Wayne Levine is the founder and director of the West Coast Men's Center, where he coaches and mentors men and facilitates men's groups. He is also the author of the book, Hold On to Your Nuts: The Relationship Guide for Men, and he earned his Master's in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University in Los Angeles.
00:01:55.380So balls are flying all over the place, you know, off the walls.
00:01:58.460And then they start talking about some issues that are going on amongst the men.
00:02:03.820And I, you know, I heard them talking in a way that I had never heard men talking before.
00:02:09.200You know, I don't remember any of the specific content.
00:02:13.260This was a long time ago now in the early 90s.
00:02:16.280But I thought, I don't know what's going on here, but I want some of this.
00:02:20.840And all of a sudden that night, I could feel that there was some solution to this problem that I'd been carrying and this cyclical feeling I would have of missing something, this isolation.
00:02:35.480I had a wife and I had two little kids and everything was fine and a business, but I was lonely oftentimes.
00:02:41.960I didn't have guys to hang out with and I could just see guys on the other side of the street working in their garages thinking, how come I'm not with them?
00:02:52.040So it began this journey where I did a men's weekend, was involved with these guys for a long time, and learned about myself, learned what it meant for me to be a man in the company of these other guys.
00:03:04.880And it put me on this path that now that's what I'm doing all the time.
00:03:10.040And it's pretty remarkable because back when I was 32, 33, I had no close relationships with men.
00:03:18.700And, you know, now I've got more than I know what to do with.
00:03:31.140Well, I went to school to get my master's in clinical psych, and the plan was to become a marriage family therapist.
00:03:38.540When I went to school, I found out pretty quickly that being a therapist may not be the thing I wanted to do because I found that they weren't teaching me anything about men.
00:03:51.300None of the students were learning anything specifically about the needs of men.
00:03:54.860We were learning about every population out there, young, old, of color, gay, lesbian.
00:04:01.320Everyone had attention given to them except men.
00:04:07.160And so it became clear that I needed to find another way of sort of presenting myself.
00:04:13.360So although I was very close to becoming a licensed therapist, I decided not to.
00:04:18.260And one of the other reasons I didn't do that is because there are very strict rules, especially in California, around what therapists can and cannot do.
00:04:28.160And one of the things therapists can't do is have dual relationships with their patients, meaning that the only relationship I can have with you is a therapist-patient.
00:05:24.760You mentioned that when you were going to school, that there wasn't a lot of stuff out there in the textbooks or in the classes on men's issues.
00:06:06.740And it's fairly ironic to see that I am now father to many men.
00:06:12.180And I had been looking for that all my life.
00:06:14.740And I think that that search for father led me on this search to take care of myself, to figure out what it means to be fathered, what I was missing.
00:06:25.940And after I did the men's work the weekend and I was involved with these guys for a couple of years, I learned a lot of tools.
00:06:32.880I saw hundreds of men dealing with their issues and I learned how they were being helped to find the truth to commitment to being held accountable with these other men.
00:06:46.720And that's really where I got my chops.
00:06:49.060And then, of course, I read, you know, all the books out there from the 90s about men's work and communities of men.
00:06:55.920And then I think, really, I rely mostly on my own experiences.
00:07:02.120And I figured whatever helped me will probably help a lot of other men because as special as I once thought I was, through this work I've realized that I'm not so special.
00:08:01.520They're isolated from each other nowadays because of career, because of geography, because of the Internet, because our culture doesn't support us to get together.
00:08:13.600And a lot of the places where men used to gather are no no longer exist.
00:08:18.020We're isolated because we are taught that we need to do things by ourselves.
00:08:23.540And we have very distorted views of what it is to be a man.
00:08:26.980And so guys are isolated by their confusion and by their shame and their sense of weakness that asking for help is some somehow unmanly.
00:08:39.440So the best thing that happens in circles like ours at Better Men is that we bring the men together.
00:08:45.760I mean, if you just bring men together, you're more than halfway there.
00:08:49.420So all the all the groups and churches and temples and everywhere where they get together, that is the most important step.
00:08:57.060So why are why are male relationships so important?
00:08:59.660You seem like you're talking about this a lot.
00:10:00.600They were taught what was expected of them as men in their community by their fathers and uncles and grandfathers and brothers and neighbors.
00:10:07.400When men started going off to work, the women started raising the boys.
00:10:10.860And I think that's where the imbalance began.
00:10:14.940So we cannot learn how to be the best men we can be unless we're in the company of other men.
00:10:53.860I teach the men a certain way of asking tough questions, holding each other accountable, minimizing the advice, and just finding out what's going on with the men.
00:11:04.100And what happens is now the other men learn how to do that.
00:11:08.140And so we start feeling more comfortable in the company of men.
00:11:14.820We start opening up to help, whatever it looks like.
00:11:18.700We start growing comfortable with trusting our own guts, which is something most men get to a point where they're not trusting their instincts anymore.
00:11:28.800And so it takes time to start trusting what's going on inside of us.
00:11:32.900And so being with the men helps us to work all that out.
00:11:36.120And, you know, what we say all the time is how you show up here, meaning in our circle of men, is really how you're showing up everywhere.
00:11:42.080So all the things that you do that sort of tear your relationship down, all the things that you're doing that aren't working with your kids, all the problems in your life will eventually show up in the circle of men.
00:11:57.220And you can get honest feedback, and then you can get some ideas on how to change it and be that man and husband and father that you would like to be.
00:12:05.980And apart from the isolation that a lot of men are facing these days and not being initiated into manhood, what are some other problems that you see men are facing these days?
00:12:19.300Well, one of the biggest issues that we're dealing with all the time is the subject of the book that I wrote, and it's a relationship manual for men.
00:12:28.820And so men, for the most part, they don't have the tools they need to be the men they want to be in their long-term relationships.
00:12:40.740Whatever they learned from their mom and dads in terms of what it means to be a man, what a relationship or a marriage looks like, a lot of us didn't see very good examples.
00:12:51.680And so we go out in the world, and we just keep repeating it.
00:12:55.020And as much as a lot of men would prefer not being like their fathers, they end up being like their fathers.
00:13:03.120And so we teach tools for them to understand how to behave with their women, how to take care of their women without compromising who they are.
00:13:14.980So obviously a lot of our time is spent dealing with that main relationship.
00:13:20.560Going back to the initiation, you know, you talked about how it happened naturally, and we've talked about that on our own site, about rites of passage that used to happen naturally.
00:13:32.480So what can men do now to be initiated into manhood?
00:13:36.500Because, you know, a lot of men don't go to church where there's usually lots of different types of rites of passages where boys come into men.
00:13:43.900Lots of men aren't joining up, you know, fraternal organizations where there was once a rite of passage.
00:13:51.360Well, a lot of what happens, a lot of the ceremony that happens in organized religion really has very little to do with manhood.
00:13:57.760I mean, it's more these days about the party and comparing, keeping up with the Joneses, especially in the Jewish community with bar mitzvahs.
00:14:20.420Sterling Men's Weekend is still going on.
00:14:22.520There are a lot of guys out there who are doing things.
00:14:24.220And at these initiations, these initiatory weekends, it's the beginning of an initiation process.
00:14:32.700It's obviously, it's only, you know, 24, 48, or 72 hours.
00:14:38.180It's not like the old tribal initiations where the boys are taken out for weeks or months at a time and they're really put through the paces, you know.
00:14:49.160And I think that what men need to know is that they can be initiated into manhood, they can feel very differently about themselves as men, but they have to be committed for really for the rest of their lives.
00:15:01.700They have to be committed to this journey of learning because once you're 30, 40, 50 years old, it takes real effort to learn new behaviors and to see yourself differently.
00:15:12.500And to be consistent so that the rest of the world responds to you differently.
00:15:17.780So doing a men's weekend, being in a men's group, doing reading, reaching out to the men in your life, revealing yourself, opening up, telling the truth, and, you know, getting past the shame that there's really anything inside of you that should not be explored and that cannot be shared with another man who is on the same path.
00:15:40.860So we've been talking a little bit about some of the problems that men are facing.
00:15:44.000We have isolation and just problems in general with relationships with women.
00:15:48.720What are some things that men can do today, you know, right away to start turning their life around?
00:15:53.340Well, you know, at the risk of repeating myself, it's looking for the relationships they already have with men and deepening them.
00:16:04.060Going to your father and thanking him for doing a great job and for helping to make you a success and being with him on his terms and getting help to let go of the anger.
00:16:20.660And so counseling, you know, counseling is good.
00:16:44.980And I think that those guys who are fathers, spend time with your sons.
00:16:53.580You are being an example to them in everything you do every day.
00:16:58.040And so getting together with other men who have boys your age, going out and having fun, and opening up, and putting into practice and, you know, making some of those changes and being that father that you wished you had, I think that's another good thing that can happen.
00:17:15.780So, Wayne, just from your experience dealing with men, what are some kind of characteristics that men have who have been initiated into manhood?
00:17:23.980I mean, is there something like divining characters and you can look at that man and say, that man is comfortable with his masculinity and he is a man?
00:17:32.520Well, I think that we innately feel that when we're in the presence of a fully realized man.
00:17:41.100And you're with somebody and you're like, I want to be like that guy.