Mothers who genuinely believe only they are uniquely capable of raising children
Women who have been surrounded by women dealing with women their entire career who just do not really understand why a man is trying to raise children
Women who feel men are heroes for doing what every parent should do regardless of gender
Organisations which are mainly female dominated such as education, health, social care and so on who instinctiverly look for the Mrs to write to or telephone and then, when they cannot find her, wonder if the ‘father’ perhaps needs some parenting support because, it won’t come naturally to him.
Yes, those above groups are the main offenders but, let’s not forget the:
Men who feel the place of a woman is in the home, doing the cooking, cleaning and raising the kids, after all, Mums’ gone to Iceland.
Mothercare because, only mothers need to buy nappies
Mother and toddler groups, yes, they still exist
Netmums. Isn’t it strange as that is seen as a group of mums just being mums whereas a male group trying to do the same thing would be seen as political.
The assumption that men are potential abusers whereas, ‘mothers’ could never do such a thing.
Those who feel on a mother can truly ‘get it’.
Only a mother can comfort a screaming child
Yes, I have experienced all of the above. I’d like to say only once or rarely. I’d like to say that in 2024 it doesn’t happen but, yes it does. The assumption is still there that really, they’d all rather be dealing with their mother. That any claims of inappropriate behaviour or risk a father might mention about the mother if not taken seriously as ‘obviously’ he has an agenda.
Then there is this widely held belief, held as much by men as men, that men are just not cut out for it, they just are wired wrong. Lazy arsed me go along with it because, frankly, that means the mother changes the nappies and, women persist in the belief to maintain their central role.
Above ar the top 8 searches for ‘parent uk’ on Google
Reassuring that the first is actually a man every other one is either a man, woman and child or just a woman and child.
That’s an absolute random snapshot, nothing scientific.
Do you understand that in many cultures, many of which now form part of multicultural Britain, genuinely believe there is something wrong if a male is parenting on his own, To do so much mean that there was a mother but, she has obviously and sadly died and even then, the role would be expected to be done by the nearest female surviving relative.
Go to a parent and child swimming session at the local pool, men are stared at as though they are a threat.
Look, if you think I am wrong, leave a comment and say why, insults and crap will be ignored by well researched real world comments are welcome.
I have not seen beyond episode 4, I nearly didn’t watch that episode to the end, it was very difficult for me. So many memories of my own experience.
Spoiler Alert
From this point in, some or a lot of what I am going to say might spoil the series for you up to this point but I am only saying it for some context.
What did happen to me?
A little history of me
I have always suspected strongly I was gay. My main issue was, I had actually no idea what that meant. What I knew for sure was that I felt uncomfortable around other men. I thought there was something, some point about being a man I totally didn’t get. They all seemed so confident, they didn’t seem to care what others guys thought, they acted like I was weird if I complimented them. Doing so felt natural for me, I thought it was just that, ‘natural’ to compiment someone. In my teens years I come to understand, just a little more, what fancying men was all about. It is fair to say I was heavily conflicted. If I knew anything I knew for an absolute fact that I could not be gay. There were some very obviously gay men on TV and I most certainly wasn’t like them. Let me give you an example of those men:
What we have here is John Inman, Larry Grayson & Quentin Crisp. I was a million miles away from any of those guys. On TV the first two never openly came out as gay to the best of my knowledge but ‘everyone knew’ they were, you know, queer. The last one, Quentin Crisp only became famous following a story in which the actor John Hurt played him.
There was nothing about any of those men which I related to, nothing at all. If that was what being gay was, perhaps, well, just maybe I wasn’t gay at all, I just somehow found other guys attactive and it would be those other guys which would form all of my sexual fantasies.
But, there was another issue at play, I wanted to be a dad and had zero interest in girls, never even had any friends who were girls let alone a ‘girl friend’. You see, I say that, by my early 20’s I had maybe 1 and a half girlfriends. I was that naive that I didn’t notice that one of them just pretended to be my girlfriend to make the guy she wanted to be her boyfriend jealous. This other girl, I am sorry, I don’t recall her name (it’ll come back to me), she was a girl from the office and she seemed really into me in every way which was important ‘to her’ and, I felt nothing. Neither attraction or desire.
In 1983 I did though get a boyfriend. A true boyfriend in every sense except in the most important, nothing we ever did was legal. When we started it was illegal for us both to be together and by the end of it, two years later, it was just illegal for him but, by defintiion, as I was having a sexual relationship with someone under 21, I was a criminal.
After that ended through a really bad assumption that I was seeing someone else on his part (I wasn’t) I was single again. He was the only guy I’d ever had any form of sex with, we had never gone all the way and had anal sex, all very vanila.
Soon after, I met the girl I would end up marrying. I knew on my wedding night it was a terrible decision. Not because of her but because, I then realised just how long forever could be.
The sex wasn’t unbearable, it was a function, nothing more and I always suspected she got way more from it than I ever did. Within 9 years the marriage had changed. She’d known I was gay from the first weel but chose to believe I meant ‘bisexual’ and I didn’t want to argue. But in 1995 I told her I couldn’t do the sex part any more, I didn’t enjoy it, it stopped me being the person I really was, that it made me unhappy every time that I was acting a part, living someone else’s ideal.
We moved to Northampton, it doesn’t matter why, we just did. In 1998 I told her that I needed to fully come out as a gay man, have gay friends and explore that side of me. I was 35 and I realised I’d long since stopped being a gay boy, I had gotten much too old for that.
I met a man who became a good friend. He really got me out of myself. I enjoyed him touching me and showering me with compliments. He even liked going out with me with all the kids as well. A true friend.
However, and this is where the connection is between me and episode 4 of Bay Reindeer, something happened. He said he wanted to give me the most amazing birthday ever in 1999, my 36th. We would go clubbing in London (I’d never been), he said, I might even meet someone. I got very drunk. I don’t recall the drive home. I say home, I’d agreed to stay at his place as the kids were already sorted for the night. He told me the guest bed wasn’t clean and suggested I sleep in his bed, I was beyond caring from what little I recall.
I was asleep when I felt him fucking me. I’d never had anal sex in my life, never, it wasn’t something I’d ever thought much about and here was this man fucking me. I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening as, no one would do that, not without asking but, it was happening. Before I knew it, he withdrew and wiped his cum from my arse! I went back to sleep.
He asked the next day if I had enjoyed myself the day before, he didn’t mention the sex. I wanted him to because I couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t come out. For days I panicked. I worried I might have HIV. I even not very descretely asked him several days later if getting HIV ever worried him as he didn’t use protection. He told me that as his age he didn’t much care. He didn’t like sex with a condom so he was prepared to take the risk, I did some sort of stupid giggle, I felt sick.
I went to the ‘GUM clinic’ after a week or so. I felt so dirty, I never thought I would ever need to go into one of those places and there I was. I made up some crap story, I don’t ever remember what it was to get a HIV test. Of course, at the time I could have said I was a gay virgin and they’d have eventually suggested a HIV test. I think it took two longest ever weeks to get the all clear result. I had a choice. I knew I’d never be able to prove that what happened did happen so, I either carried on with us being friends because, after all, he was the key to my entire social life else, I say some crap excuse and move on. I decided that moving on only hurt me more so I acted like nothing happened.
I genuinely loved that man. Not in any romantic sense but he was the man who helped me work out what sort of gay man I was and to ignore what others thought I should be.
When I past away I was heartbroken, genuinely, one of the more painful times of my life.
Ever since his passing I have suppressed what really happened but, I cannot do it. Again, for me to understand who I am, to know why sex for me now is so shit, I had to go there back to the early hours of June 5 1999..
Yes, I had sexual relationships since then and they were OK but, they were always things I personally and emotionally had to work at. I was too often taken back to that uncomfortable memory and my mind would race killing the moment,
Did I enjoy the experience with him? I genuinely do not know. It was incredibly painful, I know that. Later in the day I remember a very painful explosion of shit and blood, I felt so dirty, so cheap. Actually, incredibly lonely. But, you know what? That doesn’t matter, that is falling into the victim trap.
If I had enjoyed it, would it still have been wrong?
Yes, undoubtadly I was raped. At no point did we ever have any conversation about anal sex beforehand and at no point did he ever ask my permission to fuck me. Had he asked me, I would have said no, I wasn’t ready to do that with him or anyone else. He took away my right, my absolutely right to choose when I did that. I would have chosen a time when I was with a man I truly loved as an act of love.
Do you know, and I am not saying who, there was only really one man I loved enough to enjoy the experience, where we could laugh about failures say yes or no and it never mattered. Both of us in that relationship were, as I am, 100% versatile, that we both equally enjoyed each aspect, each so called ‘role’ in gay sex. With every other guy. and with some it was just ‘too soon’ but, with other guys it was uncomfortable, it became a function with someone I didn’t really know. That part I know was what changed in me on June 5 1999. I lost my trust in someone else.
I do not think I will ever get over it. This year will mark 25 years since it happened. For sure it is healthy for me to be opening up about this. Some might find it strange or unfortable to read this. Others might ask why now? Why say this about a man who cannot defend himself? My answer is simple, I still loved him enough not to mess his life up whilst he was alive. But, likewise, I love me enough not to allow my life to be messed up because of a decision he made without asking me first.
He always described himself as a narcissist* which, made no sense to me at the time, I always thought he was just being modest. Looking back though I now realise that those of us who benefitted from him in any way did so at his pleasure.
*Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others
I have mentioned this before but, I am sure others find it difficult to recognise that any of this applies to me.
One of the side effects of it is that the sufferer (that’s me) keeps pushing through which is actually the very worst thing which can be done.
Take a look at these posters showing the typical symptoms.
I am going to concentrate on the last poster and explain it, how it relates to how I am …
Muscle Pain – Can be severe and is random across my body and can change throughout the day. It’s rarely a ‘real’ pain in that, there is no injury or damage creating it. What happens is that the pain receptor nerves randomly fire sending signals to the brain identical to those as if there were a physical injury so, to me, it’s very real.
Joint Pain – Much the same as Muscle pain only this one creates confusion with my joints leading to weakness which are the cause of falls.
Post-exertional fatigue – This doesn’t differentiate between physical or mental exercise.. In a ‘normal’ person they can have a run and the recovery time is really quick. If I were to run it could use all the available energy I have for that day. Just typing this out for you is killing my available energy. Prolonged exertion such as several days of a ‘work’ equivalent will often take weeks to recover from needing considerable bed rest, more on that later.
Chronic Fatigue – This is the ‘normal’ state for me. I never feel fully awake, never ever. Imagine how you would feel if you lost a complete night sleep. That is how I feel on a good day. On a bad day it is two nights sleep and jet lag.
Brain Fog – This one looks like dementia which scares the hell out of me. Going into a room and not remembering why is common. Forgetting names or muddling names up. Not recalling simple words in conversations.
Memory Issues – This isn’t much difference to brain fog but specifically it refers to not being able to learn new things, such as a language. Having a lesson and understanding it but, losing it all really quickly.
Concentration Difficulties – In me this is such things as struggling to watch a TV show or a movie
Headaches – Thankfully, this is one I rarely get.
Sleep Dysfunction – This is a huge part of it. Essentially, this illness stops my brain from recognising when I have slept. A sleep monitor will show several hours of REM sleep yet, my brain registers nothing. It is similar to those people who don’t register they’ve eaten and always feel hungry. It is also not something whereby I can logic my way out of it. Even though I know I slept OK, the chemicals my body would produce with sleep to refresh me, don’t get produced. Several hours sleep might be needed just to achieve a minimal increase in energy levels.
Heat/Cold Intolerance – This is quite bizarre. It is around 14°C in this room and yet I am sweating. If I picked up a cool can of drink, I’d find it uncomfortably cold. It is why I now must have a car with a heated steering wheel and air conditioning. Things which used to be a luxury have become a medical essential.
Marked weight gain/loss – This one makes perfect sense. If I cannot exercise as I used to then unless I reduce my food intake radically, I am going to put on weight quickly.
Flu like symptoms – Again, I am fortunate that this doesn’t happen often. That said, other symptoms I shall mention later do resemble this.
Sweats – Not in the last list but in others and related to the point above. I randomly sweat and feel really hot and this has nothing to do with the temperature. It is annoying during the day but, it wakes me up at night to the point I will throw the bed clothes off and then wake up some time later shivering.
New Sensitivities – For me this is light and sound. I find many sounds uncomfortable. Even music I have put on myself can become uncomfortable after a while. I love bright light, a glorious sunny day is heaven to me but, at the same time, really painful.
Tender Lymph Nodes – Yes, this is true but, it doesn’t trouble me as it seems so minor by comparison.
Sore throat – Yes but again I don’t see this as particularly worrying
Orthostatic Intolerance – I feel this is too closely connected to some of the earlier points to deserve a separate mention. Needless to say, I find just standing very uncomfortable.
Vertigo. palpitations – Not something I suffer from
Irritable Bowel Syndrome – Most definitely and one of my main reasons for never wanting to stay in someone else’s house. Alongside this is severe bloating and discomfort. When I have to go it is consistently explosive and creates a huge mess. Again, one of the reasons not to be somewhere I can’t easily clean up. Just about anything can bring it on.
Bladder Dysfunction – My bladder can ‘forget’ to tell me I need a pee for an age and then it goes from not needing to pee to major bladder emergency in minutes!
So, that breaks it down for you.
What can you do to help me?
Don’t have expectations that I can do what it looks like I can do
Don’t be shocked if I use a walking stick or an electric scooter to get about
Do ask questions if you are unsure about what I can do, it will change from day to day
Please don’t question my decision not to drink alcohol, it makes my condition worse very quickly.
Please, don’t be offended if I appear anti-social. It just means I have run out of energy and need to rest.
If I seem angry just ask me if I am OK, it’s most likely I am really struggling to get through my day and will need some help.
Talk to me like I am ‘normal’. I don’t have dementia even if it seems like it! I am just really, really tired.
If I am driving and say I need to pull over for a nap, allow that to happen, indeed, encourage it.
Make sure I drink plenty of water, dehydration is a common issue.
If I cannot learn your language it is not because I don’t want to or I am not trying. My brain just isn’t functioning at that level much of the time. Never give up trying though. Just try not to get frustrated as, there is no point, your frustration is nothing compared to mine.
If I mess up my words or get yours and everyone else’s name wrong, it’s OK to laugh about it, it is how I deal with it.
Male suicide is at an all time high and it’s practically ignored. Were it women who were killing themselves something would be done but, for some reason, it’s not something men want to talk about.
Men don’t tell others when their World is falling apart. They don’t complain when, perhaps they should. They don’t go to their GP with medical issues and they suffer in silence until they cannot deal with the things which weigh heavily on them. Why are we not doing something about this?
What should you do?
If you have a male friend and you notice any change in him at all, speak to him. If you are a man, still speak to him. It doesn’t make you gay, it doesn’t mean you fancy him. It is just one human reaction, an act of compassion to another person. Never tell him not to cry or to pull himself together. Never point out that other people are watching, it doesn’t matter.
It is not just men who go to war and pick up a gun who are heroes, just helping one other man is as heroic an act as anything the forces do. Just letting one other man know you care is often time all it takes.
If this is someone you look up to, don’t look down on them because they are not coping, give them support. They can still be your hero if you have to be their hero.
Why am I writing this now?
Well, it’s not me, it’s you! I am fine but, I know how not fine feels. I am struggling like hell with the pressures of life and my illness but, I am OK. I am managing and my coping mechanisms are in place and mostly functioning. But look, let me show you signs in yourself when you know that stuff in your life is getting on top of you. I know as it’s happening to me right now.
Little things suddenly get you really angry like, you want to things sorted as they’re just wrong, someone needs to know they are wrong. The war in Gaza or Ukraine, the government or, the stupid price of fuel at Sainsbury right now. It’s realising that our reactions to such things are chronically disproportionate to how much they personally affect us. Maybe there is a feeling of obligation to ‘get involved’, get it sorted and, maybe, you feel if you do get involved you will have at least cracked one problem that annoys you in life.
You know what though? These are not ‘your’ problem. Sit down for a bit and contemplate all the things making you angry or confused until you come to some closer to home.
I am realising now how events going back decades in my own life still have a huge effect on me and how I think now. Certain things trigger me. A comment which might even seem like a funny joke to someone else and to me, it gets me so angry, so uptight and that is, to me, it’s a trigger.
Bottling up our history
When we have a bad experience we store it up. We may not realise we do but, as men, we do. I am sure some, perhaps even a lot of women do this too but, right now I am focusing on men.
Maybe someone significant to us died when they were young or, at a time in our lives when we vitally needed them? Maybe we have been physically or emotionally abused? Perhaps we were given unrealistic expectation of what success looks like?
What do I have?
I grew up raised by an overbearing father with expectations of his son I did not match. I was expected to be captain of every school sports team or, at least, the football team. I had zero interest in sport. I was meant to show a young interest in girls, I showed zero interest in girls. I was meant to match the men in the family and be high up in banking, I had zero interest in banking and was not actually very fond of maths either. If I achieved anything it would be “well done … but.” I was emotionally abused by him well into my adult life.
I was emotionally and physically abused in a Long Term Relationship. The shame of that was huge and, of course, I genuinely had no one to talk to as, well, men don’t get abused you see, doesn’t happen.
I was raped by a good friend. I stayed with him overnight, I don’t recall going to bed but woke up with him raping me. I felt confused, very confused and I did nothing about it. After all, even I believed then that men don’t get raped but, what else do we call it when we discover someone screwing us from behind without ever giving them permission to do that? It wouldn’t even matter if I’d ever said it might be OK, at that time he did not have my permission. It was unprotected too and for weeks after, until I got myself tested, I was terrified I might have contracted something.
I became a single dad. I am taking nothing away from the male partners I had a LTR with at the time but, they were not parenting, they were just there. I was abused in another way at that time, by the discrimination by women who would not accept my role. Teachers who kept wanting to speak to the mother of the kids just as one very basic example. As a gay man I also had a social worker question whether it was appropriate for me to take my son into the male toilets given my ‘persuasion’. For the benefit of doubt, my son was doubly incontinent and needed to be toileted. Fortunately, there was a witness there who herself put in a complaint.
How am I affected now?
Yes. I did notice myself get angry when I saw Sainsbury have raised petrol by nearly 3p a litre in the past week. My brain was going there, who do I write to, this has to be stopped. That’s a warning sign, it’s the time when we need to either talk to someone or, we need to have a good coping mechanism in place or, both. Come on, realistically, I only have a tiny amount of energy each day, do I really want to waste it on such things?
How do I live with it?
One of my ways of dealing with things is to write. Write in the hope that it might encourage another person to not let it go to far. To appreciate that many of the things we think are important really are not and can be ignored and, many more things we are ignoring are the very things we need to sort out either in our own mind or with the help of someone else.
I can honestly say I rarely feel depressed, rarely feel out of control. Sure, with my medical condition (M.E.) I do struggle just thinking but, I am still mostly in control of my destiny.
Earlier I knew I needed to eat but, the thought of just making a sandwich was too much. My solution was to do a quick analysis, why was I feeling like that? The actual process of making a sandwich was painful but, manageable. The alternative was to go back to the car and drive elsewhere and eat. Logically just making food at home makes more sense but, that would only be if I ignored what was really the problem. It has nothing to do with whether I could make a sandwich or not, it had everything to do with needing some ‘me’ time. A time when I didn’t need to avoid tripping on the cats, when I didn’t need to speak to anyone where I wasn’t able to get distracted and take on another task around the house.
I went to McDonalds, I got a free meal (I go there too much and earn a lot of points apparently). My phone data was off, I ordered on my phone using their WIFI and chose to ignore any messages coming through. For just half an hour I shut the world out.
… and after?
Sure, I saw the same sign for fuel but, it didn’t bother me, it’s fine. As soon as I got home the messages came in, the phone kept ringing with problems to solve for other people but, this is my life. It will not always be this way and I have maybe written something here which might help just one other person.
You must be logged in to post a comment.