Men and women are not born, but become.

I work in the office with men who need to learn to become men and also with women who need to learn to become women. I myself learned this in a structured therapeutic process, and the free, spontaneous learning from life continues.

What does this mean?We are born boys and girls and as we grow up, our bodies mature, we become teenagers, we grow into young adults. We experience in our family of origin, but interacting with our father and mother, certain archetypes/models that with the mind of a child, we consider to be universal.

If the father drinks alcohol and is aggressive towards the mother, we consider that this is how masculinity is expressed, through toxic dominance. Or if the father is passive and uninvolved in family life, but overly involved in professional and social life, this too could become a model of masculinity. Likewise, if the mother is passive and the permanent victim of the father’s abuses, we learn about femininity that it means victimization. Or if the mother is domineering and castrating, we understand about the woman that she is that being that cancels the male nature and that handles everything and does it all.

The child takes this masculine or feminine model through thesis or antithesis. He copies certain elements from his mother’s or father’s typology and completely rebels against others, proposing the opposite solutions (anti-scenario). Be that as it may, the child’s first male or female archetype is taught by his own parents, by the way they are woman and man into this world.  

As we grow in adolescence, youth or adulthood, we also interact with other archetypes, with other people, whether they are partners, office colleagues, friends who add new elements to this archetype. We can learn that masculinity is about that inner strength that gives us direction, courage and perseverance in pursuing a goal, an ideal, and femininity is about our ability to love, to see and empathize with the other, to create space for so that the other can exist with us.

The life contexts in which we work, love or relax create so many opportunities for us to constantly learn what it means to be a man or a woman in this world. Everything is to be open and to accept that learning is permanent, throughout life.