Men Who Become a Woman's Phantom Instead of Fantasy

It's New York City and Times Square beckons. I know that "real New Yorkers" can have a way of disdaining that several square block space as being too full of tourists, too crowded even for a native, too crazy and chaotic - but I like it. It's daytime bright even at night in a somehow more authentic spectacle than its brother, Las Vegas. Now THAT'S "touristy."

I'd only seen one play on Broadway ever in my life up to now, and that was Cats. It was many years ago, and I had only seen it because my father liked the music, and had recently passed on at the time.

I didn't like it. It put me to sleep. I'm a movie lover and there's something about live plays and musicals that feels like too much intellectual work to appreciate after a long, long day's intellectual work.

Well since I actually live here now too, it was time to try it again. After all, I had escaped being held captive for the typical three hour stint - much like flying from NYC to Vegas. Even though I detest flying, I think I might rather take that flight than sit stationary for that long again in a theatre.

This go around, I chose another long-running show that pleasantly surprised me: The Phantom of the Opera.

The music is incredible, the acting, singing, and spectacle itself, a one-time experience to remember, but the reaction of the audience to a psychiatrist's senses is just as irresistible.

After seeing this drama as a kind of plot and theme marriage of Frankenstein with Romeo and Juliet, you would be very interested as a man to learn just as much about human behavior from the audience reaction as you would by the philosophy of this drama itself.

A lesson for men like no other.

Men Who "Love Too Much"

Maybe you have been there with a woman. You enjoy helping them, giving gifts, advice, perhaps you helped one get a job, or solve her personal dilemma, and she seemed truly thankful for your help.

But this felt so good, and her initial response was so positive, that you kept doing it over and over as your prime way of feeling masculine with her.

It's understandable. In the Mature Masculine Power Program at http://www.menspsychology.com/courses/miman, we call it the "Zeus Instinct."  In that program we cover all the masculine instincts which:

1.) Make you feel like a man

2.) Make you more attractive to women

3.) Make you do better in your career

4.) Give you more passion for life in general

This Zeus Instinct is like that - as the cheif god of the ancient Greeks, he was the ultimate fatherly force in nature.

But the problem is, if you ONLY use ONE "feeder of masculinity" like this one, it can get old and stale and clunky in how smoothly your life runs.

Back in medical training days, we had a saying for specialists who tend to see their own "pet illnesses" in every patient. It goes, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

If you fall in this boat then you are failing to use something that we talk about in MindOS Mastery, called PERSONAL BOUNDARIES.  These are the things that let you be wise and clever in deciding how and when to use your various masculine instincts, for various and different kinds of problems.

MindOS is at http://www.menspsychology.com/courses/migrowth.

The natural course of this "friendship" with a woman where you provide way too much (which is a man's form of "loving" - to give, provide from the fruits of his labors) is that the woman values you less and less, and takes you for granted, eventually feeling more and more entitled, expectant, and even taking for granted that you will, should, ought to, and MUST keep providing at least at the level you now do.

Maybe you have been in a long term relationship or marriage like that.

It's actually the exact equivalent to the term some women sometimes use with each other, called "slut."  When they use it they often mean that a woman "gives too much" in terms of sexuality.  That would be giving of their essence in the form of their bodies. But to us as men, we feel more identity in our WORK and the fruits of our labors, than we do in our body, or in being sexually active.

What makes a man a "male slut" is not "sleeping around," but rather, "spending around." Anything that is attacked as a "taboo" happens because it "goes against nature," and it is against the nature of men to give away the very essence of who they are, in exchange for less and less appreciation.

You see it every day in dinner conversations where a man and woman on a first date are overheard saying, "Well if there isn't going to be any chemistry here, why am I paying for this? We won't be doing this again." It is exactly the same disappointed emotion as the woman who says, "If there isn't going to be a relationship here then why are we having sex? We won't be doing this again!"

It's the same, just felt in different languages.

We finally decided to take these two ideas together in the form of the masculine instincts, PAIRED with the concept of GREAT BOUNDARIES for men, and composed the brand new set of practical skills called Masculine Intelligence in Personal Boundaries Program just released:

http://www.menspsychology.com/courses/masculine-intelligence-in-personal-boundaries

In there, we teach you every skill needed to set limits, use your resources wisely, have strength and respect - all the things others don't have the knowledge to teach you - in the areas of Women, Work, and Being a Man in general when it comes to having boundaries.

Which brings us to the classic error - Being a Woman's "Phantom."

Don't Be a Phantom

In the Phantom of the Opera, I couldn't help but wince every time the audience slapped the hate on that poor creature who was playing the lead. He was the "muse" to the young female artist, the inspiration, and certainly a father figure extraordinare to her. Responsible for her rise to fame as an opera star, the Phantom ends up just that - a remote figure of her imagination, somehow not quite real, though valued long ago when she really needed him.

And to a degree, isn't that like being a father to a girl. When she is small, you are her hero - you help her universally. But someday she will grow into a woman, and call you less, check on you less, and go out into the world to live her life (without you much of the time.)

Sure, as her father, you will still be in her memories, her imagination, she's think of you at times. But for the most part, she is working on a job, or being in a very real relationship, not in your arms.

The Phantom of the Opera deals with this dilemma of "overfathering" women, and the tragic disappointment of men who "love too much" and overrely on this "Zeus Instinct" of appealing to women through fathering them too much.

Let's look at the basics of the story:

Deformed since birth, a bitter man known only as the Phantom lives in the sewers underneath the Paris Opera House. He falls in love with the obscure chorus singer Christine, and privately tutors her while terrorizing the rest of the opera house and demanding Christine be given lead roles. Things get worse when Christine meets back up with her childhood acquaintance Raoul and the two fall in love. The Phantom decides to kidnap her and imprison her with him in his lair. Raoul is now the only one who can stop him.

You aren't your date's father. You want to be her equal and her very real man - not just a figment of her imagination, or her patron or muse. And as you play the "male slut" in the drama of your life - by giving away too much too soon, in hopes of being appreciated and loved - you'll learn that you will not be loved as you want to, as an equal and a lover, rather than a distant but kind father who is slowly, slowly less appreciated, honored and romantically attached.

If you do this - use the Zeus Instinct as your ONLY means of feeling attractive to women, valued by them, and masculine in your own heart - you may find an audience around you too - jeering you, considering you "ugly" or "strange" or even frightening as the Phantom.

Don't do that to yourself. Learn about Masculine Instincts in the MMP, Boundaries in the MindOS Mastery Program, and both of these COMBINED, in the new Masculine Intelligence in Personal Boundaries Program.

Be Her Fantasy, Not Her Phantom

Instead of overrelying on just one facet of being a man is not the way to go, clearly, but is a situation where you need to not "throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Instead of "being her father from afar" only, recognize that yes, being "fatherly" is an occasional necessary part of attraction and definitely is within a solid, lasting romantic, committed relationship. We all need to lean on each other sometimes for fathering from the man and mothering from the woman, even in a mature romantic relationship - and that's where the Zeus Instinct in you shines.

But that's not all you are. You are not just the phantom memory that harkens back to what it was like to be in her father's strong arms.

There is an idea called "psychological integration" and it involves a sense of "balance" in life.  The kind of balance that personal boundaries filter, wisely measure, apply (or not apply), and the balance of all the traits and instincts of masculinity which make a man, a man.

To be her "fantasy man" instead of just her "phantom," it is necessary to know all these tools and skills, these instincts of masculinity which can be brought out in balance, in the right way at the right time, and for the right task. When you know how to stand up and fight with the Ares Instinct, or to read up on solutions with the Apollo Instinct, or how to communicate with the Hermes Instinct, you'll be on your way to seeming "magical" in her eyes.

But not as a little boy who wants to impress his mommy with gifts.

You'll  be a man who knows what to do, and when and how, which is quite a man to be with in her eyes.

Masculine Instincts are in the Mature Masculine Power Program.

Boundaries are completely and extensively covered in the MindOS Mastery Program.

And their combination - setting your path on strength, respect, wise choices with your resources, and 'never being used again' are all in the Masculine Intelligence in Personal Boundaries Program.

Enjoy being her fantasy.