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HEALING THE PATRIARCHAL HANGOVER — PART II
The Moment He Chose to Wake Up
How men break free from patriarchal conditioning
TLDR Men don’t change because women berate them. They change when they realize, for themselves, that the patriarchal script is a dead end.
Patriarchy never gave my husband real power. It just pretended to. What it really delivered was a father who abandoned him, a youth of numbing distractions, and a marriage on the brink of collapse.
But one day, he walked away from the old script he had been living from, and he has not looked back.
It wasn’t an overnight shift. And it wasn’t because I nagged him, yelled at him, or gave him an ultimatum. It wasn’t even because I almost walked away from our connection.
It was because something inside him, some deep, quiet voice buried under years of conditioning, finally asked, “Is this way I’m living working for me?”
And the answer was no. So, he found the will and the courage to change it. Yes, he is an awesome human being. But anyone with a bit of consciousness and the ability to self-reflect could make the same choice. If they wanted to.
When survival mode stops working
A lot of us are working from a kind of emotional survival mode. It’s a logical reaction to the mounting stress levels of living in these crazy times.
In late 2023, I lost my tech job. The layoffs had hit hard, and suddenly, the fragile relational interdependence we had been working so hard to grow into fell off the cliff and we dove into full-blown survival mode. I was scrambling, working every angle I could to make money, and keep the bills paid.
I felt like I was also still carrying the weight of far too much emotional labor. I was managing most of the financial paperwork, insurance, kid schedules, and all sorts of invisible tasks that keep a family functioning.
In case you haven’t read my work here on Medium, I’m a creative! Not an administrative organizer. Keeping track of logistical stuff is definitely not in my zone of genius, but someone has to do it, right?
