we didn’t get in our familial relationships as a child and adolescent we often look to a romantic partner for. Or, to play off Dené’s words, a romantic partner becomes the regulator of our nervous system. For evidence of this, we needn’t look any further than the cultural vernacular of romantic relationships—I am yours, you complete me, you’re my everything, you’re my forever person, you’re my rock, I need you, til death do us part. While there’s nothing wrong about wanting to feel needed or wanting to receive certain things from your partner, the lines get blurred, and it becomes a slippery slope when a significant other starts to become our parent, therapist, or the fulfiller of most of our wants and needs. As renowned therapist and author Esther Perel writes in Mating in Captivity, "Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity."
The question that I was left with after our last meetup was this: What if the love, connection, and fulfillment we’re often so quick to look for from others is something we cultivate within ourselves, whether we’re in a romantic partnership or not?
