In the movie Moonstruck there’s a scene where a friend asks Olympia Dukakis as Rose, whose husband is having an affair: why do men have affairs? She responds: men have affairs because they fear death.
I always thought that was one of the best lines in the film and a true insight. Yet as I grow older and think about it more – and especially in light of recent events – it may not be death men fear as much as they fear women. War and the ‘warrior’ attitude may be counter phobic for men, but the pandemic denigration and violence against women – throughout all societies – strikes a much deeper fear. I suppose not all men, including men who have affairs, fear women more than death, but Moonstruck has hit me more recently as a tragi-comedy of desperate men and the women who manage them.
Is it possible to think that fear of death and fear of love are somehow the same? And taking that premise a little further, is male vulnerability more likely to split the paradox of that reality? It was Freud who came up with the Eros/Thanatos split, as did all the sons of Plato. Perhaps women, through whom we are all birthed, can’t really afford that split so easily. Perhaps for women the complex binding of life and death is inscribed in the depth of every cell in their bodies in ways that can’t be ignored; whereas, we men can split … and run off to fight our wars?
The thought occurred to me: perhaps there is nothing but the feminine. Has male vulnerability tossed a veil over the mother-goddess of existence and called it ‘Father’?
We get stuck on the metaphors. Do we use these metaphors to shield us from a deeper sense of void and meaninglessness? Existence can’t be defined by any of its creations. It is a pure possibility that endangers all its expressions. It is lovedeath, yesno. The source of our identities is beyond all definition and is accountable to none.
Until we come to grips with that reality, we do what we can to keep Father and Mother apart and live in fear of both.
Perhaps gynophobia and homophobia are the grimacing face of the same jack-o-lantern – ghost of our worst nightmare.
***
the wind
blows petals from the trees
clouds
race before and fade the moon
and love
wraps its truth in dreams
for life to blow away
revealing
one knows only
by risk of heart’s desire
Good Friday
Love and Knowledge: The quest for personal meaning
© 2017 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW
All rights reserved
South Garden Press, New York
For thoughts and comments, please e mail to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com