Psychoanalyzing Promiscuous Men
The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant - G.K. Chesterton
Young men, and old men with an adolescent disposition, chase women along a hedonistic wheel of ‘bliss.’ However sincerely the pursuant of bliss claims he is in search of the “right one,” he subtly betrays a backdrop of terror. These two, while distinct, share a common problem at base: the fear of the Feminine.
The fearful man may fight, fawn, freeze, or fly. We need not linger on those who freeze or fly, who more often escape women by retreating into a porn enabled, narcissistic descent into labyrinthine fantasies. They are not promiscuous in any recognizable sense. The image of woman, whom they worship, is a representation of psychological processes decoupled from their natural intent. In other words, they approach unconscious sexual complexes through alluring images – not women. The fighting and fawning men are two sides of the same coin, however. They rebel against or submit to the Feminine, both in the world and within themselves.
The fighter is aggressive prima facie, hypermasculine, or even “toxic.” He is embedded in the principality of the Great Mother – the mythological dimension of abundance and privation – the archetype that births and devours. The fighter feels himself subtly manipulated by the Feminine, not because she consciously manipulates him (though she may) but because he is unable to decipher the veiled forms of feminine communication. Men are explicit. Women are implicit. His avoidance of a genuine relationship is what damns her to obscurity. Therefore, he is unable to distinguish between her good and bad elements.
Against the threat of being devoured, he reflexively asserts his total autonomy. He, like his flying counterpart, avoids companionship while making an idol of sex. Sex is a symbol. For the fighter, it is not a symbol of connection, but domination. He longs to conquer his fears, which each individual woman has come to represent. By “conquering” women, he conquers his fears. He longs to pillage the territory of women, believing himself above the Feminine every time he “claims” a woman. Yet he fails to recognize how he has organized his life around them, thereby demonstrating that while no individual woman can ‘tie him down’ he is owned by women as such.
While all femininity is projected outwards, the fighting man denies his own femininity. Ironically, his fear of his own femininity, which he interprets as powerless and passive, is what leaves him powerless before women. We can only know each other insofar as we know ourselves. His femininity is what corresponds, in both senses, with the femininity of his partner. In other words, it is through his own femininity that he can understand women. His rejection of this part precludes understanding, and therefore a serious relationship with the opposite sex (except for those women who have, for their own reasons, adopted a masculine disposition). This is to say that the fighter would be unafraid if his masculinity was secured, as the waves of femininity would break against the shore of his identity.
This leads us directly to the fawning man, the soft romantic. Where the fighting man asserts his masculinity, the fawning man lays it to rest, opting instead to soften his disposition. He rejects the notion that he is dominant, or aspires to be, to preserve his naive ‘goodness.’ Out of fear, he retreats, leaving the assertion up to the woman, who he ignorantly presupposes will take responsibility for herself like he, as a man, is expected to. He clings to ideologies of the atomized individual which state that all is fair so long as explicit consent is stated. He is libertarian, in essence, because he reduces human interaction down to a successive set of linguistically sealed contracts. If she says she is okay with it, be it a relationship, sex, or polyamory, then the fawning man takes this as intrinsically good. He never ventures to guess what she means by her statement.
The veiled nature of intent, the intrinsic inadequacy of language to capture feeling in a complex world, is a feature of femininity. The Feminine is veiled, but so is reality. Women speak in meanings, and their words orbit around a hidden sun. Men, on the other hand, are “literalists” who presuppose their words to be signs. In other words, man thinks that what he says is what he means, and there is no daylight between them. Thus, the man who does not understand the Feminine in himself, nor women, misunderstands her language to be like his. Then, when he converses with women, he finds them disorienting. Women’s words dizzy dis-integrated men. It is the responsibility of mature men to refine the raw meaning his partner offers him. Yet immature men fail to recognize the challenges women present to him and become frustrated. They throw up their hands and announce that women are merely confused men.
While both the fighting and fawning men share in this libertarian ideology, the fawning man does so because it offloads his responsibilities onto the woman. He needn’t investigate or consider the feelings of his partner so long as she agrees explicitly to sleep with him. Once she speaks, it is settled. The fawning man puts the responsibility onto the woman. By allowing her to make the decision, he ensures her consent. Yet he avoids the necessary discussion about what she wants and needs. A man who wanted the best for his partner would discuss whether or not their relationship was healthy. The fawning man avoids refining her desires, allowing their relationship to remain murky and undefined. For the fawning man, ambiguity cloaks his movements and intentions, i.e. the instrumental use of women.
One might expect the fighting man, by contrast, to take responsibility for the wellbeing of his partner. Yet he too is afraid of approaching the numinous other and obscures her radiance with a cloak of rationality. Both types of men refuse to encounter the Feminine as such. Eric Neumann, who was student of Carl Jung with a deep interest in the Feminine, wrote,
Another not uncommon form of failure [to mature], a variant first described by Freud, is that of the man who is incapable of experiencing and tolerating woman in her totality. The fear is so overwhelming that it results in splitting woman into a higher and lower femaleness, and the man can have a relationship to only one aspect at a time; that is, on the one hand the man worships the woman and achieves a relationship to her of supremely valuable friendship, but on the other hand a sexual relationship is possible, if at all, only with a prostitute or with a woman of inferior social status. Here, too, it is always a question of “fear of the Feminine,” of a “fear of woman” that is experienced as so overwhelming in its totality that the incompletely developed male feels he is no match for it
Among the relative failures who approach what is called normalcy, we find the Don Juan type, who is not only potent but has a relatively strong capacity for relationships. His failure lies in his inability to commit himself to a woman, and without exception fear of the Feminine lies behind his inability. Every form of male self-protection… rests on an unsureness of Self, on a feeling of not being a match for the Feminine, that is, on an insufficient development of masculinity, be it that the male fears the binding, arresting, elementary character of the Feminine predominant in the mother, or the opposite, the transformative character embodied in the anima that will not “leave him alone.”
We must never forget that, for a man, the Feminine as the “totally other” signifies and must signify something numinous, and that without the fateful confrontation with this numinosum, this other half of the world, no life can attain to its potential for maturity and wholeness (and this, of course, is equally true for woman). It is possible to confront and to come to terms with this numinosum, however, only if one risks one’s entire personality without reservations such as may be expressed in a self-protective overestimation or underestimation of the Feminine and of woman.
In essence, fear of the Feminine, the fear that the insecure masculine ego may be annihilated by a tidal numinosity, is the foundation of man’s promiscuity. While hellbent on protecting his self-image as a leading man, he offloads his responsibilities onto a system of rules. So long as the woman explicitly consents to the rules, then he is “good” and has fulfilled his obligations to the woman. However, he avoids ‘getting to the bottom’ of the woman’s discomfort. When she admits her discontent, he throws her ‘signed contract’ back in her face. She agreed. End of discussion. He did nothing wrong. It is certain in his eyes. By reducing the relationship to a system of rules, the man denies everything implicit, ineffable, or undefined in the woman. And instead of taking responsibility, embodying his role as the logos, he covers his eyes and ears, pretending no such mystery exists.
Both the fighting and fawning man, successful as they may be at sleeping with women, attempt to encounter the Feminine ‘through themselves.’ In other words, instead of approaching the numinous female, he finds women he can already comprehend – women like himself.
Of course, these two men despise each other. One believes the other is a wimp, succumbing to effete control. The wimp, for his part, believes the other is a brute, compensating for weakness by way of exaggerated manliness. This is what Freud called the “narcissism of small differences.” Both men participate in fearful unwillingness to contend with the Feminine. They merely express their fear in different ways. Seeing the other as weak or brutish affords a sense of superiority and reassures them that they are not subject to the failings of the other - which they are.
If these men upheld their responsibility to Love, they would facilitate the growth and understanding of their partner through dialogue and collaboratively arrive at the best outcome for both. Instead, they abdicate their responsibilities. The difference lies in where they offload them: One places the burden on women, the other on an abstract system.
Ultimately, both long for la petite mort, or little death, which they symbolically approach through sex. The little death they obtain is, as the French slang goes, an orgasm, but the true ‘death’ they need is an ego death - the forfeiture of control over to God. This is not to say that the fawning man has it right when he relinquishes his responsibilities – truly, he relinquishes his personality, hiding his intentions from his lover and himself. The true forfeiture is not of one’s self-image but involves the radical acceptance of what one is, the consequences of oneself – for better or worse – and the desire to ascend towards the good despite one’s many failings. To state omnia committo Deo is to recognize that the outcome, however painful, serves one’s development. God is a father who is willing to risk his children’s safety for their growth.
The rejection by the numinous woman is often a sign of one’s inadequacy, and that is okay. It is better to know one’s shortcomings than to live afraid of learning them. Alternatively, one may finally encounter a woman primed to facilitate one’s development. The sacrifice of one’s will to whatever Being has in store allows the fear of loss, even the ultimate loss of oneself, to pass away. This death allows one to approach the divine Feminine.
In closing, the gracious reader will understand that the fighter and fawner are not absolutely distinct categories. They have much in common with each other and one man may flicker between these dispositions across his lifetime. What matters is that fear is in a dynamic tension with one’s innate desire to establish a fruitful relationship with the opposite sex, and control, when sacrificed, allows for nature to run its course. In a remarkable fit of irony, letting go of the outcome is what ensures the best possible outcome will occur. Leave your fear in God’s hands, and you’ll have no need for it.
Neumann, E (1994). The fear of the feminine and other essays on feminine psychology. Princeton University Press. P. 259-260.