Newsflash! Men have feelings too. And not only those dudes who read our site.

I don’t mean to be facetious. It’s just that in our f*cked up, post-dating world, we – as women – so often feel like we’re left holding the bag. No matter how strong we feel starting out the night, the friendship, the non-relationship, or even – for goodness sake – the relationship, we have the sense that the cards are stacked against us.

We gulp down the tears and act like we weren’t that into him anyway when we get that thoughtless blow-off email or break-up text. We go hang out with him and his friends, only for him to spend the night hooking up with another girl. We find out he’s engaged on Facebook. We wonder what we did wrong when he disappears off the face of the planet for a day, a week, a month, forever.

Sure, the death of dating has saved us from lots of awkward set-ups and  expensive dinner-and-a-movie snooze-fests. At the end of the day, non-dating is more fun and more fruitful.

BUT, absent traditional rules and expectations, we never know if we can get our hopes up. We can never be sure what any ambiguous interaction means. We feel like crazy psychopaths for stressing and second-guessing everything when LOVE is supposed to be FUN. The dah helps us keep our sanity, but with every non-date we put an inch of our hearts on the line.

It’s enough to drive a pretty lady crazy!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But today I’d like to put aside the hysteria (as it were) and think about where these guys might – might – be coming from.

Fortunately, given our male-dominated, patriarchal culture, we have eons of poetry written by men to investigate. Perhaps the pen is mightier than the sword after all.

When it comes to masculine swagger with an undercurrent of deep emotion, I’m a Stephen Dunn fan. His language is direct. His lines are measured. His thoughts are clear. But somehow the feeling is palpable.

In Dunn’s collection I’ve read most closely, The Insistence of Beauty,* he deals in constructs of architecture – a stairway, a house, a garden – that represent the constructs we build in our minds (for protection, for self-justification, for inflicting pain on others) and the similar constructs we build between each other in relationships. These poems are simple, frank depictions and quiet, stoic ruminations. I always have the echo of this phrase (from “For Many Years”) in my mind, or maybe it’s my heart:

You can’t trust a heart,

its attachment to the new,

how quickly it forgets its way.

So in a way, reading Stephen Dunn – as thoughtful as he is – leaves me feeling still cynical about men. You can’t really expect anything of him or his heart, he says. If he’d been born in 1979 instead of 1939, I bet he’d be sending me a lame excuse for a blow-off text.

But then there are those poems that strike at the core. Is “masculinity” a veneer or a deep rock of truth? What underlies the ambivalence, the gruff reticence, and the studied emotional distance that characterizes so many of Dunn’s – decidedly masculine – poems? (not to mention more than one of our WTF?! Guest Blogs!) I think Dunn is “getting at” those questions here:

Achilles in Love

by Stephen Dunn

There was no getting to his weakness.

In public, even in summer, he wore

big boots, specially made for him,

a band of steel reinforcing each heel.

At home, when he bathed or slept,

he kept a pistol within reach, loaded.

And because to be invulnerable

is to be alone, he was alone even when

he was with you. You could sense it

in the rigidity of his carriage, as if under

his fine-fitting suits were layers of armor.

Yet everyone loved to see him in action:

While his enemies were thinking of small

advantages, he only thought end game.

**

Then she came along, who seemed to be all

women fused into one, cheekbones and breasts

evidence that evolution doesn’t care

about fairness, and a mind so good, well,

it was like his. You could see his body soften,

and days later, when finally they were naked,

she instinctively knew what to do-

as smart men do with a mastectomy’s scar-

kiss his heel before kissing

what he considered to be his power,

and with a tenderness that made him tremble.

**

And so Achilles began to live differently.

Both friends and enemies were astounded

by his willingness to listen, and hesitate

before responding. Even in victory he’d

walk away without angering a single god.

He wore sandals now because she liked him in sandals.

He never felt so exposed, or so open to the world.

You could see in his face something resembling terror,

but in fact it was love, for which he would die.

In the beginning, we meet Achilles – he of inhuman prowess, godly rage, and a fatal flaw. He is the essence of powerful, impenetrable strength. He commands the adulation of the world. His enemies fear him; he is all about the death blow.

But masculinity – even at its apogee – has its price:

“…to be invulnerable / is to be alone…”

Achilles is alone. His experience of life is from a distance. There’s no getting through to him. There’s no telling what he’s thinking or feeling. (Sound familiar?)

Then she comes along – The One. And Achilles is changed. We can point to her beauty, her brilliance, her sensuality, her deep understanding of his brooding soul… But really, there is no explaining the connection, or his transformation.

Ladies, we think that we can change him (whoever our “him” may be) because we’ve seen it happen before. Case in point: now Achilles listens, he hesitates, he humbles himself, he develops fashion sense, he opens up. He lives differently, and the difference is astounding.

But finally, the kicker:

He never felt so exposed, or so open to the world.

You could see in his face something resembling terror,

but in fact it was love, for which he would die.

If Achilles is no longer alone, then he is vulnerable. Because love opens us to fear. To love and to fear is to be human. And to be human – particularly for Achilles – is to be mortal and to die. By Dunn’s coarse logic, Achilles is a martyr, and a martyr for love – of all debasing, treacherous emotions.

If this attitude applies to all dudes, then no wonder he doesn’t want to “have the talk.” No wonder he just blew you off. If there’s an ounce of truth in Dunn’s conception of masculinity, then falling in love is every man’s undoing. No wonder he’s suddenly avoiding you.

And yet. Stephen Dunn is a freakin’ poet. He trades in words that express emotion. He thinks, and he feels, much as his pen seems to resist it. The unspoken message of this poem is that Achilles ultimately IS powerless. That woman comes along…his manly armor falls by the wayside…and the ultimate price of his being open to the world…is death.

The higher the man the harder the fall. The implication? It takes a REAL man to REALLY fall in love.

Now there, ladies, is a thought. Who needs that (wimpy) dude who hedges via text or invents one non-date after another? I mean, that dude should be in your dah – but he’s not deserving of any Achilles’ like admiration.

So alas, my dear, darling dudes: to be a worthy man, you can’t be afraid to put your heart on the line – and not just in words. Don’t worry if this sounds scary. It’s often worth it in the end. We know because we women have been doing it for centuries.

*Full disclosure: I wrote the press release for this book when it was published in paperback in March 2006.