For many men, intimacy comes in only two flavors: sexual conquest or violent confrontation. We have been socialized, almost from birth, to face another man eye-to-eye only when we’re about to fight—or when we’re competing for dominance. The only time in our society where it is socially acceptable to come eye to eye with a man is during a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) or a boxing faceoff, as they try to intimidate each other and prepare to pound each other’s faces in. Since we were young boys, we were shown how intimacy or connection with another boy was “gay” or seen as feminine. (Notice the weaponization and labeling as “bad” of both women and people who are gay.) This lie deepened the roots of sexualization and weakened the foundations of connection and intimacy, leaving grown men not knowing how to build lasting relationships. This dynamic has completely emotionally castrated young boys and now significantly impacts the loneliness of men across our generation. We don’t know how to relate without violence toward other men. And that is just with other men; when it comes to women, the story is even more complicated. We have been conditioned to look a woman in the eye, mainly when we want sex. (Note: many Christian men have been taught to bounce their eyes from women as a way not to lust, but this behavioral modification is just a different form of objectification and dehumanization toward women and does nothing to help heal the core wounds that drive the desire to objectify.) As men, we are tragically fluent in aggression and arousal, yet nearly illiterate in every other kind of intimacy or connection. Why is it so hard for us to simply be with women without sexualizing them? Why do we so often turn them into something to conquer instead of someone to know?
My theory is this: men avoid facing women because to truly see a woman is to humanize them. And once he humanizes them, he can no longer reduce them to an object of his desire. That shift forces him to wrestle with his own humanity and his own desire—with both his own depravity and his own glory. To see women as human means he must also face his own futility and the shadow of loneliness. And if he cannot have sex with her, then what? He is left with a more complex question: how does he actually relate to her?
The Poverty of the Male Relational Imagination
From an early age, men are taught to prove ourselves through physicality, power, or sexual prowess. Fathers tell their sons to “man up,” coaches praise them for “crushing” the other team, and peers reward crude talk about women. The male relational script becomes alarmingly narrow: Toward men: Compete. Posture. Conquer. Toward women: Pursue. Possess. Penetrate.
Notice what’s missing? Attunement. Emotional connection. Kindness. Vulnerability. Shared delight. We don’t have normalized spaces for men to sit across from one another simply to listen, to empathize, or to share wonder. This is why in our men’s and co-ed workshops, we spend so much time holding each other’s gaze. There is so much in the wrestling match between our desire to be seen and our fear of being known. We simultaneously want to be known and can think of nothing less threatening.
When men do try to connect outside the sex-or-slaugther binary—when we hug another man, compliment him, or meet his gaze for longer than a few seconds—there’s a cultural suspicion. We joke, break eye contact, and go shoulder to shoulder, focusing on a common “enemy” or a “task” to dissipate the tension. We have been trained to interpret intimacy as inherently sexual or threatening, leaving us starved for the very thing that makes us whole.
This conditioning is not accidental. Patriarchy thrives when men are emotionally malnourished. An insecure man who cannot receive comfort without sexualizing it or feeling weak will seek dominance instead. A quick “fix” for feeling powerless is to take power over another (ie, porn or buying sex, or throwing himself into work). A man who cannot offer gentleness without feeling emasculated will default to violence or sex.
Healing requires a radical reorientation. We must widen the bandwidth of our intimacy. We must learn to face one another without the need to conquer or consume each other. Imagine the possibilities: Men gathering not to prove strength, but to confess weakness. Husbands sitting with their wives without an agenda, letting curiosity replace conquest. Fathers looking into their sons’ eyes to communicate pride, not performance expectations. Friends holding each other’s gaze not in challenge, but in blessing.
We need to rewrite the male relational script so that eye contact is not only foreplay or a prelude to a fight—it is prayer, it is presence, it is peace. This will require intentional practice, including therapy, men’s groups, and spiritual communities that normalize connection between men and mutuality between genders. If we cannot reclaim our gaze for purposes other than sex or violence, we will remain trapped in an adolescent masculinity that mistakes domination for connection. But if we dare to look into another’s eyes with neither lust nor threat, we may finally discover what our souls have been aching for all along— genuine connection, authentic intimacy, and knowing God more fully.
