A disconnect, in marriage, from women?

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So, reflecting on a recent email exchange with my ex-wife.

She is now as mellow as they get. She sent me a cell phone picture of a loaf of bread she just baked. She is as happy as a clam.

But I also cannot help but notice that beyond superficialities, she is impossible to communicate with. It is frustrating as hell.

But as it is now, it is not that important. It was like this when we were married, and for years and years and years. She was not a partner. Partnership was impossible.

I don't know if it is me. For a long time I blamed myself for bringing home work stress, from a most difficult and inappropriate career. But when this was gone, things still did not change.

I have always been a very reflective person. Whereas I see now that my ex-wife is not. She does not like to look much at herself beneath the surface.

So I don't go along with the concept of Autism / Aspergers. But there is a lived experience of being the other. I call this Shamanic Experience.

The most common case of one living the Shamanic Experience is a male. Does this mean that such male has to insulate himself from the emotional world of women, just to survive?

But don't all males do this is most societies?

Does the one living the Shamanic Experience, also decline to identify and share emotional experience with men, so he is without that as a protective cover?

I think probably yes. If he identified with the emotional experience of men, he would just be seen as being a typical male.

But as he does not, its Disorder, Defect, Difference, Therapy, Treatment, etc.

Learning to live, though being different in experience, is hard. People from all corners will try to subjectify you with their version of Recovery, Healing, Treatment, Religion.

My original thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=369619&start=15

Richard

So as I read decades ago, in primitive societies, elders watch the children and take notice of any which display mystical abilities. And to me an example of this would be the character Simon in Lord of the Flies.

When they find such they perform a parentectomy and remove the child from any muggle socialization rituals. They place him or her in the care of an adult shaman.

And so whereas for normals initiation to adulthood comes with puberty, for a shaman, male or female, it will take much longer and be more risky. It could take as long as out to age 30.

So whereas in primitive societies, those with mystical tendencies are valued and separated from parents and the herd, what does out society do?

Well, those with mystical tendencies can be persecuted relentlessly, by those trying to enforce conformity and gender.

This will likely be the parents, school peers, and work place peers.

White coats do not have to be involved. Like wasn't it only in the mid-90's that they started labeling Americans as having ~~Asperger's Syndrome~~.

Someone can be othered, treated like a Leper, without any special label.

But then when the white coats do get involved, then that just makes it much more long term damaging. The child will likely actually believe it.

Richard

I can't relate to your anecdote but I do have my own shamanic tendencies. I think as a result it's been all the more difficult for me to relate to those closest to me though it's also made me more direct & at least a bit characteristically simpler as a person.

As I see it those are strong characteristics of those most likely to have been abused by getting labeled as having ASD. And I say this in part from years and years ago for a while having a girlfriend who accepted the Autism label. She was just like everyone else, just as communicative. But she had no pretense, she was all real all the time. She would not have lasted long in adolescent girl culture.

I see that as being someone who has mystical abilities, not interested in the herd and how it does things. Interested in something else.

And of course the same goes for myself.

And then, though I do not agree with this guy because he panders to parents, I still see much truth in what he is saying.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/16016 ... bl_vppi_i5

Remember, if someone has mystical abilities, if they are not part of the herd, then they most likely are a survivor of extreme abuse. And this applies whether or not White Coats have gotten a chance to label them.

Richard

In lieu of monopolizing your thread with the details, my life has indeed not been easy. Plenty of white coats have taken issue with me in the past, largely in spite of all the logic I might saddle their minds with.

This is why we need a men's forum.

Not intending to be against women, not my meaning at all.

cberg, if a White Coat is trying to rob you of your humanity and identity, you do not try to debate them logically. You respond to them the same way you would respond to a knife armed strong armed mugger in a back alley. Remember, we know now that Hans Asperger was part of the Nazi Eugenics Movement and that he sent thousands of children to be euthanized. Any White Coat trying to label you or I is just a modern version of Josef Mengele. You don't try and reason with him. You hastily look for a weapon, because you might need to use it.

viewtopic.php?t=369619

Richard

Sounds like you were more in touch with your emotional experience, and she didn't get in touch with hers much. No?

Is there such a great difference between the emotional worlds of men and women? We both have the same emotions.

Why do you feel it's more common for men to have the Shamanic Experience?

YES!

I worked very hard on getting in touch with my own emotional experience, largely inspired by Alice Miller.

My then wife was not willing to do this, not willing to challenge THE FAMILY.

Men and women still live in different worlds, have different life prospects. Men are not supposed to be too much like women, whether we agree with this or not.

But in my view, some women will really hate a male whom they cannot manipulate, and I am really thinking here about mothers. I don't think it is innate, it is a mother who is not dealing with her own issues, like childhood sexual abuse.

Marilyn French's Feminist Novel "The Women's Room", talks about women who have married men whom they really are not attracted to, but just see that man as being a sort she can control.

To be male is to be more isolated, less receptive to the herd. Men talk to each other differently, than how women do.

Some commentators believe that all ASD amounts to is just male thinking taken to extreme.

For myself, pulling away from my mother was a survival necessity.

But I also later pulled away from my father. This might be what creates that Shamanic Experience in a male, pulling away from common emotionality on both sides.

More common in males because males have first pulled away from the mother.

Some think a remedy to this is to let men take on a coequal role in the care of small children.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004E ... taft_p1_i0

This is interesting to contemplate. I feel that if you did that you would find that men and women become much more similar.

Not taking any position on this, I note that some Native American tribes go the opposite way, prohibiting a mother from speaking to her son beyond about age 6. Not allowed to speak to him until his initiation into adulthood. After that it is okay. So this way, men and women will be extremely dissimilar.

To a large degree, people are created by culture, and what has always created males is prohibiting them from being too much like women. And some believe that this should change.

Now for a shaman this need not apply. Often a shaman is kind of gender ambiguous. But in these primitive societies, the future shamans, male and female, are protected from the parents and from the herd.

Here we are persecuted and tortured, and it is even worse when White Coats get involved.

Richard

FWIW, I have noticed that in the last 20 years, one sees far more men taking care of small children out in public, and with no women to be seen.

Richard

I can definitely relate to your self-discovery through Alice Miller. I have one of her books and love it. A real hero.

I like your point of view and insistence on self-definition. That seems the best path. In society today, everyone seems to want labels (straight, demisexual, liberal, republican, creative, incel, atheist, Christian, etc) as a shortcut to identity, but that's not really identity. Not everything needs to be named, especially when it can be described more personally by the individual. We are our own diagnosis, aren't we?

Do you really think men are less susceptible to the herd? I think it's down the individual. Is there really such a thing as male or female behavior? We are human--there is human behavior.

I think the majority of men go along with the herd, just as the majority of woman do. That's why it's the herd. The majority of people are not given to deep thinking or introspection.

It has occurred to me that those we now identify as autistic would have been prime candidates for the role of shaman in traditional tribal societies.

I am a woman and I do have the reverse of your expirience. I am the one to explore the depths of human soul. Most people I know, both genders, don't want to even try.
And sometimes I dream of a witch I could be. Living on margins of the society, not understood, a bit feared but needed - well, just like I do. That's my place even in the modern society.
I don't know if the word "witch" comes from "wisdom" but in Polish the word wiedźma - witch - comes from wiedza - knowledge.

I think what you are describing is a big gap in the intelligence between partners. If it is too big the partners cannot communicate. The telling and receiving of jokes is an indicator of this communication. If a partner can't get the jokes of the other, this is a bad sign for the relationship. This may be why some people are willing to pack up and move across the country to a partner, just based on texts and phone calls.

I couldn't agree more strongly!



I think there are some built in gender tensions, created by our culture as much as by anything else. But most of all, it is children who are today's exploited workers, used to give social identity to their parents. I say the Autism / Asperger's fallacy is just one of the machinations of this abuse.



Yes, I guess this is true. But I think it is more often than not women who communicate in a very intimate way with casual friends. If a boy is being taken advantage of this way, he might need to pull back. I think men are more inclined to keep their feelings guarded. So if a boy has had to put up a wall, I believe that some women will really just freak out. You could say that such exacerbates existing gender tensions.



I agree, and especially on Recovery Movement forums. As far as being a witch and living on the margins of society, well that is what a female shaman is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-4YN9p6yCc



I think you're right. But I would not really say that my ex-wife was not intelligent. Rather, my own intelligence was stunted by denial of my feelings. It was Alice Miller who gave me permission to start the long hard work of feeling my feelings. My ex-wife always refused to follow me in that. So I grew to be more of what I could be, while she rejected that.

Thanks to everyone for these most interesting responses. I really feel that we should be trash canning the concepts of Autism / Asperger's / Neurological Difference and stop advocating for these in any way, and instead go with the idea of Shamanism, and also of holding parental, school, and white coat bullies responsible for their abuses.

Richard

Just to follow up, my view that Shamanic Experience is what we should be talking about comes from my own life experience, experience long ago with a girlfriend who white coats convinced she 'had autism, and also from 4 other sources:

1. Guy I do not agree with because he panders to parents, but still well worth reading:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/16016 ... bl_vppi_i5

2. My idea of prototype for the one living the Shamanic Experience, who would get labeled as having autism and told about all his deficiencies, would be the character Simon in Lord of the Flies.

3. In college reading about how it goes with Shaman in primitive societies.

4. Well also J. K. Rollings's compelling descriptions about what it is like to live with Muggles. Because of her writing about Muggle's, some commentators have extrapolated from that to suggest that Rollings may be ASD. But I felt what she was saying when I first read the introductory section of the first Harry Potter book. I think that intro section is the most important part in the entire series.

Richard